Discussion: The Deadly Apocalypse is upon us!

I might be the only one saying this but...I enjoy the Zombie Raids! I get tired of fighting only Ritki so zombies are a nice alternative. Also I think it's awesome that we have Zombie Raids year around so badge lovers don't have to wait for TWO WEEKS OUT OF ONE WHOLE BLAZIN' YEAR to get badges or to get a pumpkin head! I know I have several toons on several servers who have Pumpkin Heads!!! I guess to fix that they could do what they do with the x-mas and the valentines event have it go on twice a year or so, so no one misses out.

If you want to get rid of the Z Raid so be if but please at least make the pumpkin head assessable as head piece I can purchase at WW or BM. Also in replace of the z raid let something else spawn...even though I hate lagging and crashing I do love to join with other toons to fight a greater threat!

My biggest problem with the Halloween event is the Vampire lords and the Crones at lower levels. I play a lot of alts and they just seem to hold you and one punch. Theya re no fun , just irritating.

Okay, I should probably have read every page, but
I wanted to know if the ToT'rs are ever going to drop
"magic" enhancments. Getting only Sci/Tech is annoying *lol*

besides, black magic, witches and stuff, it's all supernatural.

MAGIC...

take care and be safe out there, run from zombies if you're by yourself

Welcome to the forums, NeonKnight

I really like the new DA.

Havent done it more than a few times, buit to me seems right balance for alt friendly and main friendly with four powers to collect.

Its a very imaginitive use of the game engines limiations in my opinion, and would love to see time spent on making the creatures as unique to fight.

I wasnt happy about the changes for halloween salavge at first but won over as my squishies can still get in with a group ToTing withouit risking door clicks of doom.

Its very hard one low number groups (solo to triples) though, the tricks have bite in them for lowbie characters espically.

Something odd just happened.

I was playing my level 22 Rad/Fire blaster, ToTing away, when I saw the badge earned message.

I got Ostentatious!

But wait a sec....

I only have 27 costumes so far on this guy, he was made less than a month ago so it can't be carry over from last year.

Are the costume badges awarded account wide or is this a bug?
If it is a bug should I bother to bug it or would that just clog up the system?

Ah, that makes sense, I have been ToTing with him pretty much exclusive. Just made me pause when I saw it and realized I was still getting new costumes awarded.

Glad I didn't bug it.

Personally I love the events that this game offers us throughout the year and I have done a banner raid this year and thought it was cool.

However I do want to beg the devs to not keep 1 upping themselves each year. It's great to get new content sure but we've been getting new stuff for 5 years now and the events are getting full.

I'm a 60 month player so have heaps of toons that have done all of the previous years events but I loved them then and love them again when they return so I can play them on my new toons. I dont' need a new massive event each year.

Sure add little tweaks, like a new monster mob to the ToTing or a new type of 'Nice' prize to the Holidays event but IMHO we really don't need any more zone wide events added to the events that we've currently got.


Just my $0.02. The events we've got are great. Can't we just keep what we've got and have the devs didicated to working on new permanent content? That's much better for me.

I have yet to find enough people, on my server, to finish this event. This halloween event blows big time.

I get lag even when I'm just moving around in a zone.
The game crashes at odd times, sometimes requiring me to restart my computer.
Trick-or-Treat monsters are tougher, resulting in frequent party wipeouts and massive debt.
And then the developers say they've extended the event to November 8.

The event has made the game almost unplayable, and I am not enjoying the event. See you on November 9.

LOL @ everyone complaining about the difficulty of the ToT spawns. I like the bosses, I like how I actually have to break a sweat or how I get nervous/scared/excited when the doors open up, it's fun! The time before when it was just minions spawns were boring! I found myself falling asleep at the keyboard and on teams ppl tend wait till they get their badge and leave due to the mediocre xp output.

My team wiped 2 or three times within a 2.5 hour span of ToT'ing. ONLY 2 or three times! Not so bad and it sure did make us pay attention next time. Do people still take debt seriously in this game? I have no issue with it. If needed be I park my toon in the Police Headquarters/Arachnos Base and let them chill there for 10 days if I somehow manage to get a whole level's worth of debt it will be taken care of in ten days.

While you are waiting, play other toons.

I have to agree that more frequent boss spawns are nice IF you can handle them. My level 10 Brute got brutalized by them. If a boss and Leut spawned I was basically dead even if I used every Enhancement in I had. If I got a boss alone and used all my enhancements I could survive but was left defenseless for the next one lol.

The new event is a nice change from the everyone meet here events and now that I have seen it actually work (now that people don't try to split up to take the banners). Although that is kind of a bad in that now it is like Rikti Raid/Zombie App except you run to a new location a few times. It would have beeen more interesting if you had to split up.

i.e. If there had to be so many losses of each type or if banners healed each other if not being attacked (interruptable heal that they can only cast on each other). But all told it is still fun.

What is really amazing is the company. When I saw the announcement "We looked at the feedback and we are going to change the game" they admit they are wrong and try and jump in and fix the event in the middle? This is one of the reasons I love this game.

