2009 Winter Event test - Official Feedback thread
By
Abraxxus,
Posted on: 2009-11-23 15:47 in The Global Training Room Test Server
Played redside, level 29.
After deciding Mercy was bugged, Cap was kind of a pain to search for presents. I found maybe three in the 20 minutes I was in there. Presumably others had a route planned out (maybe gobbling them all up) because we got in okay after that.
I liked the battle in Winter's Realm. It was pretty simple, straightforward, but without being just a matter of beating on a sack of HP. It wasn't always clear when the WL was phased, what with all of the FX on him -- and I didn't know I had to go look for a WG until someone said it in Broadcast. A popup text of "Defeat Winter Guardian" or something might help.
Overall, not bad, and a fun way to earn candy canes other than Farming Baby. 
Global @Twoflower / MA Creator & Pro Indie Game Developer.
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Played Hero side, Level 27. Team leader was level 50, so was sk'd to 49 most of the time.
I believe this is going to be a good addition to the Winter Event. It's not too different, adds in a little something. The thing I am worried about is what the requirements are to spawn the ability to get into the Winter Ream. Does it REQUIRE that there be a WL on both Blue and Red side at the same time, or was that just so we could test to co-op nature of things?
That was unclear.
In general, it felt good. You may have to tone down the WL a little so that on the less populated servers we will be able to gather enough folks to take him down. (That was my problem with the Halloween event and those spawn sites and the requirements of that... very hard when there is not a lot of population in a zone or at a time of day on a server to get things working right.)
Other than that, looks good. Feels good inside the Winter Realm, too. Maybe with all the people we had it was the reason it went so fast and 'easy' for us in the test. It needs to be easy enough that low population nights and times can do it, yet not so easy that it is a push over on high-population servers during peak times.
My other feedback is about the timer on the 'preparing the present' that is the gateway to the Winter Realm. Ghost Falcon said in the channel to wait for the timer to run out then click... and it took me a while to FIND the timer there on the compass. Yes, we had it there for the UI with the Halloween Event, but other things already were drawing the eye there with the change in the UI... the Winter Event doesn't do that, so I didn't know to look at the compass for the timer.
Might want to use a larger font on the timer. Make it more obvious or color it in red/green, whatever.
Having the dot on the zone map showing where the present/gateway is really helps rather than running all over trying to find it. I thank you for that!
All told, it 'felt' good. But then, winning always feels good. It WOULD be nice to have a SPECIAL temp power, rather than re-filling the spirit/cheer powers. Maybe you DID give me one and I missed it, but those were the ones I found... and I know I cleared them out by using them before going off present hunting.
Okay, enough of my rambling. I look forward to it on live.
--Axe To Grind/Thrillseeker
Too Many Characters... not enough player
Member of Alts-R-Us.
I also was on villains. (And yes, I have a wicked present route for that zone - I was glad it was the fallback choice.)
The coop instance went fabulously. There were something like 6 teams there, though I am not sure that all three villain ones were full. We took him and his guardians down rapidly, and enough stuff was flying around that the Northern Lights were not especially noticeable.
Round two, the heroes and villains did their own things. There was something like 1.5 villain teams in zone, and we managed to take him down. We didn't have a ton of time left over, which felt pretty reasonable given how few of us we were.
We for sure had at least one strong hard-target debuffer - I was there on a level 50 Ice/Dark Corruptor with a lot of global recharge. I think that there's no avoiding that people are going to have to rely on high-level characters and/or buffs and debuffs to take down these foes at a decent speed.
The phasing effect is just too hard to see. Even with people telling teammates to peel off and look for Winter Guardians, several stayed behind anyway. It desperately needs some other visual queue than the fog. The main problem is that because he's so tall, the "UNAFFECTED" floater is out of sight unless you peer high up in the air. Please, please, make it more visible on his person.
