The Festival of Olladra comes to Stormreach!

[MysticTheurge]

Whats the point of having a contest where nobody wins?

I don't get it. The rules were really simple. You picked numbers, if they matched what was rolled you won. That's the point of the game. The point of the game was to have some fun in a lottery style. No one was ever guaranteed to win.

Now, if they're smart, they'll take a page from the lottery playbook and keep increasing the "Jackpot." The next lottery style game should have a grand prize of the daggers from this one and something else. They could potentially get people pretty interested (well more interested anyway) in a game that followed that pattern.

But, I don't see the reason why somebody has to win (the grand prize, which is what we're debating, some people did win, just not the grand prize) in order to have fun with the game.

[Kindoki]

I don't get it. The rules were really simple. You picked numbers, if they matched what was rolled you won. That's the point of the game. The point of the game was to have some fun in a lottery style. No one was ever guaranteed to win.

Now, if they're smart, they'll take a page from the lottery playbook and keep increasing the "Jackpot." The next lottery style game should have a grand prize of the daggers from this one and something else. They could potentially get people pretty interested (well more interested anyway) in a game that followed that pattern.

But, I don't see the reason why somebody has to win (the grand prize, which is what we're debating, some people did win, just not the grand prize) in order to have fun with the game.

My bolding. I agree that is exactly what should happen. Eventually, you could get someone who wins a dagger, a shield, a suit of armor, a ring, etc. etc. in one fell swoop. That would be pretty cool.

[Sir_Lawrence]

An interesting discussion here. I am open to all feedback as always. However, the one thing I need to know is whether or not you - as a whole community, not an individual (meaning I want to hear from everyone!) - want to see more events like the Festival of Olladra? The only way to get more events like this (or others) is to participate and let us know what you think! There are more events being planned and the excietment grows with each one on our end, but we need to know how you feel about them (good and bad) so we know where the event strengths and weaknesses are.

[crimsonretribution]

I like events. I like free stuff. The bad side of this particular event though, is that there was very limited player activity involved in this one, all we did was pick four numbers.

[Tanka]

While I like player events, they should be, IMO, more like the Christmas event -- more people participated in that one overall than any other event that has happened since.

Limiting them to forum users, while a good way to push forum usage, will not reach the majority of the playerbase. Many players simply do not care to use the forums and only want to play the game.

[Coldin]

Well, in order of best to worst events in my opinion...

Trivia Events (Trivia across the whole server is always a good thing)
>
Scavenger Hunt (Gave everyone a good chance to claim a prize)
>
Hide and Seek (Though the frequent movement with no focused area to look or hints made the event frustrating)
>
Festival of Olladra (Odds to win were too low imo)
>
Trade or No Trade-2nd Version (Rules were confusing and no way to help one's chances of being selected)


I should add that the Festivus Jester was probably the best thing to do just because it lasted so long and we got cool cookies and cakes. But that doesn't really count as a live event does it?

[Ciaran]

An interesting discussion here. I am open to all feedback as always. However, the one thing I need to know is whether or not you - as a whole community, not an individual (meaning I want to hear from everyone!) - want to see more events like the Festival of Olladra? The only way to get more events like this (or others) is to participate and let us know what you think! There are more events being planned and the excietment grows with each one on our end, but we need to know how you feel about them (good and bad) so we know where the event strengths and weaknesses are.

I would like to see them, but on a larger scale than a quick pop in, pop out thing that necessitates people to use the forums to partake of the events. That event felt a little underwhelming to me, personally.

The trivia that was done several months ago was a fun event and got a lot of people together. I'd like to see stuff like that more. The recent ladies night event looked like it was a lot of fun for all involved.

As an example of what I'd like to see for an event, what about holding some kind of scavenger hunt in Delera's graveyard in which random undead are spawned (sort of like in that old trailer for DDO where there's undead actually roaming around the graveyard?) for Hallowe'en? Maybe you could have to find a zombie that looked unique from all the others (such as a different color, different clothes, or some such).

