Halloween Issues & Zombie Apocalypse Frequency
By
7thCynic,
Posted on: 2008-10-22 10:51 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Ive noticed that clicking a door will aggro nearby door spawns.
Someone clicks a door and runs off with the mob following, I click a door (not in aggro range) and they make a bee-line straight for me.
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thanks for the feedback
How do you receive "treats at a faster rate?" It might just be my own experience, but I rarely get treats this year... it's easily 80% trick, 20% treat, but maybe that's just my luck. It's not uncommon for me to knock 5 times in a row and have all 5 be tricks.
Just wondering what the experience is for everyone else, as this doesn't seem to compute with what LH said.
Too bad about that ghost spawning thing... I had one ghost spawn in 30 minutes last night. Oh well, the event is still fun, though the zombies are a bit rough in the lower levels.
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How do you receive "treats at a faster rate?" It might just be my own experience, but I rarely get treats this year... it's easily 80% trick, 20% treat, but maybe that's just my luck. It's not uncommon for me to knock 5 times in a row and have all 5 be tricks.
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I believe Lighthouse is referring to the fact that you can now knock on a door every 10 seconds this year, instead of every 60 seconds, and a door is no longer unusable for 30 seconds after somebody else has clicked on it. The chances to get a trick or a treat are the same, but the frequency in which you can click on doors is drastically increased.
I noticed last night on Protector that there were frequent notices of Hero Zone invasions, but none for Villain zones. I have a tab setup for Event, Hero zone event, and Villain Zone event messages only. I saw quite invasions happening in Striga, Talos, Bricks, then I saw Miner's Strike has begun in Sharkhead. A few minutes later, I saw "The zombies have retreated from Sharkhead" It happened more than once over the three hours that I was on last night.
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At the risk of sounding ungrateful...
Is there really nothing that can be done about the spirit spawn rate before the end of the event? It will be a full year before we've got the chance to get the badge associated with them again, so being told that it won't be fixed in time to apply to this event is more than just a little disheartening for badge collectors.
Don't get me wrong, I love this event! I just love badges too, and having a "collect them all" mindset being confronted with not being realistically able to is disappointing.
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Just as a thought for next year, it'd be nice if there was a chance of a big inspiration as a treat, say, 10% for a large, 20% for a medium, 70% for a small? With all the fighting, the inspirations are actually getting used pretty fast.
Thanks for the update on the Spirits issue!
As to the invasions... they've seemed pretty frequent to me, but thanks for monitoring it!
If you can't fix the spawn rate for Spirits can you lower the badge requirement?
I've gone from 13-19 a character and still not gotten that badge.
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What about the Jack-in-Irons spawns for Villains?
I've read several complaints about how rare he spawns for Villains.
like this thread: LINKIE
Anything that causes more zombie apocalypse events is a good thing, in my opinion. That's just too much fun to be legal. I had a lvl 46 'troller go through almost half a level in one event. Nummy treats...
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The Zombie Apocalypse doesnt seem to correspond to area warning well, either. Actually, it will state zombies sighted, nothing happens for 15min or so, "zombies cleared", then the sky turns red. Would it be easier to cut down the maps where they spawn to only the main ones? Example: not trial zones- i.e. Terra Volta, Boom, others- in an effort to make a simpler cycle. This would also balance red/blue sides more as well.
Jack-in-Irons is rather too infequent as well.
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Is it just me, or are the spawns scaling up to team size far more drastically than last year? Clicked on my first door while on a team of 7-8 and something like 6-8 mobs came spilling out. Since I was still a good ways away from my team, it was a bit of a nasty surprise (mostly b/c I don't like to run).
Is anyone else seeing this?
LH, sorry to put you on the spot like this, but, here's another example of a QA failure:
In both Halloween test periods a few months ago, I logged the problem of the shortage of Spirits being spawned (I kept track of each foe spawning and posted the results). Didn't anyone at QA investigate this? Was testing feedback not read or listened to and the Test Event was just opened to see if it 'worked' and no player feedback was taken into account? At the time, no redname responded to my report whether their datamining showed I was incorrect or if it working as intended. It was just ignored. And now that has come home to roost.
