I agree that the current snowman system has some downfalls but there is not much you could do other than what have already been done realy . I think that lowering the drop rate of the snow would not change the fact that 50%+ of the people afk inside snowman but at least they will have to pay more for it so that's something . I thought maybe put a timer of like 20seconds (?) after snowman dies that would warp everyone out when it's over, this way people wouldn't bring all of their mules in the same Chanel because there isn't enough time to loot a present on every char , what will cause : 1. The chance of finding urself inside a snowman Chanel with like 90% afks (can end up being a 30mins fight) is much lower now 2. Those people who bring a lot of mules will have to join 2-3 snowman runs , which can make them spend much more time into getting presents on all of their mules because most of the time the next Chanel is quite empty and it would take longer time to take snowman down .
I only say that we can't change human behavior as a way to explain that no matter what we do if someone wants to not contribute, they will find a way to do so. I have no problem of there being a hit requirement to get presents, or a timer, or anything like that - but with every action there's always going to be another way someone will find a way to do what they want. In the past, we have set it to a timer that kicks you out after a certain amount of time after it's killed. We set a hit requirement. We made the entry fee. We put the entry fee item as untradeable. We put the present directly in your inventory. And every single time, someone is always going to complain that people aren't contributing any further. It happened during Halloween, it happened during Valentines, and even Christmas now. imo this is something we face every year, every event, no matter what it is. people afk, people forget they're in the map, people lag or idle. there's a million reasons why someone may not be participating in the event to the same amount as another person, some people rather just talk the whole time and make others do it. i dont see it much of an issue - there's 50 people per map, 50 presents drop, and all channels spawn at same time. Each person who enters puts their snow towards the collective amount needed. If I've got five alts in the map, I'm attacking on at least one of them. Is it okay to have five alts? That's up to different people to decide. ((Just a hypothetical situation, btw.)) By all means, keep the suggestions and the ideas coming. I just personally don't see it as an issue. If you're mad that people are getting free stuff on Christmas, I don't think you understand how Christmas works. If there's a problem with people being unable to enter at all and thus unable to participate because of these alts, then I could understand it being an issue. But I don't see this being the case at the moment? I've always been able to find a non-filled channel. I've never had it take more than 15 to 20 minutes even with a mostly empty channel.
You don't see it as an issue because you're also one of those who bring multiple mules in... Tell me I am wrong.
I don't think its part of human behavior to not wanting to contribute, I think this and other events is simply making people. Do people really want to afk to get presents? Or is it just that people want to be efficient and gain as much as possible? The issue is not that people are getting free stuff, like i said before the issue is that 1 person is having to work for 25minutes sometimes to get 49 other people their presents. I don't blame people for just logging on all their characters to get free stuff when given a chance. I just think we might aswell just get rewarded the free items every hour from just talking to a npc then. I just think its quite distastefull having a few people using their play time to kill bosses for you that you reap the benefits of, while you are on your main at some other location gaining exp or doing something else. I don't understand how you don't see this as a problem when clearly there has been stuff done to try and prevent this in the passt. Now when theres basically nothing there to prevent this from happening i think it should be pretty clear how much of a problem it is.
If possible, maybe make it so that next time, the snowman doesn't knock back in its final stage? That slows down the few people who are actually hitting it.
Actually I bring in two characters only. My main/first character, and a new character I'm working on so I can play it in the new source. My reasoning being that I want to save up 7k stars from presents on the new character to get the ice throne chair, as every bucc looks badass with the ice throne chair. Really, I just have a different viewpoint than others because I've been here nearly 3 years now. I've seen every event, every change, and how people react to it. This is forever going to be an issue to some people.
