[Jumpy]

Alright. Now that I've had food I can make an actual review that isn't in full lowercase.

Let me begin by saying thank you for picking up an event that wasn't yours to begin with. I appreciate it a lot.

This was the first event ran for Achyon's players as far as player-events went; people were happy to get their hands on something at the very least and I think that the positive reviews show as much.

I'm going to be brutally honest and not pull back any punches when it comes to this review because I think that you have the mental fortitude of handling it and improving from it.



Responsiveness

The replies were timely. A few times did we wait on narrates but that's to be expected when the even runs 8 and a half hours long. I don't mind if the DM is talking to people in-between posts or clarifying things or whatever, but when everyone is waiting on a narrate and messages go out towards the very people in the event about things that need no attention right now it's a bit grating. Even so, we didn't have to wait an hour because you went to do something else mid-event.


Balance

This is by far your weakest point. You may not think that your ECs were overtuned but they were. An EC with big AOEs that has 416 power is not fun for anyone. Combos like Fall > Black Hole > Land of Desolation in a small room with GCDE is ridiculous. Having every EC being CC immune all the time is also very disheartening when we're a group of only 4 people, three of which use CC as their primary way to dish out their damage; even when we pull out a great move like throwing a javelin while in a corner it can just be ignored and walked away from. It sucks. I suggest using lower power if the EC is going to have some gimmicky AOE stunlock build; had the EC been running around with 200 power then the combo would be something people panic when seeing rather than lift their hand off their keyboard for the next 4 seconds as they watch their health bar deplete down to 40% in a single combo. Having higher health makes for fights that are more interesting, even if they last longer.

Small rooms are another problem; this invalidates any build that benefits from a large area and makes builds that fight in melee range have 0 way to stall for their cooldown, leaving them to stand there without any answer while they get pelted down by spells. Full RPB size makes for more fun fights.

The second fight was incredibly unfair by all means. The boss we fought was sporting:
Fall, Black Hole, Land of Desolation, Impact Cannon (later changed to Blast Rush), Arc of Devastation, Shadow Cannon, Corruption, Dark Orbs, Eviscerate, and Hellstorm Burst

Only 2 of those are basic spells, 4 are Intermediates, 2 are masters, and 2 are hiddens.

The DM guide used to have a half passive-aggressive, half joke about how I gave an EC a skillset with 8 spells that couldn't be freely bought. That build was literally just that.

A broken skillset, overtuned stats, and small rooms are not the only things that were bad about the balance.

Usually when someone escapes an EC once, the EC may chase. Twice? Alright, some will chase if it's near-KO and the person has sustain or hasn't been knocked down yet. But if I get out of the way of an EC three times and he still chases me in a sequence that throws me from 80% to 0% with no counterplay at all (due to being CC immune) and I'm forced to watch the rest of the group fight all together it sucks. Especially when it's followed by getting a permanent injury. This happened to both myself and Matryona, namely. I deem it's worth mentioning in balance as well.

Furthermore, not every single fight has to be a 5-rounder. The first fight could have easily been a 3-rounder. I tend to have most fight but the last be a 3-rounder unless I have a specific plan for the EC being a 5-rounder. This definitely helps if you don't like long encounters. Hell, I've had a group fight a 1-round fight.

Storytelling

This is the strongest point. The story was interesting, the development everyone got from it was incredible and I think each person shone in their own way and will be using the event logs in their journal as a milestone. You've got that nailed down and I feel like you'll only get better and better as you learn more of the recent E3 lore dumps that came about recently. I won't go on with praises: This was perfect.

Fairness

I got exactly what I came for, except I took a -20 vit perm for it. Matryona left without a single piece of loot and took a -10 perm for it. While there's a way to increase danger as the event progresses, I've always felt it was unfair to completely invalidate how prepared people come to an event and still just lower their roll artificially for having received a temporary injury and having healed it with one of the few potions we had the resources to make. Hint: This was all of Achyon's elixirs of healing and lax essence. Literally.

There's more to this than just looking at how unfair some of the injuries were. At the very start before we even begun you told the entire group that you like it when people explore rooms and that loot can be found in such a way. You gave everyone an incentive to play with this story you've created and interact with it. Everyone liked the idea and I do it myself in my own event, having secret rewards if X happens.

That being said...
The first person that explored was Anna, and from trying to explore she was left with no choice but to roll for an injury because there was absolutely no way in which she could both explore and avoid being injured. There was a definitive sense of urgency about the rooms we were meant to explore. The second time we explored ended up with Matryona finding nothing but bones. The third time? I approached strange metallic monuments as a storm raged overhead in a room that was literally just two metallic pillars on the sides with mysterious runes, a thundercloud above, and a rift on the other end of the room. From approaching the only object in the room I was made to roll, and succeeded. Ryker proceeded to just run through which... apparently was the solution while the rest of the party tried to bring about an elegant solution of freezing the cloud above using ice magic.

Whether or not it was possible, it's clear you didn't like the idea whatsoever. You made us all roll for lingering there and trying to interact with the room that was built, resulting in more injuries on both Anna and myself. All for trying to have a solution you didn't think of to the problem posed.

When we exited we learned that the pillars were, indeed, holding some of the loot that we could have had. Whether or not we would have had to roll when attacking the pillars only you know, but I feel it is dirty.

There was an incentive to explore, and every attempt at doing so was punished.

Taking a -20 vit perm after being chased for an entire round with no possible way to escape it feels far less memorable than a nail-biting fight where I had to clutch the last hit on the ghoul King, rotting my own arm with death magic in the process in order to eliminate this plague on Agartha at the cost of a ruined arm, costing me 20 vitality.

I don't think 20 vitality is bad if the event leading up to it makes for great memories and story. This was our first player event, however. And while the way the injury came to be was cool, it wasn't on an epic proportion. I'm even of the opinion that losing 40 vitality isn't bad if you do something significant that warrants it like sacrificing an arm to save someone's life.

I don't think that anyone should be subjected to taking a permanent injury on a small-scale event in which they've received absolutely nothing. Not even a 5 vitality perm is acceptable in my eyes if the person is getting nothing.

Furthermore, a CoD event should have loot for every single person, and some extra. When I ran the Balmung event pre-ts there was a piece of arcanium per head, two dragon scales, and Balmung itself. When I ran the Vault there was Caledfwlch, two great dev materials, and one piece of arcanium per head. Both of these events were ran with people ranging from 190-205.

In my opinion, I got what I came for but came out worse when you look at it on a level of "how do I perform in a fight".
The rest of the people who came along for my sake absolutely did not deserve to be that punished for what they received, or one case, didn't receive.

Overall

The story was very good, but you're DMing this with a mix of Spires high-stake CoD where people had 600 power on their character, and what feels to be an insatiable dislike for players and the game itself.

I don't think you have anything against anyone in particular, I just think that you let your emotions get the better of you and feel like if someone hasn't been injured yet they have  to go down. Being targeted and then told you have a -2 modifier to your next roll because of the temp you just drank an elixir to heal after being told before the event:


But then watching Anna taking minuses even after healed her first temp with an elixir and having lax'd the two others that followed, only for those minuses to result in a -10 vit perm feels completely against the spirit of coming prepared.

We came with:
4 elixirs
3 lax essence
3 soothing reed bowls

And still had negative penalties on our rolls regardless.


Thus, as an overall you should look upon the more mechanical aspect of your DMing. Your storytelling was fantastic.

This is my honest review.