Hindsight on the Deadly Apocalypse

During the weeks of the Halloween event, I personally lead around 20 successful zone efforts to defeat the event. I failed a few, saw a few different winning and many losing techniques, and learned a lot about how the game works.

I love the 'Trial'-type nature of the event. It's not something that's simply a 'beat it down, get badges' button. Players must learn how run and participate in the event, or they fail.

That said, there were some problems with the event, and with the way it was presented to players. I assume that this is not the last we'll see of it. It's likely that it'll continue to come up occasionally in place of the zombie invasions, and I'm certain it'll happen next year about this same time.

The biggest problem was with the frequency of the zone event. When it was first introduced, players complained that they would not have time to get all the badges they wanted due to the length of the Halloween event. Devs responded in two ways, first by increasing the length of the Halloween event, and then by dramatically increasing the frequency of the zone event.

This created a situation in which players were burned on the frequency of the event. It happened all the time, so was no longer 'special'. It frequently happened in many zones at once, so player attention was divided. Players began to avoid zones where it occurred so it would not interfere in their regular play once they'd gotten tired of the event.

There are a few things that could be done to address that. The most obvious change that could be made is to implement code that ensures that no matter how often the event happens, it only ever happens in one zone at a time. You might even go so far as to say it can happen simultaneously in a hero and villain zone, but I personally think that's too much.

Adding more time to the length of the Halloween event was a good move, but making the zone event happen so frequently was probably not. As I mentioned, it lost its 'specialness'. This happens to zone events in general. It's not uncommon for Lusca to hang out for days at the end of IP or for three Paladins to play hopscotch in the park in King's Row all night. The frequency of zone events in general needs to be cut. 'Special' events like this one can be more frequent, but the rate we saw was far, far too much.

Another problem with the event was the 'openness' of it. In an instanced trial, a team leader can work to educate his group on what they have to do. For example, in the abandoned sewer trial, He'll tell them to split up into specific groups to deal with the various generators around the Hydra's head.

In an open zone event trial like the Deadly Apocalypse event, that option goes out the window. He has to compete with other team leaders to lead the event. If you have someone in the zone operating on bad information, it can cause the event to fail despite otherwise good leadership.

Additionally, the event was also subject to zone population. A single team was not quite enough to run the event. Three teams could reasonably overpower it, and if they weren't careful, destroy the banners so quickly that a lower-damage team didn't quite get the 15% damage necessary to earn the badge, despite otherwise lending buffs or debuffs to the zone. Four teams would almost ensure that. (And if the frequency of the events is decreased like I suggested, this will happen more often.)

To make the event more tolerant to these factors a few changes could be made. The first is to slightly adjust the timer based on how the zone is doing during the event. Once the banners become vulnerable, add two minutes to the timer. Then, upon each banner defeat, add another minute. This gives slower, but well-coordinated teams more time to do their duty and gives slower, short-bus special-ed students more time to make the mental connections necessary to sing along.

Likewise, decrease the damage necessary to get the badge associated with each banner. The event GM only requires that the team engage it to get the badge. I wouldn't go quite that far with the banners but... yes. Yes I would. Change the banners so that if a team lands a hit on them after they become vulnerable, the team gets the badge when the banner is destroyed.

Like I said, this was a GOOD event. I enjoyed it. It wasn't perfect, but it was entertaining and engaging. Let's hope it's BETTER next year!

agree about the frequency.

I don't play that much anymore, but nearly every time I logged anyone in for more than a few minutes, along came a Deadly Apocalypse. As with the zone monsters, making them too common undermines what makes them interesting.

I'd like to see a lower 'spawn rate' balance by a larger window of opportunity.

But it was really fun, and definitely a huge improvement over past iterations.

Good suggestions. Allow me to add one.

The first event on the EU side made a lot of people flock to one zone intent on getting the badge. The zone Croatoa collapsed under the pressure and everyone in that zone got disconnected.

