Improving the Halloween Event

[mechahamham]

As I've mentioned in other threads, I don't feel like we have the option of letting the game stagnate in any way. We must constantly be looking for ways to improve it. Happily, the Halloween event provides a huge surface area for improvement despite being the most-loved event of the year.

Here are my suggestions for improving the event and easing pain points that have come up over the years:

 

Spin up extra instances of Peregrine Island

 

Alternately or additionally, consider setting a hard-cap of 50 players in the zone as already exists in some other zones.

 

I prefer to solo my Trick-or-Treating or duo with a friend. I typically don't join the league unless I'm on a character that is absolutely 'team only'. I think I'm in the minority there.

 

A lot of players want only the badges or Prismatic Aether awards for defeating the Halloween EBs. Or they want the powerlevelling that the inevitable Murder Motel Trick-or-Treating league attracts. Regardless, one full league of players hammering a mapserver instance to spawn as many enemies as possible seems to be the absolute limit before zone performance goes to the Hospital. When a second league starts in Peregrine or an invasion event of any kind starts, the zone drops down below 'Playable' and into unpleasant territory. For those with missions in Peregrine who don't want to participate in the Holiday event, it can be extra frustrating. Having a 'pressure relief' instance of the zone always available would alleviate some of this frustration.

 

Difficulty: My guess is that spin-up population and zone caps are both one-item config changes, but I have nothing to substantiate that. So *probably* pretty easy.

 

Additionally, consider some stronger AFK checking in Peregrine. While the league is not really for me, people who want to join it often can't due to people going AFK in the Motel parking lot to soak up passive exp. That would obviously be more work.

Consider 'Night Only' zone instances rather than the off-on split.

 

One of my favorite things to see in the game is sunset against the War Walls. That said, when it comes to the Halloween Event, I want it to be midnight through the entirety of September, October, and November. Obviously, I'm not going to get that wish. 14 days of total darkness is... lacking... lacking in the extreme for me. I want at least a whole month.

 

That's problematic because there are people who'd be just as happy if the Eternal Night thing just didn't happen at all. Or the long night actually affects their mood negatively rather than positively.

 

Rather than the two-week split compromise, let me suggest having multiple instances of each zone, one with Eternal Night activated for the entire duration of the event for weirdos like me, and then one with the normal Day/Night cycle. Zoning into 'Rikti War Zone (Eternal Night)' would suit me just fine.

 

Difficulty: Easy to medium. I suspect that this is again, only configuration changes, but I could certainly be wrong. In the extreme, this might require different zone definitions.

Haunt Kallisti Wharf like a Romero movie:

 

Trick or Treating can only spawn so many Halloween-themed enemies. The Zombie Apocalypse and Deadly Apocalypse certainly add some more, but we have a large, tragically under-utilized zone that's just ASKING for 24/7 Monster Mashing.

 

Have each of the present/time capsule spawn locations in Kallisti cause invasion zombies or banner enemies to spawn. For bonus points, have them rarely spawn the Trick-or-Treat EBs as well!

 

Difficulty: Medium-to-hard. This doesn't require any new spawn definitions, but does require changes to the existing spawns. It'd probably be as much work again if not moreso as the addition of the Time Capsule event.

Award Monstrous or Prismatic Aether for defeat-all-ing Dr. Kane's House of Horrors

 

One of the things that makes me sad is when players speed through fun content. When I build Dr. Kane's teams, I encourage the team to fight through the trial rather than speeding to the objectives. This usually works, but has more than once given me a reason to use the /playernote feature.

 

With the advent of Monstrous Aether drops, we discovered that it was an effective incentive to complete under-played content. Poor Scrapyard is STILL walking with a limp.

 

Thus, I'd like to propose that defeating every monster in Dr. Kane's House of Horrors award some Monstrous Aether or even a Prismatic Aether to the team members. This increases the amount of time players spend on the trial, increases the number of players participating, and keeps them coming back for more.

 

Difficulty: Medium-hard: My understanding of the way special drops work in missions is that they depend on hidden and/or temporary badge flags. This would require something along those lines, possibly requiring code changes.

Make Halloween EBs (or Trick-or-Treating in general) respect notoriety settings

 

This has been one of my long-lasting pain-points. Trick-or-Treat spawns can not difficult enough or, especially with the addition of the EBs, too difficult on some low-damage characters. The only way to adjust the difficulty of the spawns is to recruit for a team and, after a point, there's only downwards adjustment in difficulty. Once you get four or five players over level 20, the team synergy takes over and even the EBs simply turn into paste.

 

Alternately, let Null disable Halloween EB spawns for those characters that simply can't handle them.

 

Difficulty: Medium-hard. This seems like it'd actually require code changes. It'd be simple conditional logic, but I don't know what the compile/deploy process is like.

