Discussion: Captain Mako Week Events!

Yet to see Mako.

Apparently they're not going to "map" 2 or 3 if there are any. A bunch of us were waiting for Mako's army on Peregrine Island 2 and nothing showed up, and the sam with Talos Island. But "map" 1 get all the event! Disappointing! >

Capt. Mako visited Infinity last night.

I took my 43 scrapper to PI and was forced to go to PI2 which was mostly empty -- so I headed back to Talos and got in a league. We never saw any Lusca heads, but there were two huge invasions of tentacles, plus Coralax and Arachnos. I didn't get any recipes or salvage, but I got 3? bars xp and filled my insp tray with large greens and purples. There was lots of trash-talking in broadcast and most of the people seemed to have a good time -- perhaps because clearly some people had already experienced the event on other servers and expectations had become more realistic.

We headed to Pocket D and danced and goofed around in broadcast. Freitag was busy popping back and forth between PD1 and PD2, but it seemed like almost everyone got the "Swimming with the Sharks" title. Except for a few whiners who were disappointed not everyone would get the aura code, it was a fun event and everyone seemed to have a good time.

I don't get a whole lot of time to play lately and I hopped on with my wife for the event. Sadly we were not able to get into the event since it never happened in the second instance redside on freedom. We sat around with a group of 24 waiting for almost an hour and a half, but saw nothing but red text mocking our inability to participate. Any players on servers where Mako has not yet shown up would do well to make sure they are in the appropriate zone well ahead of time or run the risk of never seeing him. I'm venting abit since it took me a good deal of convincing my wife to hop on and telling her that we'd have fun. I had hoped to at least salvage something from the event when there was an anouncment that codes were going to be given out at pocket D, only to find out the codes were limited. So we sat around for over 2 hours not doing a whole lot. Like I said venting abit, and putting this up as a warning to those who have not yet attempted the event. Get to your location early if you want to participate, I learned my lesson, and if I can ever talk my wife into participating in another event I'll make sure I'm ready early. Chalk this one up to being unprepared on my part.

Hey Darkbehemoth,

We're really sorry that happened. There was a miscommunication, and unfortunately we missed Sharkhead 2. In the future, we'll make every effort to be more consistent in what zones we visit so that everyone who wishes to can participate.

Again, we're very sorry that you had a negative experience. We will do our best to do better next time, and hope to see you again soon!

~Freitag

sounds to me as if you were well-prepared only to have the devs fail you...

Hi there, just replying to thanks the CoH crew/staff for the awesome event. I'm very impressed in zillions of positives ways. I've ran the event, defeated some crazy overpowered tentacle monster, droped some arachnos airship from air. And then headed to Pocket D.
While waiting in Pocket D on my death deafing tanker Devil Hunter Xavier, just after I broadcasted messages like "give me some love cap mako"... I got pm'd. And then someone gave me code! I couldn't repply the pm. So, thank you very much!
I'm a returned player... and now I VERY VERY happy about to playing CoH again.

Sigh.

So ...I was excited to find out my home server was having the event today from 5-8 Pacific. (Victory Server). Had to take my daughter to swim lessons at 5, but figured I'd be able to jump on when I got home and find out what this event is all about!

I get on at about 7:30...decide to head to Paregrine Island since I thought I had heard that that would be one of the zones this took place in. I zoom around all the water and beaches...NOTHING. Ok..maybe I'm in the wrong zone...so I head to Talos since I thought I heard something about it being there. I zoom all around the zone checking out all the water and beaches for any sign of SOMETHING...I stumble across two level 54 bosses...1 coralax and 1 Bane Spider. I take them out, check out the zone some more...nothing. Ok...IP has a lot of water, let me go check that out. NOTHING.

I don't get it. If the event is running from 5-8pm on this server (Victory) how could there be nothing? I'm appauled by the little to no heads up given to those of us who want to participate. Did I do something wrong? What am I missing here??