Going to start off by thanking everyone for their opinions put forward so far. We've tinkered a lot with this exact event, because yes, it is basically the same one we had in 2013. That's four whole years of development on this event. At first, there was no limit to how often you could turn in presents - you could kill a snowman, turn in your present, go back in, loot another present, go out, turn that one in, then maybe if you were fast enough, do it a third time. So we put a limit on presents you're allowed to turn in every so often. Later we realized that people could just camp their characters on a map if they weren't using them to wait out for free presents without adding any snow to the blower - that's why there's an entry fee now. That entry fee is important to this discussion. We acknowledge that it's very little of a thing to donate 100 snow to get into the map, but that is still a contribution, no matter how you slice it. If someone brings in 10 characters and you brought in only one, they have contributed 900 more snow than you have to making the snowman spawn. That's imbalanced as well, isn't it? Well no, it isn't, because they get rewarded for their extra contribution - they get more presents out of the deal. From a personal perspective, I honestly am too lazy and/or often don't have the time to farm snow, so I'll only attend on one character at a time because I know that if I dump snow and attend on six, I won't have enough to go to the next one. If I'm putting in the time or money to collect snow so that multiple characters can attend the event spawn, I think that I deserve multiple presents for it as well. The boss itself is difficult to balance - people are upset because it takes long to kill it, and I understand that, because a 20-30 minute fight is a long time to take out of your day to finish one event boss, and if there is one person for every attacker who isn't also hitting it, then everyone essentially has to carry someone who isn't contributing to the time aspect of this boss. A situation in which perhaps if you reach a certain number of hits on the snowman, you'll receive perhaps a present with better odds for big ticket items is an interesting proposal as it would reward people who contribute extra on hits but not people who contribute extra on snow, as the latter already gets rewarded by present volume rather than present quality. The number would have to be large enough that it would be difficult to reach this number on multiple characters, but small enough that it's still possible to do if you're only hitting on one. I'd like to receive feedback on this suggestion as I feel it would help to remedy the main issue presented in the thread. I'd also like to make one final statement - it's Christmas, and to me, as a non-religious man, this holiday is essentially about giving things for free and receiving free things. And maybe eating some good food in good company while you're at it. I don't see the problem with people getting free things from this event with little to no effort, because that's what this holiday is defined by, at least the way I see it. I apologize if I've offended anyone with that viewpoint.
I get that people who bring 10 characters have to use 10 times more snow than someone who is only brining one character. Maybe the drop rate for snow should have been lowered (the problem with this is that it might cause people being left out because of every channel being full unless the cooldown for entering would be increased as well) to make up for the fact that the person who is brining 1 character is killing the boss with 100% of what they brought in that room. For perspective 1 hour of farming they could have easily made enough to buy 50k snow. That is 1 hour spent to get them 500 entries, now they have got enough snow to probably take you through the whole event and you could just walk in and out of snowman to recive presents. While someone else is there attacking for 20 minutes every time in order to get their present, hence the person who is attacking every snowman will contribute with more of their time than the person who is bringing their 10 chars 50times just by doing snowman 4times. By the time we have done snowman 50 times the person who is always attacking have wasted 1000 minutes of their time just attacking snowman. While the person with 10 mules have just spent that first 1 hour farming and the other 1000 minutes that it takes to kill snowman 50 times they could just go farm or do what ever they wanted and still collected 10 times more presents than the person who have been killing the snowman for them every time. Christmas is the time of giving... does that mean that the person who is giving 20minutes of their time to kill snowman every time is winning? clearly they are the ones who are giving the most here. No, they are just going to get 1 present. Well atleast they can feel good about themselves because they have been giving more and thats what christmas is really about. What is the point in telling people what christmas is to you, it wont make people feel less used after soloing snowman for 49 other people. No one have argued that people shouldn't get free stuff from this event. Most of us even say that we are fine with people bringing mules, the problem with this event is that a small group of people are being used and that I dare say is not a very christmas spirity thing at all.
How about the number of hits to determine the higher % of getting better reward? (something like the PVP style in the Maplestory Chaos era?) These days,apart from the issue on afker that could have help to down the snowman faster, I think the issue seems to be more frustrating when u know a afker got a better reward compared to those who work hard to down the snowman all the way. Some might say luck do bring a part in getting better reward. Yes,Christmas is the time of giving,be it an afker or a player who work through their ass off to down snowman all the way. But, I do think those who generally work their ass off should deserve a higher % of getting better reward compared to a afker. #justsaying
Or make it that snowman pierces armor (does damage as if you had 0 armor) and does damage no matter where u stand on the map. If you arent safe afking people wont do it.
