[Fern]

Adding onto this, I'd like to note out the general steps I personally go through when preparing a public event.

1. Determining if it's meant to be impactful/serious in any form.
 
This usually determines the amount of general effort that'll be put into it. If it's not meant to be serious and something more light in tone / soft for people, then you don't have to account for too much beyond making the area pretty and comfortable to be in (if it's a new one) and how you're going to address several players at once when they're in. From what I've seen, these "soft public events" usually have like 20 to 30 people, sometimes more, so you often need to ask an extra hand or two to help you with them anyway. And that is a process in and of itself, because schedules don't always align, and if you want to be impromptu about it well... people aren't always going to be able to help you with impromptu, etc.

If you're looking to have it be in a new area, you still have to make that. Either through the house builder, or a third party tool for mapping because if you're like me you don't understand anything about the SL2 mapping environment and resort to a mapping tool that's pretty much designed for mapping babies like me...

In my honest opinion, and this is STRICTLY my perspective, steps 2 and beyond apply if you decided to go with anything that isn't "soft."

2. Creation of enemy mobs if it's meant to have combat, or points of interest if it's meant to be investigative (if you're trying to run an investigative public event, I wish you good luck soldier)
  
If it has fighting, you have to make mobs and balance them, on top of somehow getting the icons for them sorted out if not asking someone else to do it for you assuming you don't know how to. Because not everyone in the eventmin team knows how to icon, map, work with DMIs or is very skilled when it comes to handling mob creation. And it's not necessarily that anyone is dumb or anything - it's that it's not easy in the slightest.
 
The mob AI in SL2 is very, very jank and will almost always do things you don't expect or want it to do. I.E it will suddenly start using one skill and never the other, and when you pop in the encounter in the real thing they're doing the reverse of that. They will spam certain skills that you don't want to be spammed, etc. I'm not trying to throw shade at Dev or anything for this, more so saying this is a huge part of why the event prep process can be really tedious for public events.
 
Because then you have to account for the multiple team setups that are going to participate, you have to also test the mobs and make sure they're well-balanced (spoilers: they normally won't 100% be and it's even more difficult to make it semi-consistent when Glancing Blows exists.)
 
You have to figure out the order you'll do the mob fights in, when and where, the narrations that'll come with it since you'd rather not just throw them out without any RP usually (I can only think of very specific circumstances where doing it without any RP would be a good idea.)
 
Getting the icons, in my personal experience, is a pain in and of itself. For the longest time even though I'm able to edit existing things, I've had to rely on free sprites I found across the internet or commission someone to make something for me. And I don't always have that much money to spend. We don't have someone that makes sprites for us for free as part of the staff, so we usually have to mess with those things. As of recent, people have been very generous to me and offering me their help with sprites/event prep/mapping in the way I need for these events which I'm honestly REALLY appreciating all of that. I normally don't like accepting help for event prep from people that aren't even staff for the reason that I don't like burdening them, but I have no choice and it makes it somewhat less time consuming to prepare as well.
 
As for the investigation and points of interest part, then it boils down to how you are going to cater to all the players that are going to try and interact with things. Serious public events generally have 40 to 60 players, or 120+ in the more special cases (I'm not even joking, looking at you Godly Stage.)
 
I think one can probably already imagine how that's a headache to manage. And because it's horrible to run, you're usually forced to do something with combat if you're looking for anything serious that's meant to be public. And I guess eventmins don't want to bore people out with constant PVE.
 
3. Creation of the event space (if applicable)
 
This is such a tedious process on its own, at least for me. I have no house building skill, my mapping skills are relatively basic and heavily crutching on the fact that the program I use is very simplified and intuitive. It means that I often have to ask someone else to help, specially with the house building part if I need it. I don't know why, I -just- struggle with house building despite people making it seem easy and doing borderline artistic stuff with it.
 
And I can imagine that it's similar for other eventmins as well, because we are unfortunately not good at everything. So I can imagine that's a time investment for them as well. Personally I take hours making the maps you've seen recently because this is pretty much my first serious attempt at making that stuff. It honestly surprises me when I see someone more experienced with it finish in like an hour or less.
 
4. Determining the event's sequence
 
Figuring out the order in which things are happening is also part of public event setup. What are players going to do first when they arrive to the event when it starts? What are they going to do halfway? How are you going to build up to the end of it? What -is- the end of it anyway?
 
5. Future-proofing
 
You have to also account for people potentially being goons, because those people will always exist. So you have to take precautions and have backup plans. That doesn't necessarily limit itself to the event sequence, it can apply to things related to mob fights as well. Future-proofing isn't always something that takes too long to sort out, but it can be very painful at times. If you want a personal example of what I meant by future-proofing:
 
"Dev what do I do if people sit on Zera's Throne and try to get Demigod after Cornelius does"
   
And that's one of many. Sometimes you also have to account for the possibility that people might try to kill each other due to certain RP scenarios.
 
6. Figuring out how you're going to follow-up with the event.
 
What are you going to do for the next event? I find that this heavily depends on what kind of event you were running to begin with. If it was something one and done, then probably don't need to think too hard on it. But if it's something like a plotline...
 
... yeah, that's a process in and of itself.
 
 
Sometimes I think the main thing that makes me keep trying to do public events is seeing people happy, because the preparation for all of it is very painful when it comes to plotlines at least.
 
I just wanted to give a general idea of how time consuming it can be to prepare this stuff, specially considering that Event Tools aren't as robust as it may seem to people. A lot of the stuff we do like the maps is with silly workarounds that I'm sure Dev didn't originally expect, but ended up working out very good anyway. And even that is limiting and sort of painful to get going sometimes, because you have to account for file size limits and you have to compress parts of the "map" so that they fit in with the icon to upload, and I--
 
Yeah, it uh, it takes time. All I can say is I really understand why other eventmins don't public event frequently. Because it's kind of a nightmare to setup if you want to deliver anything with quality. At least that's how I see it.
 
As for the event-requests, from what I've seen even if they're not directly answered in the channel itself, they tend to get DM'd or something along the line. Personally I usually don't reply there because I already have a lot on the plate, so if I start running other people's events while continuing to do what I already have on the plate...
 

 

this will be me, i'm sorry i wish i could help tho wheeze
 
tl;dr public eventing is often pain to get going and i can't blame any of my fellow eventmins for not wanting to dive into it often
  
p.s: big thank you to the people that are trying to help with public events!!!
 
p.s 2: god i didn't even go into detail about how you're generally supposed to handle raid bosses, that's an ordeal in and of itself to make decent or good