-- pruning this off from the Questions to the Devs thread so it doesn't get too far off topic --
My reply to the discussion of in-game events/holidays/celebrations:
Even after assimilating into a distinct American culture, many states and regions still celebrate other 'holidays' that are important to their original culture, so those with a sizable Irish population might practically shut down for the day for St Patrick's Day, others with a vast Italian heritage would not, but they would then have another time of year, an area with a lot of descendents from in/around Germany would have yet another, etc.
That in mind, it would be quite reasonable if some area around the city might be having a block party/gathering at a park.whatever to celebrate something the rest doesn't. A town near me has an annual Homecomer's Day, for example, with rides, etc set up in the town center on the streets, bands, carnival booths, etc, whereas no other town in the area does that.
(insert pithy comment here)
I hope our devs aren't such ******************************************* that we don't have a Christmas event. :p Seriously, most non christians celebrate Christmas, that means it's not so much a religious holiday, as just a holiday. Yes, other winter events happen in America, however, only 3% celebrate Hanukkah and 2% Kwanza (which isn't religous, but just mentioning it as a winter time event).
Also, if Adam ruining everything is right, then it's less Christian and more American than anything else anyways. :p
Mind you, I'd only want presents going around town if we have some sort of Toy Maker style villain as a main NPC anyways. I'm also not keen on seeing there being a Santa and his elves like CoH did it. I didn't care for the baby new year event either :p However, the idea of there being a Christmas map (ie...lights strung up around the city with a huge christmas tree in the wanna be central park perhaps) of the city would be great.
A nice winter soltice evil magic event would be awesome though! :D
July 4th fireworks going at night! :)
Halloween I would love to see some zombie attacks AND some of those skeleton attacks someone else mentioned in another thread! Oh! Maybe a magic undead controller and a mutant undead controller band together to take over the world, while bickering over magic versus genetics :p
Aye, and some of these events being celebrated could even be lore-related, like when some hero from the past saved them from the machinations of some villain from the past.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I can already tell you of a community event that will be held. The Pride channel would hold a couple of events a year on Victory that were well received. Even got the game some complimentary national attention. I feel certain we would want to keep that going. Should be a lot of fun!
We already know that they have a few pieces of tech that would facilitate certain events.
Independence Day: They have demonstrated fireworks in some of the earlier videos so we should be able to expect that at least. I would be really excited to see the boardwalk packed with people and fireworks over the ocean.
Winter Event: They have demonstrated snow and even the accumulation of snow in game so at the very least we should expect to see a winter wonderland for a city even if we get nothing else. We also know they have a St Nick costume with some ... strange dynamics. I would kind of expect to see a mission where mall Santas are being possessed and running amok.
Halloween is a bit of a tradition in COX and we've already got costumes. So at the very least I'd think we'd see some pretty impressive player events. Then of course there is the city's proximity to Salem, as in it resides on the same seaboard within the same State so we could see some events driven by that or simply the celebration of sorcery and witchcraft to an Nth degree on a particular day of importance. Or all the tourists will dress up as witches and warlocks on Halloween and get hammered. In the same way that Americans celebrate Cinco De Mayo in the US. America the great mixing pot...deep fat friar might be more accurate. Taking tradition and culture poking them with a stick drowning them in batter and frying them up for portable consumption. Wow that got dark.
We also know that there will be a notable China town in game so I wouldn't be surprised to see some Chinese new year events.
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
Dev Comments: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/dev-comments
I liked the winter event in CoH, and taking my lvl 50 tank to AP to taunt the monsters whilst low level wailed on it in relative safety.
(insert pithy comment here)
Would love a Chinese New Year event!
/em Tom Lehrer singing voice
[i]Hark the herald tribune sings,
advertising wondrous things![/i]
[i]God rest ye merry merchants
may ye make the yuletide PAY![/i]
[i]Angels we have heard on high,
tell us to go out and [b]BUY!!![/b][/i]
[i]Soooo ...[/i]
[youtube]DtZR3lJobjw[/youtube] [youtube]z2Bw2ZeQcHw[/youtube]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I would love a Halloween event. Giant pumpkin head monsters roaming the city and stuff.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
*perks up sleepy head*
*returns to her snooze and dreams about patrolling the tree with Sidekick Sam to make sure there are no misfit toys trying to ruin the festivities!*
[center][color=purple][size=16][b][I][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78N2SP6JFaI]Just a cat from another star![/url][/I][/b][/size][/color][/center]
Exactly Redlynne :) We come together, spread the cheer, know cash and gift cards are really the best gift, but are so impersonal and we at times lament them :p
The only annual event in CoX that I enjoyed and looked forward to was the pumpkin invasions at Halloween.
