Feedback request from James Ohlen - In-game events

[djlowballer]

On the latest event:

 

Enjoyed

 

• atmosohere that made this feel like global event
  
• World boss fights
  
• very cool quest chains
  
• limited run titles and items
  
• Plague effects were hilarious
  

 

In the future I would like to see many more events such as the Rakghoul Plagues but taken to a more extreme level. It would be very cool if there were events where server failure led to the world being permanently changed.

[DalrisThane]

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

[TziganeNZ]

I thought it was great, having something unexpected come up in the game. Although I chose not to participate directly, I had fun watching out for the infected and trying to avoid them (as you would in a plague outbreak!).

 

However, being able to be involuntarily flagged for PvP on a PvE server was/is plain wrong. And putting a boss in an open-world PvP area is also no good for PvEers (non-PvPers). Forcing people into a playstyle they don't want is not right. If this was a way for the devs to try to promote PvP to those who don't care for it, it was a very misguided attempt.

[Hendar]

I didn't really get to try it out, since I have been so busy RL but I would have liked to, I think it's a nice touch. It seemed like fun and the rewards are an added bonus. Doing these now and then would be great, I'd like to see some sort of holiday event with some casual mini-games. It would be a nice touch, could do something that involves the Hutts so both sides can participate.

[Korikana]

I didn't get to try the event out as i was forced to re-roll from a dead server (28 people on the Imperial Fleet at 21:00 (I have 2x50's and a level 44 with a legacy level of 26))

 

I would like to see events after server issues have been sorted, merges/transfers would be superb and would actually motivate me to continue playing.

 

Events are good but try to limit the impact that they have on the fleet just in-case people don't want to participate.

 

otherwise GJ and keep it up, just PLEASE sort server transfers as a priority

[Ivy_Blackrose]

the event was overall well done and well played. the only thing was some of the aspects of it werent very well advertised like the quest tracking the origin, I found it out of pure luck, also didnt find out about the dailies in time to get a full set of armor.

 

what i did NOT like was the economical exploitation caused by the buying and selling of rhazghoul DNA a group of about 20 individuals did nothing but sit on fleet all day blowing themselves up over and over to get dna and then selling it for exploited prices I think there could have been a better way to do that

[tanksdomain]

James, I must say that I loved the little event. With that being said now, I must agree with some of my fellow game players here. What I did not like about this event is the short life it had, and the lack of notice we had of it. I like the grandfathering of the different daily's coming into it, it was a good idea, though at the end, when I was finally able to sit down and really play, a few of them were not available for me to do (IE: I realized that there was a gear set collection to collect, but I could not get the chest piece cause I could not do hybrid dna daily).

 

Plus, I must make a small complaint with customer service on this event. I spent over 2 hours trying to figure out how to aquire the "[daily] hybrid dna" quest to get the chest piece of the containment officer gear set, consulting with online game guides, swtor forums, and fellow ingame players, coming up with nothing. I finally as for ingame help from customer service and the only thing that they could say is "we can't give out help". Though I do realize my request more than likely did look like a request for some sort of hint, my primary concern was that there was some bug in the quest giving code. Other than that, the event was awesome. Love the green-black saber crystal that my jedi is rocking right now!

[Nyjin]

Something more light-hearted, to balance the mood. This game doesn't have enough humor, at times.

 

-A Galaxy-wide hunt for wild-creatures?

-A huge gaming (Pazaak, Sabaac, etc.) event on Nar Shaddaa/City-worlds?

 

And, on the more serious note, maybe create new zones that allow access to the opposite factions' core planets? (New zones that wouldn't interfere with the ones already present, so no griefing).

 

There IS a war going on, you know. In-game events that emphasize this would be great, since we don't have true world PVP at the moment.

[Harlin]

It was great. Never saw it coming. I respectfully request that future events last longer. A month would be fine.

[Drudenfusz]

I enjoyed the event, first time I saw open world PvP in SWTOR that was actually fun (not like that Ilum crap). I liked it that BioWare was not holding our hands and told us exactly what the steps were we had to do, and I liked the progressive nature of the daily quests. But maybe the event should have lasted longer, so that people who miss one day in the middle of it get not screwed. I liked it that sometimes people fought around the vendor and sometimes people kept peace, but I see that this might be a problem on PvP servers where the faction imbalance is quite large (but on the other hand people who roll on a PvP server should know that such things can happen).

 

I hope that there will be another Rakghoul plague outbreak (especially since the news cast during the event said that it was spread though multiple star systems). And I would have liked it if some consequence would have happened to the faction who had infected the most of their own people, maybe just raising the prices for certain things for a while, or some vendors disappear until the next event comes along, something not to big, but still something that people might notice.

