About the Christmas Event

This one is aimed at you, reader. The player. The person who goes online and plays and has fun on your regular characters. You don't make decisions about what goes into the game, or balance, or any of that. You're just a player.

When did you become such a goddamn scumbag?

I've been thinking this since the Thanksgiving event, and things have only gotten worse since then. The number of people who just wander around doing just stupid things to complete event requirements feels to me to be rising by the day. During Thanksgiving, people would literally swap around in Henesys Hunting Ground 1 and 2 channels and just loot drops from people who were farming event items there. When told to leave, they'd go to another channel, loot there, and come back later to your channel. They'd run fast too, usually on mages with Teleport, to hopefully prevent you from getting a good screenshot asking them to leave. People will ignore what you say and stand on top of your drops and wait for them to be lootable and if you can't get to it in time with one of your characters, since the items are untradeable, you just straight up lose that item. If the friend you're helping went to go pee while the item dropped, they've lost that item. If you put the message out to your guild, alliance, friends list, that you have a drop that you don't need, but one of these pricks is on your map, the chances that you can pass it to a friend is essentially zero. On top of that, I heard of new players to the server getting added to guilds for one or two turn-ins towards the guild total then kicked for different players, from some other guilds. But despite it happened to me so many times, even though I decided not to report anyone for anything because I decided it wasn't worth it, even though I've used ~mapowner in Henesys Hunting Ground more times in the last two events than I have since I started on this server in 2013, I just let it go. People will stop right? Christmas is about sharing and having fun and getting free stuff? Things will improve?

Wrong.

The number of you people that just wander around and stand on top of drops is the same, if not more, now that there are even more untradeable items for you all to freeload your items for. They don't ask, they just stand there and take. If it's not the Christmas Dinner foods, it's the Advent Calendar boxes, if it's not that, it's someone running through my maps looting all the Stars/Snows that I haven't gotten around to going over to pick up on characters yet. And as if matters weren't worse enough, there's been a running trend of, after a Snowman kill, players looting and dropping all the presents so that other people can't have any. It has gotten to the point that players in my guild will attend Snowblowers, put in more than the minimum snow, attack for the whole fight, and still not get a present. Really? Honestly?

What the fuck is wrong with you people? This is Christmas. I know that the holiday itself has passed, but this event is in the spirit of it even still. Of all of the stupid things that have happened to me over the years on this game, I'm honestly left speechless by the sheer amount of inconsiderate garbage that people have been pulling lately. I do know that, if you, reader, have been doing this, my post likely won't make you stop. Nor do I think there's really any way to solve player behavior from a staff side either. I'm just really, really disappointed by all of this, and I couldn't just keep it to myself anymore.

Y'all should be ashamed.

 

Shoutout to the 40-50% of people in snowman who afk and magically start helping when 3rd body is 30% hp. Shout out to the triggered autists who get angry for getting 'baited' in a first body snowman when smega says its 3rd body then defame and leave the map LMAO

 

Solution for snowman afkers: Snowman hits 10% max hp, snowman bodyslam hits whole map, simple as that really, dont deny people of entry just make people get hit and make the damage % based so people cant afk completely

 

Would it be possible just for the server to warp you outside if you havent hit the snowman for x seconds (only after it spawns)? If it is maybe 1min tops?

 

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/hit-requirement-for-snowman.111925
This is a thread i started when the event came out which i believe would solve most of the snowman related issues mentioned above

 

I have talked to many people about the new implementation on one-character per snowman and we concluded that with this change and the fact that pretty much everything that needs to be collected for this event is untradable, nevermelting snow should be tradable to avoid these troubles @Michael pointed out with people looting off others. Trading nevermelting snow with other characters won't affect mules from joining snowman because of the restriction. People feel discouraged to go to snowman on alternative characters because they don't have enough snow to even enter.

Nevermelting snow had always been tradable ??? WHY CHANGE ?????

 

When it comes to scummy behavior during this event, nasty afk-ers on Snowman deserve special mention.
There seriously are players trashy enough, that they come to this fight on third phase ~20%, and STILL don't do anything but sit on their chair in the corner. I don't know how people can enjoy such parasitic behavior.

 

The Thanksgiving event convinced me that my best strategy is to go back to approaching events with apathy.

 

I haven't noticed this but that sounds like a real dick move and frankly speaking this should become a bannable offence. GMs and admins, what do you think about this?

