Feedback Winter Event - Bugs and Suggestions!
By
13th_Stranger,
Posted on: 2008-12-19 15:24 in Developers' Corner
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Totally Subjective: Many here seem to be concerned about the 'difficulty' of getting the ski badges. IMO, and I don't wish to demean or disrespect the folks with their concerns, but there SHOULD be badges and achievements in-game that are more difficult to get. Making every badge, every achievement, every accolade obtainable with little to no effort by every single player on any type of toon demeans the value of having them in the first place. That is not something I want to see.
If we follow through on the logic of badges that can be bought somehow, rather than earned, why not allow my blaster to 'buy' all the healing badges, including empath? Seriously, it would be difficult & time consuming for him to get them, so why not?? Surely, you can see how the above completely devalues the accomplishment of those who earned the badges by actually completing the required tasks.
Heck, let's make the MoSTF badge buyable too while we're at it...
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The Skiing badges are only available for a few weeks of the year, and lag and reflexes make a huge difference for those badges, unlike all other badges in the game.
But I have no problem with the gold badge being hard to get, even to the point that not everyone is capable of getting it. Silver should be fairly hard as well. The Bronze badge times should be greatly increased, though.
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I just think it would be nice to flip around the "You've been Naughty" and "You've been nice" for villains, I mean we aren't in this to be polite.
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Subjective Feedback: I'll chime in my agreement with giving the "naughty" spawns the Rikti code, and giving them a small percentage of dropping candy canes.
Subjective Feedback: Next year, add a couple more "Baby New Year" missions, just to spice things up. I love the suggestion somebody up there had regarding holding a "Mission Creator" contest for best Winter Holiday themed mission, and making the top 3-5 "official" next year.
Subjective Feedback: I know this is a minor and silly thing ... but couldn't you switch the "nice" vs. "naughty" message in CoV? My villain's a baddie! He should be getting presents for being naughty, not for being nice!
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What he said! I was going to chime in but this covers it for me.
PS: Oh, I do have one other suggestion: Everyone who goes to the Chalet Zone gets the Snowball temp power ONLY while in that zone. This means that the Snowball temp power purchased/earned will work anywhere.
I just like the thought of everyone in the Chalet being able to join in a huge snowball fight and not having to worry about the Power. We had a couple in Cap Au on Triumph recently and they were a blast!
"Comics, you're not a Mastermind...you're an Overlord!"
I like the candy cane idea, and the fact you can buy stuff with them. Badges, special IO's, and special auras are all good ideas. The ski courses are fun.
One thing I would suggest to improve the seasonal events is to create a new mission or two for each event. It would help keep the story moving along, and get rid of the stale feeling I get when I do the baby new year mish for the 100th time.
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Now allow me my rant about halos. I love the idea of halos. I have a couple of demon toons and one angel. Problem is that they are all well below 30 and given my extreme case of altaholism I won't be seeing 30 in all likelihood before next Christmas, or later.
I don't believe halos should be auras at all.
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This has been my feel on the halos as well. I like them and use them, but immediately found it odd they're classified as auras and not headgear. Only possible reason I can see is if the flame and glow animations stacked with other auras make a toon too graphically intensive.
Making them exclusive to level however, namely a 30th minimum, makes no sense whatsoever. If there's a reason the devs did this, it completely evades me.
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Ski Badges - If you achieve the gold level without getting the other two first, wouldn't it make sense to award them all at the same time? I mean, if you can do it at the gold level, you can obviously do it at the other two.
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Yes, it would. But they may have a goal of wanting people to run the course at least 3 times to get 3 badges.
If that's the case, I suggest changing the badges to work like this:
Bronze - complete course in under 45 seconds.
Silver - have Bronze and complete course in under 35 seconds.
Gold - have Silver and complete course in under 25 seconds.
So if your first run is 20 seconds, you get Bronze, and have to run it again. If you keep up that pace on the 2nd run, you also get Silver, and still have to run a third time.