Is it intended that Northern Lights can attack while they're phased? It's not the end of the world since you're supposed to leave and go looking for the Guardian, but it would be kind of nice if people could at least stay and clear them out if they're going to attack us. I actually assumed they couldn't be harmed at all because, for whatever reason, it didn't occur to me that their phasing was linked to LW's. I turned to blast one that was poking me while LW was phased and found it untouchable, so I assumed that was just their nature - that they were some sorte of "turrets" around him. So if nothing else, them attacking while phased is potentially confusing, because almost nothing does that in the game.
It seemed that LW didn't seem to regen much, if any, while phased. He did noticably regen while unphased. Was this real or just my perception?
Towards the end of the event, Ghost Falcon was explaining that there were apparently distinct instances of the multi-zone winter realm. When heroes and villains entered at different times, they ended up unable to visit one another despite the ability of the magic portal to send you to other winter realm zones. This is going to be radically confusing to most players. Sometimes they'll be able to cross winter zones and find people and sometimes not, and the rules are not going to be clear. After all, even Ghost Falcon didn't understand them until he spoke to a programmer. Anything that can be done to improve on or at least explain this will probably be well appreciated.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Were there any changes made to this incarnation, or is it the same as the updated version tested last week?
EDIT: Nevermind, just saw the patch notes. 
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
In particular, I wasn't detoggled, and I didn't see any AoE mez from Lord Winter. I have no idea if that was because we did something that prevented it, if I/we were lucky, or if those abilities were stripped from LW.
I didn't see anything pop Glacier period, though it would have been easy to miss any given power activation when we were piling on LW. Even if there aren't a lot of player characters, the Northern Lights really, uh, light things up with their Peacebringer attacks. It'd be easy to overlook.
That's a major downside to such abstract patch note entries. It's impossible to say if LW did what he was supposed to, because we don't know what he's supposed to do.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Went pretty well. The under map return seemed to be fixed, which is good. Heroes did a second run, with 2 teams of 6. We managed to take the LW down with a couple of minutes to spare, so it doesn't have to be a swarm of players. Glad to see this, it should help keep interest up.
I had 2 toggles dropped on the second run while I was getting zapped by Northern Lights. I don't know if it was the Northern Lights or the LW that did it. But it happened while just a couple of us were still beating on the LW. Everyone else had stopped to take down the 3rd Guardian.
The reason I was still attacking the LW was, I was doing damage. The fog rolled in when he was down to about 25%, but I kept waiting for the "Unaffected" to show up above his head instead of damage. It never did. I was on a Dark/Dark scrapper, and both my melee and AoEs were doing damage to him while the Guardian was still up. I even moused over his HP and they were going down as I damaged him.
If this is WAI, then it is a bit of a departure from the first two Guardian appearances. If not, I don't know why a couple of us were able to continue to hurt the LW. Especially since on the first 2 Guardian spawn points, my attacks did stop hurting him.
Justice Blues, Tech/Tank, Inv/SS
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Fighting The Future Trilogy
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The more I look at it, it seems like this phasing is based off of the code for Dimension Shift, sort of like Winter Lord is casting Dim Shift on himself and the AoE splash is catching things nearby. Since it just has -threat and not a true Placate or Blind, DSed enemies will still actively attack. It doesn't hurt you but your toon still does hit reactions. Plus, if the enemy has immob resistance, they can still move around and the visual effects for the phase are not fully applied. It seems like fixing these inherant issues with Dimension Shift will help fix the phasing with the Northern Lights.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
So if nothing else, them attacking while phased is potentially confusing, because almost nothing does that in the game.
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That was just to try and test the co-op, and some of the potential for things to go wrong because of that (especially with the changes to where people get kicked out to). |
Originally Posted by Thrillseeker
The thing I am worried about is what the requirements are to spawn the ability to get into the Winter Ream. Does it REQUIRE that there be a WL on both Blue and Red side at the same time, or was that just so we could test to co-op nature of things?
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The requirement to spawn a Winter Lord in a zone is strictly based on the number of frostlings killed in the zone, spawned from Naughty-result presents. This is a zone-wide counter which does not decay (although server resets may reset it). Theoretically a single patient person could do it by themselves. The number required is probably in the general vicinity of 500 at the moment (almost certainly more than 300, yet not too many hundred above that), although that could change. Note, however, that the number of frostlings that spawn from a single Naughty present is based on team size, so a large team turns presents (with a limited spawn rate) into frostlings more effectively. NPC-killed frostlings seem to still count.
