Rakghoul Event Feedback - What was good, What was bad

[Chirru]

I loved this event for 1 reason, PVP!!!! Had some amazing fights in recent nights just because we were able to piss off some people while they were grinding dailies.

 

want more events please. ooo some open world pvp might be good too. Possibly, i dunno.....COMBINE THE TWO?!

 

yea..that is it. Some people just love to grieve others. I sincerely hope it happens in R.L. to them. I wonder if they still like it then?

 

Get the PK's their own servers. Then all the Grievers can Grieve themselves.

Wanted to write something more nasty..but then the post would be deleted.

[ConradLionhart]

Good

The overall event. Everything about it was fun.

 

Bad (just minor nitpicks)

1. The belt and chest rewards are from the same mission, why?

2. No bracer reward.

3. There is a reward for spreading the plague and exploding, but there is no reward for the opposite, stopping the plague or containing it.

There should have been an ongoing warfare between the rakghoul sympathizers and the anti-rakghoul heroes.

 

3.1 There should be a daily to cure 10 people of vaccine, to counter the daily that plagues 10 people.

There is one mission where you can create either a rakghoul vaccine or a rakghoul weapon to be used on the sand people. Why not give us an item with 10 charges to use on other people? That way people who do not want to be griefed can ask for a vaccine. We can also grief the griefers this way.

 

3.2 People with the plague should be taken out by containment officers not just at the hangar, but inside the fleet as well. They should be flagged so that people can engage them in PvP. Dedicated heroes can force push them before they explode.

Edited April 23, 2012 by ConradLionhart

[DarthBeefPatty]

The event also punished casual players because of one mechanic, and that is the progressive dailies thing. There are 6 pieces of armor you can get, but if takes 6 days to do all of them. You can't do them all in one or two days because the game won't let you. You have to do the first one, then come back the next day before the second one will unlock, and so forth. This doesn't sound to bad, but the first one unlocked on the 15th if the internets are correct, and it ends on the 24th. You can't do a daily on the 24th though, so you essentially had between the 15th and 23rd to do them. That is 9 days, so if you started doing dailies a tad late, or missed a couple days here and there, it is impossible to finish the set of armor. Not a problem for people who can log in and play for an hour or two every single day, but not everyone can do that. This is why casual players are hurt by this mechanic. Personally, I generally work 12ish hours a day during the week so I don't really get to play except on the weekends. At best I would have had 3 days to do the dailies.

This was by far the worst thing about the event!

[SajmanPeetee]

3. There is a reward for spreading the plague and exploding, but there is no reward for the opposite, stopping the plague or containing it.

There should have been an ongoing warfare between the rakghoul sympathizers and the anti-rakghoul heroes.

 

3.1 There should be a daily to cure 10 people of vaccine, to counter the daily that plagues 10 people.

There is one mission where you can create either a rakghoul vaccine or a rakghoul weapon. Why not give us an item with 10 charges to use on other people? That way people who do not want to be griefed can ask for a vaccine. We can also grief the griefers this way.

 

3.2 People with the plague should be taken out by containment officers not just at the hangar, but inside the fleet as well. They should be flagged so that people can engage them in PvP. Dedicated heroes can force push them before they explode.

 

Someone mentioned this in a thread a few days ago. The reason why there is no reward for avoiding the plague or stopping it is because the best way to avoid getting the plague would be to not log on. The event is there for people to participate, not to vaccinate and go hide in a small room.

 

As far as curing people and flagging those who are plagued, if you had cured me before I farmed all my DNA, I would have blown up on you. Think of the all drama that would cause given the fastest way to get DNA was through blowing up and not vaccinating.

Edited April 23, 2012 by SajmanPeetee

[Marrond]

Get the PK's their own servers. Then all the Grievers can Grieve themselves.

Wanted to write something more nasty..but then the post would be deleted.

Well there is server for "PK". It's called PVP server you know... and, I may suprise you, it's dedicated to do PVP. By the way it's funny how on most populated PVP server EU I can go on crash site, sit near Reps as being Imp and have some random chat and you guys on PvE servers got so many bloodlust.

 

 

This was by far the worst thing about the event!