Candy Cane war maces and pinwheel sheilds! I know it's late but for next year these would be cool.
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* All spawned Winter Horde should have a chance to drop Candy Cane salvage, and not regular invention salvage. This gives player a reason to fight the Winter Horde and not simply just run away to open the next present, especially those who have already obtained the Defeat X Winter Horde badges.
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Very nice idea! Especially coupled with the "Invasion" code (Rikti/Zombie auto-scaling).
I think the ski times are pretty good. Bronze is tough-but-doable with any character, I think, which is just where it should be. Takes effort, you have to make a few runs to learn the course, but you don't need any special powers. Gold is an absolute pain-in-the-butt, and you really need skill and certain powers to get it. Yeah, it kinda sucks for badgers like me, but at least it makes sense, so I'm not bitter about it.
Also, giving out "lesser" medals with the one you qualified for doesn't make sense. Someone in the Olympics doesn't get the Silver & Bronze medals if they take the Gold, after all... 
Candy Canes have got to be taken away from present opening and put on spawn defeats...
This would solve the leaving of spawns...
leave teh snowball, build a snowman, Jingle Jet, and inspiration presents as treats for being nice...
Candy Canes have got to change....
No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded...
"The potato goes in the FRONT."
Nthing the notion to make the spawns use the Rikti/zombie invasion scaling code (same for the Halloween door mobs when that rolls around again). I hate to leave spawns behind, but when you're solo and a present spawns the snowmen at the zone's level cap which is frequently in deep purple territory, well, discretion is the better part of valor there.
I like the BNY XP... I average 2 to 2.5 bars per toon; no matter what level, solo on tier 2 difficulty... drops are okay.
I suck at skiing.
Would like to see candy canes added as drops from Frostlings (not a dire necessity being that you could run the BNY on tier 1 diff and stock up).
Would like to see Canes be convertible in the same way base salvage is.
Would like to see more use of the BNY type of map; frozen lakes and such... maybe even add wind/repel effect object(s) to these/other maps... (make the map available for MA?)
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
Long List:
Snowman head akin to the Pumkin head of Halloween.
Emotes: Snow angel, build a snowman, and caroling
Convert 1 PvP area into a giant snow covered snowball fight, with snow forts, and no powers.
3 on 3 Ice hockey
Option at end of all TF/SF during holiday event to get equal number of candy canes instead of merits.
snowman invasion ala zombie invasion
Replace blimp in Atlas with Santa & reindeer
Xmas trees replacing some of the trees in the zones
costume pieces: Fur lined skirts, mittens, elf cap, reindeer antlers
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Long List:
Snowman head akin to the Pumkin head of Halloween.
Emotes: Snow angel, build a snowman, and caroling
Convert 1 PvP area into a giant snow covered snowball fight, with snow forts, and no powers.
3 on 3 Ice hockey
Option at end of all TF/SF during holiday event to get equal number of candy canes instead of merits.
snowman invasion ala zombie invasion
Replace blimp in Atlas with Santa & reindeer
Xmas trees replacing some of the trees in the zones
costume pieces: Fur lined skirts, mittens, elf cap, reindeer antlers
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/sign
All of those are great ideas!
~Liberty~
The LEGION (CoH) - The Fallen LEGION (CoV)
Forget your fears and want no more
50's - Renkoro, Remorseless
~Virtue~
Angry Angels / Jaded Angels
Global - @Puretone
Objective Feedback:
Winter Gift IO set behavior is erractic.
The proc randomly fires or doesnt fire off. Hard to tell if its *really* working. When exemped to not more than 3 levels below the crafted level of the set (IE lev 50 toon, with level 41 set, exemps down to 39) sometimes it flickers on/off.
Subjective Feedback:
Winter Gift IO set slotting seems illogical.
This set is a Universal Travel Power. However, you cannot slot it in Sprint, the first (and only) travel power many have until after level 10.