In the same way, I and others complained about the Tier 3 change. No response as to whether this was a bug or WAI. Now we find it's WAI and it's too late to suggest a compromise (e.g., let there be a 10% chance for a Tier 3, which would be *decrease* in the rate from last year). And so now, when nothing can be done, we get feedback on it.
Besides these two issues, we have the Jack in Irons problem in that a 10% spawnage is too streaky: Players can kill 30 Eochais before they get one Jack and that's certainly within normal deviation patterns. WAI, but not fun.
We also have grief problems. Every year we ask for door spawns to use the "GM Purple" level normalization code, but that never happens, and I'm guessing, and so I may be wrong, that the Test for the Halloween event has nothing to do with improving the content, like it is with an Issue Test, but just so 'see if it works' with no regard for improving game play and fun.
The Halloween Event really is a fun event, and these things are relatively minor (unless you're a badge junkie or getting killed by a +6 door spawn), but can we have next year a *real* Halloween Testing environment where game play is examined and it's not just turned on for an hour on Test just to see if it starts?
Thanks for listening.
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Personally I would much rather have a slower ToT rate with Tier 3's than what we have now. I can get Tier 1's anywhere, anytime, Tier 3's were a bonafide treat. The new zombie event is nice and all, but once you've done it and got the badges, the rest of the event is just plain 'meh'. Very disappointing.
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Problem: 47 Eochai spawns later, and NO JACK. we killed 47 in a row, before we finally gave up on Jack.
In the 5 hours I was online, not one Villain Zombie Apocalypse showed up, and I have both side zone event messages toggled up.
Tech/KK
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Would it be easier to cut down the maps where they spawn to only the main ones? Example: not trial zones- i.e. Terra Volta, Boom, others- in an effort to make a simpler cycle.
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Agreed. There are two main problems with the hazard zones' being zombie targets. First, there's hardly ever any players already there, so a player usually has to go out of his/her way to zone to the affected area, which is time-consuming. Second, it's ridiculous, flavor-wise -- who cares if Zombies invade Dark Astoria or Perez or Crey's Folly? Those areas are already overrun.
My other beefs with this year's Halloween Event are:
1) No backstory to the Zombie invasion. (Hopefully the devs will redesign Dark Astoria soon and incorporate zombie spawns as a zone event in addition to Adamastor; maybe then we'll also get some missions exploring the new zombies' evil intent.)
2) Too easy to get all the Zombie badges -- I got all 4 badges my first round with the zombies. After that, fighting zombies got real pointless, real fast.
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We also have grief problems.
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I'm trying to block out some of the griefing this year. It was so bad the first night on Triumph in Peregrine Island. In previous years my "griefing" experience was just some people leaving mobs behind and some sloppiness. This year it was someone 7 levels higher than my character running along a building and clicking doors quickly, spawning +9 mobs onto me and my team while we were fighting and running off. Then, lapping around a few minutes later to do it again. Deliberate mob-player-killing (MPK). If I could have targeted that player and gotten a name I'd have petitioned them, but they moved too fast for me to actually see their name, just "zip, knock, flee, oh no..." I actually like us being able to pop a couple doors at once because for some teams it is fine, but what I'd like is for Ambush Aggro Code to make those mobs actually chase their door clicker instead of stopping to paste the characters who happen to be standing there when they spawn.
As to the non-main-city zones getting zombie invasions, I'm for them! it's nice to do the invasion thing somewhere out of the ordinary. Perez Park, Crey's Folly, Dark Astoria... these are places I can really see the zombie hordes massing!
I spent over two hours killing Eochais before Jack finally spawned, and I thought that was excessive. five hours? jeez....
*edit* and since this is "Halloween Issues" the pumpkin head costume piece is too big 
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Zombie Apocalypse
Since the Halloween event started on Saturday, we've identified an ongoing issue with the Zombie Apocalypse that leads to it not triggering as often as it should. If you have been playing and looking for this event to happen and not noticed it being very frequent, that's why. We've put a system in place to correct the problem. If you are playing and feel the Zombies are being excessively infrequent (not showing up in a couple of hours)
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Five hours (2 a.m. EST to 7 a.m. EST). One character, no switching. Hero zone events monitored.
Zero zombie attacks on Liberty.
Excessively infrequent indeed.
