I'm just going to be concise and mention some issues that I have noticed. When snowman spawns there will be a few minutes where no one can get into the snowman maps. The npc will tell you "Snowman was recently killed in this channel" in every channel. Snowman doesn't drop enough presents for everyone in the map? Not sure about this but I tried to earlier and only 2/5 of my characters got a present. Maybe it actually drops enough presents for everyone just that it lets people in right after it was killed? (not sure). You don't need to hit snowman to get a present. Pigs and foods are way too hard to farm (even at low level locations). O-pongo doesn't have an option to exchange 2 pies for 1 gelt or vice versa. edit: confirmed now that you can indeed enter snowman map right after it is killed.
I agree with all of these except for the ingredients, they're tradeable so that to me makes up for the fact that they're harder to find. You can also hoard a bunch at once which is helpful if you farm often. Hopefully #1 gets fixed fast (if it's a bug) as this event isn't very long.
I don't think the pig drops are hard to get, I have like 15 of each even doing the exchange everyday. But after yesterday's maintence, it's probably easier now.
No one likes to hear the bad stuff but i just have to get it off my chest. You don't need to hit the snowman to get a present. This is pissing me off with those people thinking they're elitist just because they 'Exist' longer in the game. Worst of all, some of them rub it in your face with sarcasm during the event like "KILL IT MY SLAVES" or "I am not afk, i just dont want to be send to the wall". The changes to the snowman goes like this: It was funny the first time but the joke isn't funny anymore. It doesn't make it easier for us to do with all those afkers around. The knockbacks are actually irritating though it was fun the first few times we experienced it. Last of all, i would like to say that MULES shouldn't exist. ------------------------- Things That Are Good: All the bugs regarding the event were fixed. The Mods listened and compromised. Love how the Snowman give exp at the end.
I wouldnt go as far as saying mules shouldnt be allowed to enter Snowman maps. However, Id be A-OK with a limit to how many mules are allowed in the snowman map. Def no more than 5 should be allowed in. I know some players who have 10+ and IMO it completely ruins the event. Not only do you have an entire channel of AFK mules doing nothing, but they're gaining access to higher chances of collecting some of the really rare items like the red socks. It makes items that normally are very rare and sought after, and lessens their value and rarity.
I do agree that it is just plain annoying having loads of afking mules in the map. But the problem with not allowing more than a certain number is the implementation of it. I think that it is hard to realize without hurting 'innocent' players. Maybe a higher lvl requirement or whatnot could help.
You're right, i dont think there's any actual means of limiting a single person's mule accounts from entering event maps. A higher level req would indeed help with this, but then you have an issue that affects newer players, and I'm not for that in any way what so ever.
A suggestion actually came by with the other players in the midst of hitting the snowman and complaining about the afkers. In order to get the gift, you must register a specific amount of snowballs thrown at the snowman or damage done to the snowman. Which i thought to myself, "That sounds pretty good!".
We've done this in the past and it really doesn't make the situation better. Instead of afking from the beginning, they will land x amount of hits required on the boss and then move back to afking. At the same time if we do that, we'd have to make the server place the present box in everyone's inventory rather than dropping it, which isn't something we wanted to do for this year's Christmas event. As for optimizing this event, it's really hard with the current source we're running on as it's horribly limited and because of this we aren't able to have the event the way we want it to. For this reason the event is very simplistic, and there isn't too much we can do about it at this time.
Has anyone been experiencing dcs ever since the snowman was patched to do the knockback damage? Now I'm dcing from snowman all the time and it sucks considering I'm actually attacking the snowman and I don't bring any mules along..
