Unofficial Live Event Feedback Thread

[HumanJHawkins]

Ok... I spent an hour writing this and the official thread disappeared. So here is an unofficial one until it is found again.

Here's an edited and improved version of an older "2 cents" post:

1. Lesson Learned: Live events have to have schedules. The thrill of discovery can be about what will happen, but can not include when it will happen. Real life (which 90% of us must sometimes endure) demands this.

2. New Info On Lag: I have a pretty good computer, video card, and DSL connection, but not over-the-top. I barely experienced any lag during the whole weeklong event (On Sarlona). I assumed it was only people with low end equipment complaining, but maybe not.

However, suddenly close to the end, it went from pretty good to unplayable. This persisted for about 5 minutes. Then everything was back to normal. It seemed to affect everyone. Whatever the cause, the server just stopped responding for about 5 minutes. Other than that, it was quite playable all week.

3. Please Consider: You need an Instance Hop Timer... If you change instances, you get a 3 minute timer or something before you can hop again. (Except automatically by coming out of a bar to be with the instance your party is in for example)

4. Lesson I hope you will learn: On Sunday and then especially monday, we had fun mobs spawning. That was great. But even on Monday, the mobs lasted less than 1 minute. And the loot lasted about 3 seconds. We were trained by this to NEVER EVER LEAVE the main group by the bridge, because it will result in missing all the fun.

Then, On Wednesday, you apparently rigged it so that mobs would only spawn on small groups. Therefore, almost no mobs spawned, because everyone was afraid that if they walked away for a few seconds, they would miss out on the event. So we all missed out on the event.

You didn't have to give away the farm to get us to discover your secrets. But a simple DM World Broadcast message saying "Devils are reported in small groups all over the marketplace! Please help!" would have sent everyone scrambling. We all would have had more fun, and your event would have gone off as planned.

They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink... Well, sometimes you have to lead the horse to water, or there is no chance that he will drink.

5. Player Want: Mobs must spawn more frequently. If people want or need a rest, they can go to a tavern... Anything more than 2 minutes between mobs is boring. Up to maybe 5 minutes would be acceptable. But if you want future events like this to go off well, you absolutely must not make us wait 15 to 30 minutes+ between mobs. Seriously, there should be technology that has a timer... If a mob hasn't spawned in the last 5 minutes, then auto spawn a good one on the biggest (not smallest) group in the place.

NOTE:

• Weak mobs must spawn constantly... The reason people hate Kobold Assault is not that it is tough or long. It is that the kobolds don't come nearly fast enough and in way too small of groups. Don't make the same mistake in a live event.
• Medium mobs should come in waves... Maybe 2 minutes between them for recovery, etc.
• Major Mobs do need 5 minutes between them for people to pull it back together.

6. Fairness Issue: The way loot is dropping is favoring the quick and the greedy. Thanks for that... I have been scoring. :-)

Seriously, using a mechanic like the way shinies drop on kobold bodies would be more fair. But this still favors melee over healers who may be standing back. The ideal would be to have loot dropping 1 piece at a time, randomly, all over the place during the event or something. This way, at least people would have a fair chance of it showing up right next to them.

Also note... I'm not sure the loot should be attached to the mobs... I think mobs should be spawning constantly and randomly every 2 to 5 minutes. But Loot should be on it's own mob-independant schedule... Maybe every minute something small drops somewhere, and every 15 minutes something bigger. This would favor attendance over location. On average it would reward everyone equally, including the lvl 6 guys who just want's to be a part of this community event.

7. End Quest Request: The quest should have been (and could still be made into) a raid type quest... Nothing any more monumental than it already is. Just beef up the baddies and let 12 go in at once. No need for special raid loot (although that would be cool). The thing is, we went from multiple raid parties in the market defending the city, and then when we reached the final battle, it was like, "Ok... now disband and we only want 6 of you." Kinda' anti-climactic.

8. THANKS!!! Even though there were things that were not ideal, it was still cool to get together with my guild and talk a bit while we waited for stuff to happen.

