Rakghoul Event Feedback - What was good, What was bad

[Rhizoprionodon]

Yeah, it would be nice to leave the vendor around a couple of days so that players who don't read the forums regularly don't lose out on all their DNA.

[Rhydler]

Quickstats

• Containment Officer Title x 5 (3 Republic and 2 Imperial)
  
• Level 26 Jedi Shadow was my lowest level Containment Officer (all the others were at or near max level)
  
• All titles were gained on PVP servers (Fatman being one of them)
  
• Suffered through all of WoW's lame world events, including lagging through the opening of Ahn'Qiraj at 1 frame per 60 seconds after failed attempts due to server crashes, as well as the completely laughable "invasions" of mobs 40 levels below you (I'm shakin' in my boots. Promise.)
  

 

Good

• Scaling mobs to player level. Small quibble: the minimum mob level was 27, and not a true scale to level. It was challenging to down the level 27 elite summons with my little level 24 Jedi Shadow.
• Promoted community. Fortunately, between the legacy bonuses and the server community, I would usually get the dailies done without an issue. I did get unsolicited help from the opposite faction too, which was nice. (Although I did get ganked a few times so Iet's not make the Fatman sound like some sort of mecca of Imperial and Republic harmony.) And it was fun to see a massive group of people gathering in an Op group to take the vendors on the final night of the event. Also helped separate out the good community sites that put up information quickly (like Dulfy/mmo-mechanics) and the slow as molasses ones (Darth Hater)
  
• Story. It was a nice there was a bit of humor mixed in with the overall tragedy. Introducing the event in the game was also quite welcome, rather than the event explained through the website and dev posts.
  
• Rewards felt meaningful, but not required. Well, aside from the non-augmented, light armor only bit.
  

 

Needs Improvement

• Conclusion of the event wasn't announced in game/fleet by the PSAs. The progress of the containment should've been announced in fleet so it would've felt like there was more dynamic and also it would've been the most efficient way to let people know that the event was wrapping up.
  
• No catch up mechanism for the social armor set. Gating the dailies was a good way to ensure a consistent population, but it's not really a feel good mechanic for your more casual playerbase. There should be some sort of catch up mechanic built in for people to at least get the chest piece with a certain amount of effort, given the unify to chest option. That way casual players can get the flavor with unify to chest piece, but only the people that took the time to do all the dailies get the full set.
  
• No in-game memorial/lore object commemorating the event. There might be one, but as of the writing of this on 4/24 there haven't been reports of one. There should be some sort of memorial in game that commemorates the event. In the game universe, this would be a massive tragedy, so there should be some sort of memorial somewhere to the victims. Ideally it would be another lore object, so that newer players that come to the game see the history of the world events that are happening in game.
  

 

Suggestions

1. Put the set rewards on a currency only awarded from the daily so you aren't overtly punishing casuals or time limited people. This seems to be a blind spot with the design team, see also: the former 3 medal minimum in pvp to get rewards and backfill players.
   
2. No randomized bop/bol items and bags. Ever. Again, your design team seems to have not learned from the PvP bag debacle. For the randomized companion customizations, make them (random and BOE), OR (purchase and BOL). I'm not just whining about it, because I was lucky and got all 8 of them (and 4 extra Tharans, 3 Elaras and 2 Kiras). This is even worse since it's a limited time event with a currency that was gained primarily by people in fleet pressing the spacebar every 10 minutes.
   

 

Conclusion

Overall it was a very good first world event, and I'm looking forward to more from the events team. But please, no more idiotic randomized bag rewards that are bound to your character/legacy. There's good random and frustrating random in game design. Stop repeating the latter.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Rhydler

[ZeroMasta]

Thank you bioware for making the event short as hell, when I finally got around to lv 30 today. I log in with my dna samples ready to turn in and npc is gone. Should've atleast kept the npc for a cple extras days for lowbies like me.

[DalrisThane]

Deleted. No point. Everyone is TLDR these days. +See Sig. Edited March 31, 2013 by DalrisThane

[RenegadeCommando]

I had an idea! add a lone Containment guy who buys your DNA! Makes it worth it yet minus the exclusives. Buy for credits mind

[Spankyjnco]

I like that every post about the event, even if not even relevant to this topic, is being sent to here.. awesome.

 

We really do have the best customer support on these forums... really.

[Aloro]

Is it really true that if you didn't start on day one you couldn't do the all the armor quests?