 

For future events I hope that all the rewards will be bound to legacy and that there are no random boxes for anything, so that people can directly get what they are looking for. I think the special event vendor could stay a few days longer than the event itself, so that people who missed the announcement when it will end still can use their event currency.

 

Events I would like to see

- A natural disaster on a world and then both factions send help there (or try to exploit the situation).

- Some kind of treasure hunt.

- A big game hunt.

- A diplomatic event, where it is not about killing, but about intrigue and such things.

- A event that allows my to visit the world of the other faction which are normally not accessable.

- A purely PvP oriented event.

[TuxedoMazoku]

the event should've lasted longer, and perhaps a bit more variety with the rewards.

 

Their should have also been a more expensive vaccine (5-10k) that lasted through death for those people grinding warzones. As popular as the event was there were still plenty of people not interested in partaking in it. It is sort of annoying to suddenly implode while defending an empty turret in the Alderaan Civil war.

[Nocturnix]

First off, LOVED the event. I thought it was great. Who doesnt love a good ZOMBIE PLAUGE OUTBREAK. YEAH!

 

For me, my favorite part was getting the companion skin I wanted. Sure I had to spend time farming DNA samples, and since I am a casual player I had to buy alot. It took me about 12-15 boxes to get Malavai Quinn. Alot of people complained about not being able to get the skin they wanted. I think people always want everything to be easy in games. But the stuff that is hard to get is that much more VALUABLE. So I have no complaints on spending time and about 1mil credits trying to get my quinn skin. Well worth it, and now I'm proud to have it!

 

That being said, we need a HIDE COMPANION HELM option now, so I can show off my zombie quinn!

 

I liked the progressive dailies. But I did not realize until it was too late that I was behind. As I said I"m a very casual player but I really wanted the full set of containment gear. Unfortunatley on the last day I still had the chest piece missing (most important part!) So if it is possible to explain better to players (you get a new daily each day, Day X is the last day to begin and get the full set!) Of course if you are able to explain this naturally in-game somehow thats better than some announcement somewhere that no one will see. It was a bit dissapointing to get to the last day and realize i cant complete the set. Would not have been a problem if i had known.

 

Thanks! Keep up the great work guys, I love what youre doing!

[bright_ephemera]

The event was by and large easy to avoid, which I appreciated. Only once did my destitute level 25 get stuck with an infection she couldn't afford to cure. One single inconvenience through the course of a world event: Pretty okay.

 

The incentives both to get infected and to infect others were great fun and helped make it a social (wacky pigpile on the fleet) event.

 

The random-drop companion customization was...I liked the customizations; unfortunately I found myself on the far tail of the random distribution curve. I would've liked to either choose the customization to buy, or trade in at, say, five identical customizations to one of my choice. Or six to one. Or nine to one. I could've done any of those before the end.

 

The dailies were managed well. I worried about having to sit around spawn camping usable computer terminals, but each quest stage had only a few objectives and the spawn points were plentiful enough. Good. On the other hand, it felt weird taking a Light Side option to inoculate Sand People and getting a side quest to immediately murder them for their clothes.

 

The level scaling (neutral level 27s to initiate, enemies spawning in according to your level) was brilliant.

 

The development of PvP activity around the event wasn't exactly my cup of tea, but I hear rave reviews for it, and it certainly didn't ruin my experience. Shared event location, one boss in a PvP area even on PvE servers, it was all well set up.

 

I don't have any suggestions for future events offhand, but I'm sure you're hearing plenty from the community

[bright_ephemera]

Sure I had to spend time farming DNA samples, and since I am a casual player I had to buy alot. It took me about 12-15 boxes to get Malavai Quinn. Alot of people complained about not being able to get the skin they wanted. I think people always want everything to be easy in games. But the stuff that is hard to get is that much more VALUABLE.

 

Thirty. Six hundred rakghoul DNA, for thirty boxes, to give Quinn half the disease he deserves. If being a little frustrated about that means I want everything to be easy, then yes, I'm an unrepentant slacker.

 

That said? 100% worth it for the look on his face, and as I said in my post just above, I consider this event a complete success.

[celldoom]

Loved it, but the rewards were abit pointless so i didn't bother with it much, had other things to do

 

Augmented custom gear would be nice, not just light armour. Recipies too!

[Zafere]

I had family in-town, so pretty much missed the entire event. So I guess the first suggestion would be to make them last a little longer and don't penalize players that have jobs and obligations and can't be on every day with unique daily quests.