 

Allow players to visit random Halloween-themed Bases

 

I ADORE haunted houses! I am delighted to the point of delirium that our super-talented base-building community goes all out to create and hold contests for haunted house bases.

 

Kudos to all of you who do so!

 

I try to visit all of these that I can find, but it occurs that there are many I'm missing simply because I don't read the right threads here on the forums. (I only this last month found out about the Base Registry spreadsheet on Google Docs. How did I miss that for so long?!)

 

If I'm missing them when I actively seek them out, it occurs that they could be made more accessible in general.

 

Thus, I'd like to propose an in-game feature to send players to a random Haunted House base. When players click on the base portal, in addition to the usual list of bases and the option to enter a code, they could also be presented with an option to visit a random Haunted House submitted by its builder.

 

Difficulty: Hard. This would require at least a new database table and two new subsystems, a registry and a randomizer for the base portal, all of which would require some pretty serious testing. The upshot of this is that the idea of an in-game base registry would be pretty useful in general and not just for Halloween. Alternately, this could be a temporary power that brings up a popmenu curated by the GM staff or even forum volunteers. This takes work off the the developers, but places it on to others for more limited functionality

If you have suggestions to make the event less onerous or more fun, please don't hesitate to share them!

 

I'd like to wish all of you a Happy Halloween!

[Rudra]

13 minutes ago, mechahamham said:

Spin up extra instances of Peregrine Island

 

Alternately or additionally, consider setting a hard-cap of 50 players in the zone as already exists in some other zones.

 

I prefer to solo my Trick-or-Treating or duo with a friend.

Go to another zone then. Khallisti Wharf for example.

 

15 minutes ago, mechahamham said:

Haunt Kallisti Wharf like a Romero movie:

 

Trick or Treating can only spawn so many Halloween-themed enemies. The Zombie Apocalypse and Deadly Apocalypse certainly add some more, but we have a large, tragically under-utilized zone that's just ASKING for 24/7 Monster Mashing.

 

Have each of the present/time capsule spawn locations in Kallisti cause invasion zombies or banner enemies to spawn. For bonus points, have them rarely spawn the Trick-or-Treat EBs as well!

Just do your trick-or-treating there. The doors are perfectly functional for it.

 

17 minutes ago, mechahamham said:

Award Monstrous or Prismatic Aether for defeat-all-ing Dr. Kane's House of Horrors

 

One of the things that makes me sad is when players speed through fun content. When I build Dr. Kane's teams, I encourage the team to fight through the trial rather than speeding to the objectives. This usually works, but has more than once given me a reason to use the /playernote feature.

 

With the advent of Monstrous Aether drops, we discovered that it was an effective incentive to complete under-played content. Poor Scrapyard is STILL walking with a limp.

 

Thus, I'd like to propose that defeating every monster in Dr. Kane's House of Horrors award some Monstrous Aether or even a Prismatic Aether to the team members. This increases the amount of time players spend on the trial, increases the number of players participating, and keeps them coming back for more.

No.

 

17 minutes ago, mechahamham said:

Alternately, let Null disable Halloween EB spawns for those characters that simply can't handle them.

Or run away. That works too. Or call for help. That also works too.

[Jacktar]

45 minutes ago, mechahamham said:

 

Consider 'Night Only' zone instances rather than the off-on split.

 

One of my favorite things to see in the game is sunset against the War Walls. That said, when it comes to the Halloween Event, I want it to be midnight through the entirety of September, October, and November. Obviously, I'm not going to get that wish. 14 days of total darkness is... lacking... lacking in the extreme for me. I want at least a whole month.

 

That's problematic because there are people who'd be just as happy if the Eternal Night thing just didn't happen at all. Or the long night actually affects their mood negatively rather than positively.

 

Rather than the two-week split compromise, let me suggest having multiple instances of each zone, one with Eternal Night activated for the entire duration of the event for weirdos like me, and then one with the normal Day/Night cycle. Zoning into 'Rikti War Zone (Eternal Night)' would suit me just fine.

 

Hi, a bit confused as you seem to say you want a midnight clock state for three months but also talk about 14 days. In any case and for your info I asked for help a couple of weeks ago (see forum Help section and thread Night into day) because my old eyes were having extreme difficulty playing during dark hours and in dark zones. Our fantastic modder then immediately set to work and produced a mod that replaces every zone sky with a permanent daylight overlay. What a fantastic difference just having an always lit game to play in. That mod is available in the modder menu. All hail to Michiyo for their work and help.

Maybe you could ask for a reverse mod to mine giving you a way to have your all the time night? As Michiyo explained it does need a lot of work but you could ask. (lol sorry Michiyo 🥴) Oh and yes this also stays light during events.

