Pocket D Jubilee comments and feedback!
By
Alexandria2000,
Posted on: 2007-03-05 11:34 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
You know, last year I thought this event was pretty spiffy. We got to team up with "the other side", we got door missions in Pocket D (which was still new), and heroes got to visit a piece of the Rogue Islands (and a nice island it is), while villains got to take down a ton of Red Caps (not to mention the first Elite Boss Red Cap).
However, this year....
1. No reward for just logging in.
2. Exact same event as last year.
3. The only new things added (extra rewards), required doing the final mission over and over.
This past Winter Event was an example of a well-done event. I mean, the whole Chalet was grand, there was a snow-covered map (finally!), a mess of new badges (with nifty temp powers/costume pieces), and a log-in costume piece reward (with badge). Then they capped it by adding outdoor presents and even the potential for getting the original Winter Lord Giant Monster to spawn. All in all, a great event.
But if we get the exact same thing next year... well.... it just won't seem that great anymore. <_<
That's what happened with the Valentine's Event this year. Same ol', same ol'.
I think if we had a log-in reward (Partygoer badge, perhaps, with the heart costume pattern), that would have taken care of many issues (log in some alts, get a reward, move along). And though the teaming with heroes/villains is great, requiring it can be rough, especially with all the farming teams (why aren't the cold-based CoT villain-only badges?).
I can imagine that future events could have some spiffy rewards, since the Invention system will be out then (I wouldn't be surprised if the Halloween salvage was originally meant to be Invention salvage that we make our own slots with), so let's hope next Valentine's Event (if there is one), can be something different.
Dungeoncleaners! (ID#125715): Slay the Adventurers! Rescue the Monsters! Return the Treasure!
Peppermint Cat-- Lv50 Mewtant Ice/Eng Bls
Must go with the concenuses on this. Tired of Snaptooth. Plus I'm mad cause I came up with a great alt this morning that really could use the laurel...just as the servers were going down 
Honestly I hated doing the same mission 60 times just on one server, it was to repetative. Got to be uberly boring. I had to take a break after all the snap missions and half of the beautiful badge missions. When I got down to my last 4 characters that needed beautiful I just gave up I didn't wanna do it anymore
It is a fun event, the main problem is that everyone does it the first week (during which it is very easy to do), after that it can be hard to find a villain/hero to partner with.
I would agree that I would leave old Snappy out of new events but I see no reason not to keep bringing back the old ones like this.
The Snaptooth fight is a particuarly fun one actually. Not enough people play it at their level to see what a fun fight it is.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
I ran the event with a few alts then just ignored it for the remainder of its duration.
My feedback:
- GOOD: co-op missions are always fun. Did one run with my kin/rad defender and a ninja mastermind. Very fun stuff. BAD: Making co-op play mandatory. The winter event approach is better, especially given the disparity in hero/villain numbers on most servers. Provide incentives to mix heroes and villains, don't make it mandatory.
- GOOD: having buyable temp powers that greatly benefit the opposite faction but still boost the same faction. This is a nice incentive for mixed teams, as described above. More of this would be good.
- GOOD: Plenty of rewards. BAD: None for logging in, badges encourage farming teams, which detracts greatly from the spirit of the event for people who want to play it "for real".
- BAD: Too many missions. Four missions is too much for an event with five distinct rewards
- BAD: Snaptooth is tired. Get a new villain in, preferably a unique one.
- GOOD: The duration of the event meant there was little chance anyone would miss out. BAD: I think the event ran *too* long. 19 days is more than was needed, really and interest just fizzles out toward the end.
Suggestions:
- make the event shorter, perhaps 7 days total
- replace Snaptooth with a unique villain
- make rewards global, not per character to cut down on repetition and farming
- reduce total missions from four to two maximum
- provide incentives (temp powers, alternate paths in mission) that encourage cross-faction teaming but do not require it
- add a secret pie easter egg somewhere
Well, let's see...
Biggest problems were needing someone from the other side to clear your second mission and needing to help clear the second mission for someone on the other side, and the number of times you had to face Snaptooth to get all the rewards.
Let's compare it to the winter event, which alot of people are saying they enjoyed more:
5 missions / 1 mission: With the winter event, you could get right to it and do the important part of the event. And while the 5 mission setup might give you some variaty in what you're fighting, look again at how the winter mission was set up. You start out on the snow, fighting Tuatha. Then, you move to snow and ice (so fun!) fighting snow beasts, then to caves fighting Red Caps, then snow and ice against snow beasts again. That one mission was actually like several micro missions all hooked together, and in a fun way.