The zone limit for a single Lord Winter's Realm is 50. If there are more people trying to enter, multiple zones will be created; this is easiest to cause when you get near-simultaneous WLs defeated in multiple zones.
There are multiple (5?) LWR maps; as far as we know, chosen at random. It is possible to travel between LWR instances only if they are using the same map.
The event is co-op... with some luck. You need a hero and villain WL defeat within a few minutes of each other, and it's not clear whether the random map selection issue may make it less likely to connect up.
Hazard zones didn't seem to have presents. RWZ and Croatoa didn't have presents. Siren's Call *did* have presents, and it appeared to be possible to have a co-op LWR that way. We were running short on people, and didn't get to fully test the implications of switching from PvP in Siren's to Co-op in LWR.
To my knowledge, there were no major "appear outside of map" sorts of problems like the last test. There was one minor incident where a Northern Light was summoned (or got knocked) underneath the ground; and in addition to the known issue of WL not spawning in Port Oakes, they couldn't get the WL to spawn in Mercy either.
In general, Lord Winter seemed a bit more manageable, yet still a problem for smaller groups. He still has 226k HP, and summons 3 AVs at 75%, 50%, and 25% HP so the "Reichsnowman" nicknames are at least partly applicable. The Northern Lights were still annoying; a larger group may want to detail someone to sweep duty to keep them cleared off.
With the possible exception of the fact that the two lowest Villain zones don't seem to be working properly, the event is probably workable. Unfortunately, the balance scaling still only works over a fairly narrow range; if you mob it with 4+ full teams, it's not a serious challenge, yet with less than 2 teams, it's a tough fight that may not succeed. I would really recommend at least 2 teams; the odds of getting a win on this with 8-12 people are not great.
(Yes, some uber teams may be able to do it with significantly less, but at a minimum you've got to do something north of 300,000 HP + 113/sec in less than 16 minutes, plus survive the stuff he and his friends throw; there's also some time lost running after the Winter Guardians, so actual time available is probably in the 14 minute range. Side thoughts... that's in the neighborhood of 470 DPS collectively. I'm guessing the minimum is at least 3 and probably 4, and that assumes two 250+ DPS grade uber scrappers, one tough ranged person to deal with all his support stuff (by tanking or elimination), and probably some sort of support / healing person; I'm not even sure that's possible, and it's a level of performance beyond 99.9% of the players. Test PuGs of 8+ were not reliably pulling it off.)
P.S.: Props to the NCSoft folks and particularly Ghost Falcon for being helpful and approachable during all this; I personally got a much better feel of working as a (admittedly somewhat chaotic) team to collectively make this event better than I have in previous testing.
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This patch added a feature that I think will become problematic: after leaving LW's realm everyone is transported to AP (I'm not sure of the villian-side location). If you were hunting in Steel, it boots you to AP. So why will people hunt anywhere but AP? I predict multiple instances of AP filled with present hunters for the Winter Event; then you top the zones off with people flooding back from LW's realm. I'd forecast some zone crashes. I hope we don't see it, but to me it seems likely.
Also, I'm disappointed to see nothing down to make LW's phase state more visible.
We'll see how it goes when it hits live, but I feel like I may prefer the plain old WL hunts of yesteryear.
Why not have the exit zone be Pocket D? It has good connections for all levels of characters on both sides.
Kosmos
Global: @Calorie
MA Arcs in 4-star purgatory: Four in a Row (#2198) - Hostile Takeover (#69714) - Red Harvest (#268305)
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Hm. That might be interesting. It could lead to some strange influxes of people into what will probably already be a crowded zone, though. That's about the only downside I can think of.
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Originally Posted by Kosmos
Why not have the exit zone be Pocket D? It has good connections for all levels of characters on both sides.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I think that the Lord of Winter addition may work well for this year's event. I'm not sure how well the hero/villain co-op is going to play out during the event as a whole. My only complaint is the the winter realm was a bit boring. I was expecting large ice crystal jutting out of the ground -- but that's just me!
