2009 Halloween Event Bugs and Feedback

Very nice event, a definite upgrade from the past years' Halloween events.

The only thing I have to add here is to echo what some others have said -- have NPCs somewhere around that explain the background and give a bit of direction/advice on the event. It's fine that it'll be available outside the game, and of course players will help other players as always, but it would really be great to have the flavor within the game, and to help out newer players.

another request for more flavor text, this event has major promise, but id like to know what these pillars are, and why im fighting them, and what the heck the monster is.

beyond that i noticed no issues with badge3s, temps, or general gameplay.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Found a bug with the banner of terror in skyway at 1000.3 -126.0 -1295.4 . The spawn point at that position just keeps clumps of spectral whatevers clustered at that point and they cannot move forward to melee or aggro upon player charectors at anything other than range.

Central time zone here so didn't get to join until home from work so only for the last 2 hours. The events I participated in were in Independence Port, (where I took the last posted temporary power (forgot the name)) Croatoa where I took the 1st posted temporary power and Skyway City where I took one of the other temporary powers. None of them actually showed up in my inventory. In Skyway after my selection, the select temp power window came back up and wouldn't close until I selected take no power.

As a side note can someone tell me why my sig gif will not load it is below all the parameters given.

Bug: Deadly Apocalypse spawned in The Hollows, which is a hazard zone.

A follow up to the lack of info for the event:

Any chance we could get a NPC to contact us about the event, the way DJ Zero and Father Time do for the other events?
Someone in Pocket D, or maybe the Midnighter Club, to keep with the magical flavor would be awesome - just with a brief bit of background info for the Event, and a list of what players can do, with a few hints and tips for things like ToT and the Banners.

Found some typos in the text for the new badges:

Dark Fiend - "Mystic Banners" should be singular since you only have to defeat it once.

Hell Hath No Fury - "Mystic Banners" should be singular since you only have to defeat it once.

Monstrous - The badge mentions defeating the "Aspect of the Mystic Banner" but the GM is actually titled "Greater Mystic Aspect." It probably ought to be changed to avoid any unnecessary confusion.

Hell and Back - "mishapen" should be spelled "misshapen" and there should be a comma between "friends earning".

First note, before I forget.

Regarding new event not spawning in hazard zones, it did.

Mod8 extended the event 12 minutes for a latecommer, and during that time, the Deadly Apocalypse event spawned in the Hollows. The alert came across the event channel while I was in skyway and I bopped over to see and sure enough, all the banner were in the Hollows. I pummeled (and was pummeled by) minions for a bit but there were no others heroes I could detect in the zone so the timer ran out without the banners becoming vulnerable etc.


General over all:

Very cool looking events, very interesting and mysterious but, maybe too mysterious.

Since the question was asked, I have a feeling Devs you were concerned about it so, yes, it was confusing, what the tasks of the new event were - what we were supposed to do and in what order. It was a more complex set of things to accomplish beyond any of the other invasion type events, so some explanation and prep will be really needed/helpful.

I also agree that some explanation or connected story for what the banners are, why they are there is needed.

It didn't bug me so much that existing critters were used. It makes sense that if a "banner" for mystic evil is raised, it would draw existing critters of a sympathetic type. I think this makes sense but we do need the story. Presumably this will be forthcoming in the official event announcement.

Most things including tot seemed to be working correctly as far as I could tell.

Badges for the new event, I'm not so sure, I got some of them but at least twice I was on a team bringing down banners and didn't get badge from that or the Aspect (GM) afterwards. I was sk'd since team leader was 50 and I wasn't at the time.

The way tot spawns are working, I foresee I will solo all my doorknocking. Spawns on teams are too high (level, not amount).

Getting a low level inspiration as a treat seems... silly. Not much of a treat. Like the house you go to and they don't give candy, they throw some wrapped saltines from the take out dinner salad they had the night before, or a package of peanuts from an recent airplane flight. ;P

Looking forward to getting the story on the banners!

• Are objectives clear when the Event is running?
  Not entirely. It seems that it is required that at least one person be attacking at each banner; in the final Port Oakes run, we had approximately one team on each of two banners, a soloist on a 3rd, and no on on the 4th. We beat on them for at least 4 min. without any appearance of blue on the bar at all; the moment I moved to the 4th banner and started shooting, the blue bar jumped up and was moving quickly. This is not at all obvious, and cost us too much time; we ran out of time and weren't able to get all the banners down.
  
  Given that it appears that full zone debt is earned, having to sacrifice a character to start the other banners if you don't have enough folks is troublesome, especially as that character probably will not get the banner kills either.
  