It was a spin on a traditional holiday that had meaning in game play terms. The event was weaved into the lore of the game and that is what made it interesting.
I do not want any events crammed into the game to justify the existence of a badge or to just simply mimic what real world people do to participate in the holiday/annual events. So no Easter Bunny egg hunts where players scramble around to 'find' eggs hidden in the park. No Father Christmas event where we have to get a cookie recipe, collect ingredients and cook a batch to leave them on the mantle so we can then go to the community Xmas tree and get a present. There could be an opportunity to cater to the desire to do something like this in a pocket dimension or something, just please don't do it in the city proper.
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This is sort of separate from events for the players, but I want to see the game world mirror real world holidays and provide augmented opportunities. The day to day experience in the game world should be fairly reliable. If you pay close enough attention to your surroundings you will see patterns. Holidays should impact the game world by disrupting those patterns.
So for something like 4th of July, the city could react in a handful of ways. Titan City could host a fireworks display at a common public area. Hopefully there would be a gathering of NPCs around to observe to flesh out the experience. Players could join and watch the show. Or players could look for opportunities to exploit the system. It is a 3-4 day weekend, businesses are shut down and security in areas might be lax. Titan City residents will be setting off illegal fireworks all over the place (making lots of noise), that might provide a gang an opportunity to take action to do whatever it is they do.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
There's a bit of an asymmetrical aspect to seasonal events ... they're Alt Onerous.
This was driven home to me most firmly by City of Heroes and (ironically) Star Trek Online. Any time there is a limited time window to do content within, you're (as a developer) essentially obligating the Player to "do" any and/or all of that content within that limited time window. If you've got only 1 character that you play, that's not a huge obligation ... but if you're an Altaholic with plenty of characters, it can become a real chore. Yes ... [b]CHORE[/b]. Because almost every single time you're looking at needing to do the content on every single character you have.
I remember doing the Summer Movie Event in City of Heroes and trying to finish it on all the characters I was playing, and since I had TWO PAGES of alts to go through, it just turned into this massive Grindfest At The Grindhouse™. The same thing happened with Baby New Year and the Winter Lord and the Pocket D Ski Chalet ... and on and on and on and on.
Star Trek Online was even WORSE in this regard. I only had 4 captains, but when a seasonal event rolled out, I'd easily be losing [b][i]1 hour per day per captain[/i][/b] to grinding out the Daily Nonsense needed to complete the "jump through hoops" for the seasonal event. Once all of that grinding was done, I had no time left to play and just wanted to log off. It's part of why I eventually just got fed up with Star Trek Online and dropped it permanently, because the Devs kept creating OBLIGATIONS to do every single day, to the point where it felt like the game was [i]playing me[/i] instead of me playing the game. It turned into an (unpaid!) JOB that could easily devour 4/6/8 hours A DAY with no end in sight, just for 4 characters, and that didn't even include playing the "story" in the game to advance the plot.
Take a look at something like Trick or Treating for Halloween in City of Heroes. You needed to knock on some 100+ doors per character to get all the kill badges for the event (thanks RNGesus). That wasn't something that could be done in no time, and the time investment for it was multiplied by the number of characters you had to do it for. In an alt friendly game [b]that adds up FAST[/b] to the point where it can feel like you're OBLIGED to do it within the time window of the event on every single character that you have, because if you don't you'll be waiting for next year's event. It's that feeling of "do this, or else" ultimatum when you've got a huge pile of alts that changes things from being FUN to simply being ONEROUS as you need to do the exact same thing an increasingly ridiculous number of times to get the rewards on every single character. Gets worse when there's a Daily Bonus even further obligating you to redo the content "daily" on every single character you've got ... especially if you need to do the same thing daily for 20 days(!) to get a special time limited reward like Star Trek Online does all the time.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Personally I like a few in-game events that are tied to real world holidays, but not to many. Maybe one a quarter. I would also like a couple of yearly events that are unique to the game and were tied with game lore. You could even have it setup so that redside and blueside had separate events at different times of the year. Maybe blueside celebrates a major battle that has defined the city while redside celebrates when the leading villian/dictator came to power.