Firstly, I'm surprised not to see more feedback.
Secondly, mine:
I was on the one of the first villanside teams when testing started, looking all over Mercy until it was determined that the presents were bugged (not spawning), then going to Cap. It seemed to take a long time to get the requisite number of frostlings to spawn WL. Has the number ever been determined? For a while some were saying 100 but it's definitely more than that. Now I'm hearing 500. It would be good to know.
Defeating LW seemed to be less difficult, he went down in reasonably short order without my alt getting killed a lot, which was nice. I was on a plant wrangler who doesn't use toggles so I didn't notice the effect of toggles getting knocked off at all.
I'm playing on a minimal system, which means I suffer lag during any event like this, even with my graphics options turned low. The more players on the map, the worse the lag. One of the results on this occasion was that I never saw LW call for his Guardians, though I did see players in the chat telling others to find or fight the Guardian. I never moved, not because I didn't want to but because with the lag, I couldn't get away and get back, so I stayed put and just wailed on LW each time he became vulnerable. That was about the limit of what I could do.
I did the first event test, missed the second, and made this one. In the first I participated as a 50 and as a level 8 (heroes) on a level 50 team. This time my villain was a 41 on a level 50 team. The level 8 was pretty useless, that has been discussed elsewhere, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone who was playing a low level (ssk'd up presumably) that participated against the new, kinder gentler LW.
In general, I think it's a cool thing that the devs are giving us credit for being able to do more complex event tasks than just popping presents/tot-ing, and killing GMs. As primarily a soloist, my actual participation in these events varies. I like doing them but on my minimal system, it sometimes depends on whether I'm really in the mood to watch a slideshow and push buttons without really being able to see/enjoy the event.
I would like to see more backstory for the events. It seems like we got a more coherent backstory for the Snaptooth event missions for example, than we got for the new Halloween Apocalypse event (I'm still wondering what that was about) and now seemingly little or no backstory as to who/what Lord Winter is, and why the chain of events gives us access to his realm. I could make up a reason for it, but I'd like to know there was an in-game reason. This MMO has so much reasoned content, it seems like an odd oversight.
It seems like a cool event, but as others have said, I doubt I'll do it more than once or twice once it goes live (which means I may be contributing to people not getting enough participants to do it properly, as has also been mentioned as a possible downside).
Global: @MomentaryGrace
Servers (to date): Liberty (primary), Infinity, Protector, Virtue, Justice, Pinnacle
MA Arc: ID #143659 "Visit Scenic Arcadia!"
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Drop em all off on a slope.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
Hm. That might be interesting. It could lead to some strange influxes of people into what will probably already be a crowded zone, though. That's about the only downside I can think of.
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I thought of that, but the zone population for creating a new instance could be decreased if necessary.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
Hm. That might be interesting. It could lead to some strange influxes of people into what will probably already be a crowded zone, though. That's about the only downside I can think of.
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Kosmos
Global: @Calorie
MA Arcs in 4-star purgatory: Four in a Row (#2198) - Hostile Takeover (#69714) - Red Harvest (#268305)
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Presents were spawning fine, as were snow beasts. The problem was that defeating snow beasts wasn't producing a Winter Lord.
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Originally Posted by momentary_grace
I was on the one of the first villanside teams when testing started, looking all over Mercy until it was determined that the presents were bugged (not spawning), then going to Cap.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
A few take-aways from the new Winter Event:
- Lord Winter's Northern Lights pets are absolutely Brutal.
I approve!
I like this kind of thinking from the Powers team: a distributed, seemingly-minor threat that becomes lethal if ignored. Using the Kheldian-alike energy blasts to "play the odds" against highly-protected Players made the situation dangerous. GM fights are often threatless with heavily-IOed characters and just involve standing in one place while pressing a series of buttons (or worse having to chase after this big thing that can't hurt you). The Northern Lights force one to pay attention to the fight. Do you stay on the GM or try to reduce the population of scattered pets with the clock ticking? If you don't break off to "Follow the Lights", will you be overwhelmed?
