My suggestion is that the Custom Event Info function should be used for all events - minor events included. That way players can choose if they want to be part of an event round or not.
This has been rejected in the past with the reason that it “ruins the surprise” of an event, but if that’s a concern, staff can use the function anyways with a description like “An event may be run this round, details are secret.” That way it preserves the surprise, and still lets players choose to be part of an event or not.
The problem with this, in my opinion. Is if any form of event is stated before round starts, we have a flood of people ghosting/observing, who then all ahelp for roles and if not selected, then all ahelp to be returned to lobby. If an admin is planning something minor and does not require people/has already got their people for it and is forced to announce an event, even if they state in the description they do not need anyone to ghost for it. It will still happen, the majority of our players are selectively literate at best.
You state that people would want to know details of an event to judge whether they want to take part, but if the event details are secret -ergo- event may be in place, details are secret. That doesn’t really give any specifics for someone to judge whether or not they want to be involved in it? And would then cause round balance issues if a bunch of people ghost/observe then request lobbying with roundstart xeno numbers.
I think it’s fair to just tell people an event is going on, no details needed. That way they can decide if they want to be part of a potentially goofy round where anything can happen, or not.
Apologies, misread the initial comment. Still asleep brain.
In either case, my previous comment on the concerns at impact of round balance for roundstart is still a valid concern against making this a mandatory thing.
Additionally, not all events are planned ahead and some are ran as and when a situation arises in game that an admin thinks that intervention may be required
People choosing to ghost when there’s no indication that the event involves ghost roles is a skill issue that staff doesn’t need to be concerned about People can pray for potential roles in lobby instead of ghosting. Ahelps should be for reporting rule violations or when staff needs to do something, prayers should be for requests that can be ignored. Also event rounds are usually not balanced anyways because wacky admin things are allowed to happen. Personally when I see it’s an event I’m not expecting the round to be balanced at all. I’m just happy when there’s any kind of notification so I can decide to be in it or not.
Better yet. Make an #Events-Announcement channel and make a lottery picking bot in the discord.
People can sign up to an event posted by the bot, bot picks through a list of people and they are automatically given a role.
But thats like effort.
A lot of minor events are spontaneous or are extremely minor in nature. It would be a bad idea if the server receives Discord pings when someone is running a minor event such as spawning a non-talking Cat in a side office, for example.
Major events, despite the title, range a lot in what they do and if it is worth pinging for it. An event where someone spawns an extra ERT wave during Hijack likely does not need a ping. Another event where someone skips hijack, may not need a ping.
Personally, I do often ping people for events, mostly when running my HvH events. However, I consider this appropriate since the event is a wild departure from the typical CM experience.
I do believe it would be appropriate for staff to ping for major events that make a significant change to the game, but from my experience these kinds of events are fairly rare. I am the only person running large scale HvH events, and things like Greenshift are exceedingly rare.
Some context on the round that prompted me to make this thread:
In lobby I saw that evacuation was in progress. This always means hijack in my experience, so I observed. It was not hijack, and the round was far from decided. I sent a prayer saying something like “uhh why is almayer set to evac for no reason” and then a couple minutes later, someone finally decided to set Custom Event Info, the event was that the almayer was uninhabitable for some reason and there was “no shipside” (someone probably remembers and can say exactly what it was).
I’m not trying to criticize the event at all, I just think it would’ve been beneficial for Custom Event Info to be set at the time that they were sure they were running it (at the very least before setting almayer to evac status), and a policy feedback thread is the way to give feedback on it for similar future events.
People can pray for potential roles in lobby instead of ghosting. Ahelps should be for reporting rule violations or when staff needs to do something, prayers should be for requests that can be ignored. Also event rounds are usually not balanced anyways because wacky admin things are allowed to happen. Personally when I see it’s an event I’m not expecting the round to be balanced at all. I’m just happy when there’s any kind of notification so I can decide to be in it or not.