YET, you can slot IO running enhancement sets like Celerity or jumping enhancement sets like Springfoot in Sprint (or even both!), but *not* the Winter Gift IO set which enhances both running and jumping?
Further example in inconsistency of implmentation: Take Superspeed as an example, 3 slotted with Celerity. To get the full benefit of the Winters Gift set, and since you cannot slot it in Sprint, you either need to add 3 more slots to Superspeed, get a second travel power, or sacrifice the Celerity set. Few people are going to sacrifice the set bonuses of Celerity and Stealth, for the Winter Gift IO set.
So in the case of keeping the Celerity set and adding 3 more slots, you never will see the full benefit of the Winters Gift set as youve likely already hit the run speed cap with the Celerity set. SuperJump sees this same problem to a lesser extent, Fly a little less so, with Teleport coming in last as least impacted(in the scenario of a 3 part IO set).
Some may say this is a choice a player will have to make and to weigh the sacrifices, but dont miss the point: Winters Gift currently can *only* be slotted in Superspeed, SuperJump, Flying powers, and Teleport powers. There are other sets in common use that are of more benefit *and* in the case of some, like Celerity, can be used in Sprint. To work so hard to get 130 candy canes just to buy the recipes, then spend more time and money on ingredients and crafting them, one would hope to be able to use them in EVERY travel power. This expenditure of time( acquiring candy canes, ingredients, influence) outweighs the sets value when comparing to other sets in slotability, buffs, and set bonuses.
I could maybe understand why this set isnt allowed in Swift or Hurdle(although you can slot Genreic IO's in these). However, please fix\re-evaluate the issue with slotting this set in Sprint. This is an imminently logical place for this set, as Sprint allows both running and jumping enhancements; You would only need to add 2 more slots (vs 3 in some other powers) to get the best benefit from the set, and this would improve the gaming experience of low level players rerunning game content.
Winter Gift IO set classification seems illogical
Lastly, the *entire* set is marked Unique. This seems to be overkill. Perhaps make the Proc unique, and the other two normal. This would allow slotting of this versatile set and causing it to be used more, in turn causing more folks to try to get them. If you dont want them to prolific and interfering with other IO sets, try the novel approach of setting them to a max of not more than 2 sets per toon, or even 3. Currently, you either can slot as many of something as you want or only one of something. Allowing slotting of a set more than 1 time and but less than X allows new middle ground and adds a new game dynamic in the crafting system. Please consider re classifying this set, and allowing more than 1 (maybe limiting to 2) sets on one character. This will make game play more enjoyable, and increase the incentive to acquire this set during such events.
Pinnacle: Sgt. Major - L50 ARDevicesElec Blaster ,Sgt. Medic - L50 IllusionEmpathy Controller, PootyButt - L50 DarkDP Defender Skunk
Virtue: Rockford Pennington - L50 StoneSS Tank, L50 WPSS Tank, L40 ElecDM Tank, L37 DADM Tank, L50 EmpRad Def, Zoom Jr - L50 FireDev Blaster
Halos with no warning you cannot use them , Winters Gift you cannot buy. I tried to buy the universal travel power had over 3 million inf and 45 candy canes - got a message saying my inventory was full - which it was not. Did the misions on one of my low level alts and did not get rewards . Galaxy and Kings Row spawns switched . Maybe that is working as intended as it was switched last year.
Objective:
Winters Gift - Please put a warning on the Universal Travel Power IOs at The Candy Keeper. It's a pain when you go through everything to get Winters Gift on something below level 10 only to get told your inventory (which is usually empty) is full. Instead just have it simply state that it can't give you one until you're level 10 or higher.
Subjective
Costume Pieces - New Costume Pieces would be nice (Fur lined skirts, maybe gloves/boots that are fur lined but don't have that buckle on them, maybe a Snow Man head similar to the Pumpkin Head from Halloween.)