Although another event I think would be pretty cool to do would be the mourning of the shutdown of COH. Maybe even develop lore around it. Maybe talk about how the battle of Good vs Evil escalated out of control and destroyed a whole planet. That would leave it open for CoT to go to a devastated COH Earth along with the Ritki home world and all the other alternate earth's that were part of COH.
anyways. just my thoughts.
One way of dealing with this issue would be to have all the badges, and unlocks be account wide and have any of the loot be bound to account instead of character. That way you would only have to do the event on one character unless you wanted multiple copies of the same loot. You could even take it a step further and have it so every piece of event loot could be purchased from a vendor, but only if you had already acquired it.
For the most part those 'holiday' events are there to provide a limited time hamster wheel with a tasty badge or whatever at the end. Look at how & why those events were implemented. Badges and loot were tied to events to get people to participate. The events themselves were not the driving force to keep people participating. Make the event itself the reason why you want to participate.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
I'd prefer events that are tied to the game lore (such as a monthly monster uprising that seems to occur when corporation XYZ switches on their backup thaumatic reactor for a test) or some seasonal cycle (spring causing certain enemies to leave hibernation, or summer hurricanes causing Aether Pirates to go raiding at some inland zone and leave the city alone). If the city's appearance changes with the seasons (weather, leaf colors, store window displays, steam from sewer vents), that's very nice for immersion. However, I'm not sure an event involving player activities tailored to match a specific real-world holiday would fit... Guess I could be convinced if the event is really creatively designed into lore and makes use of an enemy group that exists year-round but behaves more aggressively during that one holiday, such as an alien group that invades on July 4th, or like CoH's Croatoa crowd around Halloween.
And yes, please follow Redlynne's input for making events alt-friendly.
As a person who only really played like 5 toons in CoX, and didn't badge hunt with ANY of them, I don't get why a person with 10+ fully leveled alts feels the need to do the entire seasonal event gamut to completion with all 10+ alts, for every seasonal event package, every time one rolls around. Or if you assume those people will act that way, I don't get why those people would then complain about it after the fact, as if the game devs are to blame for giving them more content to do than they can really handle. The devs are giving the players more of what we want, new content. That's a good thing. We want that. And if there's something compelling about the new content that makes you really want to get it done, I think that adds to the excitement of the content. I never did the Signature Story arcs in CoX because there was no compelling need to do them, but I did Tip missions over and over and over because I wanted those sweet Hero Merits, anmd I did Incarnate Trials galore for the Incarnate system rewards..
If you feel you need to do all content to completion with every alt to the point where it becomes grindy, then I would argue that the problem there is not the devs, or the events, or the rewards for the events. The events are intended to be fun and engaging, and if they're rewarding too, I think that adds to the excitement. They give players some variety and something different to do every so often to break up the monotony of all the other content that doesn't come and go with the seasons. If the main problem with events is that you feel like you have to do them with every alt, and given the number of alts you have that's a tall order, you could argue that virtually anything they roll out is bad because whatever it is, you now have to do it with all 10+ of your alts, just because it exists, and you might get a badge or something from doing it. Whatever it is, summer blockbuster, winter events, etc, there's bound to be something about it that's a permanent keepsake or badge or bit of swag you might get from that, in all likelihood. Therefore someone might feel obligated to do those events with every alt. In reality though, the game is not forcing you to do that, you're forcing it upon yourself, and that's nobody else's fault.