With every event you see that at the start loads of people get involved and it is a hectic mad time. Then the newness wears of and the zone gets ignored most of the time. To remedy this, you could make sure that once the event is turned on there are a lot of events. Once the first few days are over, reduce the number of events and make sure that they only appear in 1 zone at a time. This will help interested people to find like minded people and will result into more successful attemtps. On the EU servers at least I dare say that 90% of the events did not find anyone attempting them.

I'm not interested in raids, I got burned out fighting all those ToT bosses, and I got tired of the continuous darkness. So I've been playing Perfect World International for the past few days. Interesting game.

Now that the daytime light has returned, it's back to CoH!

Hidsight from getting the banner badges on at least 1 character per server:

• Limit the zones the event triggers in (or limit to only 1 instance at a time.)
  
  Hopping from zone to zone & server to server, I quickly noticed players mainly participated in the higher population zones, ie. Atlas, Kings Row, Talos & PI. Occassionally you'd find an attempt in Steel, but this often failed miserably due to banner placement.
  
  Teams tended to avoid large zones where the banners are spread too far apart, ie. Steel Canyon and Independence Port. They also seemed to avoid zones which were "off the beaten path" such as Brickstown, Croatoa, & Galaxy City.
  
  Never once did I find a team attempting the banner event in a hazard zone.
  
  
• Lower the required amount of damage to banners in order to get badge credit.
  
  On high population servers like Freedom & Virtue, it took multiple runs to get all the banner badges since they went down so fast. On low pop servers it was just the opposite, sometimes you'd be lucky to get down just 1 banner before the time ended.
  
  What was really frustrating was when a full team was attacking the banner and you were either solo or a 2-3 person team and didn't do enough damage to get credit. I wouldn't go so far as awarding credit for just doing 1 point of damage as this would discourage teaming, but lower the requirement to 5 or 10%.
  
  
• Temp powers had great synergy with overall event.
  
  I esp. enjoyed the Resistance temp power which helped ToTing solo on my blaster immensely! I found myself seeking out Banner teams for the temp powers instead of badges on certain alts!
  
  It would have been nice to see a Temp team teleport in the mix, too.
  
  
• Longer event window/less frequency.
  
  I agree, adding an extra week did more for this event than upping the frequency. Keep them less frequent and more players participate in each. By expanding the event dates you address the frequency problem without impacting it's uniqueness.
  
  Players will always complain of frequency, but if they get a long enough window of opportunity they will be able to participate.
  
  
• More background on the event.
  
  While the event was a fun, new mini-game, it was missing a key ingredient...it's story. It would be nice to have a mission arc that ties into the banners and fleshes out the story behind it. Maybe the mission could drop clues on ways to defeat the banners more effectively, in essence, be a tutorial on how to complete the event successfully.
  
  The mission could be granted from the costume contacts in Croatoa or Nerva the same way DJ Zero only seasonally gives out the Valentine arc.

Great feedback, MOO. I'll forward this to the guys who responsible so they can pick it apart for useful bits.

I agree with everything else mentioned the only thing I would add is under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should this be tied to character actions to make it a zone event through out the year!!

The Zombie Apocalypse and Rikti Invasions have been cheapened somewhat (more so the ZA) by allowing them to happen whenever you turn around. What makes the Winter Event special is that you can ONLY do most of its activities during the Event itself.

Please, please, PLEASE don't make the Deadly Apocalypse a triggered event. Keep it Halloween ONLY!

I'd like to suggest limiting what zones these events happen in, at least for Heroe side. As was brought up in the OP, attention was heavily divided for the zones at least partly because of zone population and ease-of-use, and with all the zones open to Heroes, a lot of the mindset was "eh....I don't feel like going way over there". The same can be said for Zombie invasions IMO. FBZ and the "hazard zones" do not need these events happening in them for these reasons. Whatever the Hollows and Faultline are now considered I'd also argue they do not need the events as well (please god take away Zombie invasions from Faultline as I swear every time I manage to get a Numina going it'll happen just as I need to clear away some Vhaz in there ) I believe the Rikti invasion is limited to just the "city" zones? I don't see why the other events can't be similarly contained.