Badges (Part 1) - Find a different way to get the ski badges, please (I can't stress this enough how big of a thing this is). All it takes is a slightly sub-par graphics card, a older, slower computer, a little lag, or a lack of buffs to not be able to get those badges (last year I went out and bought a brand new video card just so I could try! Having to spend an extra $100+ to get 3 badges is not a Good Thing (tm), nor is it that I couldn't get them this year thanks to lag). If anything these badges are becoming either a turn off (especially for badgers), or a reason to break the EULA and out your accout and everything related to it at risk (I know of at least one person who was going around offering to get these badges for other people by logging into their accounts for them, and while I know they wouldn't pull any funny stuff, the risk is still there).
Badges (Part 2) - Not directly tied to this event, but if you're making it so people can go back and get the log in badges from previous Holiday Events for this, why aren't you guys doing the same thing for all the other log in badges from years past that newer players/alts can't get? If anything it just doesn't make much sense to say that badges X, Y, and Z are still available from previous years, but badges from other events/special occasions from years past aren't. If anything you should try to balance these out a bit more and provide some logic behind this.
Babby Ugly - Please, Jay oh Sexy one, please in your infinite power could you please redesign this little tyke so he doesn't look like he beaten nearly to death with the Ugly Stick.
Skating Ring - That lake is the most fun part of the mission. Was tempted to try and find a way to cram more than 8 people in there just so there could be an Ice Skating Party. Maybe you could expand the area at the bottom of the Ski Slopes and stick something like this in there?
Candy Keeper - I can understand your not wanting to around all year, especially without a place he'd fit in well in game, but all the extra Candy Canes aren't going to magically vanish after the event, nor are they going to be useful until next years event. On top of that, event salvage for other events (Halloween) are still able to trade after the event you get them is done for stuff, so why not the Candy canes? Maybe you could just move the Candy Keeper (until next years event starts at least) right outside the door to the Ski area? That way people can still trade in the Candy Canes without being able to access the other event related stuff.
Halos - Some warning at the Candy Keeper saying you can't use these until you unlock Auras would be nice. Or you could make them a non-aura (and non-hat) costume piece. And of course making them color tintable would be nice as well.
@Aoide Muse
Arc IDs: #3571 Digital Love, #182068 The Rikti Roll, #334016 The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web
Subjective:
Please, for the love of anything holy, NO MORE BABY NEW YEAR! And while we're at it, since the V-Day event is coming up, NO MORE SNAPTOOTH!
BNY is just, to put it bluntly, a pain in the butt. Escorts are amongst the least desirable mission types in the game, so what happens? Put it in for the event mission type.
How could this be resolved? Rather than actually taking BNY to the mission door, simply let the mission end once Snaptooth has been defeated. No need to escort him to the door, no need to deal with the rather...eccentric...escort code, no need to deal with hairpulling frustration.
At the same time, there needs to be Candy Cane drops for the snowmen that spawn from presents. A combination of streaky RNG for getting Nice presents, combined with the rather high amount of Canes needed for getting past badges plus the haloes plus the Winter's Gift set does not equal "fun". Especially in a game that encourages alt-ing.
Ski runs. I like them, they're fun. However, the times for the badges are not. Solo, without buffs on some characters, I could just manage to get Silver on the new run. Were the timers upped by about 5-10 seconds each (55s-1min for gold, 1:05-1:10 for silver, 1:15-1:20 for bronze) a person could conceivably get them at a lower level without needing outside assistance.
Or, rather than having "set" times for the badges (dunno if this is possible), have the first run a person does set as a benchmark for them. If they beat that time by 5-10s the next time, they get Bronze. If they beat it by 10-15s, they get Silver. If they beat it by 15-20s, they get Gold. That way, everyone potentially has a much fairer chance for it, despite twitch skills/lag/comp setup/etc.
I got the Winters Gift Badge - it says slot in run , jump, fly or tport power. It won't go in Srpint or Hurdle so what can you put in at lvl 10 if you do not have the first flight power. This just seems like a waste of time and effort and could atleast have a disclaimer on the power.
Xmas decoration for base? :O String Lights, Wreaths, Trees with presents and such?