  
• Are rewards being handed out correctly?
  Even with the small and cooperative number of people on Test, it was difficult to get to the final GM before they went down. If it's using the 10% coding, it may be difficult to get the badge on a busy server.
  
  
• Are there any problems with the event occurring in any City Zone?
  (Note: The event will only be present In Paragon City or the Rogue Isles City Zones, and not in any PvP Zones, Hazard Zones, Trial Zones or Co-Op Zones)
  As noted, one popped in the Hollows.
  
• Are there any graphical effect bugs?
  Targeting the banners themselves, when vulnerable, doesn't work well; their click area is small and it doesn't seem like you can TAB to them properly.
  
• Do banner icons appear correctly on the MiniMap when the event is running?
  Yes.
  
• Do waypoints correctly appear when the event is running? (Note: Navigation waypoints of active Missions orient players to the Halloween Event objectives when a player’s character is near one, and should disappear when they leave the area.)
  Didn't notice, was driving by the mini-map.
  
• Are enemy NPCs appearing at the appropriate level? (i.e. a Level 50 should be able to fight side-by-side with a Level 5 character).
  Sort of. I started a team for the Port Oakes run, as a level 29. Due to auto-exemp, that meant everyone higher was lowered. We were considerably more effective when I passed team leader to one of the level 50 characters.
  
• Are all badges awarded correctly?
  Seemingly, although see above about the final GM.

Additional to my earlier posted feedback:

BUG:

During the event in Croatoa the banner icons were popping in and out on my nav bar, disappearing at times entirely. During the event in Skyway the banner icons did not show up at all.

SUBJECTIVE:

Given the need of the GM for the accolade, one of two things should be done:

1. An icon on the nav bar for the GM akin to that for the banners

2. Frequent events, as in at least every hour. Once every three hours is not going to be sufficient when only the first team or two to find the GM is going to get the badge, and may not even get the accolade if they haven't gotten all four banners.

This will be Jack 100-fold.

Soooooo ... I stayed up until 3:30am to check this event out, to test it. In the end, I ended up going to bed at 5am because I was just getting too tired, and too confused from the event.

The events objectives were definitely not clear enough. There was nothing to tell you, once you entered the zone, what was happening there, and what you were supposed to actually do.

Once the timer had started, which was AFTER someone got close enough to one of the banners, it wasn't clear as to what mobs were required to be defeated. If it was specific mobs, like an EB class, that moved that little blue progress bar, well it needs to be a little more clear. Also, using common enemy types ... what the hell ... I was expecting new enemies ... Cenobyte lookin things ... demonic fiends ... not Red Caps and Shivans ...

I never received any of the badges, because I was solo during the whole event. Why was I solo ? To test the event. The event is not solo friendly, nor is it small team friendly. There just isn't enough time for a small team to defeat the required enemies, defeat the banners, and defeat the Aspect of the Sigil.

The Aspect of the Sigil, again, is a renamed standard GM? Boring. I was going around looking for something I hadn't seen before.

So, as I said, I never received any of the badges while solo. So I never got any of the temp powers that were apparently available aswell.

In all, the event was mildly ok, in that it was new. The new monsters are bland, being standard mobs renamed, and badges not awarding for soloers/small teams, made the event completely meh for me.

Now, the monsters in the event, IF they are just placeholders, just so we still had some surprise for the actual event, cool, otherwise colour me unimpressed with this whole event.

As for Trick or Treating ...

I am so glad that the spirits are correctly spawning now, it shouldn't be too hard to get all the badges for that in about 30-45 minutes. What I don't like is that defeating tricks is the only way to get the halloween salvage. It's rate needs to be greatly increased. By having such a decreased drop rate, it will create a crappy expensive market through WW and BM, where people who have hundreds of salvage (like myself) from previous years will jack up the price and make huge amounts of inf from poor suckers who want a 5th costume slot. This is not a good thing, the 500k/piece as it is seems a little high, that will only go up as supply won't be restocked as high from this years event.

Treats are now pretty much boring. You get a costume temp, or a small insp ... boring. Noone wants those anymore, really, because they don't drop the halloween salvage. All they want are tricks so they can defeat the mobs to get their badges and halloween salvage. The insp needs to be the large type to actually make it a treat.

Lastly, the world GMs for the event. Has Jack's spawn changed from a 10% chance per spawn. If it hasn't, I can't express how much this needs to be changed to 20-25%, OR to put in a streakbreaker, making it a definite 1/10 spawns WILL be Jack. It was so frustrating last year, I think we defeated 50 Eochais before Jack finally spawned.

All my opinions/observations/suggestions.

Kadabra Kill and Sigil would make the better Halloween Event Info Officers -- they're not used as contacts in any other capacity.