I think this would make the snowman even slower because like Sila said there'll always be people who do the bare minimum that's just how people are, you can't force people to change their behavior. I'll use myself as an example, I usually do the snowman on 3 characters and put them each on different channels so I don't clog up the map. I'm always attacking on the client which has the lowest hp and switch clients after it dies, if this change were to happen then I'd have to constantly monitor my other clients and repot which means I'm not hitting the snowman as much on the character I want to focus on. At this point it doesn't really matter anymore, the event is almost over, let's just deal with it.
I think something like enabling pickup for users who were active (i.e. doing damage) within...say, 2 minutes before Snowman 3 dies might work. Got the idea after using ~mapowner which brought up the "last activity in map was at [time] by [user]". Maybe a combination of a timer like this and setting a minimum requirement for damage will work better.
If that were to be implemented, who's to say someone can't AFK for 17 of the 20 minutes it takes to kill the boss, comes over and attacks a few times to get the minimum damage, then sits there and waits for it to die? They still aren't doing much work.
I have an idea but I'm not sure if this is even possible to code. "Make the event map have continual percentage damage on everyone (let's say 1% per sec that gives 100sec to everyone) and make it so that anyone who attacks the event boss gets healed." I think that would solve the mules/AFKers on event maps if they don't take part in killing the event boss they might as well be dead right?
For last year's Christmas event only one snowman spawns in the whole server when 10k snow was collected right(instead of this year's every channel spawning one)? Maybe that method is better, since people having multiple mules won't have enough time to make it to the next channel to get a present because of the active people being fast in moving to the next channel's snowman map after one snowman was defeated? Plus, only a maximum of 100 people can get a present in the server per snowman spawn compared to the current 1400 (since snowman only spawns at one channel, not every channel), so this would limit the number of mules present to leech off a present from those active ones attacking. Just my two cents
30 people doing zero damage versus 50 people doing minimum 300 damage each. The difference is obvious. I can't understand why you'd say implementing minimum damage requirement for prize reward does nothing. Snowmen would have died so much sooner. PS: I just completed my longest snowman challenge today! Took us (yeah, the formidable 9 alive, huzzah!) 29 minutes to kill it! Thank you for letting people afk. Helped so much!
We've done this, that's the thing. People still hit the minimum amount and then went back to afking, which earned just as many complaints.
Why not tighten the time limit in the future. Common afker mentality = "The Snowman will die anyway. Doesn't matter how long. I'll park my characters here as I do something else and come back 30 mins later to loot" Basically people who afk (not people who bring mules, but people who choose to not attack in order to do smth else with their time) want efficiency and knowing well that the snowman would die anyway in 20-30 mins max, they would do something else with their time rather than hitting. Would be interesting if Snowman was more of a time challenge where everyone had to really attack to kill it within the time limit. Idea came from this run where the channel had 5 minutes left as phase 3 spawned, and literally everyone was hitting Snowman.
Fully agree with this - It will cause complaints though as people will not be happy if they find out they didn't hit quite enough. A situation in which perhaps if you reach a certain number of hits on the snowman, you'll receive perhaps a present with better odds for big ticket items is an interesting proposal as it would reward people who contribute extra on hits but not people who contribute extra on snow, as the latter already gets rewarded by present volume rather than present quality. The number would have to be large enough that it would be difficult to reach this number on multiple characters, but small enough that it's still possible to do if you're only hitting on one. I'd like to receive feedback on this suggestion as I feel it would help to remedy the main issue presented in the thread.
So instead of retaining/improving the system, you guys decided to downgrade it instead and remove the hit requirement and let people free to afk from the start instead? I wouldn't complained as much if people were required to hit a certain minimum amount of damage and go afk for the remaining time. There are people like me and you (I hope) who are constantly hitting the snowmen, from start to finish. I would be more than glad to finish off the job for the other 30 afk if they helped and contributed before they afk. 30 afk doing a minimum 300 damage each is 9000 (shit, not over 9000!), which is 90% of snowman's first body! So much time would have been saved, compared to what we have now in our hands. Again, I would like to reinstate on the point being letting people afk after doing a minimum damage versus letting people afk from the start. It literally makes no sense to choose the latter as the better choice. Unfortunately, the event is already ending today. I hope that in future events, they can be designed in a more participation-orientated manner. For now, NEW SOURCE HYPE! Happy New Year.