 

Hello everyone who's reading this.

It is with deep regret and shame to admit that I did the relooting presents shenanigan today. To begin with, I strongly dislike people who afk inside the snowman boss fight, so I thought that they didn't deserve the gift boxes. As a result, I decided to take matters into my own hand. So, without thinking of others, I relooted them several times, until there were only a few left, which weren't enough for everyone who were still coming from the other side of the map. Serve the afkers right, or so I thought.

After the event, I was confronted by Invertible (sorry if it's the wrong ign) through whisper. Apparently, my action has caused him to miss out on the gift boxes loot, and he wasn't afk at all. He was just on the other side of the map, getting knocked back and couldn't loot from the other side. What I thought was justice served for afkers, is nothing more than injustice done on innocent people. What's worse, I was very rude to him and putting up an asshole attitude throughout the whispers and megas that followed.

After some time of thinking, I've come to realized that my actions have caused inconvenience and unfairness to many others, and I deeply regret it. I am reflecting on myself as a person and would like to guarantee that this won't happen anymore. I would like to take this chance to apologize to Invertible again, and to the rest of you who have been wronged by my actions. Not only in this incident, but also in the past, to whomsoever that I've mistreated, upset, or offended. I am sorry, and please forgive me.

Thank you for reading, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

edit: If anyone of you needed a personal apology from me, do not hesitate to inbox me so I can apologize to you in person (albeit virtually).

 

I don't really know what improvements could be made to the event - I didn't post this to make change to the game so much as just express how unhappy I am with the community on this. I suppose that making more of the items tradeable would solve a big part of the issue; the Christmas Dinner foods have always been tradeable in past, as has Nevermelting Snow. I don't really understand why the foods were made untradeable and unstackable this year, since it allows for this situation that we've got now to occur; if they're farmable as they have been in past, losing one to a looter doesn't hurt nearly as bad. The Nevermelting Snow reasoning I fully do understand, but dual logging in Snowman is now hard-blocked, so I think that this limitation should be removed, as it's somewhat redundant now. As for the snowblower; we previously did have a hit count limit for items directly inserted into your inventory rather than having to loot the dropped items, and I thought that that system was really great. Can we get some insight into why it was changed? I'm sure there was a reason, but the old system disallowed the issue that I've seen so far with present relooters, of which there are more than just the poster above me who apologized. Thank you, by the way.

Honestly, I have to agree with this statement and it really makes me sad. It's a mix of both the events becoming more grindy and difficult rather than fun and enjoyable and also people learning more ways to abuse the systems to piss people off. I miss the old days where people used to party and help one another through events and share drops rather than actively stealing items and trying to bar people from getting drops instead.

 

In my opinion, the best solution is to change what items are used for the quests each year, and make everything tradeable and NOT one-of-a-kind, this way you can't stock up 100-200 food ready for next year, you'll have to buy it again or farm it again, but you won't run into the problem of either relying on a guildie to announce they got x food for you and hoping you get there in time, or sitting there farming for hours because the pig won't drop one type of food.

It really makes the event monotonous because you can be waiting for say... a cake, you get 30 of the other foods before receiving a cake, and then when you try to farm again ready for the quest to reset, you could then also constantly get unlucky and not get 1 type of food for a long time, causing even more food to be wasted.

 

Similar to @MoriForest's story, I myself was a victim of relooters attempting to "combat" the afkers by denying them a present because I had to step away from the computer during the very end of the third body to open the front door and greet a relative. I can say it was very frustrating having to attack for nearly half an hour just to miss out on the drop because some vigilante decided to encourage people to prevent afkers from looting drops by taking more for themselves.

A change I'd like to see implemented is to either disallow dropping presents on the map or to revert to last years' method of rewarding presents upon a snowman kill with a minimum attack requirement, which was the best implementation of the event in my opinion. While it doesn't prevent people who don't participate from being rewarded, it ensures that those who did participate get something for their effort.

Also, in the future, I'd suggest removing event items from people's inventory after the event is over. Having thousands of snow/stars from previous years isn't fair to newer players. If that isn't possible, at least create new items each year instead of using the same items as previous years.

 

Personally, I don't really think of it is an advantage to have leftover from last year. You did the grinding for it anyway (especially if it was untradeable) but you didn't use it at the time. So either way, the items you grinded are still only getting used up once, it's more like you have to give up on rewards for whatever reason that year in exchange for getting things the next year. I don't think people should be penalized for having items that they had to work for.

