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What are some great events that should not have failed in other MMO`s?
akabear
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Just wondering what are some events in other mmo`s that failed and that perhaps with a little tweak could have been awesome!
- What was the event?
- Which MMO?
- What went wrong?
- What change could have made it the great event it was intended for?
0
Comments
2, Archeage
3, people would log in and feel the need to run the event before doing anything else, often resulting in people only having time to do said event then log back out for the day, only to do the same thing tomorrow.
4, not having events at all would have made them great.
The appeal of an MMO is the ability to do what ever you want. Events kind of go against that. They dont necessarily force you to do a thing, but they do tend to greatly encourage you to participate.
Events in an MMO are things players should see perhaps once a month - or once a quarter.
Cyrodiil (PvP zone of the game, split in 3 teams, no player agency, forced enemies/alliance)
ESO
What went wrong? I went in that game with the best intentions back in 2015, because it looked beautiful and had a big map, with various biomes (even though very quickly I realized how little challenge it had to offer, and how boring was an open world with self rez on the spot, mounts that you can summon on the spot, unchallenging mobs.)
1) It's never a good idea for mmos to have factional PvP. One side will always lose and the players have no means to choose their friends and enemies. If you are blue you attack red and the other blues are your friends. If you are red, the opposite. Now in ESO you have 1v1v1. Two sides will pile up against the third. The loser was always the lone alliance and from the other 2 it was a matter of which one had the most off-peak time players active, to pvdoor the map.
Mmos need guilds and the option to declare war against everybody; the option to form an alliance with anybody.
2) ZOS allowed addons because there were so lazy (my god, Bethesda is a billion dollar parent company) to create basic UI and tools. That made cheating so ez. To combat cheating they ruined the server stability. Lag followed. The game was never, ever the same.
3) Due to the nature of having no individual cooldowns, eso combat became a piano recital, switching from burst to turtle. HP MP and stamina where going up and down up and down. Due to no individual cooldowns, zergballs were ez to coordinate. So the PvP of eso became just whoever had the biggest zerg wins the battle (but not the objective. The objestives were won.. no I should say lost, by the team which was alone against the other two, as I mentioned earlier.)
It's a bad idea for an mmo to have global cooldowns.
4) Due to the lag and the unbalanced classes (two types of fun in ESO... ganging with classes that had all the tools for mobility/burst potential, and capping POI with immortal tanky builds. Nothing else. Very narrow metas every 3 months) ZOS started introducing ridiculous gear sets that basically did the gaming for you.
By meeting easy conditions, sometimes as easy as flailing normal hits, the armors would either kill your target or keep you immortal.
Armor should not do the combat for you. Your selection of active skills should. Your passives and stats should complement your playstyle (key word PLAY).
ESO was a game that you could take at your own pace. You could do all sorts of things except for compete against other players. Cyrodiil, even if it didn't had all it's problems, was basically an isolated, giant BG. It was optional. There were no stakes, you could just tap out and keep doing something else, no real sense of winning. Btw, when you have players forced into factions there is no real sense of winning. One day you win the next you lose, or one side always wins and one side always loses. The number of players involved are too big to honestly say "yes this was achieved by us". Who is us? Factions are so large, that any individual or group contribution isn't making a change without all the other individuals or groups. It's different with guilds.
With guilds YOU and your mates have to work for a goal. The rest of the half of the server population isn't there to share your goal, like in Wow or other faction based mmos.
Anyway, Cyrodiil was just a large BG. When you isolate and designate a location for a specific purpose only you make less of an mmo and more of a co-op/versus video game.
TLDL
1) Factional pvp mmos dont have real victors and losers. It's all circumstance, not goals and conquests.
2) Devs should make UI and tools, not allow Addons. NEVER allow addons in mmos.
3) Global cooldowns for combat is a bad idea. The gameplay becomes just a rotation, with narrow metas. There is no judgement, action/reaction and genius.
4) The combat should be "active" (either tab-target or action), not passive. Gear shouldn't do the combat for you, as you do the bare minimum. Gear should only provide stats, not passive attacks or healing/selfbuffing.
If a gear piece provides a skill, let it be slottable and active.
This is the first time I agree with you. You had to spend like 2-4 hours per day for mandatory "events" or daylie missions.
Why mandatory? Because you got tokens/ressources that were very "rare" or limited. So not loging in one day, you fell one day behind everyone else.
Thats why wow vanilla is still my fav. mmo. No daylies (ok except ONE pvp daylie that was not that important) and Events that occured on special days.
Holding events according to TES Lore and calendar
Problem: Holiday events were held on regular weeks and people didnt have that much time to play since there were no holidays.
Problem II: ZOS lacked ideas and ended up running same events with same rewards year after year, with 1 new item added to the reward pool. Events became a boring daily grind.
1. Auroria Continent Opening Land Rush(Conquest of Auroria)
2. Archeage
3. It was rushed before being properly implemented,
people were getting client crashs when approaching the continent and on the land of the new continent
(and having to deal with insanely huge queue times that would randomly disconnect you),
the date/horary was terrible, literally tuesday morning,
some land plots were simple bugged and unacquirable, the rest were mostly taken by teleport hackers alongside the continent castles.
