[Lore event series] First Battle of Geonosis

[Brian-Limmon]

SYNERGY LORE EVENT TEAM

Who made this possible: Dono, Bacta, Brian, Embark, Unkindled, Guac

Event helpers throughout the weekend:

Attack of the Clones (Full server Deployments): @Brian-Limmon@Dono@cubby @Daytona211@MrNeptoon

Galactic Assault (Siege):
@Dono@Katy@Brian-Limmon@Daytona211@Zen
501st Journal (Attack):
@Brian-Limmon @Daytona211
Republic Commando (Spec):
@Brian-Limmon @Katy @keller @Prophet @Babatunde

Classic Battlefront (Operations): @Brian-Limmon@Dono@Katy@Bacta@Midnight@Beetle

Link to Event/Encounter Document (optional): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r_MbuFgdodWMyU0Mz_HDKGcjqwRAr1UnTWggbC96GfI/edit?usp=sharing

Description of event/encounter (required if no document provided): This lore event series began on Friday with a prelude on the main server, where the server was set for the day to Kamino, 22BBY before the war broke out. Late in the day, the Jedi order were sent to Geonosis for their own small deployment, this was immediately followed by a massive full server deployment utilizing both the event server and the main server at the same time, beginning the first battle of Geonosis. Each regiment was given their own special deployment throughout they day which were each based on a different on screen piece of star wars media, from entries in the battlefront game series to the republic commando video game.

We seriously hope everyone enjoyed these events throughout the weekend on main and on the event server. In total there were 6 events ran throughout the entire weekend all linked and connected through the First Battle of Geonosis. Overall this was a huge success and will most likely be the largest event series we run as a part of these lore events (until we get to coruscant...). We would appreciate if you leave any and all feedback specifically on the structure of this event series overall rather than in the specific events as they have separate AARs.


Until next time. The Synergy Lore Event Team will see you at The Battle of Muunilinst...

Edited March 8, 2022 by Brian-Limmon

[Misfit]

14 minutes ago, Brian-Limmon said:

@keller

heheheh das me

10/10

Edited March 8, 2022 by Misfit

[Cubby]

asked naffen to change my name ahhhhh

but 9/10 

[Brian-Limmon]

Bump as we're still looking for more feedback on this structure as a whole, please send this to your battalions if you see this so we can get more perspectives and opinions on how to improve for future events!

[Perssongi]

10/10

[Seabass]

10/10 one of the most fun weekend deployments i’ve played 

[Bane]

I’m going to be real with you, and I’m speaking for many members of my battalion here, this event as per the chart ranks at a 3. To be clear, I don’t want to dismiss the hard work or vision put into this event. That being said, everyone in my battalion was bored. They didn’t like Kamino, The Battle of Geonosis had really weird pacing, and a large portion of my boys decided to skip day two. (I was busy that day, so I only got a taste of day one). 

KAMINO BREAK DOWN: 

Many of the issues stem from the weird design of the map, but mostly the massive instability. You guys couldn’t have run an event on Kamino for a regimental deployment without killing the server, let alone a full server deployment. (Flashbacks to the unveiling of the Venator still wake me in a cold sweat). There were Kaminoans running around and putting people into jail cells after promising pilot training, there was nothing interesting for clones to do besides march, patrol, and watch the Jango fight. (Many of us missed it because we had no clue it was happening). Overall there’s not much to say because there wasn’t much to do. 

 

GEO BREAKDOWN: 
**I KNOW BRIAN WAS THE ONLY SA HELPING. I DO NOT BLAME HIM FOR NOT HAVING HELP.**

The Jedi portion was definitely one of the cooler/more coherent parts. of the deployment. As a faithful recreation, it was definitely a 9/10. I really enjoyed that part. The problem came in when we deployed as clones. There were no clear objectives, we ended up getting to places far earlier than the GM was able to keep up, and there was a lot of pointless walking without action. This is largely due to there only being one SA, but there are definitely many ways in retrospect this could have been combatted. On top of it all, we went to the Venator after the Geo deployment. 

 

THE VENATOR:

This relates less to the AAR and overall rating and more to a general theme: Half of the server fucking hates the venator. In a cursory poll, over half of my battalion stated they dislike the venator. It kills activity every time we’re on, and GMs are never on it long enough to adapt to running events on the venator. The only people who really enjoy it are Operations, this is largely for the same reasons they hate anaxes, but the rest of us have trouble enjoying it. 

 

OVERALL THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS:

I think the real root of the problem here was the event that was chosen. The first battle of geonosis is a very difficult event to pull off even with a full team. The lore behind it doesn’t really translate well when you’re trying to entertain 120 people with different jobs, specializations, and and expectations from an event. I think the Lore team’s efforts would be best directed in creating a “Campaign”, that is coming up with their own lore and putting an extensive amount of events behind them. This was tried with the Bounty Hunters and the Shadow collective, and it definitely started off strong. If there had been more people involved with playing out a pre set storyline with continuity and lore to be discovered/lived through it would have been a smash success. Create your own characters, create your own lore, create your own story, then design events/deployments that cater to the player base. Either way guys, I love the vision and effort that was put into this weekend. Don’t be discouraged. If it wasn’t for you guys the server wouldn’t be half as good as it is. 