 

That being said, in the future, I would like to see events that feel like they have more consequence. We are supposedely in a war, but the game does not feel that way because there is no actual way to impact anything. I am not even necessarily talking about PvP events, although I prefer those, but some way to leave a lasting impact on the server would be appreciated. A giant statue on Nar Shadda or Corelia or something to the faction that wins the event.

 

Bioware has shown a disturbing aversion to the sandbox in any form. Stop trying to control everything and let the players effect the world. Design the events this way. Quit making equipment the only thing that matters in the game.

 

I have to be honest if this game does not add something other than the item grind (and that is all PvE, PvP, and this Rakghoul event are currently), I probably won't continue playing long-term. Make particiaption give faction wide bonuses

[NinjaApacHe]

Hello James, the event was really amusing and hope your focus on keeping the community alive and having fun will not fall in the time to come. After that I really wanna pray for you to conbcentrate on N. 1 PRIORITY: Server merge.

[I-ku-u]

While I enjoyed many parts of the event, there were three aspects that were annoying.

1) Several daily quests seemed to only became available after you'd been taking part for the appropriate number of days. RL kept me from starting my participation in the event until about 4 days after it started, and I quickly learned that it was no longer possible to work to where I could get the last daily quest. Thus I lost much interest in the event, because part of it had ended for me already. I would have preferred missing it entirely to learning I could still *sort of* take part.

2) The plaguebearer quest involved being around uninfected others at an unpredictable time. So, the only way to complete it with confidence involved deliberately *waiting* around with other players, until enough cycles of infection and dying finished the quest. And on at least two occasions I spent more than an hour waiting (on the fleet, without traveling) before I got to the second stage (and that only happened after I logged-in the second time after I'd given up on finishing it). So this was almost too tedious to finish once.

3) The only item from the jawa that I found desirable was *one* of the companion customizations. Since they were BOP and completely randomly obtained *after* purchase, I couldn't be sure of getting the *one* I wanted no matter how much effort I made, or money I spent. The easiest way would have been to repeatedly buy samples and to buy the kits until I happened to buy the customization I wanted. I decided it wasn't worth it.

 

And a general complaint, related to this event and other daily quests. If a quest is to be repeatable, then please write it a story such that it makes sense to need to do it more than once. Otherwise the story part of the quest encourages *not* repeating it and repeating it encourages *tuning out* the story.

[TUXs]

James takes feedback directly via his Twitter account (@JamesOhlen), but if you're not on Twitter, his question is below and you can give your feedback here which will be passed on to him.

 

I'm sorry if this sounds rude but...

 

Maybe James can lower himself to actually using these archaic forums in the future?! I'm sure he's cool and has a million followers...but...WE have subs and are the people who pay to play the game Stephen...any twit can twitter.

 

I hope this is the end of the zombies. Not one of the 6 Star Wars films featured zombies. Galactic CONFLICT, not galactic contamination, were the theme of Star Wars.

[otakuon]

This is precisely the sort of content that SWTOR needs more of. Their hadn't been this much activity on the servers since launch. I hope that events like these will become more common place, as in at least once a month. Not only do these events provide additional content for players to participate in, but they help to advance the overall story of SWTOR.

 

I have always felt that SWTOR presents a great opportunity for BW to create more of episodic element to MMOs, much like a TV show. The way I see it is that these events could be chained together to create "seasons" so to speak. Each season would be based on a self-contained plot that may (or may not) tie into other facets of SWTOR's story. So for instance, this "season" would be about the Rakghoul plague and depict how it spreads from planet to planet with each subsequent event being set on a new planet (or planets). As the "season" progresses, it is slowly revealed how the Rakghoul plague came about and how is responsible for spreading it. The final "episode" could be a flash point style encounter where players can confront the source/mastermind behind the plague (if there is one). Also, it would be interesting to add competitive elements. Some players will want to stop the plague while others might perhaps want to spread it for their own twisted reasons. It would be great if there was a way to introduce a metric that could track spread vs. containment game wide (server wide would be cool, but might make things too challenging) and then some sort of repercussion occrus based on this (like, during the final few days of the event a particular series of quests kick off). This could lead to some interesting situations where players might find that they are now at odds with other players from their own faction or maybe even their own guild. Now that would be some REALLY interesting drama.

 

As for events in general, I think keeping an element of surprise is definitely the way to go. Maybe a little bit of "hint dropping" would be useful (like was done by pre-loading vendors with the vaccine), but I don't think there should be a need to always say "event x will begin on day y" as one of the factors that made this first event so much fun is that it was unexpected. Adding mystery to the game is always appreciated.