/2 cents

I've already forgotten about most of you

[QUOTE=Mirai;2399552] I got tired of the continuous darkness. [QUOTE]

Well, that bothers me someway but... It helps those of us who still don´t have certain badges that are only obtainable at night (like Pirate), so I can live with it.

I made the mistake of joining a Numina TF last week. Geez! What a pain it was during the series of hunt missions. We got stuck with three zones where an Event started just before we got to them which added a 15-20 mins wait for each. Not a big deal, but we were in a groove. The team knew what they needed to do, went to do it and then got hit with a dead stop.

So an argument can be made for Atlas, but having an event as intensive as the Deadly Apocalypse triggering in areas like King Rows, Mercy Island, or Port Oakes strikes me as an exercise in futility.

Maybe it was just my experience or maybe it's just CoV, but it sure seemed to be a lost cause attempting the event in any low level zone, nevermind using a lowbie in said zones.

good luck D.B.B.

Actually, I saw several successful runs in Croatoa. Including one folloed by a sound thrashing of Jack and Eochai. It probably helps that it seems somewhat thematic for the zone. I'd definitely agree that it could be removed from some zones- expect for that not making much sense story-wise. Maybe have the initial time limit start much lower and earn "bonus time" as you defeat the "defenders". Also, adding extra time for defeating each banner would be a good suggestion, I was on several attempts that just abrely managed to pull off defeating the banners in time (like 10 seconds left on one), and others that just barely failed. Actually, it'd be great if it could be coded so the banners don't disappear as long as they have someone within thier 'aggro' radius.

I'd also like it if the toughness of the event could somehow scale to the number of people participating- nothing was more disappointing that only having 5 or so people show up for one, and knowing that all you're really doing is farming some annoying mobs.

I agree with the idea of only one zone at a time, I'm sure there were times when participation got split between zones that ended in failure by default. I'd also like to see some additional notifications in the Event channel besides the initial one- sometimes I'm zoning or loggin in when it gets announced and I don't know it's happening until sometime later I see "Supernatural Activity has ended in ZONE" and go "Dang, missed another chance..."

Oh, and PLEASE, for god's sake, don't let Eochai spawn on top of the banners next time!

Um... it's supposed to be over now, right? I've been playing for over an hour and it's still dark... and I can still trick or treat. Was it extended yet again?

The last announcement I see says it was supposed to end on Wednesday, November 11th.

My biggest complaint is that it knocks out all the other enemies in the zone when the banners show up. I've only had a limited amount of time to play the last few weeks (maybe an hour every few nights or so), but it seemed that every time I was working through a story arc and a hunt would come up, of course that was right when the banners or zombies came up and all the enemies i was hunting went away. If you have a lot of time to play, its not a big deal, just do something else for that time, but when you only have an hour or so to play, that means you spend a third of your time doing the banners...and those times i happened to be playing at night in Croatoa, when there were all of about 2-3 other people playing in that zone, so no way we could actually complete the banners.

I'll throw my own two inf into this mix.

I agree with most of the points here. I'll be glad to see daylight again, but the reasons for extending this event as long as it's been going were logical.

My only real complaint with the event is just how tough the banners were to drop. Multiple, coordinated teams with debuffs were the only way (as far as I've seen) to down them; several times I ended up getting skunked because all we had on hand were lowbies.

Rather than a blanket reduction on the banners' resistance, though (which would lead to smaller teams getting cheated out of the badge, as mentioned earlier), I would propose this solution: scale the difficulty based on how many people are there.

All you have is one team? Make it a tough fight, decent resist and regen, but nothing you can't power through, maybe a little tougher than your generic GM. Got four or five teams pounding on it? The banners scale up until they have resist/regen that would make Hami green with envy.

I'm sure I'll get a few eyerolls of "you don't know how to code this game, yadda yadda" and I'm fine with that; I really don't know how to code. Just thought I'd toss the suggestion out for review. Still a fun event, though, as long as it's just for Halloween.