[Conrad]

As one of the few people that got to go to everyone of these I want to preface this by saying that’s a pretty unique perspective. Most of the server probably went to max 2 of these. That being said, boy am I sick of geo. 
your build up, set up, and dupe consistency was equal throughout all of this, and the level was honestly superb. You really can’t get better for a story line that is literally just shooting at droids. But that being said, all of these where just slightly different geo back drops of you shooting st droids. I shot droids on geo for 8 hours this weekend, with not much more unique interaction. Now I get geo doesn’t have a lot of interaction, it’s kind of just shooting droids inlay it’s heart. That’s all the battle was in lore. No civis, no objective other then kill and blow things up. the only thing I can say is I hope that all events are just shoot’em up’s, regardless of the quality that these held, I need things and people to interact with to fall in love with an event. Great consistency. Great effort. But again as someone who went to all of these mediocre execution as the gameplay became repetitive and boring. 

[GregRocks]

2/10

I know this seems low, but I genuinely didn't enjoy this event that much. This rating is also according to the chart. I'm very critical of this event, and if you disagree, that's fair. Feel free to tell me what you think! I'd love to hear feedback. I'll break it down into sections similar to other ratings.

Kamino 

Kamino itself wasn't a bad idea, and it started out in a way that made it seem well organized and put together. Players were allowed to explore Kamino, and had an understanding of the timeline and what was going on. I played as a clone for a while before switching to a Kaminoan and hosting a battle sim as per the game master. This is when things started to show their lack of planning. While setting up, several players had discovered the Carbonite chambers, and started using it, which lagged out the server to the point of several players being launched off the map. This continued despite staff's best efforts for 15 minutes until they removed the machine from the map. During and after the battle sims, the RP started to feel forced and immersion was hard with the amount of players minging due to a lack of enforcement. Two of us had switched to a security clone job to help this. Later, when the story started taking place, it was shown how under planned this was by how awkwardly the story progressed after that. I don't believe anyone knew what was going on, even the main characters. Overall, better planning with a more solidified timeline and maybe even small, planned out scripts for the roles, this would have gone much better. I never felt immersed in the story, but overall there were areas where I was able to have fun.

Geonosis 

This part didn't go well. I felt fairly disappointed by it. This started when we only had one SA+ GM trying to run the entire event. I think eventually we got another SA+ that could help with the second server, but this again was still an extreme shortage and showed the very poor planning. For an event this large, to me it makes sense to have a team of GMs set out who all were free that day and willing to help at this time. Instead, we got one GM who struggled to find event jobs, could barely fill all the roles, and who seemed incredibly stressed doing circles trying to figure out what was going on. It was hard to get teleports back to the battle at some points as event jobs, which caused us to have to hang out with clones at their own base, as that was the only spawn point. When Jedi joined was probably the biggest flaw in this section, which was trying to split it up between two servers. This wasn't a bad idea in theory, but it was executed very poorly. No one was sure where to go, and the main server couldn't start their event until ours was already underway. We ended up waiting in DB and on the event server for a while because by the time our event was over, main was only half way through it. This section was fun, but a lot of the time no one knew what was happening, and the one poor GM was trying his best to keep his head on straight. This section was fun, and I know many players including myself had fun, and it wasn't bad, but it was poorly planned and even during the final story part, no one knew what was supposed to be happening. I believe better coordination with other GMs, better planning, and again maybe some scripting could have made this section go so much smoother. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.

Venator 

The aftermath was... Something. When we got back to the ship, and for maybe 12 hours after that, no one could tell if we were still supposed to be in the GEO timeline or not. We had some people running around as CTs, some people who thought the timeline was back to normal, we had certain characters that would DEFINITELY not be in this era running around, which to me isn't that big of a deal but worth mentioning. Once it was clarified it made more sense, but this still felt weird. I saw a few cool screenshots from this section, but I personally never saw anything that made me feel immersed in the timeline more than just normal operations on the Venator.

I know there was another deployment, but I did not attend this. If this made the event a 10/10 by itself, then I apologize for my rating, but the rest of it by itself this is what I give it.

Overall

Overall, the event wasn't the worst I've played. I still had some fun, I just never felt immersed in the time line. The poor planning and clunkiness of this event could have been avoided. While some parts of the clunkiness were charming and funny, most parts just shattered my immersion, and it was very hard to feel like this was a genuine event, as opposed to just another excuse to mindlessly shoot droids and some very forced storyline that is hard to follow. Major props to the GMs who still managed to make this work with such little help and so few helpers.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Lovestruck
Removed excess space at the bottom of the rating.

[Brian-Limmon]

32 minutes ago, Lovestruck said:

I know there was another deployment, but I did not attend this. If this made the event a 10/10 by itself, then I apologize for my rating, but the rest of it by itself this is what I give it.

There were 5 deployments throughout the weekend total, the purpose in this AAR is for feedback on the whole structure of how they were all handled and connected rather than for the single events as they all have their individual AARs

[Bro]

9/10 

I enjoyed the new voting system for events and push for a timeline that we, as a server, can experienced and push through the events. That being said I enjoyed the BF2 event we did with ATK as it reminded me of the old days. In addition I loved the Specialized deployment though I believe it would have been better to just be a SOBDE deployment. Both were very fun in very different ways! The change of main server map and esthetic it was very fun!