 

This. I will miss my belt propably, since I started 19th @ 5pm. Maybe some petition to extend event for a day or two? There are alot people out there who didn't know what's all event about despite infos. I personally instructed during the event over 300 people how to get Crimson Rakling Pet for example. Some of you playing on most populater server EU on Imp side may recognize me (Xa'ressi)

Edited April 23, 2012 by Marrond

[Distracted]

I found the whole thing to be quite cool. Only got to play for 1 day during the last week, but I was able to farm enough DNA to get the 2 items I wanted.

[Fei-Ke]

I care about looks but not having time to get the full orange set that has no stats is not getting "hurt" or "being punished". Edited April 23, 2012 by Fei-Ke

[Cilionelle]

I really enjoyed the event... still am, really. I'm hoping to run the last mission for the belt tonight. I have the advantage of wearing light armour.

 

I will agree there are annoying little things in the way this was handled. However, and I think for me this is key, these are far outweighed by the good stuff this event brought. I'm only speaking for my server, but it has been very good.

 

The main blessing this has been is that suddenly, on a server that was seemingly devoid of life during the times I was playing (Aussie on a US PvP server), there has been some 15 Republic people on Tatooine to run around with. At one point, whilst killing a World Boss, our ops group of 20 was attacked from behind by a group of about the same size - Imperials come to claim the boss for their own. (Actually, this or something similar happened three times to me!) I've never experienced that before. It was awesome. Pitched battles around the Sarlacc, cat and mouse around the wider Dune Sea as the fight devolved into skirmishes - I couldn't ask for more.

 

I'm not an hard-core player, I have maybe 5 hours a week I can play, but I've made the time for the dailies (which only take an hour to run, depending on griefing and things like that. I've not done the Plague Bearer one for character reasons. With the extra DNA I'd been getting, I sold some and netted a goodly amount of money. I also was able to (finally) group with some 50s who helped me out getting the title, and was able to help out a little with the ops leader who needed another WB to finish his title bout. All in all, it's been a great experience.

 

The things that soured it a little (and only a drop) were, in no particular order, the long distances (I'd not got my second speeder level yet), the frustration of having to do the last mission twice in order to get the complete set of armour (I was hoping that there would be both the last pieces with the last mission) and the brevity of the event. I'd not had to worry about exploding and the fall out from PvP-flagging (to the person who mentioned a lvl50 Bounty Hunter killing a bunch of infectees, think of it as containment!) but I understand the concerned.

 

The other thing was that from a story perspective, the containment in place was really crap. Two containment officers attack when you get to your ship, with 4 or so others standing around watching. If this plague was as bad as all that, then they all should have jumped in. Infected players wandering the fleet should have been continually harassed by containment officers, with no XP or loot drops from the officers either.

 

But... those are minor issues compared to seeing groups of players from all over the galaxy come together and play. I loved it. Bring on the next one!

[Fatespuppet]

It is a good first attempt, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

 

Pros:

- series of daily missions requiring you to come back each day. Most events in other MMOs can be sped through and ignored, but this gave you a reason to come back

- didn't have to pvp to complete it, but pvp gave extra lore/dna etc.

- the news announcement that you could either ignore or investigate

 

Cons:

- no real direction after landing on Tat. The number of people asking where to go was laughable

- infected players being allowed on fleet where they could spread the virus to low level player who couldn't afford the vaccine OR go to Tat to spend the DNA

- the long quest chain started with the infected wrappings giving the same number of dna as the area quest near the ship despite taking three times as long and being spread out over four times the area

 

Suggestions:

- deincentivize the virus huddles by making all NPCs hostile, including the jawa vendor, to people with the plague. Vendors simply refuse to talk, and ALL combat NPCs attack on site(as directed by the announcements) A few deaths to champion level sentries would help prevent the spread.

- drop the price of the vaccine from med droids, and lower the event level so new players can join in

- fix the pvp flagging on pve servers so griefing of people just trying to enjoy the event can stop

- make the companion customizations tradeable and keep the random boxes, or let us buy the customs we want and make them bound

[Bafucin]

And it was not a event for the low level people. =(

 

Other then death... yay!

 

But it was a little bit fun to run around in Fleet and blow up at other low level people! KAA-BOOM! Welcome to SWTOR noob!