 

There were five quests to get six pieces of Containment Officer gear. You had to complete the prereq at least one day before starting the gear quests, and you had to complete each gear quest at least one day before the next. A player who did not log on at least seven days during the event could thus not have obtained all the gear. The event ran for nine days, so you could skip playing for two days and still get the gear. If you skipped three or more days, you could not get the whole gear set.

 

I definitely appreciate the effect this had on population, driving people to come back every day. It isn't however very casual-friendly.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Aloro

[Alexi_son]

It is also completely fubar for a mechanic given the poor communication about the event and a large amount of people who primarily play on the weekends.

 

It COMPLETELY eliminated any chance for folks who play on average Thursday-Sunday from finishing the quest chain, and that is a p*** poor design as far as I'm concerned. It makes me feel like BW / EA is catering to the folks who play daily and not the heavy weekend folks, regardless of hours played per week overall.

 

It was poorly communicated to the community (we don't all hover on the forums), and then it was removed within 3 or 4 days of a LOT of folks realizing it was going on.

 

I don't like the mechanic of the armor quests, and I don't like how quickly it was cancelled.

[RickRedOne]

I would have liked to see some story line ending to the event. Not it just going away. At least news casts about how the plague was contained or something. Edited April 24, 2012 by RickRedOne

[DarthSabreth]

I was excited to finally see a dynamic event happen in the game, something outside the norm, but I think this event could have been done a lot better and hopefully feedback will make future events more fun.

 

What I liked about it:

I enjoyed the fact that there WAS an event. Getting together with guildies and taking down the bosses on Tattooine was a lot of fun. The outbreak virus mechanic was pretty cool except for one major exploit which I will cover in the BAD section. I would have liked to see this be something more than just a way to slip in yet more dailies, but overall it was cool.

 

What I didn't like about it:

This event was a wet dream for griefers, and outright punished the more casual players.

 

On the griefing side, we have a virus that can be used to flag people for PvP even if they don't want to PvP, plus bosses that can be force taunted then run off, resetting them on an entire group. At one point I was in a group doing the patient zero guy by the sarlac pitt and there was a couple assassins who kept force taunting then force speeding past some point and instantly resetting the boss so we had to summon him again. He kept doing this over and over and we finally managed to defeat the boss only because we had like 4 tanks who kept force taunting as much as possible. It was very annoying and made the fight not a lot of fun.

 

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.

 

I'm not whining about not getting the armor, though I am very disappointed, but instead i'm just trying to point out how it is a bad mechanic that punished casual players, whom I bet are a large portion of the player base.

 

On a side note about special event rewards in the future -- If you are going to do color crystals again please consider adding some that are NOT the horribly ugly black core ones. Not everyone likes those, and since those were the major rewards a lot of us felt that the event rewards were pretty useless. I really just did the event to do the event.

 

I loved every part of it. also i like the RP value of the plague continueing after the event ended.

[Stellin]

Honestly...I loved every single part of it. Seriously...every part. Especially the open PvP that occurred. I didn't even get the entire containment suit (because of the progression daily)....but guess what?? Oh well....that's how the cookie crumbles.However...the Jawa trader needed to stay a bit longer. Seriously....about 3 days longer.

[Nullmatrix]

I thought it was great due to personal issue i wish i had more than one day to play this event. If i knew ingame that it was ending i would have changed my schedule

[bullk]

Overall i found the event enjoyable, I had a lot of fun with the infection and love that its still spreading after the event finished. I'm on a pvp server so the flagging bug didn't affect anything

 

The biggest failure for me was the lack of communication in game about the event

we had the news terminals which say stay tuned for updates....but there were none

when i first got to the planet I had to exit the game to look online in order to find out I needed to be in the dune sea to start this quest. I didn't notice the TV at all outside the spaceport at all, not that it would have told me anything about the quests

Also the fact that the event just disappeared instead of having some sort of a conclusion put into place was quite crappy

[DarthDemens]

Good:

1) Neat Rewards. I like the radioactive green crystals, the Rakling mini-pets are sweet, the Social Gear looks pretty awesome, and seeing the Infected Companions was just cool.

2) New mechanics. The plague was a cool idea, the mechanics were fun, and adding the containment officers that attacked me in my hanger just made it feel more 'real'.

3) Requires some Dedication. I like the progressively unlocking series of quests for the Social Armor. It made it actually feel like a week long event instead of a single-day one.

 

Bad:

1) Plague flagging for PVP. I'll assume this is a bug that will be fixed in the next iteration and not cover it again.

2)Event time too short for casuals to achieve all rewards. This was effectively a 9 day event that required 6 days of participation to get the full rewards. 2/3 of the time is probably too much for casual players. In the future, I would recommend that any event last at least twice as long as the maximum number of days required to achieve all rewards. Additionally, why start the event on a Sunday? That's an evening and a full day of higher population that you missed out on roping into the event. Any future events lasting longer than a single day should probably cover at least 2 weekends.

