Hindsight on the Deadly Apocalypse

Moo, you incredible genius!! Great analysis.

Actually, I concur. Too many, too long. Got aggravated when I had street sweep missions, which happened quite a bit.

I think one zone at a time is the way to go, and make it so that everyone gets credit, no matter what percentage of damage they do. When playing my debuffer, I felt as if I were not really contributing to the team getting the badge.

Also, if killing the foes "in the ring" was the only way they would count, then they need to stay in there more often, and not move out and range attack.

Hey I just remembered something. Aren't you able to override the day/night cycle for yourself locally, so it always appears as day or night for you, even if it really isn't in the game? And I'm guessing that works as well during the Halloween event.

Or maybe I'm thinking about Sim City 4...

Only spawn banner events in Atlas Park, Talos, and Perigrine Island heroside. This ties in with the idea that too many events diluted the ability of teams to form that had a chance to succeed. By the forth day or so of the event I never saw banners even vunerable, much less all four banners defeated, in any zones but the three I listed.

Make the banner vunerable when enough defenders are defeated, not enough defenders at EACH banner. If that is too hard to re-engineer, then at least change the information verbiage provided to clearly state the requirement to engage defenders at every banner.

Thanks for the great addition to the Halloween Event this year!

As with all public quests / events, the key issue is population - you need enough players around to complete it successfully. My most successful run was in Atlas Park, where the team was coordinated to hit all banners to get the badges and then the GM at the end, meaning I got all badges in a single event, but that there was enough player population to defeat the giant bags of hit points that were the banners. .

The reality is that there is no way to complete this event without enough players, so starting it in low population zones is a waste of time. Make that zone IP (for instance) and it is doubly wasted, since the banners are so far apart to be not worth attempting on a time limit.

Considering the time limit as well, it is also an issue that only having 20 minutes to complete the entire event means it is very easy to know you aren't going to make it. If you've taken down 3 banners with 5 minutes left, there's a good chance you aren't going to have enough time to take down that last one and the GM. It really should be perhaps a case of 20 minutes to take down the banners, but once you do you get another 5 minutes to take down the GM.

Public events need to scale. They need to adjust for the initial burst of popularity as well as the last few days where fewer people are doing them. Perhaps this needs to work so that mobs scale to the number of players, with the number of mobs resulting in buffs for the banners (who would have a fixed HP value that would be reasonable for a small group to take down) to deal with larger groups of players.

I don't know if it's feasible, but would it be possible to attach a sort of "zone flag" with the events? So that when an event spawns in a zone, that zone is then "timed out" for, say, 30 min.s from having other events (be it zombies, banners or Eochai) spawn in it.

This would prevent the events from spawning back to back within a zone so as not to interfere with regular content hunts and whatnot. Also, it would prevent situations where teams have to fight off Eochai while also trying to beat down the banners... especially since the banners themselves are on a timer.

I also agree that the banner event could have used a little more time at the top to allow for team gathering and strategizing. Or, as has been suggested, as a reward with each banner downed... kinda like getting extra time on the bank mishes.

As for the eternal night... I have to say it does become dreary for playing after a while. I can stand it for maybe 5 days, then I just don't feel like it anymore.

I really do love the Halloween events.. all of them. It just seemed like they were a little overwhelming this year.

Wow, AmazingMOO is amazing! He has presented almost all of the suggestions I would have given. Definitely implement those changes, devs!

My only remaining suggestion is something BackFire mentioned: explain the backstory to this event. I understand why you needed to re-use existing mobs as adversaries, and I don't really mind that per se. But there were so many different mobs involved that it became very hard to determine any themes to them: it just became a rumble with a bunch of random mobs. This is especially true of the GMs, since their forms (ie. existing GMs) seemed unrelated to the event, and they simply appear without much explanation.

I definitely enjoyed the event, but I think it can be even better if you have some time to tweak it for next year.

-D

I really enjoyed the event. I got the badges on the characters that needed them and had some good times.

I'd echo the fact that the frequency was too high, and perhaps the event was a little too long too but only by a day or two although I can understand why. It's good to have daylight back now though

One thing that I've not seen mentioned - disclaimer: I haven't read every post in every thread - but am I the only one who's wondering if this isn't a precursor to something bigger?

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

The only real issue I had with the Deadly Apocalypse (and I guess part of it was late participation) was that villain zones seemed to have the event activate less often than hero zones. One obvious fact is there being more city zones in Paragon City for the event to activate in, so it would appear more often there, but that really shouldn't be the case. There were times I'd wait an hour or more between villain zones spawning the event while it might pop up in 2 or 3 hero zones in that time. Lower population didn't help for finishing the event either since if the event didn't happen in a hub zone, it wouldn't get finished. I really think next year, whatever the spawning rate will be for the event, it should always launch in one hero zone and one villain zone at a time. It centralizes where everyone needs to go and offers the same chances to both sides to have the event even though they have a different number of city zones.

I have one problem with the analysis. It doesn't respect the way people play events.

Sure on the second week there were too many events happening at once but on the first day it wouldn't have been possible to get everyone who wanted to do the event in even if it happened in every zone at once. Limiting the number of events when everyone wants to get in on it just creates frustration.

I would say extending the time for the overall event was not a good idea as no one was doing the banner events the last week anyway. They actually became an exploit (ToTing in a zone under banner event gives experience, drops and badges but no risk of debt)

Personally I have a problem with the Zombie Appoc spawning all the time in that if you want to ToT there is often only 1 zone you can do it in and if it is overrun by zombies, you have to wait it out. This is particularly true on Red side where you USUALLY only have 1 zone you can hunt in.

I would prefer if these type of events were triggered by number of players on the server. The more players the more potential "events".
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ULTIMATE - If people could flag themselves as wanting to do the event so that the server know just how often it should be happening (if at all).
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that would be very cool in my opinion and raises some interesting possiblities like a multiple zone events where you need a team in three different zones for all or part of the battle using global channels to coordinate. Would reduce the load of people in a single zone/battle at least.

Overall though I would say the new Banner event is best new event in a while. Almost always challenging (which zombie and Rikti never managed) and no ninja clickie battles (it is that time of year again lol).