[Sunjammer]

I'll start by saying that while I understand the desire behind the comment, I would say that something like this by itself would possibly provide equal fodder for griefing when compared to the mechanics of the event. That said, a more functional type of interaction between those who are infected and those who are not wouldn't have been a terrible idea. It just would be something that needs to be managed well. The suggested preemptive action might sound compelling from an immersion standpoint but it has a large potential for abuse. At a bare minimum, both options (infection or containment) would need to provide equal pathways to rewards.

 

As for the talks about potential costs to your so called factions, particularly vaccine, I simply don't by it. There's been a lot of complaining about vaccine costs but these fall flat when the cost itself is so low. This talk of "Vaccine tax" is almost laughable. Vaccine is a voluntary expense for which there is literally no appreciable penalty in foregoing. The only potential cost of infection was some minor inconveniencing, after which the player has access to materials which can pay for several inoculations. This is to say nothing of individuals like myself, who distributed vaccine to those who wanted it for no cost.

Firstly thank you for taking the time to read my post: I appreciate it was a long one.

 

With regards to your first point I would agree that such a mechanic, in and of itself, could be open to abuse if not carefully balanced and controlled. However something should have been done as it is was far too easy for the Infected Faction to leave Tatooine and access the Fleet. Moreover once on the Fleet there is no mechanism that restricted or inhibited their activities in any way. Personally I think BioWare was wrong to incentivise players to attack their own Fleet but since they did they should have at least allowed the Fleet to fight back either using force or the vaccine.

 

With regards to your second point I think we'll have to agree to disagree. The credit cost of the vaccine might be relatively minor to you (and me) but to others it is more significant and either way it is still a recurring cost. I accept it can be mitigated participating in the event's quests or by begging vaccines from other players however, even if a player is willing to do either/both, there is no guarantee the number acquired will be sufficient so the choice is buy more or risk infection.

 

Additionally the argument that the benefits of infection far outweigh the Vaccine Tax keeps coming up but it is, at least to me, entirely illogical. Firstly if you are willing to become infected then you have no need of vaccine therefore you will never pay the Vaccine Tax. Secondly the cost/penalty of infection cannot be measured merely in credits: allowing my character to participate in spreading this vile plague would completely invalidate him and everything he stands for. This is something no amount of credits can offset therefore he must use the vaccine.

 

My full thoughts on the event are pending but I needed to comment on these two points. Because, frankly, I would say they are not fully thought through.

Perhaps I could have communicated them better but not thought through? Ouch!

[Cordonus]

Overall I really enjoyed the event I disliked the following:

 

1) Flagging for pvp - I understand Bioware's reasoning but until they implement functionality where a 50 can't atack a 30 even pvp flagged pvp just won't be that enjoyable (I pay on a pve server).

 

2) I really hated the randomness of the companion customization box from the jawa vendor. Yes this is due to not getting one for my main character (one for all my alts), but it seems like I could get 5 Andronikos Revel in a row and no Malavai. Quite infuriating...either the random code generator needs to be reviewed or remove the bound to legacy in the future.

 

3) The guided tour of tatooine - admittedly not a problem with my mount, but still...for those lowbies saving for a mount of tatooine ouch

 

4) No scaled world bosses - I know there is trapjaw but would have been nice to be able to summon the others and have them be level 30 ish or so and not one level 30 and 2 50s.

 

Overall though, good event.

[Felli]

I think my biggest problem with this event is that it is time limited. I'm sorry, I'm an adult and have a job. I have a life outside the game. You might call me a casual player (although, I'm sure with the time I put in on the game most casual players would disagree). Having such a quick cut-off date and on top of that, requiring you to only do one quest per day makes this event difficult for people like me. I work 10-12 hours four days a week, I can't log time on the game on days I work so I'm limited to only being on on my days off. Unfortunately, there are five items to gather and I can only grab one item per day. Not to mention that the quests are spread across Tatooine and there is a lot of time involved in travel and gathering the materials. Time I'd rather spend progressing my character, not waste on social armor. I play a knight and a smuggler, I have VERY LITTLE interest in ever wearing light armor as doing so would handicap my characters immensely.

 

Now if the rewards had scaled to class and provided heavy armor for heavy armor wearing class, medium for mediums, and light for squishies.... or even... gave you the opportunity to pick which armor level you wanted it would have been far better.

