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Dev Discussion #38 - Holidays

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Comments

  • DygzDygz Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    I’d prefer a focus on in-game holy days that match the in-game lore and religions.

    If there are going to be Verra holidays that match real world celebrations, they should include more than just US holidays.
  • Well Holidays tied to the game lore and seasons like spring festival/ summer contests / harvest fest in autumn and winter tales etc (not happening while those seasons rotate every idk 2 weeks, but on the weeks that correspond to irl seasons), why not!
    But religious holidays transcripted from IRL into the game (exp. Easter, Christmas etc....) -> hard no!
    When the flame of life glimmers in the wind, my hand shall guard it
    When the weak waver on their path, my spirit shall be their guide
    When the strong fall to darkness, my heart shall be their beacon
  • T ElfT Elf Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    I love when game celebrations line up with real life holidays given with their own special twists. I like the usual, Halloween, Christmas (non religious), St.Pat's (like BrewDay), Easter (generic); with other ones like Lunar New Year, Celebration of Launch, and in-game racial events. Many people only get to celebrate thru games; and who doesn't like to get stuff for you house or costumes? Well I like it. <3

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    Formerly T-Elf

  • I don't think holiday events are very important, but I would definitely miss them if there didn't exist. It's just nice to see the community come together for an arbitrary holiday, wear goofy clothes, and mess around for a while instead of grinding the usual content. Speaking of which, I don't think the event should be an excuse to make more grindy quests to get exclusive cosmetics. Just give them out at the door, or have a super quick quest to get people into the fun. Treat it like a holiday party, and don't make your guests work for their cake.

    Whatever holidays you put in the game, they have to make sense in-world. Doesn't have to be the most thorough explanation, but the NPCs at least need to acknowledge that there's a holiday season and that's why I'm seeing everyone in Santa hats.
  • BollwerkBollwerk Member
    edited January 2022
    Half Ready (Alpha/Beta Status)Game Releases every Day ...
    Trash infos that arent importend for a basicly working Game ...
    Do YOUR HOMEWORK with the Basics ... rest of it is just play around like thinks that arent importend...
    Work, Work and Work!-> on the Basics and a playable Game .. Not on Thinks that are useless for Release.
    Thx
    all Hyped Game where the same Trash as a 0,99€ Cent Game from Steam
  • Honestly Holidays seem to be used to make a gimmick that requires transit to a specific site in game (Which shouldn't be easy in Ashes) to do events with others for Cosmetics or fairly basic if odd and themed equipment.

    Rather, I would prefer to see the people of towns show some sign of celebration times, whether holiday or perhaps an event for stage 3+ nodes of a travelling fair that gives the mood.

    For the world itself, i'd prefer to see the monster and drop spawns to reflect the 'holiday' such as more Undead around Halloween, more Elementals around the Solstices, and possibly treasure hunts promoting PVP for Easter and X-mas.

    I would have suggested seasonal foods and games for the Taverns would fit but the weekly seasonal at the moment won't fit that unless we get in lore that each year is 52 weekly seasons long (Game of Thrones did have winter was coming for far longer than a year).
  • We need Festivus and the feats of strength.
  • Personally I focus on gameplay, so any event is good if it does not force you to grind and struggle. Also event activities should not take much time, especially considering twins (other characters on same\other accounts of same player).
    Examples from personal experience, with pros and cons:
    From Lineage 2, new year or Christmas event: each day you get a snowball, you speak to a chain of NPCs, each of them is located near seasonal decoration - one near Christmas tree, another near snowman etc. You spend 5 minutes, pay special attention to seasonal decorations, get holiday mood, and a set potions or something like that - nothing special but pretty useful. The only problem is that it was beneficial to be done on each character, so a player resulted in running between same NPCs for an hour each day, which is pretty boring but has to be done to save efforts on other grind.
    From Bless Unleashed, Halloween event: a pumpkin mini-boss spawns on a city plaza, 10 minutes after it spawns in another city, then next one, then after they are killed there comes 8h cooldown. From the boss you get coins that you can exchange for goodies, lots of them can be exchanged for limited-time cosmetics, the rest is exchanged for useless consumables. At the beginning the boss was killed in 2 minutes, allowing enough time to tp to another city, check in-game mail, chat with clan in discord, get back to watching soap opera on another monitor - common afk event. After most players got enough coins for cosmetics, there was little players to fight the boss, which took over 30 mins each boss, most players dropped this activity and the other ways to farm coins to get limited cosmetics were just as slow as fighting the boss. And obviously there was no way to get untradeable cosmetics with 2 characters on same account - both coins and cosmetics were bound to character and you could not participate with both in killing same boss.
    Suggestions:
    - event rewards should be beneficial enough to participate but not so valuable to force players drop other activities
    - event should not take more than 30 mins per day, regardless of the number of player's characters
    - event activity must be accessible by any character on the account, but the rewards and number of accomplishing should be limited to account not the character. Make sure reward is not tradeable, there are no cases when reward is strongly desired to be obtained by several characters to prevent extra grind or cases similar to the above when a player had to decide which one of his characters will get limited time cosmetics
    - event activities should not strongly rely on cooperation with other players - it should be solo, or small groups without need of understanding mechanics (like 5 person dungeon or boss fight that don't require you to spend an hour to form a party of players familiar with mechanics or explain them to everyone on party, or wait half a day for clan members to get online), or scheduled an a specific time to guarantee participation of enough players (but be sure to do something in case there are little players willing to participate making event difficult for those who do want to participate)
    Under such conditions players will be very happy to see new events, especially related to actual holidays.