[Samy]

The quest should have been (and could still be made into) a raid type quest... Nothing any more monumental than it already is. Just beef up the baddies and let 12 go in at once. No need for special raid loot (although that would be cool). The thing is, we went from multiple raid parties in the market defending the city, and then when we reached the final battle, it was like, "Ok... now disband and we only want 6 of you." Kinda' anti-climactic.

Seconded. It really sucks when you go through the entire event with a 12 man party getting together every night and forming a bond, and then when you get to the big finale, you're smacked in the face with the quest only accepting 6 of you. Sure, you can form a "B-team", but it really ruined a lot of the feel for me when you had to break up the party you'd been building bonds with.

Imagine if Catacombs allowed a 12 man team for everything except the *last* mission, where you had to pare down to 6 people? It wouldn't take much for the kicked individuals to feel hurt or offended.

[Kaldaka]

My two favorite things about the live event:

1. Watching that market tent blow up like a freaking nuclear explosion, it was unreal.

2. The comaraderie of my guildies and I, we had 2 raid groups and then some in the Market, and the anticipation was at a fever pitch.

My two least favorite things about the live event:

1. The horrible lag, I logged in at around 9 pm EST and it took 15 minutes to fully log on. I went into the market and was sent a party invite, which I saw on my screen, but by the time it let me click anything it was already 'expired' LOL.

2. The 6 man adventure after most everyone was in a raid group. Dropping from groups of 12 to 2 groups of 6's really isn't as smooth as you might think. There were many people who wanted to all go in together and were highly disappointed they could not.

Just my two cents.

[Angelus_dead]

1. Lesson Learned: Live events have to have schedules. The thrill of discovery can be about what will happen, but can not include when it will happen. Real life (which 90% of us must sometimes endure) demands this.

Backwards. The recent event DID have an accurate schedule, and that made it tons worse. In fact, it caused the failure of the event, by overloading the server with too many players in the area at once.

[Pellegro]

Great points by OP.

I'm not sure what caused the lag - I have a top of the line machine and still bogged out early in the week (Monday?). Had no problems when tent blew up, but my instance (#32 on Ghallanda) was relatively sparsely populated. Maybe 30 folks?

Anyway, nice post.

[HumanJHawkins]

Backwards. The recent event DID have an accurate schedule, and that made it tons worse. In fact, it caused the failure of the event, by overloading the server with too many players in the area at once.

Well, Sunday had no schedule until people started complaining. There were actually people who logged on in the morning and sat there all day waiting for something to happen. Of course nothing happened, because they were planning to do stuff in the evening, but never told anyone. This was no good.

A schedule is absolutely necessary for any major happening. But your point of overcrowding is legit too... However, overcrowding can be dealt with many other ways... Decreasing the max number of players per instance... Adding a timer to instance switching so people can't just hop instances constantly (which of course is a major cause of the lag since a lot more data has to be loaded with each instance hop. etc.

Another way to mitigate the overcrowding is to schedule multiple shows... They could have had 3 shows per day, for 3 days straight. And they could have announced up front that the same thing was going to happen at 9:30 AM, 3:30 PM, and 9:30 PM each day, so you wouldn't have to all be there at once.

Yeah, the story would need tweaking... A magical rebuild of the market so it could be blasted again, etc. But like I said, reality sometimes demands this sort of thing.

As for the time around the scheduled events, a lot more frequent spawning of CR 9 to 11 would have helped everyone feel more useful, heroic, etc. and insure everyone felt they got some action.

Still for all the criticism, I liked the event. Lots of fun. I didn't have bad luck with the lag though. I bet that was 90% of the frustration many people felt.

[Arnya]

Backwards. The recent event DID have an accurate schedule, and that made it tons worse. In fact, it caused the failure of the event, by overloading the server with too many players in the area at once.

Don't blame the servers, blame the hoppers jumping from instance to instance right over where the loot drops...

They kinda learnt by last night tho... jump in on a Black Mantis group and get slammed with dispels and break enchantments

[thewoz]

I agree in general with the OP's points. Other than 5-10 minutes of nasty lag on Sarlona Saturday night, I enjoyed the week's events thoroughly. Just being able to say "Honey, kids, come check out the swirling vortex over the city" and get Ooohs and Aaahs (okay, from the kids at least) was very cool. I'd get home from work and they would say "anything new in the city"? I thought the storyline and immersion factor was excellent, the graphics were tremendous and communications pretty good. I think there was a lesson learned in the pacing of some of the spawning of the bad guys, but the Devs observed, listened and adjusted. I was really happy they ended it with an instanced quest. Thanks Turbine for a very fun week! It's obvious a lot of thought and work went into it.