3 stage boss with ambushes / EB boss: The three stage Snaptooth is a neat trick, but it can go from fun challenge to annoying really fast, especally with the waves of Redcaps that come to help him. In the winter event, he starts tough, and has limited backup. The fight can be intense, but it's fast enough to not become a drag.
Rewards: In the winter event, you got badges with something extra. Two reasons to earn each reward. Not so with this event.
Forced grouping / optional grouping: This became a real pain. If you want to do something like this again, I would suggest putting an NPC in the missions to represent the other side. You've got plenty of heroes/villians to choose from in the safeguard/mayhem missions, throw them in as Flower Knight-type pets to get things done. That way the missions can be soloed.
Ski lodge / Pocket D: The Ski area added extra space to Pocket D, allowing people to spread out more. This made it easier to do normal Pocket D things (lots of RP there on Virtue) without people there for the event crowding you. Though, to be honest, I hope the Ski area comes back for good in I9. It was a great place to have fun and RP.
"I do so love taking a nice, well thought out character and putting them through hell. It's like tossing a Faberge Egg onto the stage during a Gallagher concert." - me
@Palador / @Rabid Unicorn
Haven't read any of the other posts, but did want to post my feedback.
Although I understand programming for I9 probably meant that not much could be done for the V-Day event. the Winter Event was a lot cooler than a rehash.
Although I appreciated that I could get last year's badges on new characters, and old characters could get new stuff, the four missions just to unlock Snaptooth became monotonous very fast, especially across multiple characters.
Some of the monotony could be bypassed by teaming w/ a high-level character and just going for the objectives, but I don't think this was they way it was meant to be played.
The same could be said for Snaptooth. Snaptooth missions at-level (like last year) could prove overly frustrating without a decent team to help absorb the multiple waves of ambushers. Using the purchasable temp powers and Nectar helped, but more often than not, a "squishy" would take agro and drop within seconds with multiple arrow and knife wounds 
So in closing, the prizes were great, but the road to get them could be somewhat redundant and frustrating.
Need More Winter Lords!!!
Winter Lord Explosion!
For me it wasn't that good. The Snaptooth fight is ridiculous due to the massive ambushes that Snappy summons. The co-op missions are limiting because if you play at odd times, like me, then it is near impossible to find someone of the opposite allegiance to team with. Luckily since my mains had done the event last year I could skip straight to the DJ Zero missions. Here is what should be done for next year:
1) Remove the team up requirement from the event
2) Change the Snaptooth fight to something more thematically appealing and tone down/remove the massive ambushes.
3) Remove Arachnos from the event (I'm sick of fighting them).
4) Change it so that you don't have to run the last mission 5 or 6 times to get all of the rewards. Twice is enough.
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I only used the missions a few times - not necesarily because I couldn't find a villain to team with (which was the case ALL too many times) but because the costume options are limited by the legs and bodies chosen. While I have one character who really should have gotten all the badges and such, I didn't bother with half the rewards for her because she's got Monsterous legs.
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Or, as I discovered only after doing the full set of missions on about ten characters, that the one costume piece I was primarily interested in -- the laurels -- wasn't available with any of the head settings on all but two of my characters, both of whom had the same head style.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
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Or, as I discovered only after doing the full set of missions on about ten characters, that the one costume piece I was primarily interested in -- the laurels -- wasn't available with any of the head settings on all but two of my characters, both of whom had the same head style.
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Huh? I'm not sure I follow this...did you think the laurels was a head detail and not a hair style? This is what I thought at first and I was moderatedly disappointed to discover differently as I only ended up using it on one of the two characters I intended. Still, as long as the head was human(oid) and you were willing to use that hair style with the laurels, you should have been able to use it on more than those two characters.
What annoyed me was that I couldn't use any of the belts with the toga without significant clipping. I have a female character that looked good in the toga but the clipping made it look awful and no belt didn't look right. And I had a male character where the sandal straps clipped through the back of his calves. Playing with the scaling didn't fix the problems.
Attache
Attache @ deviantART
Attache's Anti-401k Art Collection
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I loved it! It was a bit exhausting to have to do the same battle five times in a row (The DJ Zero Mission).
Five times you had to do that mission to get the prizes. Snaptooth appeared three times in that mission.
Fifteen Snaptooth fights.
I, personally, didn't mind, but I can see why people wouldn't like him.