3) RNG rewards need to be removed from anything, through one way or another. Despite spending over 1000 DNA samples on Infected Companion Customizations, I still was unable to obtain a full set due to bad luck. The options here are fairly varied.

1. Rather than selling a box that gives a random, allow each customization to be purchased individually. Even at a higher price than the random box. 20 DNA for a box, or 40 for a specific.
   
2. Allow them to be freely tradable between characters to let players cover each other's bad luck
   
3. Offer a "Complete Set" box that awards one of each. This also could be offered at a higher price than simply buying the random reward box.
   
4. Make the customizations Unique, so I can't get a duplicate unless I specifically mail one to another character.
   
5. Make rewards specific to the character opening the box. If I open on an Agent, I get Vector. If I open on a Knight, I get Kira. Yes, this causes issues with planning for future alts, but allows me to have some control over the reward I receive.
   

4) World Bosses need to not be tauntable by people outside the ops group once tagged by an Op. Minor issue on PvP servers and the Outlaw's Den boss, since the option is there to destroy your griefer. More annoying on PvE servers.

 

The most important thing to consider is not how the event is taken at the time it is running, but how it will be remembered by players afterwards. For this event, I'm not going to remember the fun of hunting down world bosses with my guild. I'm not going to remember culling the infected from the crash site and destroying infected sand people. What I'm going to remember is that despite opening 50 of the customization boxes, I wound up with 5 customizations that I will actually use.

[Iamsamsara]

I thought the event was great. The progressive missions weren't insurmountable as people would lead us to belive, it took all of 5 minutes to complete each of them, three of the days those were the only 5 minutes I logged in to the game as I started the dailies late myself and wante the full set.

 

I can appreciate those who had bugged codex achievments being upset, I was one of the lucky ones who got credit for each kill on the first go round.

 

Those complaining about lack of direction from Bioware.....really guys? If you want you hand held through every step of the way find another Genre. This event brought the community together to figure out all the parts, I found enough of the guides out there by day 3 to figure it all out, and what little I needed clarifiaction on people in /1 chat on Tat were happy to help with.

 

The level 50 Bosses I guess could be viewed as restrictive, although my son was able to pug his way into all of them on his lvl 27, so again a moot point. I had low levels in ops group for each of the three WB kills I was on.

 

All in all I really enjoyed this, got the title, a couple crystals for myslef, and a couple to sell on the GTN now that the event is closed. The comp boxes worked fine for me, I got 7/8 and only opened 7 boxes.

[Kryptonson]

So is this going to happen again, a yearly or maybe every few months thing?

[DarthDemens]

So is this going to happen again, a yearly or maybe every few months thing?

 

Nobody knows. While they did hint that the vendor might be returning, that doesn't necessarily mean a repeat of the event.

[Drakkip]

The idea I thought was good. The implementation I thought was bad. The implementation and the mechanics of the event were very poorly thought out imo.

 

It lead to a large group of people huddled around the cargo hold access waiting to explode for DNA and get rez'd rinse and repeat.

[Eegore]

Good = Only one planet and I could get away from everything.

 

Bad = Screwed if you could not afford vaccine.

 

 

I dont like random, or World events, but as long as I do not have to participate its fine.

[HumanSheild]

my second mmo. This event by far was freakin stupid as hell. This is the stupid crap you gamers get excited about these days? So looking foward to gw2. Ive never played the first one and it looks 100 times better then this game offers. If you gamers wana settle for crap go play d3

[Saseav]

The event was amazing, and some on my server have made a 'meme' of it.

Onaren is waiting to give you the quest in Anchorhead.

I loved the dailys, i was fine with finally seeing some open world pvp rather then ilum. i loved we were given the opportunity to revisit old places etc.

[Saseav]

The idea I thought was good. The implementation I thought was bad. The implementation and the mechanics of the event were very poorly thought out imo.

 

It lead to a large group of people huddled around the cargo hold access waiting to explode for DNA and get rez'd rinse and repeat.

 

to be fair, they'd otherwise be around the bounty board waiting for the WZ to pop.

[patchew]

loved it, personally. i wouldnt have had daily quests linked to it or anything.

i was helping some friends through an instance and we got to last boss and i blew up when fighting the last boss and died. they wiped. we all laughed our socks off and had a grand time of it.

more of this stuff but dont make it give rewards with game content.

just fun stuff to do with no real rewards.