Festival Overview

Concept Phase

Festival is a calendar-driven orchestration system. It does not replace the mods that provide content; it schedules and coordinates them.

Core Philosophy

A good live event should be visible, bounded, reversible, and memorable. Festival’s job is to turn operational intent into reliable server behavior.

Visible

Players should know what is active, what is coming, and why it matters.

Bounded

Every modifier has a start, end, scope, and owner.

Reversible

Staff should be able to pause or roll back an event safely.

Memorable

Events should produce recaps, Passport stamps, screenshots, leaderboards, or stories.

System Design

flowchart LR
    Staff[Staff Calendar] --> Event[Festival Event Package]
    Event --> Validator[Conflict Validator]
    Validator --> Scheduler[Cluster Scheduler]
    Scheduler --> Nodes[Server Nodes]
    Nodes --> Modifiers[Boons + Adapters]
    Nodes --> Heralds[In-Game Heralds]
    Event --> Web[Web Calendar]
    Event --> Discord[Discord Posts]
    Modifiers --> Treasury[Treasury Rewards]
    Modifiers --> Passport[Passport Stamps]

Event Package

{
  "id": "moonlit_market_2027_04_16",
  "name": "Moonlit Market",
  "starts_at": "2027-04-16T19:00:00Z",
  "ends_at": "2027-04-16T22:00:00Z",
  "scope": {
    "network": "main",
    "nodes": ["survival-1", "survival-2"]
  },
  "boons": ["bazaar_fee_discount", "rare_vendor_rotation"],
  "attendance": { "enabled": true, "minimum_minutes": 20 },
  "rewards": ["treasury:moonlit_market_attendee"]
}

Lifecycle

State	Meaning
`draft`	Staff is editing; not visible to players.
`scheduled`	Published to calendar; not active yet.
`warming`	Pre-event announcements and countdowns are running.
`active`	Modifiers are live on target nodes.
`paused`	Staff stopped effects without deleting the event.
`completed`	Event ended and recap/reward jobs have run.
`cancelled`	Event will not run; cancellation notices can be posted.

Gameplay Design

Event Types

Event Type	Example	Good For
Boost Window	2x Relic Renown for 3 hours	Focused grinding sessions
Outbreak Rally	Dragon spawns boosted on selected routes	Group hunts
Market Fair	Bazaar fee discounts and vendor rotations	Economy nights
Contest Gala	Reverie contests with extra ribbons	Social/cosmetic competition
Frontier Night	Bonus ranked rewards for selected queues	Competitive spikes
Season Finale	Jubilee closing weekend	Server-wide celebration

Attendance and Participation

Attendance should support multiple modes:

Presence: player was online in the event scope for at least N minutes.
Action: player completed a specific event objective.
Contribution: player contributed to a community target.
Staff Check-In: staff manually checked in attendees for bespoke events.

Cross-Mod Hooks

Mod	Festival Role
Jubilee	Launch weekends, chapter spotlights, finale events, event-specific deeds
Passport	Attendance stamps, event titles, recap cards
Treasury	Reward bundles and compensation grants
Courier	Event reminders and post-event reward mail
Outbreaks	Spawn rallies and type/species spotlight windows
Bazaar	Market fairs, fee discounts, featured listings
Relic	Renown boosts, catalyst hunts, inscription discovery weekends
Reverie	Contest galas, tournament showtimes, ribbon bonuses
Frontier	Ranked queue nights, bracket events, rating protection windows

Safety Rules

No event should activate without a generated preview of affected nodes and modifiers.
Recurring events should copy a template, not mutate old event history.
Every start/stop/pause action needs an audit entry.
Node-local clocks should not be trusted; scheduling should use a shared authority.
If a modifier fails on one required node, Festival should either roll back or mark that node degraded.