I did want to publish input in the official Live Event feedback thread, but I'll put it here instead (maybe the official thread was tethered to the tent?!?!)

My guildies and I commented that it would be cool to have a memento from the event...I'm not talking about an uber item. In fact it does not even need to be practical. Realistically, I'm guessing that the players that enjoyed the event are probably the ones that are looking for the fun of the Experience, the immersion...not the awesome end reward, the 8 bazillion xp or to finish the new content 14 minutes after it was released. A "The Devils Attacked the MP and All I got was this Lousy T-shirt" reward is probably enough for the Enjoy the Experience crowd. We've heard that Turbine has scripts that allow for the automation of events, so HOPEFULLY we will see these happenings fairly regularly in one form or another (not every one needs to be or should be epic in scale) With this in mind, I'd like to see something along the following lines:

• A new tab is created next to the Bio tab of a character that is autopopulated from participation in the event. Keep it simple...if Joe Adventurer was in the MP at the time of the finale Saturday, he gets a bullet along the lines of Bravely defended Stormreach Marketplace Against the Shavarath Devil Invasion - Eberron Date (3/8/08) entered into the tab. Next live event is another opportunity for a tagline to be added to the list
  
• Cooler customization, but I would guess harder to implement would be that we all get our bound 'Parade uniforms' to wear in taverns to impress the ladies. Participation in live events would get a ribbon, badge, pin, whatever added to the uniform that you can click on to get the details of the event.
  
• For a more practical reward, tokens could be given that could be traded in for new things that folks are asking for like customized armor color, naming of weapon, new haircut etc or improved services - repair with no chance of perma damage, 1,000 free House D arrows, one time free repairs (hey, we got a business to run here) for the hero that stopped the MP invasion, etc

Different topic and minor criticism - I think anytime the possibility of finishing a quest is lost, you should get the failure, Do Not Pass Go message. We wiped on the 4th wave in the Devil Assault and spent a fair amount of time trying to get back in. We figured it was a bust, but a You are not a winner, Please try again message would have saved 20 minutes and a few deaths as some of the devils came 'through' the door when we were not ready!

Another minor criticism on Devil Assault...why no favor? I'd think it fits storyline and gaming concept.

Anyway....hope that we see more live events. I'm still enjoying the quests and everything 2 years in (and REALLY looking forward to Mod 7), but these live events can really add something to the game!

[Knightrose]

I thought the event was pretty terrible.

Especially considering that most of the monster spawning and loot dropping was manual by the Devs.

I'm gonna guess (but I feel confident saying it) that most players were there in hopes of getting loot. There is obviously nothing else to gain otherwise. You can't tell me it was meant for RP reasons, beacuse I'm certain a Very small percentage of players are in DDO because of and for role-playing.

Most of us lagged much longer then 10minutes or couldn't get back in the game at all and had nothing to show for it.

Thumbs down, over here.

[Angelus_dead]

I'm gonna guess (but I feel confident saying it) that most players were there in hopes of getting loot.

They didn't necessarily want to get loot. More importantly, what they wanted was a chance to get loot, where the success or failure of that opportunity is based on their own actions, and not server and network load factors outside of their control.

[Jack_No.7]

i think what needs to happen with the live events in a case like this where loot is had, to be from a npc or spawned chest, and not random drop where ppl can loot all of the drops themselves . anyone back me on this? im sure they can rig up chests that give loot for ppl in a designated area, and not the whole zone?

[Naso24]

I really liked the event. My biggest complaint is the loot mechanics. I pulled a bunch of hams earlier in the week, but nothing on the final day. And I did a lot of killing. I participated in killing the red names. I also killed at least a dozen mobs solo, wandering around per the dev suggestions on the forums. The lack of loot was truly disappointing. Although I am sure some got more than their fair share, being at the right place at the right time.