That's just a wildcard example given that I have no idea what is able to be done or not, but I think events like that would be a lot of fun and make the servers feel like there's an actual community to interact with.

So not so much with the Festival of Olladra which wasn't really interactive and required a person to be on the forums (several guildmates of mine don't bother with the forums; it's just not their cup of tea, they shouldn't be precluded from events because of that), but more stuff like scavenger hunts and trivia.

Thanks!

[Kindoki]

I like events like the festival of Ollandra because you didn't have to be present to win. I can almost never make the set times for things because I play around my wife's work schedule, and I am a part time player at best (4-6 hours a week). So having events that don't require me to be somewhere at a specific date and time are cool. I admit the difficulty of actually winning was a bit off-putting, but the lotto idea with increasing jackpots really makes it a winner.

[Theris]

What I really miss is the changes in the environment and in costumes for player characters as seasons/holidays changed. I remember when Halloween rolled around in the land of Asheron's Call. The Auberean lands were filled with pumpkin head monsters and players could loot masks that made your characters head become a pumpkin head or some other AC monster. During the winter months snow covered the ground and large snow men could be found roaming the lands.

I really miss that. If I could get that with DDO, I'd be happy camper.

[Hence]

Create an arena on every server that is not accessible to the player community.
Hold slayer events, something to challange players against creatures, the more you kill, the better the reward. Kill them all for a grand prize.

The reason you would not want the arena to be accessible is because of what happened with the other event, people cannot control themselves.

Hold team pvp events, supervised by you. A tournament, every player on the winning team gets a nice USEFUL item, something like a Secret Decoder Ring, runner up team gets a fancy looking hat or something.

OR...

How about a time trial event, this way multiple parties can play at the same time to speed up the event. Have it be a time trail to complete all VoN 1-6. Or to complete an entire quest arc. Whoever does this the fastest, gets a prize. Now that would be fun.

[amysrevenge]

I should add that the Festivus Jester was probably the best thing to do just because it lasted so long and we got cool cookies and cakes. But that doesn't really count as a live event does it?

I agree with this guy. The Festivus thing was fantastic.

I submitted a number for the latest festival, but wasn't excited (well I was kinda excited when I got 2 numbers right, but that's all).

Mike

[Strakeln]

An interesting discussion here. I am open to all feedback as always. However, the one thing I need to know is whether or not you - as a whole community, not an individual (meaning I want to hear from everyone!) - want to see more events like the Festival of Olladra? The only way to get more events like this (or others) is to participate and let us know what you think! There are more events being planned and the excietment grows with each one on our end, but we need to know how you feel about them (good and bad) so we know where the event strengths and weaknesses are.

The holiday festival (where we found gold/silver/bronze tokens in chests) was quite well-received. I still see the occasional candy cane and rez cakes being sold on the auction, and I and carefully guard my small stash of beholder cookies.

[Hendrik]

Well, in order of best to worst events in my opinion...

Trivia Events (Trivia across the whole server is always a good thing)
>
Scavenger Hunt (Gave everyone a good chance to claim a prize)
>
Hide and Seek (Though the frequent movement with no focused area to look or hints made the event frustrating)
>
Festival of Olladra (Odds to win were too low imo)
>
Trade or No Trade-2nd Version (Rules were confusing and no way to help one's chances of being selected)


I should add that the Festivus Jester was probably the best thing to do just because it lasted so long and we got cool cookies and cakes. But that doesn't really count as a live event does it?

I would have to say that this list of best to worse mimics my feelings as well. The best 'event' was the Festivus hands down.

Live events are a hard thing to nail down +Sir. Have to test the waters and see what works and doesn't. You are doing that and while some go over great others do not. IMO, you ARE doing a great job and I, and my Guild, thank you for it. We look forward to your events and attend them as we can as a Guild Event.

Keep testing out new and different things. Keep up the good work.

And above all else, Thank you very much for the Events. I know these are not easy to plan nor pull off.