I would propose that the same alt-heavy person who feels overwhelmed when there's a new event package that they have to do with every alt before it ends would likely not play some/many of those alts AT ALL during that same time period if those events did not exist. It's not the devs fault that this person made 30 toons that they love playing so much they burn themselves out trying to do every event with every alt. What are they supposed to do, NOT make new content for us to do because some people might find it difficult to run through it with all 50 of their alts before it starts to feel grindy? Being required to choose which toon to do fun new content with is a sign that there's fun new content to do in the first place, and that's a good thing. I WISH the devs could come up with fun new content to do faster than people with 30 alts can burn through all of it, that would be a sign that the game is well maintained and that the company is invested in keeping the players happy.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
To each their own, but man, I loved me some SSAs. They were literally some of the best story-telling in CoH/V period.
Considering the [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge]Stuffed Into The Fridge[/url] storytelling style of the SSAs from the Who Will Die? arc ... um ... you're entitled to your opinion. I personally found the vast majority of the writing for the SSAs to be an insult to my intelligence.
I mean, seriously ... (Bat)Manticore went into Episode 6 [b][i]without a backup plan in case something went wrong[/i][/b] and then rather than detoggle Sister Psyche by mezzing her (you know, like any other squishy Controller), HE OPTS TO KILL HIS WIFE INSTEAD? Dude ... you're Trick Arrow/Archery. You didn't have to shoot her in the heart with the [b]POINTY STICK[/b]!! You had stunner arrows in your kit. But no ... gotta do the over-the-top DUMB thing instead, because ... Plot Hole™.
I mean, seriously ... why didn't the guy rig the altar in the MAGIC CITY of Oranbega with explosive charges to "crack it" and therefore ruin the focusing power it had just in case something went wrong? When in doubt, smash the amplifier with demolition charges! You use them ON YOUR ARROWS ... why won't you use them as a backup plan prepared in advance just in case something goes wrong?
Episode 3 was no better with its offing of [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Miss_Liberty]Miss Liberty[/url] in gratuitous fashion just to motivate Statesman ... which was objected to at the 2012 Player Summit in its proper context as a [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge]Stuffed Into The Fridge[/url] move, because that's basically what it was. FEMALE Players begged the writing staff to NOT repeat this sort of gratuitous offing of female characters from the franchise as an excuse to "motivate" the male heroes in the story to take the events in the arc seriously. Sadly, the entire arc had already been written at that point and it was too late to change anything, so these pleas for respectful writing went unheeded, because Sister Psyche still got (stupidly!) murdered by her husband ... who it can be honestly said, didn't deserve her.
Then there was the [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor]Plot Armor[/url] of utter inevitability protecting [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Darrin_Wade]Darrin Wade[/url] from ... well ... plausibility.
As far as I was concerned, the Who Will Die? arc was so ridiculously heavy handed with its writing that neither the words "heavy" nor "hand" adequately describe the quality of work produced.
So pardon me if I disagree with your perspective that the SSAs were literally some of the best story-telling in CoH/V period. As far as I'm concerned, on a scale of 1-5 stars, the SSAs rated [i]la bomba[/i]. [img]https://d30y9cdsu7xlg0.cloudfront.net/png/54644-200.png[/img]
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I have to agree with Radiac's comments above. I *want* there to be new things to do that give me reason to dust off my alts. A one-time event that will never re-occur, then yes: account-wide reward. But yearly events? Nah, I'll eventually get round to all my alts if the mood strikes me, and that's how I think it should be.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I saw no problem with Miss Liberty dying. Fridge moment? Pffft, maybe if we got any real content out of her before she was killed.
Sister Psyche and Statesman being killed was the dumbest thing ever. Statesman being killed, just because it was Jack's character, was also the dumbest reason to kill off a character and that's the only reason it was done. It wasn't because "Oh! hey! This would be a cool story!" Wasn't Psyche Jack's character too?
Maybe if they killed Castle, Back Alley Brawler and Positron I would have thought it was better. :p
I am looking forward to "Amerikatt Day" and "Ascendant Day"! Maybe we can make it "Amerikatt Week" or "Amerikatt Month"?