 

I'm terribly disappointed with this... maybe even more disappointed than I am with the fact that I'm STILL WAITING for my PAX East tauntaun.

[Blackardin]

I didn't really get into it, but the feedback from my guild is that it is awsome.

 

Events are great, this was well done for their first. It will get better I think.

 

Two issues:

 

Allowing the flagging of players on a PVE server is never a good thing. Any time you give the village idiot the wheel, you will crash. Giving griefers the ability to ruin someone else's fun is a bad thing.

 

Fleet. Keep it off fleet. Kill anyone infected. Put it on another planet that has an auction house so that those of us not participating do not have to continually run from the GTN terminals every time we hear someone moaning. LOL. It became worse then the old mission pop-ups LOL.

 

Other then that? Great, great job getting the first event out. People had fun.

[Avrid]

the idea of the gated content i think was actually ok, that meant if you wanted the event armor then you had to play for a bit almost everyday. i don't think that is a bad thing.

 

what needs not to happen again is to allow exploding greifers into the social hubs who stand next to either the banks or the gtn. for the next space virus or space virus clone they need to make is so you cant explode when you are near where people who may choose not participate stand to do business.

[meatlocker]

What I liked about it:

 

The new world bosses and seeing that many players in once place was fun. It brought back some of the pvp the game had been sorrily missing.

 

What I didn't like about it:

 

The actual process of infecting people was impossibly slow, sitting in one place for 30 minutes waiting to explode was boring and I never did manage to finish that daily quest. The quest line to get the pet was annoying since I had to look all across tatooine for the 12 pieces of the stardream.

[Knightmoon]

I have to agree with most players here, while the event was fun, it totally ignored the casaul/adult players. Those of us who do not have 60 hours a week to play the game unfortunately lost out on this event and I for one would like to see future events last 2 - 3 weeks as some of us do not have the leisure time as some of our younger counterparts.

 

As for the progressive quest line. I like that part but at the same time I believe that a longer Event time would solve most players issue with only being able to play on weekends or during down times. The ability to take a vacation just to complete a quest lays only with Game Devs

[AlyxDinas]

Personally I think BioWare was wrong to incentivise players to attack their own Fleet but since they did they should have at least allowed the Fleet to fight back either using force or the vaccine.

 

As stated, this is a fair notion. But it would have needed to be one considered carefully. Bare minimum, it probably couldn't penalize the infected player too much. At least compared to whatever rewards it gave to the player reporting. Imagine a system wherein an infected person is merely killed upon reporting and the reporter gets, say, 2000 credits (enough for a vaccine). Even something like this is not necessarily desirable unless a) the infected player still receives their DNA upon destruction and b) the system has a cooldown in place to prevent abuse against repeated targets.

 

Additionally the argument that the benefits of infection far outweigh the Vaccine Tax keeps coming up but it is, at least to me, entirely illogical. Firstly if you are willing to become infected then you have no need of vaccine therefore you will never pay the Vaccine Tax.

 

I'll politely suggest to you that you're not apprehending my point. For the cost of a single infection and about 10 minutes of time, a player received 5 DNA samples. When sold, each individual sample's value was nearly equal to that of a vaccine on most servers. Thus, for a minor time investment (which is no more of a time investment than anything which produces credits), a player had a means to afford numerous vaccines. Simply put, there is no appreciable cost to infection except some time. Furthermore the gains can then be sold to remove this as well.

 

Secondly the cost/penalty of infection cannot be measured merely in credits: allowing my character to participate in spreading this vile plague would completely invalidate him and everything he stands for.

 

This is not a valid concern. Perhaps it is, insofar as your sense of immersion goes but the notion that your character accidentally getting infected is the same as him deliberately letting a rakghoul bite him and then traipsing about the Fleet, is not an honest assessment of the situation. Infected? Can't bear it IC? Then respond IC. Quarantine for a time and then continue play. Or better yet, exhibit the use of the very same suspension of disbelief which allows you to accept the fact that you are sitting in front of a computer screen to begin with.

 

Your sense immersion is not dependent on anything other than how you respond to what is before you. But saying that the digital pride of your character is an actual cost in this case is really a bit much.