Can you just make the nevermelting snow untradeable? I'm pretty sure this will lessen the number of mules around? Genuine players will get to participate too
I personally hated when the sunshine for Anniversary was untradeable. It leaves non-farming classes at a severe disadvantage, I wasn't able to farm enough to join most of the runs when I was actively trying on my NL. What does it matter if there's alts joining in too? Or if someone afks during it? You're still getting a present. The snowman is still being killed, regularly. It's an event meant to have fun. So far I haven't yet heard of someone being unable to join in the event because there's someone with an alt. While I don't like the idea of people having 10+ alts all at once, I don't like the idea of harming players who legitimately just want to participate in the event on multiple main, actually played characters. Not everyone has just one single main account/main character. In the end, you can't change human behavior. If you make it so people need to hit a certain amount of times, people will hit those x amount of times and afk again. If you make presents only enter inventory by hitting, they'll still do that - hit a few times, afk. If we keep it as it is, people will pay the entry fee to join and afk. If someone wants to afk, they will find a way, regardless of what we do. You can't change human behavior. We made Sunshine untradeable during the Anniversary event, and it took hours for the tree to go off once. It was only until the last couple days did it increase. With the drop rate being at a reasonable level, you hinder non-mages in their collecting attempts. If we keep it tradeable and introduce an entry fee (which we have now), we have people who are contributing to the collective amount of snow, whether they contribute to attacking or not. I much rather it be this way than like it was during Anniversary.
I'm afraid the answer to this question is simply no, it is not possible for us to make snow untradeable at this time. As far as I'm aware the item's tradeability property is defined in the files we use, and thus to change this it would require players to update their files mid event which from experience they just won't. In theory it could be something to consider for next year, but seeing that we should be on the new source next year, I'm not even sure if we'll have a similar kind of event at that time.
Imo the last anniversary was the best event on this server so far, if you were unable to farm you could easily do jump quest which rewarded you with enough sunshine to get inside twice. The fact that the tree wouldnt fill up for a few hours just made this event even better. I have no idea why events like these should fill up every 30min/1hour it seems like way too much imo. I don't really mind that some people are bringing a lot of characters to get more presents than others. I do however think it is wrong that people who do less gets more? Every time I have been to one of these snowmans so far there has been about 5-10 people attacking while the rest is just standing back till the presents drop. Why do you hit then if you are so pissed at people leeching just leech yourself? because I want to use this character at some other place, not hitting will just waste even more of my time. You don't have to ban these people from bringing all their chars to every snowman just make it so that they actually have to work equal amount on each character to get the present, not just walking their mules in and out of a map for free rewards, unless everyone gets to do that (like anniversary). Maybe you cant change human behavior but you could indeed make it so that people would not get presents for being afk. What have we tried in the past? We tried doing 10atks to get present, it didnt work people still afkd after they hit 10times... "sorry guys its just human behavior". Seriously 10atks each for 50 people is like 1.25% of snowmans last form hp. I don't know if it ever came to your mind that maybe the 10 atk limit was too low? and if it did then maybe you should tell us about why a higher attack limit to get presents would not work rather than telling us about human behavior.
Some options we may potentially be willing to consider (although I've not yet discussed this with other staff members yet a so don't know if I'm missing something obvious) are: - Lowering the drop rate of Nevermelting Snow - Decreasing the time limit that you have to kill the snowman within. These could have the potential to force players that usually don't partake in killing to actually help since there may be a chance of not killing in time. I do agree with the fact the snowblower is going off more than it probably should be as well.
Could possibly make the amount of gifts rewarded based on how much you are hitting the snowman. (If you hit all the time you get for example 5 presents, while if you afk you get none) and then make it so youd need to turn in 4 presents or something for a reward. That way people who work hard will get more rewards than people who afk, and people will probably stick to 1 or 2 characters since bringing any more wouldnt benefit you with this system. Dont see the event being changed now, but it could always be an idea for a future event =}
If you make it so people need to hit a certain amount of times in order to receive gifts, then I have no complaints if they did and afk. Why? Because there is a big difference between that and what we are experiencing now; they contributed vs they did not contribute anything at all. I don't care even if it's just 20 or 30 hits, as long as they participated and helped out. What we are experiencing now is the worst case scenario. People would just come in and afk at the corners, not giving one damn about what's happening on the other side of the screen. Once snowman is dead, suddenly they are no longer afk and walk past you and loot the gift boxes as if they deserve and are entitled to it. How is that even fair? They contribute nothing, yet they are able to salvage the reward. Also, hearing you repeatedly say "you can't change human behaviour" is rather disappointing. It's as if you just give in and don't bother to come up with a better system that would improve the situation.
