Easter '11

[enchilado]

Easter's just three months away now, but just because there's plenty of time to make the event doesn't mean it should be wasted. It's better to have the event ready in advance than to have a last-minute rush or, indeed, a late event. I haven't got internet at home, so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to contribute, but I'll do what I can.

So! After a brief conversation with Salmondine on IRC today, we agreed (at least I think we agreed. This was my opinion, anyway) that everybody should help, thus promoting community rather than competition. Perhaps we can get some kind of slogan out of that. Anyway, I proposed that everybody helps collect items, and the average collected amount determines what reward everybody gets. For example: the average number of collected items is 74, so everybody gets 74 points to spend on whatever items they like. Similar to Hallowe'en, but the points are shared. It's not a competition.

There are two faults with this, the first pointed out by Frost: grinds are boring and unfun. Proper quests are far more interesting - how can we work a grind-free quest where everyone helps?

The second, which I realised myself and Mistakes kindly pointed out when he said he'd collected one sweet each with 164 characters, is that because the average number of sweets determines the reward the quest is easily sabotaged.


So - any solutions to posed problems? Story ideas? Other ideas? Easter draws nearer!

[Alige]

I agree with the fact that we need to stop doing quests on our own. We should all work together and all have the same prize. This prize could be determined by a nice item that will be given to everyone (please don't use 164 characters. In addition, the prize could be different depending on how much "things" we personally gathered. What I think of is money. In fact we are in a huge crisis. Make people win money!

If you need help finding ideas for easter, i got a lot already!

Regards.

[Falloutboy]

"all have the same prize. (please don't use 164 characters) the prize could be different depending on how much "things" we personally gathered. What I think of is money. In fact we are in a huge crisis. Make people win money!

First point, im agree about a collective quest
Second point, i don't understand your " all have the same prize" & "the prize could be different"
Third point, if we don't have money, its because dev want it (or someone else ^^ dont remember exactly)
Fourth point, i guess few players will listen to you "please don't use characters", but as you said, people want money,
event -> reward
another account -> another reward -> selling it -> money

Sorry but i don't think everyone will listen to you

[Alige]

Fourth point, i guess few players will listen to you "please don't use characters", but as you said, people want money,
event -> reward
another account -> another reward -> selling it -> money

Sorry but i don't think everyone will listen to you

What I mean by that is: Each character that participate will have the same price. However, the more you personally give, the more money you get. Here, lets take an example:
I collected 2100 Chocolate Bunny Ears -> then I will personally get 1 Bunny Ears + 210000 gp. (Yeah, I think x100 is good)
Falloutboy collected 1500 Chocolate Bunny Ears -> then he will get 1 Bunny Ears + 150000 gp.

Understood?

[enchilado]

I'm thinking something more like this:

You give 100 Easter Eggs.
Person 2 gives 50 Easter Eggs.
Person 3 gives 150 Easter Eggs.
Person 4 gives 25 Easter Eggs.
Person 5 gives 175 Easter Eggs.

The average amount of eggs given is 100, so everybody gets 100 points to 'buy' items with.
Eg,

Rabbit's Foot (A good luck charm). Cost: 25 points
Caramel-filled Easter Egg (Tasty!). Cost: 25 points.
Easter Basket (Somebody ate all the eggs from this!). Cost: 50 points.
Easter Egg Carton (A decorative egg carton). Cost: 50 points.
Easter Egg Hat (An egg that balances on your head). Cost: 100 points.


Creating new characters wouldn't help you an awful lot, though. If Person 2 and Person 3 both made a new characters (Person 2a and Person 3a), and each of these collected just one item, the average would be lowered to about 71. If they made several characters, it would be a lot lower (five characters each and the average is only 34. If Person 2 makes 164 alts, it's only 4).

My concern isn't just that people would create more characters to get more rewards, but that someone may create 164 characters deliberately to lower the average.

[Alige]

Hm... then figure something like: every character made in the last month cannot participate... or 2 weeks maybe. Just like the Baktar's Quest.
However, do you need graphical help for any items? If yes, what items would you like?

[argul]

The Bowler Hat event was done that way:
Noone younger than 2 weeks was given a hat.

(It's a basic change:
The variable, which stores if you have talked to the trainer and if you agreed to the rules, was 0 or 1.
Now it has 0 in case you did not talk to him, but the unix epoche time, when you talked with him.
So every character since start of this year has a "birthday" second stored in a variable now. All older players still have the "1", which can also be interpreted as unix epoche time )

Greetings

[Kage]

Easter is cancelled this year. They found the body.

[Wombat]

All new event quests will be permanent additions that follow a yearly schedule and must be completed far in advance, tested and added to the game without any feeling of rush or urgency and added with any other regular content updates. The current event "Burns' Supper" being held in Dimond's Cove (dimonds.txt "shannon"), is an example of how this will now work for events.

This is so there is no more "drop everything to get in the event" feeling and if deadlines are not reached, the event will just have to be added next year.

This does mean that these holiday events will repeat, which may or may not affect the "unobtainables" player market. With some slight tweaking, the event can be the same, but the rewards different. We also stack many holiday events...like Christmas could be a two week period where 3 event quests are being ran.

The disadvantages are holiday events don't get special "hidden" treatment anymore. Spoilers will just have to happen like any other form of content. Changing things temporarily within _mobs.txt would instead be handled in a different way, perhaps "event monster" spawning (areamonster or monster). These are things to consider when crafting future events and how they may differ from past events.

[Tiana]

I actually thought about an Easter quest myself, and made an attempt at scripting it out. Is there someone on particular I should send it to? By the way, it does NOT involve grinding.

I do wish to note that this has never been tested, and I am a total noob at scripting anything. But I think the idea is sound and if it needs minimal work to fix it up/make it actually work, all the better.

Well, let me know who I should direct the script to if this is something of interest.

[Alige]

Did you make a new NPC or do you plan making one or is it already created? If not, please tell us ho you want it to look like.

[salmondine]

I'd really like to se Ali-g's chocolate bunny make it into easter content.
If it can be worked into idea it would be great.

[Alige]

LOL, i didn't thought that it would be taken once haha, I would indeed want someone to work on it please.

[mistergrey]

You want a quest people will have to cooperate in to get a reward? Here's an idea.

I don't know if the Candor Reward Points idea is still being considered or not, but I was thinking of something like Candor, where it counts the rounds you survive and gets harder and harder to survive. You could reward credit/points towards the event reward (similar to the Halloween npc) by using the rounds survived as the player's credit, or multiplying the number by an appropriate amount. That way, botting would be useless as it should get hard enough that everyone dies eventually like Candor.

Another good way to keep many players from sitting and repeating it the whole time would be to charge a fee like Candor, except charge a large amount of an Easter drop, example 50-100 chocolate eggs, or whatever. That way instead of one player paying 20k like at Candor, players who wanna do a round can just pool their items to the paying player. It wouldn't benefit one player who collects said item to just keep going alone, since they'd die much sooner than with help.

I'm too tired for any more intellectual side to the quest though, dunno if this idea would be enough.

[Chicka-Maria]

LOL, i didn't thought that it would be taken once haha, I would indeed want someone to work on it please.

anything on it that should be? added a bit of shade.