 

So, to sum it up, I would like to see more of these sorts of events more frequently. To be honest, THIS is precisely the reason many of us got into MMOs to begin with. For us the promise of MMOs was that it would allow for a gaming experience where there was always something new and you never ran out of things to do. The whole point of us paying our $15 s month is to fund the continuous addition of new content and an ever-changing game world. But as we have seen time and time again, the vast majority of MMOs have fallen completely flat on this promise which causes us to get bored and just move on to the next one that will only hold our interest for a further 30-days. I am hoping that SWTOR can be an exception to this and give us the MMO experience that many of us want. If anything, the raw numbers from the shear amount of player activity that occurred during this event should be a clear indicator that this is a direction that BW needs to pursue.

[Trinak]

The event certainly looked fun, but unfortunately I missed it due to a vacation (was gone from 17th to 23rd). I would agree with many in this thread for allowing event to be run longer and announced better/sooner.

[Florion]

What I liked was being able to experience a developing story at level 50 - as opposed to grinding dailies - and the chance to earn unique items and gear. I really hope to see more like this in the future!

 

What I didn't like was the sudden ending: I had read somewhere that the event would go on for a while, so I left for a short trip without worrying. However, when I came back the event was over and I hadn't spend any of my 75 tokens and I only had half of the orange gear set

 

What I'd like to see in the future: an alien race sending a recon-in-force as a prelude to an invasion, wild animals attacking, a virus that causes droids to turn on their masters, a supply crisis that requires players to harvest resources from a certain planet, and perhaps some non-catastrophic events, like a festival or a special trade post appearing on a planet. Just some random thoughts.

Edited April 27, 2012 by Florion

[Kagenoshi]

I really enjoyed the feeling of a living galaxy this event gave. I thought the event last exactly the right amount of time and gave exactly the right amount of clues on how to interact with it. I don't understand why many people want things handed or spelled out for them. As for the plague, it was great. Don't understand the hate as it was maybe only a slight problem to people running ops in which case they should be able to run a daily or 2 or buy a vaccine. I only had two problems with the event.

1: Tthe fact that the customizations were random as I ended up with 3 doubles and a triple while never getting a couple available characters.

2: I felt there should be more news broadcasts. I loved those. They added to the feeling that thee were events taking place elsewhere. Was really sad when I logged in after the event and didn't see a news broadcast reporting the containment of the plague. News updates are definately something I'd like to see more often maybe even outside of specific events.

[mmogaddict]

Things like event unlocks, codex entries and titles should be applied across a person's legacy rather than to a specific character.

 

You've designed a game which rewards 'alting' and has a Legacy system yet you have still fallen into the old developer trap of assigning event rewards (and things like lore unlocks etc) to characters.

 

with future events please make these kinds of things rewarding to the entire legacy.

[LordExozone]

"the rakghoul plague was a very popular event. You’re going to see more surprises like it in the future.

 

I want to hear your thoughts on why you thought the rakghoul plague was fun. Also, what kind of stuff would you like to see in the future?"

 

 

I loved the event. It had in my opinion all the right ingredients for a fun event.

 

 

The Good:

 

Most importantly for me:

 

- World PvP!!! I finally got to participate in some fun and much needed open world pvp clashes! Woohoo.

 

Furthermore:

 

- A pretty original theme that fits in well with the KOTOR universe.

- Quests that were relatively fun, and not overly grindy. I wasn't a big fan of the "collect 12 starship pieces" quest though, a quest where I need to look up a map on the internet with coördinates to see where all the pieces are or spend 10 hours searching a whole planet is a bad quest imho.

- Good ambiance though the various news announcements.

- An interesting story that unfolds as you progress in the event.

- Unique usable rewards.

 

And last but not least:

 

- Exploding people!!

 

The Bad:

 

- It needs to be much better communicated to the players through in-game means where exactly to go for the event, what exactly the event entails, and how long exactly it will last.

- If its not properly announced when an event ends, any reward vendors need to stay for a few days after the event has ended, so everyone has a chance to turn in their commendations.

- Don't overdo it with the crazy pets. It's not a fantasy MMO, stay true to the starwars theme. Small droids like the Torture Droid from the dark side vendor make for great themed pets. A mini taun-taun or that dodo-like bird are a bit odd. But a miniature Rakghoul as a pet simply doesn't fit in my opinion. Now a Rancor on the other hand....

Edited April 27, 2012 by LordExozone