4. Proper dev attention to implementation, organization.and other big in-game issues.
It is so painful for me to remember how badly mismanaged this game was, it makes me sick...
I will never forgive or forget Trion's Incompetence and Negligence.
Aren't we all sinners?
Seasonal events are okay. The Halloween event, Xmas event, those are fine. As long as events are special and limited in time, then maybe. Granted they become FOMO, as long as it's a small window 3-7 day event cool. A Month long halloween event I would be against, but a single day or weekend event, cool.
Personally - events should pop up as a surprise and randomly via GM.
GM decided to wake up one day and choose violence. Logs into his GM account and turns himself into a Sand Giant and begins to kill on sight all players, until the server comes together and take him down. No Special Loot, just a random fun time being part of a community tying to kill a GM. Those are special events I'd like to see.
- WoW World Bosses.
- Final Fantasy 14 S RANKS (World Bosses).
I love the Idea of Final Fantasy's S Rank spawn. You have to Spawn the Enemy with other Players by doing something in the Open World (not just a set respawn timer).
Like: after 4-5 Days you have to collect a lot of Iron Ore in a specific Area or kill specific Enemies. If you do that the Boss will eventually spawn.
But in many MMOS the ''World Bosses'' were a really sad ingame Event.
You spawned a reallly huge Boss in the open World with a long respawn Time (4-5 days+) and the ''Boss'' just gets swarmed by so many Players that all the World bosses i can think off died in like 30 Seconds.
I dont know how to fix this issue but i was always kind of sad because this ''Epic'' Giant Creature goes down so fast it couldnt even do more than 2 Spells
Wow retail theme park MMO design, those are not "events", but more like system design gameplay.
1. World quests - failed because there is no sense of sandbox design, you feel forced to do them and there was not very good reasons why to do them, except when you get to fresh max lvl and you need quick gear. WQs were easy and boring to do.
2. Events such as borrowed power, every newer expansion had some system worth doing for player power, with good lore introduction due to quest chain and good rewards. Problem was that this system was mandatory and not skippable on alts, it also felt like gacha games where you have these things to do daily. Again, no old fashioned traditional sense of RPG. Not skippable on alts, and too mandatory.
Gw2 events, this varies from person to person.
1. It felt repetitive therefore for me it was boring to participate even on second time.
2. Too easy, you just needed people to finish it.
3. Not sandbox design, if you wanted gold farming, there was no real option that can give repetitive gold farm that you can do daily. Look all guides on how to farm gold on gw2 are from events.
New World elite chest farms.
1. 5man areas that can be cleared within 1-1.30h, people abused that because they would go 30man and finish under 10min. Making it impossible to do it as 5man if you want to run it to immerse yourself and get cozy. Flawed event since it can be abused easily. Keep an eye on this and learn from NW failed design, please devs. People will find a way to speed run. This is new era where people tend to do that a lot.
1) The Sleeper ( A Dragon named Kerafym)
2) Everquest
3) So the Sleeper is a ONE TIME event for the server. Once the Dragon is awakened, he goes on a murderous rampage and has been intentionally created to be impossible to kill.
In order to awaken this dragon, you need to kill his 4 guards. THESE 4 GUARDS dropped massive massive BiS loots. Each had their unique table.
When players learned that the first server KILLED ALL 4 - they never ever respawned again and was DENIED of all of that loot table forever.
Since then, other servers agreed to never ever kill all 4 guards. You can rotate which one doesn't die, but no never ever kill all 4 in a raid session.
No-one ever really knew the sleeper was suppose to be unkillable, so many years later, top guilds who didnt need the guards anymore would kill all 4 guards and attempt to fight the sleeper and completely lose.
4) none
I think the concept of that is pretty awesome. I consider that as an event.
FUN FACT - https://massivelyop.com/2022/04/04/the-game-archaeologist-when-everquest-players-killed-the-unkillable-sleeper/
One server united, during it's live day decided to take on the sleeper and did the unthinkable. They almost killed it, forced Sony Online Entertaintment devs to log in and remove the sleeper from dying. HOLY SHIT THE SHITSTORM THAT CAUSED
Finally they gave in to demands, server had round 2, only to learn no fucking loot drop., because he was never meant to die, they never gave it any loot table LOL.
Some of the best "events" were player made to be honest.
1 - The Sleeper in EQ
2 - Killing the king in UO that wasnt suppose to happen
3 - The great heist in Eve Online
4 - The original Covid-19 pandemic of WoW (corrupted blood plague)
5 - Lord Kazzak being trained to a major city in WoW
6 - The Great big race in WoW
7 - The Bazaar in Everquest
8 - Ponzi Banker Scheme in Eve
#9 - UO servers back in the day would need to reset to same the game world and it would always rollback 5 or 15 minutes. I dont remeber.
Once the announcement is served in-game. Every player brings out all their best weapon and armor and heads to the cross roads or cemetery to have one giant epic pvp free for all fights.