/respect

[DKerrigan]

An interesting discussion here. I am open to all feedback as always. However, the one thing I need to know is whether or not you - as a whole community, not an individual (meaning I want to hear from everyone!) - want to see more events like the Festival of Olladra? The only way to get more events like this (or others) is to participate and let us know what you think! There are more events being planned and the excietment grows with each one on our end, but we need to know how you feel about them (good and bad) so we know where the event strengths and weaknesses are.

Events with more player involvement and a higher chance of "winning something" pique my interest. Though I entered the recent Festival event...the odds of anyone winning were pretty meager, as shown by the results of the event in that no one won the "big prize." More events with a greater chance of coming away with something (anything) for the participants, like the Festivus Jester and coins, Hide and Seek and to a lesser extent (largely due to player misbehavior, at least on Adar ) the Deal or No Deal event are much more appealling than 1 in 16000 or whatever the odds of the last event were. People feel like they are more involved when there is a reward for their efforts, no matter how great those efforts may be or how small the reward ends up being imo

All of the events that I have heard about and partaken in have had different qualities that have effected the enjoyment of them uniquely. The Festivus Jester was very programming intensive, but Turbine involvement aside from that was low and most importantly, everyone "won." Because it was largely quest/chest based, anyone who was playing the game during that period had a chance to win the contest. There were relatively very few truly meaningful rewards in the form of lasting items (I think the best reward I heard about was a Sunblade for the Gold Token turn in), but everyone playing during that 2 month or so period was able to walk away with something, even if it was only a Festivus Twig.

Hide and Seek took the player involvement out of the normal flow of game use (questing/looting/leveling), but gave everyone an equal opportunity to win the prize if they chose to participate. The Scavenger Hunt had the same characteristics as Hide and Seek in that respect.

Deal or No Deal stepped away from player involvement largely and was more of a player interaction event. While many attended, due to the nature of the event relatively few had a chance to walk away with something, and most became frusterated due to the multiple instances and the very limited ability to "win" the event.

Finally, the most recent event followed the lottery pattern to a "t", many players entered but few really expected to walk away with anything. The involvement of +Sir was virtually non-existant in that he could have just /rolled all of the numbers for each server and showed up to read them off. Because he was virtually intangible (not in any instance on the server), there was next to 0 interaction aside from players reading the announcements, meaning the event was smooth compaired to DonD, but because of the nature of the event in that it was forum based a hypothetically small cross section of the population that frequent the forums were eliglble to participate at all, meaning that the server population at large was largely unaware of the event at all.

In closing, if there are going to be more events similar to the Festival of Olladra, they need to have a more widely reaching scope as far as player involvement is concerned (in game mail set up to receive entries on each server and an announcement in the laucher window) and there need to be more levels of reward for participation in the event.

That's just one man's opinion though.

[Sir_Lawrence]

DKerrigan, tell me what you REALLY think!

[Coldin]

DKerrigan, I couldn't have said it better myself. The events are far more engaging when I feel I actually have a chance of winning something.

[barecm]

I have to agree with DKerrigan here.. I would also prefer events that everyone has a resonable chance of coming away with something, everyone has a chance to participate and the events are fun. To this point none of the events meet this criteria.

The last event was silly... try to pick four correct numbers on a a future die roll? Please. First off, it is not fun at all and quite lame. The deal or no deal was at least interesting if you were one of the few to be picked to play. The rest of us (99.999%) stood around bored silly... again, lame. Hide and seek is pretty ok, if you are a 12 year old on a rainy day and the TV is broken. How is supposed to be fun in an MMO? Trying to find someone hiding in storm reach somewhere. Wow, sign me up. The Christmas Festival or whatever it was called at least gave us some useful clikie type items. I could use another stack of shield cookies... However, not exactly an event or fun, more like some different loot collectibles to turn in for items. However, it was the best of the bunch I guess.

