A lot of good input in this thread!
So im gonna focus on something more specifically and hope its not too late to get my feedback to the intrepid design team @Vaknar
Imo one thing that is heavily underutilized in other mmos that have these kind of event systems is the build up to the event.
You mostly discover the event randomly, rush to it and engage with it. This also a symptom of the frequent and "on farm" type of events, as you need to make those events spawn frequently, otherwise most people could not discover it , as they are not in it´s proximity for most of the time.
I think this works for some types of events really well (especially with indicators that you can observe from a distance, like suspicious sounds from the forest as Steven indicated), but it should not be the case for every event, especially for bigger ones.
Here is how i´d like to see some events pan out:
An envoy spawns somewhere in the node´s zoi, maybe a single dude on a horse, for bigger events a caravan with royal envoys or important NPCs.
These envoys make their way to the node´s town, (maybe even to several towns) and place themselves at the town´s center.
They then shout out the news that something happened and they are in dire need for help. They call for people to assemble around them and take on the task.
People would sign up and the challenge might get scalled according to the player quantity.
After 15 minutes the NPCs then ready themselves for departure and bring the players to the location, where the fighting is gonna take place.
If succesful the players can claim their reward from the npc envoy.
I think this can deliver a nice dymanic that builds up anticipation and i think it would be cool to see groups and guilds gather up in a big influx to the node. Players can observer other participants and seeing all the players ride out in a horde together would be cool
On another note, i think having PvP/PvX events that pits nodes against each other would be nice as well!
So, I wanna recommend a launch event - I would love to see all the GMs and staff ingame next to the divine gates on the first day of beta/launch when the servers are up - they could be using NPCs or even god skins, and from time to time a message would be shown on everyone's screen saying they will be actively banning gold sellers AND gold buyers as well as exploiters hackers etc and every time someone got banned we would hear a lightning sound and the character name would be shown in the sky like in the hunger games and in a global message so people know you are taking action against it. It's critical to let all the RMT'ers both sellers and buyers know that they will get banned and if this is done before launch it's even better so they can all fk-off and go back to AA or WoW.
Comments
So im gonna focus on something more specifically and hope its not too late to get my feedback to the intrepid design team @Vaknar
Imo one thing that is heavily underutilized in other mmos that have these kind of event systems is the build up to the event.
You mostly discover the event randomly, rush to it and engage with it. This also a symptom of the frequent and "on farm" type of events, as you need to make those events spawn frequently, otherwise most people could not discover it , as they are not in it´s proximity for most of the time.
I think this works for some types of events really well (especially with indicators that you can observe from a distance, like suspicious sounds from the forest as Steven indicated), but it should not be the case for every event, especially for bigger ones.
Here is how i´d like to see some events pan out:
An envoy spawns somewhere in the node´s zoi, maybe a single dude on a horse, for bigger events a caravan with royal envoys or important NPCs.
These envoys make their way to the node´s town, (maybe even to several towns) and place themselves at the town´s center.
They then shout out the news that something happened and they are in dire need for help. They call for people to assemble around them and take on the task.
People would sign up and the challenge might get scalled according to the player quantity.
After 15 minutes the NPCs then ready themselves for departure and bring the players to the location, where the fighting is gonna take place.
If succesful the players can claim their reward from the npc envoy.
I think this can deliver a nice dymanic that builds up anticipation and i think it would be cool to see groups and guilds gather up in a big influx to the node. Players can observer other participants and seeing all the players ride out in a horde together would be cool
On another note, i think having PvP/PvX events that pits nodes against each other would be nice as well!
@PenguinPaladin Bump.