[Aloro]

But the things I didn't like about the Event was that it was mainly designed for Level 50s, who could do the entire event and reap all the rewards and codex unlocks, but guys like me in the 30 only could do limited ammounts and guys under 30 were out of luck.

 

Only the World Bosses were level-restricted. Any player lvl 22 or up could complete the rest of the event.

 

***

 

What I liked:

 

* Daily area quests were very organic

* I appreciated that new quests were added each day. This gave us something to look forward to and kept players returning, which in turn made the whole event feel more alive.

* I loved the alerts and the Tattooine NPCs relating to the event; the immersion was great in this regard.

* There's a nice range of rewards, heavy on cosmetic/vanity stuff.

* The plague itself was very well done; it's quite fun IMO. I like the visual effects, the duration, and the random stuns as you bend over holding your stomach. As civilization-threatening plagues go, this one was fun to get.

 

What I didn't like

 

* Progressive quests, ergh. This event, like this game, is very casual-friendly... except for the progressive quests. If you couldn't log in for any three days during the event, you couldn't get the whole set of gear, no matter how much time and effort you put in.

* Huge packs of infected players on the Fleet; look, I hung out there for a bit too, and I understand that it's convenient. But it really doesn't make sense for a continual mob of infected people to remain in one place for a week.

* 2000 credits for a cure was a problem for a lot of lowbies. After thinking about this, I suspect the price was set that high to prevent people from getting infected, popping a free cure, and getting infected again - thus making it too easy for someone else to complete the plaguebringer daily. A possible solution for the next event could be to have a vaccine that's free, lasts 30 minutes, and cannot be cancelled.

[Valkirus]

This is not a valid concern. Perhaps it is, insofar as your sense of immersion goes but the notion that your character accidentally getting infected is the same as him deliberately letting a rakghoul bite him and then traipsing about the Fleet, is not an honest assessment of the situation. Infected? Can't bear it IC? Then respond IC. Quarantine for a time and then continue play. Or better yet, exhibit the use of the very same suspension of disbelief which allows you to accept the fact that you are sitting in front of a computer screen to begin with.

 

Your sense immersion is not dependent on anything other than how you respond to what is before you. But saying that the digital pride of your character is an actual cost in this case is really a bit much.

 

From your perspective it is'nt maybe because the immersion part of the event was not that important to you. Do not assume it is'nt for a lot of players. I think the immersion destructive nature of this event in how it was designed is my top complaint about it. Immersion is very important to me in TOR and the whole concept of a bunch of players grouped up on Fleet exploding and infecting others, without any agressive actions from the Fleet security is beyond silliness.

[AlyxDinas]

From your perspective it is'nt maybe because the immersion part of the event was not that important to you.

 

Don't sit back and pretend to know my preferred mode of play, please. I remain IC as often as possible. I simply never make the mistake of assuming that game mechanics are necessarily subordinate to my own whims.

Edited April 23, 2012 by AlyxDinas

[MaverickXIV]

What I Didn't Like:

 

1. Progressive dailies.

 

What I liked:

 

1. I didn't do the event because the progressive dailies restricted me from getting the reward. The overall theme didn't seem too fun to me, so all this particular event had going for it for me was the reward. I'd be glad to take part in future events with no rewards if I like the theme, however.

Edited April 23, 2012 by MaverickXIV

[Koalachan]

What I liked about it: The event and having a reason to keep coming back and doing the dailies.

 

What I didn't like about it: The amount of QQ over every little thing in the event. Seriously.

[Hellionzzzz]

I liked the settings the dailies took place at. It seemed to mesh with the area well.

 

What I didn't like was the RNG factor on the skin unlocks with no way to trade in the duplicates for at least a partial cost of the item. Getting 15 duplicates isn't really fun when all you want is one specific skin.

 

Progressive daily idea would have been great if there was more time to do it. Maybe have the event last 2 weeks.

 

No real press about the event or how the dailies were going to function. I came back to see what 1.2 was about and had no clue what was going on until half way through the event.

[DarthOvertone]

Awesome event all around; Encouraged OPvP. Great story. Great execution. Outstanding rewards for the effort. Loved that it brought the server together and created a buzz for peeps of all levels and faction. Outstanding job BW!