does CoH have too many random events ongoing?

We have the summer blockbuster. We assume it will end. Lots of people play it.

We had the Nemesis invasion and they were pretty active.

But we also have occassional rikti invasions, banner events, GM's appearing, etc. And it seems that those events get ignored.

Do we just have too many random things so that they have no real importance? Are they just inconvenient?

I don't run to them because I know solo they can't be done. If I don't hear teams forming, I just assume they will be ignored. That's a vicious circle, I know.

Adamaster seems a good idea - you can summon him and then defeat him. We got a team together to do it, then afterwards wanted to hunt other GM's. But none were out. That's the problem with random events - when you want to do them, you can't. When they show up they aren't convenient.

So do you participate and if so how often - in random events?
Should they be triggerable?
Should they have a big enough reward that makes people want to do them?
Should they be in selected zones so that people actually see them and care?
Should they happen less often so that they are more special?

no no
yes, sometimes
depends
the rewards are fine as is
not really
frequency seems about right

Is what we need.

Some are triggerable, other's are not.

Rikti raids are triggered by the completion of the Lady Grey TF.
Zombie invasion is triggered by someone turning Halloween salvage (I believe, not too certain).
Banner Event I don't know what triggers it, could be Halloween salvage, but no idea.
Nemisis Raids were for the Anniversary, don't know if they'll come back at some point or not in a triggerable form.

GMs Blueside

Many of these are either random or on a timer (Jack-In-Irons, Echoli, Lusca, Paladin, Kracken and Babbage *might be forgetting someone*). A couple are triggered by TFs/Storyarcs (Babbage and Kronos Titan).

GMs Redside

All of them are triggerable: most by killing a certain number of mobs (in Caleb's case, only during a certain timeframe).

For both red and blue Adamestor is triggered by doing the ritual.

So, I guess what I am getting at is that technically (with the exception of most blueside GMs), most of these things are already triggerable. But to answer the questions:

Only when I need the badge for them, usually.
As already stated, most already are triggerable.
Hard to do, as everyone has different goals: for instance, I don't give a lick about the rikti or zombie events as I already have all the badges for them on my badger. Only reason I would do them is to get some XP for a lowbie toon.
Most events are already 'announced' to begin with: it's a matter of having your zone event messages active in a chat tab.
They are about right as is. Certain ones will happen more frequently due to certain holiday's (Zombie and Banner events specificially).

Giant Monsters need to be worth figthing. Events need to be worth running. As it is, you can spend 15 minutes getting a group together to spend fighting something that gives you 2 Reward Merits and what may as well be a negative amount of Inf. I'll stick to newspapers.

I just like that we've reached a point where asking "do we have too many random events?" is a question that doesn't trigger instant uncontrollable laughter in the forum population.

I remember when we didn't get notice about the random events happening at all. We would just HAPPEN to be in Independence Port and see that the Ghost Ship or Lusca is up or whatever.

Rather, we would just HAPPEN to notice Lusca wasn't up. (-:

If you're unlucky.

IMO:

events not designed well and thus ignored: banner event

events overdone to the point of nobody caring: any kind of invasion really

events that are just about right, but are old and could use some spicing up: GMs


the holiday trials are very nice, they are available basically for the duration of the holiday and you can run them whenever and as much as you want, the only thing i wish sometimes is that they had a slightly larger team size range

team size of 4-8 is not overkill, the team of 4 might have a slightly rougher time than a team of 8 but if you have a bunch of friends who you want to run with a team size strictly set at 4 becomes too limiting

The Giant Monster events are cool, adds a threat when moving around a low level zone (jumping into the area with three Paladins in KR is a real reminder to pay attention) and for many of them a small team can handle them.

Rikti and Zombie invasions can be fun, and you can enjoy them in whatever size team you've got, including solo. The only real downside to them is if you've got a hunt mission (defeat 30 Crey in Brickstown) and the streets are cleared because of an invasion event.

The one event I'd be thrilled to see leave the game forever is the banners (or at least only show up during the Halloween season) - It requires so many people to accomplish anything that an impromptu clearly rarely breaks out.

I think the real problem is, a lot of these random events tend to be zone wide and not contained to smaller areas.

I mean, I recently tried out Guild Wars 2 beta, and there was A MILLION things going on the world map I was in at once and it didn't feel overwhelming at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

There are definitely too many random events going on right now. The game needs fewer but more significant and rewarding events.

I wrote a lengthy post about it in another thread a long time ago:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=115