Other missions besides Baby New Year. And yes, he's ugly. :P Fixit!
Perhaps a mission can be that a band of thugs stole christmas presents and such. - So beat the snot out of them while singing xmas carols!
I'd like to see a pvp zone like sirens call's shore freeze over to have a new element of sliding thrown in with it. Or a nice arena map with a frozen lake / snow.
I loved the ski slopes this year! Amazing and very fun to do over and over again. Although it's quite frustrating trying to get in the time limit only to miss it by .25 seconds. @_@ Still very fun to do. OH and fix those propeller shoot things. I keep hitting my head on the rocks above. >:/
Maybe a big Christmas bash inside of Pocket D dance floor itself mebe a dev or two show up as Santa and give out some candy canes and random gifts / coal. :P
Revamped chalet:
Aesthetically, I do not like the advanced ski route. It looks too busy and too contrived.
I would like a "summer chalet", it doesn't need to have much purpose beyond merely existing, really; just some nice scenery for villains and heroes to interact in. I'd prefer if the winter chalet was brought to a design that looked more like a 'natural' shard island formation that just happenned to be well suited for a ski route.
The slalom is ANNOYING when I miss a checkpoint. I'd rather there be a penalty for missing a checkpoint rather than having to spend a minute trudging up to try to find a way to go through the flags, else sit around bored while the clock runs out.
Some of the geysers still don't seem to be aimed very well..
BNY missions are cool the first couple times, then they make me want to claw my eyes out. Could we maybe make it more of a new year task/strike force with a correspondingly larger reward, so that we can see more variety and less repetition? This would also address the silliness of teams of level 30-50 characters repeatedly doing level 1 BNY missions.
There is still a present right next to the Founders Falls exit; a WL spawned there will smash flat anyone exiting from the D.
The recipes and variety of rewards thus given I liked quite a bit. The candy cane merchant was major win.
Would like a non-cape scarf as Shoulder as a reward next time, perhaps.
Dislike the aesthetics of the Chalet entrance, especially when it isn't winter. It's hard to find (redside ramps to the bar are confusing as heck!) and looks a bit goofy.
I miss ice on the lakes and rivers outside the Chalet..
I realize it might be a pain, but would it be possible to drop particle snow on the city sometimes? maybe other random craziness would happen that we could rescue citizens from while the snow fell.
The level dynamics of 'naughty' presents discourage people from opening presents in level-appropriate zones. Suggest spawns be tied to the level of the box opener within the limits of the zone instead, rather than encouraging people to do their gift hunting in outleveled zones.
A no attack "Group-Friendly" Defender is like a "Team Friendly" basketball player who won't dribble, run, or shoot, under any circumstances. "I'm a PASSER."
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Convert 1 PvP area into a giant snow covered snowball fight, with snow forts, and no powers.
3 on 3 Ice hockey
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All are good, but these 2 in particular, I -SO- give my approval to! 
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Subjective:
Please, for the love of anything holy, NO MORE BABY NEW YEAR! And while we're at it, since the V-Day event is coming up, NO MORE SNAPTOOTH!
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I agree most heartedly!! PLEASE come up with something different for the Events and switch them every year. I have been playing this game since Beta and this year nearly closed my account, I was so disapointed with the same old Events.
Come on! Can't we expect something different each year? There seems to be a mindset that all you have to do is brush off the same old thing wether it be Veteran Rewards or Event and the players will keep on coming. Trust me, its wearing thin.
how dare we ask for new content!
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
I wonder if they could create a "hockey stick" temp power, and use the ragdoll physics to allow us to actually play ice hockey.
I don't really mind the whole "rescue baby new year" thing - I just would like to see the map changed up every once in a while.
Since this all has to do w/ saving baby new year and your contact is father time, it'd be kinda cool if we met soem signature characters at other periods in history. Like, what if we were actually at 1920's Croatoa and encountered Statesman from that period.
Add a Candy Cane reward for the Santa Hat.
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