I've been pretty vocal about this in game and among my friends as well, but there is absolutely no reason that the dinner items should be untradeable and unstackable. I understood making snow untradeable when there was no limit to clients, but now that there is, this is also super redundant as I believe the whole untradeable snow thing was to prevent mules.

All in all, the game and the events just feel so tedious and does not promote any feeling of helping each other out. You can't help your friend who is a bad grinding char by giving them snow. You can't help your friend who has trouble finding pigs and items by giving them the one thing they might need since you are a faster grinder (this would be assuming not stackable, but at least tradeable), you can't help your friends simply by telling them to come to a map with said items because everyone is desperate to steal them from your maps and there is literally no way you would be able to ask them to cc and mapowner in time because it takes like 3 seconds and they're gone so you can't even report, and you can't get a present box even though you spend the whole time attacking because of some people having a twisted sense of vigilante justice (not directing this at anyone in particular).

I just don't understand why an event that is supposed to be for fun encompasses so many things that are decidedly not fun, even though it has been mentioned many times before. The ingredients for Thanksgiving were brought up as being very tedious for being untradeable and unstackable and yet it was implemented again. We had tradeable sunshine and tradeable snow for a long time now, and suddenly snow is untradeable AND there is a client restriction on top of that.

I understand that people might want to make events require some effort, but the point of events is for everyone to have fun. And judging by the amount of people who have spoken up about the Thanksgiving event issue, and the Christmas one, it's pretty obvious that yes while they are entertaining to some degree, a lot of people feel like it's a big chore. The negative side effects of that I feel like has instigated these looters and pickup droppers even more. Because if things were at least tradeble, then people probably wouldn't try to steal them so much (especially since there is a timer on these).

 

All I have to say is that this is first of all an EVENT , meaning we as players who participate in it and get prizes and unique stuff and features we don't have on a regular basis among the holiday spirit for one month , this is what most of the events were all about in the past and I have had a feeling that the latest events have become more and more tedious and less fun . I really think it's wrong calling it "abuse" and bothers me a bit too , we just want to use the event mechanics efficiently ! Yes , the drop rate of the items is more than fair but for some people who have more than one main and even 4-5 and above in some cases it's really frustrating to farm them anyways and making them tradable wouldn't make it easier , it's stil going to take some hours to obtain them, but just less annoying and I think it's not too much to ask for really.
Look at snowman for example , it's literally empty compared to last year , which in my opinion is a direct effect of the untradable snow .
All people want is to have some fun in this event and I think it should be more chill than how it currently is , not like it's going to be game-breaking or anything .
I'm sure everyone is thankful for the hard work you have put into planning and designing this event , but please let us enjoy it without changing our game style completely and force us to deal with the event stuff 24/7 .

 

Change the items is something hard for them to do. There are dozens of events every year, with various kind of drops for each one.
Every game has a limit to the ammount of items you can create into it, there would be pently of useless things whitin less than a year.

A different idea for this would be Remove the event etc from everyone's inventories.
This way, nobody would save tons of their event etc for the next years.

Sorry to say that it is not true.
It can be a matter of luck to find them pigs, and drop the certain food you need, in a short period of time.
I've been doing this Pig Hunt in 6 different chars.
One of them is a Lv5x warrior Ironman, with which I can't get helped from other chars.
I had luck once to find a pig that gave me all 4 foods in 5 minutes, and also a time that took me over 1 hour and was still needing one of them.

I was using my bishop to kill Jr.Wraiths while looting the food with my other 4 chars, some days would take me up to 3 hours to complete on all them.
Think about someone who has no free time to do that everyday.
I could sit there for 3 whole hours because I'm on holidays, but next week I'm back to work.
If I didn't get my nose, I'd probably not be able to get after then.

And also, that means 3 hours farming shit mobs just to finish a quest.
No time left for bossing, grinding, leveling, etc.
Where is the fun on this event?

 

I think players who go around channels stealing Christmas loots from other players should definitely be added onto the community blacklist (not that the blacklist even holds much weight tbh), especially considering that they're directly breaking server rules and avoiding punishment by exploiting loopholes. I do agree that changing certain mechanics of the event would sort of naturally cause less of these behavioral issues amongst the community, but the mechanics of the event doesn't justify shitty behavior from a lot of the playerbase regardless.