  • maouwmaouw Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Some people in this thread have asked for townsfolk NPCs who get hyped for events.
    Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons (precursors of Stardewvalley) achieves this by adding 3 extra types of dialogue to NPC's dialogue pools:
    • pre-festive dialogue (e.g. "I heard the Harvest festival is coming up! I can't wait.")
    • festive dialogue (e.g. "The town is so beautiful at this time of year!")
    • post-festive dialogue (e.g. "I ate so much at the harvest festival, I thought I was gonna explode.")

    These dialogue lines are only turned on in the week before and after the event, but they really help to mark the occasion, and it feels more like the town comes to life.
    I wish I were deep and tragic
  • JustVineJustVine Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Came up in another thread but I think I am liking the idea of a local Krampus-esque figure donning the costume with the corruption marker activated as a result of wearing the costume. The Krampus goes around terrorizing people, but doesn't get any real reward. The real goal is to chase around krampus and repeatedly beat him up for presents. Perhaps the local town hall gives the krampus tokens to drop for holiday festive decorations for their house or festive food. Over all there is no reward for being Krampus and it's intended for you to get ganged up on and beaten up. It's mostly just a festive way to actually use the corruption mechanic.
    🔦🔱⚔️Selling pro pain and pro pain accessories. ⚔️🔱🔦
  • I would have to agree with the majority, lining up RL holidays with the in-game ones would be best, but with your own version of that holiday.

    Personally, i like the exclusivity of logging in during a halloween, christmas, or spring event, and grinding a bit for the special armor or item that drops during that holiday/season. Now, this does not mean to make the events grind heavy, for most players will likely be busy with our families or offline friends during the holidays. A good balance of "work for the reward" and "have fun" should be key to a successful event, such as a holiday specific quest with a good plot.

    As for the seasons being so short, the only problem i see is that the exclusivity of items and armor dropped during those seasons will decrease and become more 'common'. It might also burnout players faster if everything the seasons offer is available so quick. :D
  • Not really in favour of holiday events in-game tbh. I believe this is time to spend with yourself and the ones around you. But if you want to be playing, good, you have more time to do and enjoy the content that the game already has to offer or even organize your own holiday event within your group of friends, guild, or node, organically.
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  • The Crow wrote: »
    I would have to agree with the majority, lining up RL holidays with the in-game ones would be best, but with your own version of that holiday.

    Personally, i like the exclusivity of logging in during a halloween, christmas, or spring event, and grinding a bit for the special armor or item that drops during that holiday/season. Now, this does not mean to make the events grind heavy, for most players will likely be busy with our families or offline friends during the holidays. A good balance of "work for the reward" and "have fun" should be key to a successful event, such as a holiday specific quest with a good plot.

    As for the seasons being so short, the only problem i see is that the exclusivity of items and armor dropped during those seasons will decrease and become more 'common'. It might also burnout players faster if everything the seasons offer is available so quick. :D

    @CROW3 - they're trying to steal your IDENTITY!!!
    This link may help you: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/
  • daveywavey wrote: »
    @CROW3 - they're trying to steal your IDENTITY!!!

    Hehe. There’s two of us now, one more and it’s murder time. 😉

    AoC+Dwarf+750v3.png
  • CROW3 wrote: »
    daveywavey wrote: »
    @CROW3 - they're trying to steal your IDENTITY!!!

    Hehe. There’s two of us now, one more and it’s murder time. 😉

    Will the real crow, please stand up, please stand up?
  • RageclawRageclaw Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited January 2022
    I still hate how ESO completely dumped Tamriel holidays coming from rich elder scrolls lore for pathetic generic crap .

    I enjoy christmas like everyone else, but I dont need it in my games as well. Especially if the holidays are religion specific or US specific. Couldnt care less for any thanksgivings. High fantasy has no need of that. If you implement some Vera specific holidays, then I would be impressed
  • People generally enjoy holiday events in games, so I think no matter what you do it will be received generally well. That said, it's a good question. This game seems to focus more on the Role Play aspect of MMORPG, which is good. But that means you need to back your holidays up with in-game lore explaining them.

    That said, when you schedule them is important as well. We, the players and the GMs, DO live in the real world and we get affected by real life holidays. There's a different vibe in the air around holiday seasons, and people get into the spirit of the real life holidays (to various degrees). So while I feel like in-game holidays are better, I also think it helps to put them close to real life holidays too, so players are more into the holiday spirit. It fits better to me. It doesn't have to be the same holiday, but you'll still get a similar feeling if there's a real holiday going on as well.

    The other thing I've say is that I've played in several games where there were in-games holidays in times that were not around real life holidays, and they were not received well. They seemed rather random and easily forgotten. Since they weren't close to real life holidays, people were like "What's this random thing? Eh, whatever."

    As people have noted, doing new things each year is good, but not everything. I've played in games where each year people looked forward to Trick or Treat, bobbing for apples, and other things. Traditional events for holidays are good, too. So while some new things are good, some things should be done every time as well.
  • Well I am going to make a custom t shirt for that and hope I am gonna enjoy it so hard and I have found a custom clothing manufacturers. anyone interested to do that?
  • edited May 2022
    I may be the only one here. But i do enjoy seeing in-game holidays being relatable to real life holidays such as Halloween and Christmas. Both are Pagan holidays and fits the theme of AOC. Outside of those real-life holidays i do think there should be seasonal events that come from the lore of the game.

    I would highly encourage Intrepid to do real life seasonal events. And i think they will, because it would be a huge financial miss not to. Holidays are typically very stale with releases on content as developers are out of office and it's easy to just recycle holiday content each year to keep players entertained. It is also a time where people are sitting at home not doing much = gaming. It is often a time where people have some extra money to spend = spending it on time limited seasonal in-store items.
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