*looks around nervously, then flies to the Orbital Katt Kave at hyper-light speed!*
[center][color=purple][size=16][b][I][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78N2SP6JFaI]Just a cat from another star![/url][/I][/b][/size][/color][/center]
I remembering being in high school and reading the issue of Green Lantern where Kyle Rayner's girlfriend gets crushed into a fridge by Mongul and first thought to myself, "If she's hiding in the fridge, why is he reacting that way?" Then, realizing she was put in there violently (and dead), I then thought to myself, "Wow, that sucks." I never took it as, "Well, that's because she's female and therefore weaker BUT also serves as motivation for the male character." I took it as, "That's what bad guys do to good guy's un-super friends/family that can't obviously protect themselves from the baddo's evil powers." I would have taken it exactly the same way as if a male friend or family member. I understand why someone would possibly, and clearly did, take offense to it. I simply didn't have the same visceral reaction not only to the SSA content nor to the original reference. That doesn't make me a bad person nor does it reflect the entirety of my character or my tastes in things.
And, by all means, disagree. Not that you need my permission, and I don't expect everyone to share the same outlook as me nor would I expect everyone to.
I agree with you, Cobalt. If anything, it's done for all hero stories. Hero's love dies. The hero must right this wrong!
For some reason, it's (almost) never the male that dies/gets disfigured/gets depowered to motivate the heroine ... it's (almost) always the female(s) that suffer that ghastly fate to motivate the hero. Hmmm ... funny that (NOT!).
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Well, for some reason, it's (almost) always the male that brings the sales/popularity/fame to motive the company...it's (always) never the female that suffers a ghastly change to who they are to motivate the times. Hmmm....funny that. (:p)
;)
Altoholics are a fact of life in some games, for some people. Some people (like yourself) prefer to play only a handful of characters, and that is your mode of play. Other people prefer to have a wide variety of alternate characters to play when the mood suits them, and that is their mode of play. It is similar to the Lorehound/Buttonmasher mindsets, and all the gray areas they bring. Personally, I fall into the intermediate area; I had a fair number of alts, but I did not feel compelled to play all of them for any events, just the ones that I was concerned with badges for.
All varieties of player must be considered when structuring the duration, type, depth, and rewards of any event. It's just the way it is. It is important to know how certain aspects of the different types of events affected each extreme, and everyone in between, so that we can learn what was done right, what was done wrong, and how best for us to structure any events that we create.
I would much rather hear how the extreme ends of the spectrum were affected than not, so that we can know their perspective. We can't incorporate it into our thinking if we don't. Hearing only from the people in the middle doesn't really tell us enough to direct us at all.
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Conundrum of Furballs
[color=#ff0000]Composition Team, Staff Writer[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I'm going to label this type of thinking as ... [b]I've got a sandwich, so why should anyone in the world be hungry?[/b]
The problem here is the notion that so long as something doesn't annoy "ME" then no one else should be annoyed by that something either (because, hey, it's not MY problem, so why should it be a problem for YOU?). This is ultimately a very self-centered perspective that is predisposed to discount and/or discard the concerns of others. This is inherently problematic because pretty much ANY MMORPG game is going to have more than one type of Player in it, and it's extremely sad if there is only one type of Player in a game, since variety is the spice of life and all that. After all, we'd all rather be snowflakes than cookie-cutters.
The point I'm getting at here is that just because this wouldn't be a problem for YOU, Radiac, or the kind(s) of Player(s) that your viewpoint represents, it WILL be problematic for others ... specifically two types of Players that can often (but not always) overlap ... the Altaholics and the Completionists.
We KNOW that there's going to be Altaholics in City of Titans. There isn't any doubt on this point. Heck, we're even saying that "endgame" for City of Titans will be "create a new alt" already at this stage of development!
Alts were a "thing" in City of Heroes.
Alts will be a "thing" in City of Titans.
It's going to happen.
Not everyone is a completionist ... but a lot of people have a "collector" mentality (and if they didn't, Pokemon wouldn't be franchise!). Any time you set up a limited time offering/reward, you're basically "obliging" your customers/fan base/Players to "act now" or weep forever at the missed opportunity. That's the whole POINT of having a limited time offering, that "act now" motivation. And that motivation is okay to have in singular terms ... such as doing content on a single character, or "showing up" in person as an individual ... but it becomes a whole other thing when you start multiplying it by the number of alts you've got due to having a serious "collector" mentality/motivation behind how you play. It's the classic condition of "too much of a good thing" turning what ought to have been FUN into being a GRIND ... a chore ... a JOB ... and no longer fun.