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Halloween Questions
<ul type="square">[*] Low Spirit Spawn: In reading through feedback and playing the event we've seen comments about the relatively low spawn rate of Spirit NPCs during Trick or Treating. In investigating this, it looks to be a bug with how those NPCs are being spawned.[/list]
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Started clicking doors at level 47.5ish on Sunday.
Hit level 49.4 last night.
No Buster badge yet. I don't mind, though, since this is more fun than running police scanner missions.
There's also a bug, or at the very least, a very unexpected behavior, in ghost spawns. When they run away, if you attack them when they're visible again, and they happen to be near a clickable door, they'll beeline for the door and despawn. So even if you follow them, you risk losing credit for them if they run too close to another door.
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I spent over two hours killing Eochais before Jack finally spawned, and I thought that was excessive. five hours? jeez....
*edit* and since this is "Halloween Issues" the pumpkin head costume piece is too big
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The complaints about Jack happen ever year. I have said before and I will say it again, no streak breaker on Jack spawning is just a bad idea.
Duel me.
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Personally I would much rather have a slower ToT rate with Tier 3's than what we have now. I can get Tier 1's anywhere, anytime, Tier 3's were a bonafide treat. The new zombie event is nice and all, but once you've done it and got the badges, the rest of the event is just plain 'meh'. Very disappointing.
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Agreed, I even sold some salvage so I could replace my salvage rack for some Inspiration chests and now my chests are of no use, no T3 Inspirations is the sux!
Hopefully we can work this out for next year, this year was truly a let down.
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At the risk of sounding ungrateful...
Is there really nothing that can be done about the spirit spawn rate before the end of the event? It will be a full year before we've got the chance to get the badge associated with them again, so being told that it won't be fixed in time to apply to this event is more than just a little disheartening for badge collectors.
Don't get me wrong, I love this event! I just love badges too, and having a "collect them all" mindset being confronted with not being realistically able to is disappointing.
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Hi JChaos,
We completely agree that it would be great to fix the issue with the Spirits. A number of people here are upset as well about the badge for their own characters (yes, we play too!). However, getting such a fix out there would impact the schedule for Issue 13. We'd totally do that for an exploit fix, but for this issue we felt, that while painful for those interested in it, is something we'll have to leave as is.
Thanks in advance for your understanding.
Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager
If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.
To the people who are complaining about infrequency of Zombie Raids, please refer to Post 1.
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How do you receive "treats at a faster rate?" It might just be my own experience, but I rarely get treats this year... it's easily 80% trick, 20% treat, but maybe that's just my luck. It's not uncommon for me to knock 5 times in a row and have all 5 be tricks.
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I believe Lighthouse is referring to the fact that you can now knock on a door every 10 seconds this year, instead of every 60 seconds, and a door is no longer unusable for 30 seconds after somebody else has clicked on it. The chances to get a trick or a treat are the same, but the frequency in which you can click on doors is drastically increased.
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Yes, that's what I meant. Thanks for clarifying that point, Dixileta.
Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager
If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.
We wanted to comment on a couple of common questions with the Halloween Event and make you aware of an issue with the Zombie Apocalypse.
Zombie Apocalypse
Since the Halloween event started on Saturday, we've identified an ongoing issue with the Zombie Apocalypse that leads to it not triggering as often as it should. If you have been playing and looking for this event to happen and not noticed it being very frequent, that's why. We've put a system in place to correct the problem. If you are playing and feel the Zombies are being excessively infrequent (not showing up in a couple of hours) then please make use of the in game /petition command to let us know your input.
Halloween Questions
<ul type="square">[*] Low Spirit Spawn: In reading through feedback and playing the event we've seen comments about the relatively low spawn rate of Spirit NPCs during Trick or Treating. In investigating this, it looks to be a bug with how those NPCs are being spawned. Unfortunately, we won't be able to correct the issue before the event is over, so at this time we can only make you aware of the issue and apologize for any inconvenience caused.
[*] Lack of Tier 3 Inspirations as Treats: We've also seen feedback that some players miss receiving Tier 3 inspirations as Treats. This change is intentional. In making changes to Trick or Treating from last year, it's possible to open doors and receive Treats at a faster rate. In order to keep Tier 3 inspirations something of value, we removed them from rewards to Treats.[/list]
Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager
If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.