Innovative situations like this that require new tactical thinking are a step in the right direction. Keep following that path.
- There was something about making it so you had Heros and Villains in the same Lord Winter instance...?
Vague requirements are only part of the problem though. I have no idea where I might go in game to find out how to make that co-op situation happen. Instructions and information on how to make things work (especially when it's trying to play with one's other online friends) needs to be readily available. And the more complicated the requirements are, the greater the need to have that information accessible to the Players.
- There was story text that sort of carried on the story from previous years.
However, the story text as presented doesn't actually reference those previous years. There is also no nod to the Malleus Mundi, which was given as involved in the original Halloween and Winter Events (2004). Nor is there any explanation for why Lord Winter's Frostlings are popping out of presents originally let loose by "The Gamester" (Winter '05). I somehow doubt Lord Winter is the hidden Gamester, so what is The Gamester's involvement with the Frostlings? Or perhaps the Malleus Mundi? Are the town-and-existential-being-stealing Redcaps mixed in somehow?
This is a step up from the original implementation of the Halloween Banner Event (which originally had no text whatsoever). But these are ongoing events in the game world. They return annually and as such involve an accumulative story. "Because it's a holiday Event" is not enough reason for something "eventful" to be going on in the game world. Better effort to integrate Annual Holiday Events into the larger CoX (and their own) backstory needs to be taken. Even if you don't like an old story thread, you still have to tie it off
.There's quite a bit of criticism about the pace of progression in the ongoing CoX story. The annual Events present a minor, but significant and regular opportunity to create a sense of a "living story". All that is required is that any new features of the events be given a rationale that is coherent with, and acknowledges, the Events from previous years. There's an opportunity here to add a great deal of vitality to the backstory and ongoing-world with very little attention.
I'm sure that new elements of the Holiday Events start out from an Engineering perspective rather than a story one. (i.e. "What can we do that's completely new and fun this year?") Integrating those new game-elements into the pre-existing world is important for making them part of that game though; rather than just "that thingy we get to do once a year".
All in all, a good addition to the seasonal repertoire.
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After a quick skim of my logs: At 22:25, Ghost Falcon initially asked for folks to help out spawning a WL in Siren's Call. I finished poking at some potential issues with cane-bought badges and switched characters, and joined the Siren's Call team by 22:32 (IIRC I was about the 5th), and had personally opened 11 presents (4 Nice, 7 Naughty) and killed about 29 Frostlings (plus 13 Blight but no Snow Beasts) by 22:44, when Ghost Falcon checked the count and said we needed 273 more frostlings to spawn a Winter Lord. The count is therefore strictly over 300, and given that the team was dispersed opening presents individually, probably at least 400; my guess is it's 400-600, probably 500. We spawned him by 22:56, as a note; AFAIK there were never more than a single full team in the zone. |
Originally Posted by momentary_grace
It seemed to take a long time to get the requisite number of frostlings to spawn WL. Has the number ever been determined? For a while some were saying 100 but it's definitely more than that. Now I'm hearing 500.
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Of course, it may have been changed subsequently, or may yet be adjusted.
Note that this implies that a solo character acting entirely unopposed would be hard pressed to spawn a WL in less than 4 hours of continuous open-and-eliminate, and it's likely to be rather more (unless synthetic team size difficulty affects Present spawn sizes, which I didn't think to test). Larger teams are substantially more effective than the sum of their individual efforts, even (especially, really) if they're dispersed and not acting as a team in the usual sense. A full team going at it in a present-rich zone should be able to spawn a WL in 20-40 minutes, I'd estimate.
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Maybe the Gamester, Lord Winter and Snaptooth are all Automatons? |
Originally Posted by Human_Being
However, the story text as presented doesn't actually reference those previous years. There is also no nod to the Malleus Mundi, which was given as involved in the original Halloween and Winter Events (2004). Nor is there any explanation for why Lord Winter's Frostlings are popping out of presents originally let loose by "The Gamester" (Winter '05). I somehow doubt Lord Winter is the hidden Gamester, so what is The Gamester's involvement with the Frostlings? Or perhaps the Malleus Mundi? Are the town-and-existential-being-stealing Redcaps mixed in somehow?