[liamfrancais]

This is interesting because I am on the fence with this event. First off there was a terrible wind storm in my part of Maryland and my cable modem kept losing lights so I can't blame all the "lag" problems on the amount of people. Second, have you ever seen the desk decoration that is a bird and its head bobs up and down, get a few of these and make them hit the spawn monster button, if I could have pvp killed the people in marketplace who kept asking when does this start I would have. Why did they keep asking because NOTHING WAS HAPPENING. Ok so these live events are geared toward RP mentality, you know explore every little bit of minutia in an event or whatever, and I get that the twelve did not have the devils battle plans but more a rough idea of what the devils were planning but come on give us something to do except buff every 30 minutes or so in case something happens. I do feel from the people I spoke with in game, loot aside an all out battle royal was expected with up to CR 30 mobs spawning, mass mayhem and cataclysmic occurrences, not what happened though sat there for two hours in Marketplace 15 and witnessed two spawns from one portal about an hour into the event killed in less then a minute then nothing until the tent went away. As masses of battle ready warriors stormed in to drive back the hordes of shavarath what do we find that guy from the twelve telling us where to go for the "real" battle, which I will say is quit challenging on elite.
So I like the new quest and guess it is a look into things spoken of in the past, the event while visually stunning did not do much for my seething desire to wipe the taint of shavarath from eberron.
On the matter of the whole tent thing reminds me too much of something real that happened but I won't go there.

[Riddikulus]

Great points by OP.

I'm not sure what caused the lag - I have a top of the line machine and still bogged out early in the week (Monday?). Had no problems when tent blew up, but my instance (#32 on Ghallanda) was relatively sparsely populated. Maybe 30 folks?

The problem is that DDO's architecture cannot handle more than 12 people combatting in the same place at the same time, if that even (e.g. raids).

I read somewhere else here that the instance cap is 50. So it should be lowered, perhaps to 25 or even less. Or the architecture needs to be vastly improved because it is simply broken as it is for this kind of purpose.

They should also just prevent people from entering a full instance. How hard could it be to grey out the instance on the list if it is over 50 people?

Don't blame the servers, blame the hoppers jumping from instance to instance right over where the loot drops...

They kinda learnt by last night tho... jump in on a Black Mantis group and get slammed with dispels and break enchantments

And? Neither spell does anything to players anymore. They disabled that form of griefing a long time ago.

[Oreg]

I will try not to be negative here so I will try and state things simply so I don't fall into the trap of being overzealous in my account.

1. The concept and plot line was very good.
2. The communication in the beginning was lacking.
3. Lag hurt the event for many people.
4. Lack of a fair distribution of loot was disappointing.
5. The quest was challenging on Elite and rewards were appropriate (not mine but other have reported +2 tomes)
6. I have played many games over the years where special events were executed flawlessly and the majority of players said "wow, that was amazing". This was one of Turbine's better efforts, but there is still much work to be done. Many of the OP's points are dead on. Other games have proven you can have spectacular live events.
7. I look forward to the next event and hope that lessons learned will be properly implemented next time.

I appreciate all the OT and time that the devs put into this. Next time will be better I am sure.

[Samy]

Well, Sunday had no schedule until people started complaining. There were actually people who logged on in the morning and sat there all day waiting for something to happen. Of course nothing happened, because they were planning to do stuff in the evening, but never told anyone. This was no good.

Agreed. Nobody likes waiting around for when things MIGHT happen.

A schedule is absolutely necessary for any major happening.

Disagreed. You can let the players run it at their own pace, like Devil Assault. I'm not seeing Devil Assault causing huge amounts of lag for me today. Why? Because people can run it whenever they please. Some people might get together for it at 8am, others at 12am, others at 6pm, others at midnight -- so, it distributes the people around the clock instead of concentrating them all together at one exact time. Works MUCH better for server performance.

[Auran82]

1. The concept and plot line was very good.

Only problem I have with the plot line is that the Twelve guy kept talking about bringing down the barrier and invading Shavarath, and I thought the whole point of this was about Sir Lawrence going missing. Then boom, tent explodes. Thanks for coming.

It kinda felt like reading a book where only half the plot lines were completed.