As suggested, make the events interesting. Give us something here that we cannot see or do on our own. Maybe the first to run a guantlet style maze? If you insist on having only a select few participate, then let them fight a series of randomly spawned monsters in the middle of town for all to see. Or, have a gladiator competition like from Roman times... individuals or even guild teams vs others or perhaps a pack of monsters that are spawned. Maybe even players vs developers in an American Gladiators style competition in various events. We compete against the devs, but rack up points against an opponent. You can even have brackets and such like a college hoops style tournament. There are literally tons of things you can do that are more fun that the current jokes that are pawned off as Server Wide Events. Server wide events acutally have more than .0001% of the people involved.

[UtherSRG]

QFT

Events with more player involvement and a higher chance of "winning something" pique my interest. Though I entered the recent Festival event...the odds of anyone winning were pretty meager, as shown by the results of the event in that no one won the "big prize." More events with a greater chance of coming away with something (anything) for the participants, like the Festivus Jester and coins, Hide and Seek and to a lesser extent (largely due to player misbehavior, at least on Adar ) the Deal or No Deal event are much more appealling than 1 in 16000 or whatever the odds of the last event were. People feel like they are more involved when there is a reward for their efforts, no matter how great those efforts may be or how small the reward ends up being imo

All of the events that I have heard about and partaken in have had different qualities that have effected the enjoyment of them uniquely. The Festivus Jester was very programming intensive, but Turbine involvement aside from that was low and most importantly, everyone "won." Because it was largely quest/chest based, anyone who was playing the game during that period had a chance to win the contest. There were relatively very few truly meaningful rewards in the form of lasting items (I think the best reward I heard about was a Sunblade for the Gold Token turn in), but everyone playing during that 2 month or so period was able to walk away with something, even if it was only a Festivus Twig.

Hide and Seek took the player involvement out of the normal flow of game use (questing/looting/leveling), but gave everyone an equal opportunity to win the prize if they chose to participate. The Scavenger Hunt had the same characteristics as Hide and Seek in that respect.

Deal or No Deal stepped away from player involvement largely and was more of a player interaction event. While many attended, due to the nature of the event relatively few had a chance to walk away with something, and most became frusterated due to the multiple instances and the very limited ability to "win" the event.

Finally, the most recent event followed the lottery pattern to a "t", many players entered but few really expected to walk away with anything. The involvement of +Sir was virtually non-existant in that he could have just /rolled all of the numbers for each server and showed up to read them off. Because he was virtually intangible (not in any instance on the server), there was next to 0 interaction aside from players reading the announcements, meaning the event was smooth compaired to DonD, but because of the nature of the event in that it was forum based a hypothetically small cross section of the population that frequent the forums were eliglble to participate at all, meaning that the server population at large was largely unaware of the event at all.

In closing, if there are going to be more events similar to the Festival of Olladra, they need to have a more widely reaching scope as far as player involvement is concerned (in game mail set up to receive entries on each server and an announcement in the laucher window) and there need to be more levels of reward for participation in the event.

That's just one man's opinion though.

[BurnerD]

I think something like a really short, but difficult well hidden encounter area somewhere in stormreach would be a great event. One chest - limited to first 3 people who find it.

The issue would be of course the first person to find it running three characters through it, or telling his guildies about it.. so maybe three separate encounters... one pull only.. first to find it and defeat it gets the prize. It should be solo only and extremely hard for the appropriate levels.

In regard to length it should be like the encounters in one of the exploration areas, but should be very very difficult to find and have one helluva fight in it. Put it in the harbor, marketplace, one of the houses, etc...


Run different levels at different times.

[Missing_Minds]

I'm all for these events in many of the forms. Stuff where your average player, elite player, and newb player all have an equal chance of winning.

Hide and seek, scavenger hunt, the lottery, deal no deal... I liked them all and personally I think they add to the game. Festivius really fit the ideas above to a tea.

The issuse with deal no deal is the sheer amount of instances and people that showed up. That will make it not fun for most sadly. (Let alone the player caused lag in those instances)

personally, I would love it if we had more events on a more regular bases. Or even surprise events for fun.