Supernatural Activity banner events are failing almost always.

not one attempt that I have participated in, no matter the zone or the server or the time of day has been successful in the last nine months. It is too hard to get a team of strangers motivated and organized. Even with a full team of motivated and skillful veterans it takes too much time to get to the zone and spread out.

There needs to be more time on the clock, or a different mechanism to trigger the process. Stop having it in zones that are empty, too. No one wants to do it in Creys or IP or Dark Astoria.

No one even makes an attempt in Redside - the population is too light, and no one cares.

Stop teasing us or fix this crap.

Probably the only time you're going to get these badges is around Halloween. You're right that it takes too much coordination and concerted effort, and too many players to succeed when they randomly spawn.

It's a neat concept, but it just doesn't work as well as the invasions, which can be fought with fewer people and less coordination. It should probably be a specific-time-of-the-year thing like the Winter Lord.

I agree with the OP. Last night was a good example of this issue on the Virtue server.

The event happened in Steel Canyon, and although several people asked for 'LF event team', the responses were nearly all the same, "Why?", 'We're just going to fail anyway', 'Why waste the time on badges we'll get shafted on 'cause we aren't doing enough damage to earn them anyway?'

It was very disheartening to hear this, and at the same time, understandable.

Maybe we need to make some suggestions to the devs about this, such to the fact of:

1. If you do this, ANNOUNCE IT ahead of time, vice having it tied to the percentile chance of it spawning as a result of dumping Halloween Salvage to get a costume slot. We've already had some zone events scheduled at Brickstown Zig, and these zone events are fun to do; why not do this as well? Announe a week prior via the forums or in-game global message window and let everyone know (for RP purposes - CoT have indicated they are to amass in (zone x) on (date y) for a preordained supernatural event that is inline with the phase of the moon/planets/stars etc. We must stop them! (or the such...))

2. Remove the precentile needed to get the badges. If you attack a banner, even once, and the banner goes down, you get the badge, period. This is too painful for those that have low level teams thrown together as they have to try to out-perform damage done by a team of 50s doing damage.

3. The final GM: make it a UNIQUE GM (not a random existing GM). Have a marker AUTOMATICALLY show for the GM's location on the map, not have teams searching for it - it spreads the teams out too much, and lower level toons/teams may not have quality travel powers to get to the GM's location before the Lvl 50 toons/teams take it out.

4. Have the rules apply to earn badge credit for the GM for the same as item 1 above; if anyone on the team gets 1 hit in on the GM, the character/team gets the GM badge (maybe have it reliant on requiring to have ALL the supernatural event banner badges prior to earning the event GM's badge, that way a random passer-by character doesn't 'earn' the bage by taking a pot shot at the end event GM then run away, and get a badge for his meager effort).

I know some of these may open up for 'one-shot Johnny' to just show at the banner sites and do one shot on each banner/GM and leave the rest to others to fell them, but, if the banner/GM doesn't go down, they don't get the badge anyway, ergo, their piddly effort is a waste regardless.

This has been the major issue I've seen at the Sueprnatural Events; people making the effort to take down the monsters around the banners, opening up the banners to be hit, then everyone in the zone jumps on the banner and any low-level characters/teams don't meet the mandatory damage percentile to earn the badge when the banner goes down, even though they've put in the effort.

Some of the players I've seen online who don't get the banner badges usually end the event furious over the whole situation, especially when the GM goes down before the character/team can even GET to the site of the GM before it gets shot down by a band of 50s.

I know the event is made to be difficult, but with it being utilized with random Halloween costume slot eventing, and the time it takes to get VIABLE teams together AND organized, it's too much for the current facilitation of the game's players to conceivably get all their 'stars aligned' to make this event a worthy experience.

So, I've made my suggestions...anyone else care to chime in how to make this work for the players?

P.S. - and yes, I know there's been forum posts on this before; maybe these issues need to be revisited PRIOR to this year's Halloween Event and get the ball rolling on fixes NOW vice last minute.