Finally got to complete a banner event this afternoon.

Tried around 2am in Talos but 1 team of 6, mainly tanks, wasn't even able to make the banners vulnerable.

This afternoon however, we had no trouble. Started off the same, I'm the only one standing at the green banner, doing my best (on a level 22 blaster) Managed to kill 3 Lts and a handful of minions before hitting the nearby hosp.
Rinse and repeat.
After the 3rd death I started thinking, here we go again. I can't do this alone...

When I got close to the banner again I saw I wasn't. Another team had swarmed it.
They became vulnerable shortly there after and we all set out to work left to right.

I must say, it was a blast. Hopping from one banner to the next. Flying overhead with heroes superspeeding below me, one teleporting just infront of me, then vanishing.
Gave a real feeling of.... urgency. Like we were really saving the world.

The Aspect(jurrasic in this case) folded like a wet noodle though. I had time to BU and go through one chain before the reward screen popped up!

First, I would like to get the pro's about this event out of the way because I have more negative feedback than positive. Kudos for doing something new with the event, I was dissapointed in last years "zombie invasion" because it just recycled dynamics of the Rikti invasion substituting zombies in place of Rikti. So 5 stars to making something new and different!

Now that is out of the way, I have weighed the Halloween event agaisnt the Christmas event and found the former to be quite lacking. I understand that Christmas is probably the most popular holiday, espescially as a kid getting presents. But I have always equally enjoyed Halloween. So here is some food for thought:

The Christmas event has its own special little zone with the Ski Chalet and the Father Time/Baby New Year missions, etc. It has it's own villain group, the Winter Horde, complete with GM. It has temp powers like Holiday Spirit and Holiday Cheer, Golden Rings and Renewal of Light, Build Snowbeast, Snowball, and Holiday Rocket Pack. Also, it has a number of permanant costume pieces that you can use all year around if you so choose, they include the following unlockables: Furry Boots, Furry Gloves, Ear Muffs and Stocking Cap.

The Halloween event pales in comparison with its lack of unique enemies, using recycled enemy groups instead. It has no zone or mission arc. Rewards are tier 1 inspirations (that is just terrible) and temp costumes that simply replace your character with a generic copy of an npc or enemy character. The only thing really worth playing for is the costume salvage. Which is only good if your characters havent already obtained their 5th costume slot from the previous years salvage that you can stockpile in your base or buy from Wentworth.

But do not lose hope because I have some golden ideas for you. On 5-30-2009 I posted a thread about the Halloween event, it fruitioned into a very positive, but small response from the forum community. This was too recent to expect any of these ideas implemented into this years event. But now you guys have a whole year, minus the time that you are taking to finish up Going Rogue and its expected bugs, to really make an awesome Halloween event next year. Here are some ideas for future Halloween events!

1. A completely new, Halloween themed co-op zone.
A place with an overall creepy vibe, like a town with some shady looking NPCs, a big haunted mansion, a foggy old cemetary with crypts and statues and an old gothic cathedral, and a town neighborhood to Trick or Treat in with houses that actually have scary Halloween decorations (oposed to office buildings and regular mission doors that have no decorations). NPCs in this zone could tell you about the history of the haunted mansion, or other mysterious things going on in the town. Also, there could be creepy random sounds like a howling wolf, maniacle laughter, spooky ghost noises, witch cackle, etc. For overall style think Tim Burton type of eerieness and gloom.

2. The Haunted Mansion Mystery.
Go inside the mansion, talk to NPCs, click on non-glowing clickable objects to find clues to the mystery and open secret passages. Put pieces of the puzzle together to help you figure out what the clickable objects are, and where to find them. Riddles and objects could be spread out across the entire town, clues could include NPCs spreading rumors, books, statues, and objects inside the mansion, gravestones in the cemetary, hidden objects inside the crypt, a carving on a really old creepy tree, etc. Use all of the clues to enter a final room and confront the ghost AV that is haunting the place. This mystery could even change each year (i know it probably wouldnt but its a thought). Also there could be good and bad ghosts inside the mansion, trying to help you, or stop you. A ghost might randomly appear by a wall to show you there is a hidden passage there. Or maybe some bloody footprints lead you into a certain room and you have to find something there. Bad ghosts could attack you, or hit you with a special power that makes some clues dissappear, or inacessable. Maybe a bad ghost AV is sealing a door and you have to defeat him to be able to go in the next room to get the next clue. Then once he respawns the door closes again. There are many things that could be done in this mansion so take what I have given you and build on that.

3. Some new activities
Mischeivous activities could be performed by the villains. They would be able to run around and TP houses, smash pumpkins, scare NPCs, knock over tombstones in the cemetary, etc. while heroes would have to run around and clean up the houses and set out new jack-o-lanterns, reverse the damage, etc. Villains are trying to do all this bad stuff, and heroes are trying to do good stuff, you get the idea. The entire time there would be tracking of statistics, how many bad things happened, vs how many good things happened. And at the end of the event a special award (a badge, or a temp power, or a token for a random recipe drop) could be given to the winners (heroes vs villains) but there would not be any combat. And perhaps even a runner up (less valueble) reward could be given to the side that loses.