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, mechahamham said:

A lot of players want only the badges or Prismatic Aether awards for defeating the Halloween EBs. Or they want the powerlevelling that the inevitable Murder Motel Trick-or-Treating league attracts.

Peregrine Island is the 'go to' location for the 'murder motel league' because it's impossible to level out of it; in any other zone, once you ding past the zone level range, you become unable to get a response when knocking on doors. Kallisti Wharf has the same lack of a level cap that PI does, but its architecture, while objectively better than the other blueside zones, does not have a tight door cluster like the 'murder motel' buildings do. There is a 'murder motel' building in Dark Astoria as well, but I don't think the Halloween event extends there; if trick-or-treating were enabled in Dark Astoria, it would create a second focus point for ToT leagues that would also be free of the risk of outleveling; unfortunately, the building is considerably further away from the hospital than the one in PI is, so it would probably attract many fewer people (particularly the people who bring out low-level characters solely to take advantage of the firehose of XP for leveling, who would otherwise encounter problems getting back from the hospital to the 'murder motel' after defeat), which would make adding DA to the ToT event much less attractive as a strategy to pull people away from the PI .

[Glacier Peak]

48 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

 Kallisti Wharf has the same lack of a level cap that PI does, but its architecture, while objectively better than the other blueside zones, does not have a tight door cluster like the 'murder motel' buildings do.

Certainly agree with you on the comparison, but if a player/league tires of the overcrowded murder motel in Peregrine Island or the lag; Kallisti Wharf does have a building that gives a decent comparable if a player/league is okay with 14 doors instead of 17.

 

Kallisti Wharf: Located at [5673.7 50.4 5155.2], this building has 14 doors all within 30-60 yards (60-120ft) of each other. 

Spoiler

[mechahamham]

6 hours ago, Jacktar said:

Hi, a bit confused as you seem to say you want a midnight clock state for three months but also talk about 14 days.

 

Usually, the way the event is jigged is that two weeks of the event have the Eternal Night setting and the other two weeks have the day/night cycle as normal. My understanding is that this is a compromise for the sake people who have difficulty with in-game darkness.

 

I'd personally prefer the entire 4 weeks of the event, or longer, to be 'Eternal Night'.

[lemming]

5 minutes ago, mechahamham said:

I'd personally prefer the entire 4 weeks of the event, or longer, to be 'Eternal Night'.

No time to look up the thread, but recently a player was requesting eternal day.    iirc, @Michiyo managed to make Atlas daytime the default via CohMod.   I don't know the specifics, but something similar could possibly work for those who want night the whole time.

Edited September 22 by lemming

[Jacktar]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

No time to look up the thread, but recently a player was requesting eternal day.    iirc, @Michiyo managed to make Atlas daytime the default via CohMod.   I don't know the specifics, but something similar could possibly work for those who want night the whole time.

See above post and pointer to my cry for help post a couple of weeks ago 😎🧛🏻‍♂️

[Techwright]

On 9/22/2024 at 1:09 PM, Jacktar said:

See above post and pointer to my cry for help post a couple of weeks ago 😎🧛🏻‍♂️

Additionally there are players like myself who are actually affected by the long dark, both in the real world and in the game.  We actually had a forum chat about this years back, though I don't recall a lot of details other than the devs stating their understanding of the issue and limiting the amount of "night" during the event.

 

On 9/22/2024 at 10:38 AM, Glacier Peak said:

Certainly agree with you on the comparison, but if a player/league tires of the overcrowded murder motel in Peregrine Island or the lag; Kallisti Wharf does have a building that gives a decent comparable if a player/league is okay with 14 doors instead of 17.

 

Kallisti Wharf: Located at [5673.7 50.4 5155.2], this building has 14 doors all within 30-60 yards (60-120ft) of each other. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Remind me please:  what triggers Jack and Eochai in P.I during October?  Is it a trigger that works anywhere, in this case Kallisti Wharf?  Because tackling them is a second thing the "murder motel" crew do in PI.

[Rudra]

4 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Remind me please:  what triggers Jack and Eochai in P.I during October?  Is it a trigger that works anywhere, in this case Kallisti Wharf?  Because tackling them is a second thing the "murder motel" crew do in PI.

If you are talking about the Halloween versions? I was under the impression that when one of them is killed in a zone, another is spawned in another. Don't know if that is true, but it is what I was told.

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

Remind me please:  what triggers Jack and Eochai in P.I during October?  Is it a trigger that works anywhere, in this case Kallisti Wharf?  Because tackling them is a second thing the "murder motel" crew do in PI.

They're spawning in every zone where the event takes place, including Kallisti Wharf. The event spawns them, even without player intervention, but it's important to clear spawns so that it resets the spawn. 

[Shin Magmus]

I say we let the game stagnate and don't improve it.  I like ToT Leagues and Banners!