Last I read about the banner event was that there was a small chance for it and the Zombie Apocalypse to trigger if someone turned in Halloween salvage so advanced notice is not going to happen if this is the case.

Beyond the usual grips that it kills all mob hunting in the zone, can't get team together and etc. I haven't seen it happen to often lately myself but since it doesn't happen every five minutes in every zone I don't see the big deal.

It does need more time.

That said, we completed this for a friend on Virtue recently (about a week ago). We'd just finished a TF when the event popped up in PI, so #1 we had a team already assembled, and #2 we were able to get other high-level people to join in very quickly. That's virtually the only way to accomplish it; you need at least 2 relatively high level teams assembled within the first few minutes or you're probably doomed to fail.

Turning in Halloween Salvage can trigger a Zombie Apocalypse or a Banner Event.

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I agree its kinda annoying , but as long as HS is sold on a regular basis , this will continue to happen . I agree about Redside also , very few do it . I would be nice for a change to have Posi and the others show up from time to time so us villians can beat there skulls in , and yes I know there is a mission with them all that we can fight

Considering every time we finish one of those on Defiant, we get a Zombie Apocalipse, I'd say that's one darn heck of a coincidence then.

I've seen it successful only twice out of the countless times I've participated (using global channels and every means necessary to get people involved).

Both these times were either Halloween or a day very close to it, just after the event came out.

You can conceivably do it with a relatively small number of 50s (1-2 teams), but getting people interested in such an often failing event that many already have the badge for it a major challenge.

If it's definitely triggered by KHTF, why not create a player-organized event for fun on your server? Pick a side, set a date and time (heroes, this Flarnday at Tith o'clock PM Ethereal ST). Sign up teams of 8 on forums.

If it's definitely triggered by KHTF, have those teams coordinate by a global channel - either make a temporary global channel or (better yet) have the team leaders all join an existing public global badge channel to not only talk with each other but also generate more on the spot interest. Each team can begin Katie 30-45 minutes (depending on whether they agree to run the speed version) before the announced event time and -not complete- until all teams are at the last mission with a flyer ready to free her. Say team 1 completes and it spawns the event redside (you wanted blue), then have team 2 complete.. then 3. Your folks will already be on teams of 8 and can easily ouros portal/tram or base to the first hero spawned zone.

Redside. Minor adjustments. Same as above but have folks park their villains at Cap au Ferry to the higher level zones. Teams are still preassembled in that everyone has to switch and global their team leaders for quick invites. You'd all log in at the same spot to launch from. Every zone is quickly accessible from Cap: remain in Cap, prepare to use the ferry to jaunt to Shark/Nerva/St M/GV, hump it to the PO ferry or use the black copter to Mercy.

I used to think year-round invasions were a terrible idea. And yes, I've done it running a team of 8. To be fair, each time was on my rad corr. I still thought it was a terrible idea because (selfishly - ) it has interrupted more speed Numinas than I can count. But, I think about it this way... if it was only spawned in October, then we we'd wait all year and still not guarantee a win (I've been in on full zones that failed). This gives us the freedom and resources to make things happen.

I'm not fan of the idea of just extending the timer at all. Anyone trying to do a zone hunt (Numina TF being the worst) can attest to the frustration of having to wait around 15 minutes twiddling your thumbs in the middle of a task force or story arc because an annoying zone event is going on.

If anything I'd rather see them even shorter, but make them faster/easier to complete in another way. For instance, significantly lower the amount of killing it takes to make the banners vulnerable or something like that would be a much better way to go imho.

Btw, I just did a banner event that happened in Talos on Virtue just this past weekend and got every badge. The right server, the right zone, the right time, and they are pretty easy. But things do have to line up pretty favorably to have a chance.

The event, at least the zombie event, is supposed to suppress so that there is only one per day/night event. Could have broken at some point, esp after the other event was added.