He's a great antagonist, because he has no goals besides "be an jerk". It works out well, because he can unite heroes and villains constantly.
I like him, but it may be time to shake things up a bit.
Other than that, the missions ruled!
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Yes, allow him to open up a portal to the Rikti Homeworld using the Croatoa Faerie Rings, that should keep both heroes and villains busy for ages 
Admittedly, I grow weary of this style of event.
Perhaps it was partially due to the Winter Event debacle but I found myself unwilling to log in for the event after the first few days. Got the Badges and Costume Pieces that I wanted on my main and thematically applicable characters but after that, I just logged in for normal play.
Perhaps the Developers can come up with something new for the next event.
That would be swell.
Sign It : http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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Need More Winter Lords!!!
Winter Lord Explosion!
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Replace the winter lord with gigantic winged babies?
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
I ran it on four of my characters, but only on two that didn't already have access to DJ Zero. My suggestions:
1) Remove the team-up requirement, as others have stated. I found that I spent more time trying to find an other-side teammate than I did running all the missions.
2) Have something to reward people for logging in, even if it's just a single badge. I'd like to see this as being standard for all events.
3) If multiple missions have to be run to get multiple rewards, introduce some variety into that mission. Say, have a "Fight Snaptooth" mission, one each of the existing Ganymede/Scratch missions (without the required team-up), and a mission to retrieve some glowy that DJ Zero needs... and at the end of each offer the choice of the rewards. That way, it keeps things interesting while still providing flexibility in the rewards.
I like the idea behind the events. I like the ability to team-up, just not the requirement. And I like the multiple rewards, just not the repetetive nature of the mission.
Ultra_Violence wrote:
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It is a fun event, the main problem is that everyone does it the first week (during which it is very easy to do), after that it can be hard to find a villain/hero to partner with.
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QFT. The badgers tend to rush in, and the casual players (and those with dozens of alts) get left holding the bag later.
--NT
They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
Honestly, I had a ton of fun last year. That being said, I only earned Beautiful on two characters last year, but I got Heart of Light on almost *EVERY* single alt.
I just didn't have the patience to run those missions so many times to get everything. I got everything on a few characters, but that was it. And it's not like we did it the hard way in most cases... we'd get someone's lowbie alt and one-shot Snaptooth. Even then, I really didn't have the urge to work through everything more than a few times.
I even tried to be a big ole badge hound and get those badges for the CoV CoT baddies (why don't we have them hero-side? I don't get that one), but I got sick of that pretty quick, and damn if it wasn't hard to find teams for that.
I think having to fight Snaptooth so many times for the Winter Event didn't help either.
In all, it really could have used a re-visit. It's nice to get co-op missions, but forced co-op is a bit annoying. Even though co-op wasn't required for the Winter missions, we did a lot of mixing amongst my friends/SGs.
"A good Defender is the battle hardened Corpsman who will kill a Nazi with a tongue depressor while putting a splint on your leg, then hand you a fresh clip of ammo." ~Jock_Thompson
Repeat Offenders, TNT Profile, My little hero
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Need More Winter Lords!!!
Winter Lord Explosion!
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Replace the winter lord with gigantic winged babies?
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YES! YES! YES!
Overall I enjoyed the winter and halloween event much more.
What I didn't Like....
Inability to rerun the side missions leading up to DJ Zero: This lead to fewer and fewer people who could get you to DJ Zero as the event went on. If you can't get to DJ Zero you couldn't complete the event.
Finding people to team with:
This was an event that required Heroes and villians to team up. But they did not have any means in finding each other other then 1. knowing each other already, 2. Broadcasting that they are looking for a team. If you did know someone you ran into the did they already do this mission. if you broadcast that doesn't do anything for the person who just zoned in who wanted to invite a hero to help them with their mission.
No side event... Halloween we trick or treated, holidays we opened gifts. This event had no little side event that really got everyone into the mood of the holiday.
What I liked...
I liked the mutiple rewards. It gave a reason to do the event more then once. This is also a downside to those whom play a lot of alts.
I enjoyed the side missions actually more then fighting snaptooth. I find snaptooth used so closely again after the winter event that he was tired and outdated.
Suggestion for Next Year...
If you complete the event working with someone of the opposing faction you get to choose 2 rewards rather then one. Maybe increase this for team size.. for every hero and villian pair on your team you can select 1 reward. 4 rewards awarded for a 4 villians, 4 heroes team. Rewards you for running in a large and mixed faction team.
