The Night Revels Review (New Halloween Event)

[PNellesen]

Agreeing completely with the OP. I normally enjoy the majority of content released on DDO, and I appreciate the detailed work the devs put into content, but honestly, I was sorely disappointed with this event in my run-through of it.
...
In past events, we built up materials to access a major event, one that just felt epic. Now we've thrown out the unlock mechanism and gone with something that, frankly, only seems to favor soloing. The community aspect was something I sincerely enjoyed in the Spectral Dragon fight, and its mechanics managed to somehow encourage coordination even with such a large group of people. That was awesome. Again, I'm not trying to turn this new unlock thing into the spectral dragon fight exactly, but I really wish it could be much closer to that.
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As it currently stands, would I run it? In general, no. I will go through it to get my Palemaster the augment, only because endgame dictates we grab every source of DC boost we can get our hands on, but after that I may call it. Please understand that I love and enjoy DDO a lot, and I really would like to see it succeed, so this is not out of bitterness by any means. It is simply because don't find it enjoyable to run revamped and dummed down versions of quests that I traditionally run (or even farm) every life. Regardless of what could replace them, I participate in these events for a change from the normal grind of leveling, raiding, and item-farming. I would really like to see something unique, and something entertaining or challenging.

Pretty much my take on it as well. I really enjoyed Mabar, lag and all. It was unique, and while the Dragon fight could be frustrating at times from a coordination point of view, it was seldom boring.

As far as this event goes - from what I've been able to see so far on Lammania, it's not going to be something I spend much time in other than to maybe grab a couple of the augments (and I might not even bother with those - challenges just aren't my thing).

[Heynone]

Agreeing completely with the OP. I normally enjoy the majority of content released on DDO, and I appreciate the detailed work the devs put into content, but honestly, I was sorely disappointed with this event in my run-through of it.

This is exactly how I feel.

Got some suggestions that I think could possibly be implemented before this would go live. I don't think any of this will suddenly make the event fun but it will at least spice things up. First as a general recommendation, you have werewolves. Add werewolves.

Kobold's Newest Ringleader: This quest has a **** ton of breakables. What about adding those spell ward traps that turn breakables into enemies in a few locations? Doesn't do much but at least it will make the quest a little more interesting.

Under New Ravagement: This is the most boring of the 4 for me. Upstairs, downstairs, upstairs... it is just so uninspired. The only thing I can think of to improve it is if you have to protect the brothers for 2 extra stars. Also add swarms of bats spawning regularly from the roof.

Snitch and the Litch: Crateos was the star of The Snitch, put him in the end with Roderick and take away the chest, make it a pumpkin.

Haverdashed: I don't know what to do with this one. The only thing I could think of is place a permanent solid fog in the room but that is stupid. Maybe someone else has a better idea for this one.

[Ykt]

Marbar was boring as hell and lagged everything

The lag is not part of Mabar.

There is lag sometimes in DDO. Lag can be fixed or at least attenuated.

Why was Mabar boring? The public area was the same as Crystal Cove, where you kill monsters to get access to the real event, which is not a 6-man challenge where you have protect freaking kobolds (that was fun and cute the first year, but protection quests get annoying really quick), it was the biggest instance in DDO: 24 people in 8 teams cooperating and communicating to defeat a Dragon (D & DRAGONS). That ain't boring to me.

[SirValentine]

I can't understand why the Halloween loot created for the Halloween event is now available from some random event instead of the actual holiday that those items were created for... Not only that, but the random, luck-of-the-draw nature of getting those items from the mimic event means that there has only been a few days for at least the past couple of years where people could reliably get those items. Those few days were the last time the Mabar festival was up before it was shutdown abruptly due to the troubles with it.

I've been waiting two years or so to make those items... I was super excited about the new Halloween event and planned on playing it a ridiculous amount when I thought I could acquire those old Mabar items. Very disappointed, but I am glad we got something at least. Oh well.

/signed

I, also, would like some better and more thematic way to get the old Mabar items, and don't like the random card method from the Mimic thing.

Please add recipes to use ingredients from Night Revels to buy & upgrade old Mabar items.

[The_Human_Cypher]

/signed

I, also, would like some better and more thematic way to get the old Mabar items, and don't like the random card method from the Mimic thing.

Please add recipes to use ingredients from Night Revels to buy & upgrade old Mabar items.

Yes, I am not sure why the devs are so reluctant to add the old Mabar items to the new Halloween event. Halloween items for the Mimic Hunt make no sense.

[Hafeal]

The lag is not part of Mabar.

There is lag sometimes in DDO. Lag can be fixed or at least attenuated.

Why was Mabar boring? The public area was the same as Crystal Cove, where you kill monsters to get access to the real event, which is not a 6-man challenge where you have protect freaking kobolds (that was fun and cute the first year, but protection quests get annoying really quick), it was the biggest instance in DDO: 24 people in 8 teams cooperating and communicating to defeat a Dragon (D & DRAGONS). That ain't boring to me.

I dunno, have to go with Uska on this one. Myself, and my static group, avoided Mabar.

The public area resulted in kill steals and griefing.