Now, obviously different people's "pain point" on this will be different, so there is some squoosh factor in here regarding how much is too much repetition ... but the fact still stands that beyond a certain number of repeats of the exact same content within the same time limited window, what was once FUN can become decidedly UNfun. It happened to me in City of Heroes with just about every seasonal event. It definitely happened to me in Star Trek with every single seasonal event, because the events there were even more blatantly designed to be (obvious) treadmills and time wasters. I do NOT want something similar to happen in City of Titans, which from the get-go is being designed to be Alt Friendly, and engaging a "collector" mentality for seasonal events is one of the more Alt UNFRIENDLY things that you can do as a game designer, where you oblige Players to "gotta get 'em all" on every character you've got during a limited time window of the event to "do all the things" associated with the event.
I have no problem with engaging a "collector" mentality over an [b]unbounded time window[/b] ... stuff like exploration badges and lore badges and the like which are "always there" ... since there's always time to go and get those things whenever the Player wants to (or not). THAT is fine. But I do have a problem with doing the same thing during the limited time available during an event ... even if an event lasts for 60 days (or more) ... because the very act of putting a cutoff date on availability prompts an "act now!" decision which can (in effect) "throw people off their game" to go play the time limited content NOW lest they miss it.
And as if that wasn't enough ... what about the people who join the game to play it later? They're just SOL because too bad/so sad, they missed the event. There are a LOT of event rewards in Star Trek Online which were exclusive to those time limited events which simply cannot be obtained NOW by any new Players. So over time, missed past events become a sort of (growing!) handicap for new Players who can't get the already missed rewards (Star Trek Online is especially egregious on this point, with things like ships and set items "locked" behind exclusive past events that won't be repeated in the future). After a few years of history, you wind up with a situation where the veteran Players become the HAVES and the new Players become the HAVE NOTS and the whole "christmas tree" of past and future events and the need to keep up with them (for the exclusive rewards of doing them) simply becomes too big of an investment of time and energy to sustain over the long haul for a lot of Players ... especially the Altaholics that City of Titans is going to be wanting to cater to.
And for me, that's the key. City of Titans is being designed to be Alt Friendly from the ground up. Time limited "exclusive" events and rewards are, by definition, NOT Alt Friendly. That means that there is a tension/conflict between these two things because they do not align well with one another. A game's designers need to care for ALL of the Player types who play their game(s), not just the most numerous/populous types. That doesn't mean Lowest Common Denominator Wins necessarily, but it does mean paying attention to a wider matrix of outcomes than can be encompassed within a single viewpoint.
Just because that isn't a problem for YOU doesn't mean that it won't be a problem for SOMEONE ... and if City of Titans is going to be as Alt Friendly as we want it to be in a game with a lot of longevity in it, that could wind up being a whole lot of SOMEONES! Best not to say their concerns simply don't matter at this stage, methinks.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The devs don't need to have some sinister plot to make stuff "limited time offer" for no reason. There are some things that are, by nature, transitory or cyclic. Christmas, Halloween, etc come around once a year and last for a finite period of time. If you're going to do up the game for the Christmas season and put snow on the ground and snow men in yards and have mobs drop candycanes as treasure in the outside world, etc then I think it's appropriate to do that during the appropriate season for it and then NOT have it in play at other times of year. I would find it really strange to have the Christmas "Event" be in effect in the outsdie world at large at all times. Also, that would require that all other such seasonal events would also be in effect at the same time, so you'd have Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Chinese New Year, Labor Day, and Independence Day events all happening in the same city at the same time, all day, every day, 24-7-365. It would be like the movie Groundhog Day, except every day would be Groundhog Day, and like every other holiday you could name ALL AT THE SAME TIME, ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. I don't see any pressing reason to make it work that way just because some players can't sleep at night if so much as one of their FIFTY toons hasn't done ALL of the seasonal content. In my opinion, anyone with 1) enough alts that such is a problem and 2) the mentality that they MUST complete all of the seasonal event stuff with ALL of them, every year, before the season ends is making that problem for themself and only THEY can help THEM.