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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are you implying that It's a Nemesis plot?
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Maybe the Gamester, Lord Winter and Snaptooth are all Automatons?
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On Justice
Global @Desi Nova Twitter: @desi_nova Steam: Desi_nova. I don't do Xbox or PS3
There needs to be a big present at the locations where the heroes and villains show up in Atlas and Mercy. When you leave the Winter Realm, you jump out of the present.
[IMG]http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee63/Abraxxus-CoH/brax3.png[/IMG]
Justice Server
Global: @Abraxxus
There is still something strange wrong with his phasing at times. I just ran through an event and on the last section (25% health), he never seemed to phase. I and others were still getting damage numbers off of him (and floaters like SCOURGE and CRITICAL), but his health was actually regenerating, and there was definitely a Winter Guardian out at the time.
I specifically noticed this because I was staring up in the air looking for the "UNAFFECTED" floaters, and never got them on that pass. It's already ridiculously hard to tell when he's phased, and this sure doesn't help.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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I feel pretty sure it does not. I was set to +2/x6 today, and got about 4 total beasties on a team of 2.
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Originally Posted by Miuramir
unless synthetic team size difficulty affects Present spawn sizes, which I didn't think to test
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
My opinions:
The event is boring. I'm not trying to be a negative nancy, but after spending nearly 35 minutes yesterday on a full team hopping all over Cap trying to spawn the event, we THEN had to kill ANOTHER boring giant snowman, which...well...we do enough of in the current holiday event. THEN we get this big present and had to wait 5 minutes before clicking. Why?
I dunno. We just did. I assume this was to let others find the entry point to the LWR before the fight against Lord Winter. A much better approach to this would be to let players enter the zone immediatly, and begin fighting enemies there, with the five minute timer counting down to the moment when Lord Winter actually spawns. That way you arent standing there doing nothing for five minutes. That is poor game development. You shouldn't expect players to WANT to waste time. Give them something to do in the meantime. Instead I got five minutes of waiting, or going afk, or something...
THEN we get to the zone and fight Lord Winter who...is ANOTHER freaking giant snowman.
I could have made something more interesting in three minutes in the character creator. Honestly, again, not trying to be difficult, but this was almost insulting in its lack of creativity. At the very least, if the GM is supposed to be something special, dont use the same character design you have already had people fighting, literally, thousands of times in the holiday events of the past.
After running it one time, I and three others on my team all said that it was boring and we likely wouldn't run it again on any of our toons. I have a feeling the only ones who WILL be running this more than once are the badge hounds, and that's too bad.
So, my suggestions are
#1: Make spawning the zone much, much quicker. I don't want to grind for a half an hour just to start the event (and that's if Im lucky enough to be on a full team.)
#2: PLEASE give us something to accomplish during the five minute wait time that allows other players time to get into the zone but doesnt make the rest of us sit by, bored.
#3: PLEASE give the Lord Winter a unique look. Give all of the inhabitants of his zone a unique look. Make this feel more interesting and special, not just another version of what I can do in Pocket D instantly, without having to do all of the grinding, and as a coop team much easier.
Again Devs, I appreciate the effort you put into the holiday events, but this one seems to have some major gameplay and design flaws. Ones that could be easily rectified before it goes live, I think.
We will be conducting a Winter Event Test on the North American Training Room on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 starting at 4PM Pacific Time (7PM Eastern Time) until 8PM Pacific Time (11PM Eastern Time).
Given the times, it will unfortunately only be possible to make this event test available on the North American Training room. We apologise for the inconvenience.
As with the previous Winter Event tests, there will be a Global Chat channel called “Winter 2009” to facilitate communication between all participants.
Please use this thread to share your feedback or bug reports with us. For your convenience, feedback for the previous event tests is still viewable in this thread!
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