Ability to run the side missions more then one time.
A new villian...
Like many of the others here, I found it rather frustrating. The only thing I truly liked about it was the ability to unlock the accessories and badges from last year on some of my newer Alts.
On the flip side, as someone who has way too many alts, I found the whole thing boring, repetitive, and sadistically time-consuming. Some may say that as both an Altaholic and a Badge Hound, I've painted myself into a corner here, but talking with others during this event, I'm not the only one. I ran the entire setup around 20 times, plus making 3 additional Snaptooth runs for each of my characters that had done the event last year another 10 or so times. Isn't there some way you guys can make these events more Alt-friendly?
Compared to the Xmas event, where the 1 Mission required could be obtained by anyone, and run as many times as needed, The setup for this event sucked.
As many of us have tried to tell you numerous times in the past, Encourage us to team, don't FORCE us. Especially don't force us to team with a SPECIFIC Player/Gender/AT/Side- that pretty much guarantees that there will be people gated from the event simply because they didnt log in at the right time. Locking us out of the required missions after completing them further complicated matters.
And if we ARE going to be forced to team with the opposing team, at least let us give them inspirations. Ideally, we'd also be able to find them in team search. I'd also suggest that the bartenders add a fourth Temp power, a Rez of some sort.
With the exception of the Malta group, this event makes use of some of the most annoying, overpowered, and overused villain groups in the game. At least the villains have the opportunity to take advantage of farming teams to get thier CoT mission cleaned out, Heroes are stuck with a "Kill All" vs Council in a Cave map. At Even-level, Snaptooth as an EB is a considerable foe, Most people will have a hard time dealing with him, even without the neverending ambush. This led to most people just using someone vastly higher level to blitz the mission.
I was partucularly disappointed to see Badges disassociated form rewards this time around. For the Xmas event, and last year's Vday event, the badges came tied with an additional in-game reward. Linking say, Partygoer and the Hearts costume, would have helped a great deal with the repetitiveness of having to run Snaptooth, reducing the number of required runs from 3-5 down to 2-3.
Speaking of the "Hearts Costume", I may be in the minority here, but I find the Male pattern vastly superior to the Female pattern- any chance I'll ever get to use it on my female characters? And hopefully without having to kill Snaptooth again next year? (Also, why isn't the Female version availible as a "Tops with Skin" option?)
Personally, I think future events need to give rewards account-wide (possibly one CoH, one CoV), or at the very least, server-wide. As time goes on and the endgame continues to be missing, we create more and more alts and the devs only encourage us to make alts to experience new content. Stop punishing us with events for playing the way you've made us play.
I did the event for all 11 toons on my home server. But I got sick of it before I could finish the other 17 alts I have. Same with the Christmas event, although I did manage to do Snaptooth twice for all the toons for the temp powers, which of course you took away from us afterward. At least so far we're getting to keep our costume pieces. 
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What annoyed me was that I couldn't use any of the belts with the toga without significant clipping. I have a female character that looked good in the toga but the clipping made it look awful and no belt didn't look right.
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I don't remember right off what it's called - Martial Arts, Cloth maybe? - but there is one belt (at least) that looks okay. It's this one. You're right though, for most of the belts the clipping is horrible.
I tend to agree with the rest: boring and repetitive. Trying to find the other half was frustrating as stated above. Why did it take doing both side's missions to get the Heart of X badge? I won't bother with it again if it'll be the same next year.
I absolutely HATE to join in on the DOOOOOMiness that happens so often in this forum. I hate doing it. But I have to be honest, this event disappointed me, especially after the incredibly fun Winter Event. The side missions were kinda boring, the mission text said something like "you should bring a villain along" rather than "You MUST have a villain in order to complete this mission!" (which led to me running around for forty-five minutes looking for a glowy before someone on global was nice enough to tell me what I needed to do) and Snaptooth was far too hard to kill to be enjoyable. I got one reward and a mountain of debt for the whole process.
Again, I really hate complaining, because I think people here complain at the drop of a hat, but this one wasn't that fun for me.
My honest opinion? Boring. Dreadfuly dull.
Having done the exact same missions last year (Several times for multiple characters) I didnt even bother doing the mission for real.
I worked with some folks in my SG to arrange Speed missions, where we would take our 50s into lowbie missions and smash Snaptooth in 10 seconds (It sometimes took longer to find him that it was to kill him). As folks badged, we swapped characters around - but nobody there did the mission "for real". It was all about speed badging.
So- total thumbs down.