How come Darktide got the best Live Event?

[benny1105]

Frankly, the lore-related Live Event with tracker ____ (Forget her name.), was a bust. It was basically just a big lag fest, with no player initiative or control. All it takes is ONE person to chainheal the Admin on a white server, and the live event proceeds as planned.

Darktide had the choice. Kill her, keep her alive, or fight over the choice to do one or the other. She ended up dying.

What do they get? As a reward? Various rare creatures spawned (including Bael'zharon), and some Live Event tokens.

What did white servers get? Some xp, a title, and a dungeon that only level 150+ can access, even though the difficulty is closer to 100+?

Oh, and it took about 6 hours to get everyone their reward from the end dungeon.

The chest giving out tokens was a great idea. But.. we all have enough titles, and the XP wasn't anything to get excited about.

Some suggestions:

1) More player-driven live events. Give us the option to disrupt/change/choose the events again. You've done it in the past, and said events were the most memorable out of any.

2) Better rewards! It only happens once, give out some better stuff. Live event tokens are okay... Rares are better... Unique items are even better than rares... Aug gems would be a great idea, too. One-time house buffers.. etc..

3) MORE XP! Like I said before, it only happens once. Give people a reason to leave EO to do these events. If you gave out one full level per event, that would definately be initiative to show up. It's not like event happen all that often. 1 level a month isn't too overwhelming that it would become unbalancing.

4) ... How about a puzzle based event? Spawning wave after wave of laggy creatures hardly qualifies as a life event. I can go out and hunt VoD if I want that. Make players solve something. Some type of a race, puzzle, competition.

[Krowten]

I dont play live events very often, never on when they are lol. But um, yeah.

from what i understand most live events have a direction, then once its over it depends on the envoy. The envoy spawned all the creatures and crap, wasnt that just for fun. idk.

But hey, you came up with some good suggestions, atleast your contributing instead of whining :) which i do like some of your suggestions.

[Paraduck]

This has been one of my pet peeves with AC for... well, for as long as I can remember. One of the stated features of AC, even on Turbine's recently redesigned website is "The storyline changes and evolves; sometimes based on player actions." (Source: http://www.turbine.com/worlds_ac.html)

I can count, on one hand, the number of times that we have even had the OPPORTUNITY to do this. And even then, it usually hasn't been in an extremely meaningful way.

I understand that Turbine needs to keep the general storyline going in the same direction on all servers and that divergence can't be significant. But surely there must be more that can be done in this regard -- more beyond a level 7 buff item in a chapterhouse.

Having contingencies (e.g., quests not opening based on player actions, different versions of reward NPCs being spawned based on player actions, etc.) could go a long way towards this, while keeping the storyline in the same direction on all servers.

[JJC]

No lore event is ever going to done on Dt to it's end. All they do is kill whoever shows up. Everyone else gets the story.

To have a player driven story would require, at the very least, doubling the work. You have to create content for two complete stories for that patch. Either that or you have to do a live event where nothing happens at the end, and you think complaints are bad now, and doesn't happen for likely two months after that as content is created for the outcome of all the worlds. Could it be done? Certainly. But the lag between completing the live event and the impact of that on the story would disrupt the ability for the storyline to be compelling.

JJC

[Paraduck]

Hence my idea, JJC, which exactly avoids that. NPC character dies? They don't trigger the portal to the dungeon, or different reward NPCs are spawned, giving lesser versions of the rewards (or greater, if it's something like if players always defeated Kurth -- not a good example, but just an idea of when it could be used.)

Naturally it couldn't be done for every quest in game, but should be considered for some points in the storyline. This gives a better feeling to players in regards to their impact on the storyline, and seems like it's something that can be done using existing tech.

[mgs316]

Problem would be since there are multiple servers, that each server could diverge too far apart, then you'd need different Dev teams for different servers, etc.

If they consolidated to one server, then it wouldn't be a problem.

[Sigma]

No lore event is ever going to done on Dt to it's end. All they do is kill whoever shows up. Everyone else gets the story.

To have a player driven story would require, at the very least, doubling the work. You have to create content for two complete stories for that patch. Either that or you have to do a live event where nothing happens at the end, and you think complaints are bad now, and doesn't happen for likely two months after that as content is created for the outcome of all the worlds. Could it be done? Certainly. But the lag between completing the live event and the impact of that on the story would disrupt the ability for the storyline to be compelling.

JJC

What about something like a 'create-your-own-adventure' concept? It kind of has a flow chart for all of the different outcomes for an event, and would basically provide contingencies and preplanned follow-ups to whichever outcome the live event has. Hell, they could actually just make it so that most outcomes eventually meet back up with where they 'want' the storyline to end. All they'd have to do is track where each server is. Plus, if they especially wanted some event to turn out how they wanted it to, all they'd have to do is get some high-power lore characters to show up unannounced much like the defending of the crystal during the Gaerlan event, when Elysa and the Aun showed up.

[JJC]

Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth.

Lore events go 2 ways. On DT, show up and kill the event giver. On white worlds - exactly as scripted. To do all that work and then just deus ex machina the end is rather pointless and downright insulting to those who believe they were going to have an impact on the story line. Either you set out to tell a story or you let the auidence dictate the story as it comes to winners and loser. You don't give the choice and then cheat the auidence with iron-fisted slight of hand.

JJC

[Sigma]

Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth.

Lore events go 2 ways. On DT, show up and kill the event giver. On white worlds - exactly as scripted. To do all that work and then just deus ex machina the end is rather pointless and downright insulting to those who believe they were going to have an impact on the story line. Either you set out to tell a story or you let the auidence dictate the story as it comes to winners and loser. You don't give the choice and then cheat the auidence with iron-fisted slight of hand.

JJC

Actually I was just simplifying the idea because I know running 8 different story lines would be a pretty big tax on the dev team. Of course if I had it my way it would be a 'you get the horse you paid for' situation. And with 8 different storylines, the lore would get incredibly convoluted anyway. As mentioned before in the thread, it would be much simpler if there was only one red, and one white, but we aren't that fortunate.