I think it's terrible to ask the devs of a game to refrain from making seasonal content because some people don't think they have time to do it all to complete satisfaction of their personal completionist jones. I LIKE seasonal events, I like that they're seasonal, and I don't want the devs to NOT do them just because some people might have a hard time getting it all done on all umpteen of their toons before the season is over. Just because Player A has to have 50 alts AND has a completionist fetish, now you're telling me that ALL CONTENT has to be designed with them in mind and we can't do seasonal stuff because they might get frustrated by it? I disagree with that. I think that's a really bad motivation to not do seasonal content.
If you want to make the badges the same every year to appease the badge hunters, fine. If you want to have a few missions or whatever against snowmen in an alternate snow dimension for kill badges or something fine, but let the seasonal stuff be seasonal, please.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I'm okay with event rewards being limited to certain times of the year, but I'm not really okay with said rewards being unique one-offs.
For instance, if there is a winter event in CoT, I'm quite fine with the rewards gained (like a Santa Hat costume piece for instance) only being obtainable during said event - but these rewards should be available at every Winter Event from there on out. So when the next Winter Event comes around, and the devs add some new rewards to the gift pile, we have last year's and this year's stuff to choose from, and so on and so forth. That way people who missed some stuff in previous years can grab it if they want it.
Alternatively, if the rewards are not going to be moved forward to the following year, then the previous year's stuff should be available in the star shop sometime after the event is done.
I'm also fine with these prizes being character-bound (as opposed to account-bound) as long as the trials to get them are not too onerous. Of course this could depend on the nature and number of rewards as well. And, obviously, if the stuff is purchased in the star shop it should be unlocked across the account.
In order to incentivise people to play the event throughout the duration (if they already have all the stuff they want or if there isn't really anything there that caught their eye), or assist players who missed last year's event in "catching up", take a page from CoH's latter years and have us earn event-themed tokens (like "candy canes" to keep with the Winter Event theme) which we use to purchase said event rewards. These tokens could then be kept to be used in next year's same event, shared between characters on the same account, given to other players/accounts, or even traded in the auction house.
EXACTLY!
I'm right there with you... up until you introduced a secondary currency and then proposed secondary currencies for every event. Having unique currencies for everything is a PITA if not managed correctly. GW2 is particularly bad at this. They have multi use currencies. Meaning they can be used for a buff or crafting and therefore can not be stored in the wallet, they have to be stored in stacks in the players inventory. The default inventory stack is 250 units and some items require several thousand of the currency to purchase. This means you might have to sacrifice 8 or more inventory slots to hauling around event currency. You can use the currency year over year but it still means holding those stacks for extended periods. Multiply that by 3-4 yearly events and suddenly you have 20 inventory slots being used by limited time use currencies. If you are making a currency it must be a soft currency in that it can not take up inventory space.
Clearly we have people from two different ends of the spectrum in this thread. One enjoys making alts and completing those alts and the other makes few alts and isn't as interested in completion on all those alts. The devs have to find a middle ground. One that keeps the events quick and easy so the Alter can finish all their alts so they don't have to worry themselves over the work load required for each event. That same event also needs to be deep and engaging for the player with only a few alts and maybe one completionist toon so that they don't get bored with the simplicity of the event. If the devs can find that middle ground power to them but I think that we as a community need to expect that the game can not be all things to all people all the time. Some game features will cater to one end of the spectrum and other times the game will cater to the other end of the spectrum.
Perhaps we can discuss events from other games that were good and others that were bad. So the devs can get an idea of things that the community enjoys and things that they don't enjoy.
One event that I never really liked but a lot of people were really excited to see come back to GW2 was the Super Adventure Box. SAB is a unique zone with a 3d 8bit aesthetic. The core of SAB is a series of 3d platformers complete with secret rooms and coins and shops and all that. I don't see what other people saw in it. It was yet another currency that didn't have great rewards. It was pretty monodimensional IMO.
One event that I think they have done well within GW2 is the winter event. There are lots of things to do, they cover every base from unique mini games to more core content style challenges and jumping puzzles and PVP, but they all reward with the same currencies and have continued to do so every year. The prizes are so so but I like them enough to keep working at them each year. Similarly they have a Halloween event that is almost as diverse.