FYI - 7pm PDT is NOT the same as 8pm PDT.
Due to my working hours, it was impossible for me to get online before 7pm, even rushing home from work. I hop on Victory for some fun and all that is left of the event is a few tentacles here and there and a few left over level 54 mobs, some of which are worth no xp (I'm playing a level 47 right now).

So, not seeing any Capt Mako chatter on Broadcast, Help, or LFG I looked around, helped some folks kill the tentacles and I and the rest of the active Paragons-of-Victory wandered around Talos taking out stragglers...

Finally, I asked on Help only to find that it all wrapped up just before 7pm with all the giveaways and the like and Quote Moved to do do the giveaways on Freedom Unquote.

To say I am disappointed is an understatement. But maybe that's just the stress from work. Oh, well.

Thrillseeker (Guardian)
Yellow Paragon (Victory)

I had a lot of fun tonight on Victory. The event did end over an hour before the "scheduled" end time, but I thought that it went well. We defeated Mako (eventually), which I guess wasn't enabled on previous runs? Took quite some time, though.

Captain Mako: SO HOW DID THAT TEAM TELEPORT WORK OUT FOR YOU? (approximate quote, moments after a near league wipe)

Hey guys,

I just wanted to take a moment and explain some of the methodology behind the way we run these events, and why we run them the way we do.

First off, it's important to remember that we do these events entirely manually.

For the most part, it's members of the Community Team only (which is to say: Zwillinger, Hit Streak and myself). Each mob that is dropped is dropped by us manually. On smaller servers, this isn't as big of a deal, because there aren't many active zones. Generally we're doing two servers at once, so we need to split up between servers. Depending on the populations of the servers, we'll send two people to one server, and one person to another. If we're lucky, we can get one of the great people from CS to help out with spawning stuff, but they have their own stuff to work on (such as answering your tickets) which they of course must prioritize.

In a situation like tonight, we had 4 people for the first bit of the event, which dropped to three eventually. We had one team member on Victory, and two-three on Freedom. On Freedom, we had, I believe, 2 instances of Sharkhead Isle and 8 instances of Talos Island. two of us were splitting Talos, and the third was doing Sharkhead. Then, we had to reduce to two doing the entire server.

The way it works for us (the nitty-gritty) is that we move between maps, drop a ton of enemies, which ya'll promptly destroy, because you're awesome, and while you're destroying them, we're going to 4-5 other zones trying to drop stuff there at the same time. It becomes a race against time to spawn things for you guys to keep you entertained, providing witty banter in chat whenever possible, and hitting all zones. Sometimes things go wrong and a zone gets missed. We try to avoid this, but things get confused between zones, and stuff happens.

As far as the duration of the event is concerned, the situation is two-fold. Firstly, people start getting bored. We have certain mobs that we're able to spawn for you all. Those get boring after a bit. If they're not extremely tanky (like, say, the Goliath War Walkers in the Praetorian Invasions last year), then they die very quickly, which means we have to rush back to the zone a lot faster. Since the number of enemies is limited, there's only so long you guys will want to kill tentacles, Coralax, Flyers and Arachnos. At a certain point, more people get unhappy than seem to be happy, and that point has tended to arrive between 1 and 1.5 hours into the event.

The other factor is that we have some time constraints as well. We have a maximum window of 3 hours in which to do the event. This is by necessity, because we have, often, other work to do after the events (yes, at 8pm), as well as homes and families to get back to. After today's event, we had 7 or 8 Pocket D's to attend to. We need to be in each of those zones, as quickly as possible, and hand out a significant number of codes in each zone. We do this randomly, sending PM's to random players. Sometimes, those players don't reply, and that takes up time, because we want to give them a chance to get back to us. Maybe they're putting their child to bed, and just had to step away for a minute or two right when we PM'ed, so we wait a bit. We have to hit different zones of Pocket D quickly so that we can make sure people don't get frustrated because they think they're being forgotten. In order to do all this, we can't start the event at 5pm PDT, spawn stuff until 8pm PDT, and then go to Pocket D for the hour plus it takes to hand out codes to as many people as we can, because by then it would be almost 9:30pm PDT, which would frustrate people who were informed that the event would last until 8pm.