Another activity for both heros and villains could be "bobbing for apples" to give you a special buff power that lasts for 30 min or an hour of game time. But the activity would have a random success/failure rate so that you do not get a buff everytime, you could try again a few minutes later.

Or a similar idea, a scary witch standing next to a big glowing cauldron to click on for a "witch's brew" temp power that would give you random positive or negative effects.

4. Halloween Candy.
You get candy from trick or treating, not costumes. ToT rewards could be special inspirations that could have numerous kinds of buffs and abilities similar to the winter event ones, but with interesting differences. Some candies could have 2 or 3 buffs (damage and accuracy) (heal and defense) etc. but the more buffs one insp. has the less percentage they help. Some may even have special effects that no other insp has, like a rare wakie that gives you full health without the stun. Or one that enhances range, (only good for ranged attacks obviously). The more candy you eat at once, raises a slider bar or a chance to make you sick and reverse the effects debuffing you slightly, emphasis on the slightly part. So if you pop one or two here and there, no biggy, but if you pop 5 or 10, then you have a chance of getting tummy ache.

Or a different candy idea would be new Halloween Salvage. In real life when you go trick or treating you always get something at each house. Maybe it is one piece of candy, maybe it is a handfull, maybe it is a bag of kettle corn or a caramel apple. So my other idea is introduce a new event salvage, Halloween Candy, and you can use this salvage to purchase things the same way that candy canes work for winter event. Then you could use this salvage on random rolls like Costume Salvage pieces (the four salvage pieces from the old halloween events), recipes, enhancements, permanent Halloween costume pieces, etc. But since you get one or more pieces at every door, it takes a lot of candy to purchase things.

5. New enemies.
With the winter event we got the Winter Horde enemies. Why cant we get some kind of new enemies like living scarecrows, goblins, or some kind of monster that we do not currently have in the pre-existing enemy arsenal. Gargoyles that spawn on an old cathedral, mummys (zombies with wrap), or even something like masked enemies running around with a machete or ax. Take a note from any horror movie ever made in existence and build from them. On that note, some of the time old classic movie monsters like Dracula, Frankensteins Monster, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, The Werewolf, could all be unique AVs or GMs in this zone. Just please stay away from the recycled Council/5th vampires and werewolves, Cabal witches, and Fir Bolg. While I agree these are good characters for a halloween event, we could really use a genuine Halloween only enemy group. (I can fight Council, Cabal, and Fir Bolg anytime.)

6. A Costume Party.
After a certain hour people could gather inside the creepy old gothic cathedral. There could be a bunch of NPCs wearing costumes (just not current enemy costumes, get creative). It would just be a cool looking place to go hang out. If that is too much work just throw some decorations in Pocket D to make it spooktacular. Complete with our permanent costume pieces that we unlock from the event. Right now all we have is the enormously oversized jack-o-lantern head. Give us some scary halloween masks, props, emotes, these are common knowledge so I shouldnt need to elaborate further. Please nix the recycled costume temp powers that we have now, and replace it with some new quality costume pieces that we can keep.

7. Temp Powers
Now that we have permanent halloween costume pieces, we do not need the costume temp powers. To replace 'em, I have a few ideas for you to build on.

In the spirit of the Snowball temp power, a "friendly" ranged power, it would be fun to throw a tp roll, eggs, or something of a non-damage nature at your buddies.

For a ranged attack temp, throw a flaming jack-o-lantern would be fun.

The above mentioned Apple Bobbing, or Witches Brew buffs.

And a fear power vs. enemies. This would be a prank to scare them. It would work like a proximity trap, being triggered when the enemy gets near, just like the trip mine from the Traps set. This could be a number of random things that would all have the same effect, to induce fear on the enemies in range. Such pranks could be anything from a hand popping out of the ground, to a ghost swooping out. Any kind of scary encounter will work.

There are some other notable ideas on the original thread also if you are interested in reading them. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=134027

I know that this is a lot to do, so prioritize for the first year, then add things to it each following year, you know. Most important in my opinion would be the new zone and the Haunted Mansion Mystery, or some other type of new mission arc.

War Witch, if you come back and read this, I really hope that you like it, in part at least. I hope other people like these ideas as well. I used to like the old halloween events when they first launched but now after one day of playing them I am already bored. If any of these new ideas can be done, espescially the new zone, then I think that would be an event worth while.

Have a frightfully fun holiday everyone!

Be sure to drink your

Wow you're serious....*rubs eyes* way to early for me to read so much... I will have to come back to this later. *blindly searches for coffee*

Wow Red addiction...I agree with you on that but...wouldn't that take a lot of man power that the devs don't have? I dunno I can't say much b/c you really thought this through. I do like your ideas and remind me if I ever need help with some creativity...nice!

And to the one who gave me a negative comment/rating yes I do matter just like everyone else. I pay for this game monthly just like you except unlike you I voiced my opinion and left it at that...which I can say is better than you... who seemed to have got all hurt from what I said and gave me a bad rating b/c I disagreed with you :P.