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Unique one-off events are a BIG NO NO. Star Trek Online does them all the time, which means if you pick up the game now, you're missing out on YEARS of event rewards that are never coming back (or if they do, you're going to pay through the nose for them via lockboxes!).
There's two problems with this. Accretion over time of an increasingly large stack of rewards (think "Hats" for Valve) ... and ... if the events themselves aren't fun, once people have done them they stop doing them, even though other people haven't finished them yet. Q's Winter Wonderland in Star Trek Online is like this now, after being rolled out year after year. There are events happening on a repeated schedule, and once you've "finished" doing the event a lot of people abandon doing it, because the events themselves just aren't all that fun. This is fine for the "solo" events, but is a real problem for "group" events like the Winter Invasion (of the Snow Borg) and the battle of the Snowverlord versus the Snowconian and things where you need more than just a soloist doing the event. Now, to be fair, if the event isn't FUN enough to keep doing, that a problem on its own, but for people coming late to the party (sometimes years late) it will make it hard to catch up and do events if they've been abandoned by the veterans already, such that hardly anyone is doing the "group" events (because they're more trouble than they're worth). That's a "tuning" issue, mainly, but it's also a potential hazard of just continuing to pile on more and more "new" things every year just for the sake of being "new" every year. Eventually the effort collapses under its own weight.
And as you mentioned, being able to purchase stuff for Stars after the event is over is the best way to deal with any sort of Time Limit. It basically makes for a "get it free if you act now" or have to pay Stars to get the same rewards later. But once again, you'll be dealing with the solo versus group divide for obsoleted content if you want Players to actually PLAY that outdated stuff.
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Halloween event. Invasion! Skeletons. Nazi skeletons (with eyeballs) in sharp nazi uniforms, with undead tanks, a undead Luftwaffe planes. The tanks and planes can all be taken down by players.
This could be limited to a zone at a time or not.
The St Valentines Day Massacre: a gang war. Rival gangs from top to bottom fight a turf war all over the city, Not an invasion, but every organized criminal mob is threatening the city with their savagery.
summer solstice: an evil occultic group is trying to bring dragons back into the world with a virgin sacrifice. They chant, "Russ Fo Dah!" and a giant monster shows up. Players get to kill a dragon.
April Fools day: Killer Klowns spill out of the abandoned amusement park. animations show them swallowing citizens whole (its an attack animation). players can be swallowed too, but can keep attacking to blow the clown up and survive.
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I'm envisioning the way CoH handled this. Whether you call it "currency" or "salvage" or "loot", I believe it should be able to be transferred to other characters one way or another - more community-friendly and alt-friendly, and hopefully gives the player a reason to do the event beyond what they need to get the stuff.
For instance, the current STO Summer Event. After spending 25 days logging in to do that one boring-ass time-gated once-a-day mission to get the T6 Carrier I had NO desire to stick around Risa. I was out of there as soon as I could fire up the warp engines. There was no reason to stay - the vouchers cannot be given to anyone else, and are only good for this this year.
Meanwhile in COH, I kept going back to punch the Winter Lord in his face because, well, A) it was a fun community event, and B) the extra Candy Canes I collected could go to alts, SG mates, I could save them for the next year, or I could sell them in the auction house for some INF. I think we could also transfer them to others via email? It's been a while.
Note that in order to accomplish this, you not only need to devote "inventory" space but also have a means/method of being able to transfer that inventory (conveniently!) between characters. These are easy expectations in loot based games, but things become a little different in a game which isn't loot-centric like City of Heroes was, or ostensibly how we want' City of Titans to be. Depending on other factors, what amounts to Inventory Pressure could have some pretty serious drawbacks, depending on the fraction of your inventory space you need to devote to this purpose.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
As long as you have tradeable items of any kind then you have the base systems in place for those kinds of currency items. Doesn't matter if the game is loot-centric or not. And having a separate inventory for all items marked "currency" shouldn't be that hard to implement.
Didn't CoH have 5 different "inventories" in the end, enhancements inspirations salvage recipes and "currencies"? Though the currency one was most likely a "locked wallet" type, a.k.a items in it could not be directly traded with others.