We really enjoy doing these events, despite the frustrations that sometimes arise, and we feel it's important to engage the playerbase in this manner. We think you all agree with this in principle. There are probably ways we could streamline the process to make it even better, and we'll certainly try to do that.

One final thing I want to mention is that a lot of people, in-game and out, have blamed short-comings on the developers. I want to be absolutely clear that this isn't the case. Only members of the Community Team are running these events (with the exception of members of the CS team on occasion). So, if you have any frustration you'd like to get off your chests, please direct them towards us. The devs are extremely hard at work on Issue 24, where many changes from Beta testing still need to be implemented, as well as Issue 25, about which I'm not allowed to say anything .

In any case, I hope that cleared up any questions you guys may or may not have about these invasions! We look forward to seeing you at events tomorrow and on Monday!

~Freitag

I wasn't taking part, but I think you Community guys really need a pat on the back and certain people to cut you some slack. Seriously, I don't think they appreciate the effort put into stuff like this.

If it's 'Nemesis/Rikti/Giant Boogers' invasion with the standard code, they complain.
If it's actual manual triggered invasion events, they still complain.

What was that quote someone came up with about sequential dollar bills? That seems appropriate here. Just saying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Thanks for the info Freitag.

For what its worth, I enjoyed the event on defiant, especially the punning soooo many fish jokes to be made!

Now, I enjoyed the event...but it was very very chaotic and haphazard and , your explaination of how it works in the background shows why this is so. Fair enough, I have to say thank you very much for all the time and effort you and the other Devs put into providing events like this for us players.

was this the bestest event I ever played?
honestly? no. That would be the end invasion of redside beta when we fought off freedom phalanx and longbow I remember dying happy that I managed to ignore all other mobs, survive the lag and land one solid punch on States before I faceplanted...

But I realise not all events can be like that and a lot of what makes CoH what it is , is the players you play alongside. So, despite what you admit can be "samey" content, the event was, for me great fun.

Rather than just make yet another comment on the event without offering something in return, here's how I would have liked the event to go and yes, I realise that it more than likely would not be possible because of technical issues but I hope it gives someone some degree of inspiration for something in the future

Quote:

Blueside Event for captain Mako week: all week, random coralax spawns along coastal city zones. First 20 minutes: tier 1: invasion hits Independance port, Lusca attacks the ship statesman is usually on, coralax attack the hospital as a diversionary tactic. if the hospital (or rather a glowy near the hospital) is destroyed, the coralax swing round to join in the assault on the ship. If the ship is destroyed,no badge is awarded for this section. (Lusca is constantly re-growing tentacles and the head only becomes targettable once the 15 minute timer expires) 5 minute break to allow for mopping up and insp stocking second 20 minutes: tier 2: Striga Longbow base is attacked Arachnos subs surface and launch missiles at the longbow base on striga while Mako's coralax attack the base defenses, sendign in coralax constructs to soften up the enemy. Maybe a giant Coralax "living reef" with huge regen capability is waded ashore to cause a breach. Heroes have to stop the GM, Knock the missiles out of the sky before they destroy several glowy targets, protect the targets from the coralax. If stage one was failed, then the enemy forces also include mako ground troops spreading out from the smuggler ship. end of 20 mins: if any glowies survive its off to tier 3. Otherwise the subs submerge once more and the heroes are left to deal with the GM. 5 minute break 3rd 20 minutes: Assault on Portal Corp: Mako floods the underground systems using his footholds in striga and IP, forcing the hydra out into Peregrine Island. In the chaos, he sends "runners" to portal Corp to set up a device. The heroes have to stop the device form beign constructed while defeating the Hydra wandering the streets and the Devouring Earth that hang around Portal Corp, enemies: Kraken GMs and Hydra heads. If stage 2 successfully destroyed the glowies then the subs reappear and move around PI coastline targetting heroes at random with long range AoE missiles. 5 min break 4th 20 minutes Mako makes a deal with the Shaper and gets him to summon an aspect of leviathan to attack his ultimate goal. Ouroboros. If he can secure that, then he can spread his destruction and chaos everywhere and everywhen. The Leviathan is a Huuuuuuuuge area of blackness, under the water that sends tentacles up to drag Oruo down into the water below. The tentacles are summoned by rituals being performed on the floating islands around Ouro. Disrupting a ceremony requires defeating the AV Priest running each one within a certain timeframe of each other. Each ceremony disrupted will slow the tentacle spawn (and the descent of the Ouro platform..which isnt actually descending, it just has a finite timer, or uses "height" as life points) , the tentacles can also be defeated using melee from the Ouro platform where they have attached (along with smaller more attacky tentacles) , defeating the tentacles also slows the descent but only disrupting the rituals will stop the invasion. If stage one was failed: mako also portals in his foot soldiers to the islands. if stage 2 was failed: he has access to longbow fliers to patrol the area between the islands and the platform if stage 3 was failed: Kraken and other hydra GMs are portalled to the islands. Tier 5: Mako triumphant or Vengeful Mako having dragged Ouro down, Mako has disrupted the defenses around the crystal of Ice and Fire. He portals in and starts to make for it to claim its power for himself and allow him to travel through time without the need for a fixed portal. The heroes have to stop him before he reaches the pillar. All outlying forces join mako in the assault. or unable to drag the platform down, Mako ports in and decides he'll do it himself. Fight to defend the crystal. If Mako wins and manages to get to the crystal, have a cut scene where Mako threatens to use the crystal to travel through time and space destroying everything he finds and establishing his dominance over Paragon, The Rogue Isles and the world! At this, the menders who have done absolutely nothing to help or hinder either side, step forward and warn Mako not to attempt to use the crystal, Mako sneers at them and the Menders give a hint of a smile... Mako turns to the crystal just as three more Makos step out of it, one with recluse-like arms, a second with a devouring earth quality to him, and a third, armoured like Black Scorpion... Mako sees these alternate copies of himself and loses it screaming "No! Its all mine! I took it! I wont share it! you wont take it away from me!" and charges the three Mako-nates pushing them back into the crystal's glow. The crystal flares and the silhouette of the four Mako's fighting can be seen and then the screen fills with light. The light fades and Ouro is back where it was as if nothing happened. invasion? what invasion? a set 80 + 15 minute invasion (possibly more for the ending bits and the ouro fight) with time for an after party and maybe some badgey goodness (total of five badges on offer, one for each tier with a fifth for successfully stopping Makos plans at all Tiers). Some questions opened for speculation: did the menders know what would happen with the other Makos? what time/dimension are the alternates from?

yeah yeah, I know, never could happen but hopefully it will give an idea of what, for me, would be a perfect event and will serve as better feedback than "that was boring" or "that sucked!"

I just want to take the time to thank the community team for running these events. THANK YOU!

We all appreciate the hard work everyone does for the game and the community events. It just seems that there is a lack of temporary resources needed to run an event like this. Why not reach out to the community for help? I understand that there are some technicalities that would need to be dealt with. I am sure you can find a few good Heroes and Villains willing to assist during these non-scripted player events.

(wishful thinking)

option:
play a redside villain takign part in the defense of rogue isles against Mako

OR

play a coralax warden or sentinel or something with a set powerset and attack redside. On death, get assigned a new, random, creature to play.

Boss/EB level player monsters have a "summon" ability to spawn in new lieutenants and minions to keep the fodder flowing