The dragon fight was always lag - every year. When you could get in. The dragon didn't even open for me the last year it was up at a time when I could play it because everyone had simply bailed on playing Mabar and the instances the dragon opened was so infrequent. I loved the concept of the dragon fight, they just could not get it to work.

The loot was all BtC which really blew chunks.

And the grind for loot was particularly bad.

I get it, some people really loved it - but as a 'community thing' I never found it to be even close to what CC is or was, for example. And for a similar style of event, many I know preferred the winter festival for the game play; Mabar was tolerated to get a specific gear piece.

[EllisDee37]

I rather liked Mabar. Its best feature was the coordination in general chat.

Never having duped anything I see 19 crumbling spectral dragon scales in my ingredients bag, so I definitely had more successes than lag wipes. (Though I definitely had a non-trivial number of lag wipes.)

[Nonesuch2008]

I dunno, have to go with Uska on this one. Myself, and my static group, avoided Mabar.

The public area resulted in kill steals and griefing.

The dragon fight was always lag - every year. When you could get in. The dragon didn't even open for me the last year it was up at a time when I could play it because everyone had simply bailed on playing Mabar and the instances the dragon opened was so infrequent. I loved the concept of the dragon fight, they just could not get it to work.

The loot was all BtC which really blew chunks.

And the grind for loot was particularly bad.

I get it, some people really loved it - but as a 'community thing' I never found it to be even close to what CC is or was, for example. And for a similar style of event, many I know preferred the winter festival for the game play; Mabar was tolerated to get a specific gear piece.

I won't sugar coat it, Mabar was not perfect, especially the Russian roulette nature of the Summoning Chamber runs. But I did really enjoy it, and have friends to this day going back to my first year of running it

[LevelJ]

Just wanted to go ahead and give a report from the livestream's "preview" today of it, and apparently their intent really is a Halloween variant of past quests that is fairly simple to run. Based on some closing comments made, it sounds like the Devs may be open to adding new quests to it in the future, as well as the possibility of swapping off the loot with the Mimic event in future events with enough demand.

Here it is, if you'd like to watch it for yourself.

It does sound like this is basically a done deal though. Not surprising, just disappointing. If the event ends up being overly positive towards the community, more power to them I guess. I've said my piece, so I'll leave it at that.


-Jayron

[The_Human_Cypher]

A revised The Night Revels could be an effectively two tiered event, with its current Challenges and loot table and then a second set of much more difficult Challenges and the Mabar loot table. If players want to commit the time to run the harder Challenges for a greater mat reward at the end, then they would have that option or they could run the easier Challenges many times to obtain enough mats for the Mabar items. The new event is very light weight and is not even that fun, so giving The Night Revels some depth would improve it significantly.

[EllisDee37]

I could see a three-tier approach with three different ingredients, one from each tier. Items would be made with one or more types of ingredients, progressively. So basic items would be just tier 1 mats, improved would be 1 and 2, and greater would use all three.

Tier 1: The quests in there now
Tier 2: Irestone Inlet, Freshen the Air, Tear of Dhakaan, Stormcleave Outpost
Tier 3: Proof Is in the Poison, The Pit, Xorian Cypher, Invaders!

[The_Human_Cypher]

I could see a three-tier approach with three different ingredients, one from each tier. Items would be made with one or more types of ingredients, progressively. So basic items would be just tier 1 mats, improved would be 1 and 2, and greater would use all three.

Tier 1: The quests in there now
Tier 2: Irestone Inlet, Freshen the Air, Tear of Dhakaan, Stormcleave Outpost
Tier 3: Proof Is in the Poison, The Pit, Xorian Cypher, Invaders!

I hope that they do not rehash maps from regular DDO quests and make them "spooky" again. The four harder Challenges should either use House Cannith Challenge maps (Dr. Rushmore's Mansion would be a good place to start) or be entirely new Challenges with a Halloween theme.

[LordTigerDawn]

Add crateos skinned as a giant pumpkin...

Everywhere...

[Saekee]

There are lots of crazy things that could be done for an event like this. I would love to see something like 'for the next sixty minutes, every mob in every quest has undead traits.'

OMG that would be harsh. Spectral dragon then appears in Invaders! IF all now-doomsphere beholders slain, hah.

How about a Red Named Gary Gygax appearing in Deleras?

[Postumus]

At this point, I must have read the words "I hate _____" literally over a hundred times from you, Uska. Um, I get it, thanks.

Words. My mouth. Took them.

[alancarp]

I just checked back to see the Dev responses to this thread... or any other Night Revels-related thread.

Nothing.

At least nothing worthy of mention. Here we have an actual bug report and Vargouille showed that he couldn't actually read what the OP wrote.

No responses to this thread. No commentary on the bugs, the irritation about the quests, the loot situation, ... bah.... it's all incredibly frustrating to TRY and give reasonable feedback on what's supposedly a Beta test server and see it totally and completely ignored. As Level J pointed out, it's probably all a done deal anyway, so why am I bothering? (answer: because I actually care and want to see this game succeed for several more years)

Good luck, Turbine. This is a really good way to hack off your paying customers. You'd better start listening more.