Anniversary Items

[Rouen]

5000 meh, it should be over nine thousand

[Elliarah]

Apart from that 5000 item farm event:

All the other items are really really nice,

The pet nanos are the best ingame so far imo, nomad armor is really nice too

the action figures are an awesome idea, so is the rollerrat in a cage

Since I reiterated my distaste for the raid, I should do the same for the good you guys did. I agree with nijushio that the other items you can acquire are nicely done. I especially love the Leet in a mech pet. One of my absolute favorites! I also got to ask people to trade action figures which felt kind of childish and fun.

[Lheann]

I went out with my main to try this out. I have been very vocal about the content being accessible to low level toons. What I found in Newland dessert was a zone full of 220's one hitting every nomad that popped. Then looting every items for the stupid 5000 item turn in efforts. Had I not been on my 220 main I would not have gotten any loot from any nomads. Note that I actually had compete for level 30 mobs against multiple other 220's. Sad.

The lag around the boss location was stupid. I went from 50 FPS to 2 FPS. Crowd control was kicking in. And the Clan OOC channel had such ugly attitudes in it about the event that I just had to close the chat window. In all 10 of my years I have never seen such foul mouth bile in any chat channel. It was really bad in Clan OOC there for a bit and frankly it sadden me to see that the AO community could devolve to such a level.

I would say the birthday event is a total failure on so many levels. I had to freaking close/ignore a chat window. I will say this the 10 year birthday did bring at least one new experience to the game for me.

For Kintaii, Dragging my lowbie 24 twink behind my 220 to loot birthday items is very much not fun. The promise of loot for all really was honest but implementation is a total failure. A bunch of 220's running around killing nomads and looting everything really did not sit well with me. Considering the nomads were in the level 30 range that is just sad. Yes I brought my 220 main, because my level 24 was not fast enough to get nomad to nomad before the 220's raped the entire area of the spawn.

General comments, the raid should be team instance. The raid should scale to level of team triggering it. Crowd control limits of 60 toons in an area with servers that are 10 years newer than release seems stupid. Content just does not go with story line. "Dessert Nomad" would make be think they would be outfited in the existing Nomad armor and drop said armor. That for a 10 year birthday the team would have given the Nomad armor a make over to be like say Thar armor.

Errr, just erked with content. Might as well ingame shop all of it cause I am not going back to that mess with any toon. FC has lost the edge with designing viable content. A big event raid in an open zone and they "Planned" on a team of 6. WOW just what weed are you guys smoking?

[Tazalanche]

You guys are putting an *awful* lot of effort raging against something you kinda obviously have no clue how it works yet... just sayin'.

Are we allowed now?

just sayin'...

[Namiru]

Well, I posted earlier my displeasure with the way the anniversary Raid was designed as, apparently, the majority of those that followed. I'm sure it worked nicely on Test, but on Live, a whole different can of worms.

I also agree with Anamelle's comments above regarding the nature of the event. Having thought this over, wouldn't perhaps something akin to the Hacker Club style of missions been more appropriate? The Tinkerer wants to build you something nice to celebrate but needs some items which sends you from person to person to collect the items (Maybe a side mission or two), learn about Rubi'ka's history, and return to the Tinkerer with the items to build the Yalm (or Jetpack, or both, run the missions twice or split the items needed to build both, something like that).

Something that celebrates the history of Rubi'ka and AO would have been far more appropriate than a mass raid zerg cluster hump.

I have to take credit for this idea, as I know Elliarah IRL and we were discussing on the phone the absolute Failfest the second raid on RK1 was.

Here's the expanded version of the idea as I see it (and in my opinion how an anniversary event should be done.)

1. Leave the Desert Nomads as they are, but decrease the drop rate of the raid special items and make them NODROP and possibly UNIQUE. Make them more Rubi-Kaish, too. (for Example, the Gum would become Notum-Enhanced Chewing Gum)
2. Create 5-6 additional NPCs at various places in Rubki-Ka. Perhaps in the cities if you want to make it easy, or other obcscure RK locales.
3. Instead of (just) starting the Raid, the Tinkerer would start a quest to find trade with these various new NPCs.
4. Each NPC would want one of the quest items before letting you move on. "Well, I'd like to help you, (player), but I'm out of Notum-Enhanced chewing Gum, and I just can't seem to focus without them. Unfortunately, Desert Nomad Raiders captured the latest shipment. Would you get me some?"
5. The quest would eventually end back at The Tinkerer, who will want the last item and do the final trade.
6. Which NPC you went to in what order would effect change the result of which nano you'd get: The Clio, the Jetpack, the new Leetpet Nano, The Robotoy nano, or the Mr. Squeeky nano.
7. For high levels that don't want to spend hours farming, the tinkerer would also have an option to send you to a raid instance to fight the Desert Rider and his entourage. They're you'd get all of the above for defeating him, plus a set of Ql300 Desert Nomad armor.
8. An option would be to make these quests (both the raid and the collection quests) set on an 18 hour timer with an XP/cash reward as well, but as I said that's just an option.

THAT'S how I would have done this years quests. NOT this "Public Zone OMGWTFBBQ 220 raid that I just spent 5 hours farming items so some 220 Crat Trollers can keep they're Carlos pets on the loot and refuse to move or despawn them" POS.

[playboyfixer]

Maybe if the spawn requirement were like 1k items, instead of 5k, then it'd be tolerable, but 5,000 items, to get 6 people yalms, and chances of you being one of those 6? **** that ****!

maybe they should have made it so u get a quest from The Tinker to farm items (as u do now) then when u hand in atleast 1 item u get a new mish (update), saying "when the tinker gets 5000 items, some surprise might show up!". Then when desert rider shows up everyone that shoots atleast 1ce gets mish update again, AND gets a yalm + that armor pack spawned in inventory, as mish reward.

That way even the 220's farm atleast 1 item, and everyone gets the phatz, thus being happy

ps: perhaps someone mentioned something like this already, if so sorry for double posting same idea didn't read entire thread yet

[Elliarah]

I have to take credit for this idea, as I know Elliarah IRL and we were discussing on the phone the absolute Failfest the second raid on RK1 was.

I had the hacker quest idea as well choomba. Can't hog all the credit.

But yeah, what he said.

[intelknight]

I am fresh-starting a froob fixer (lv.30 atm), and I loved the anniversary content. Plenty of nomads around, they're easy to kill, but still give XP, and I got the jetpack on first raid I attended, and since I obviously cannot get the bossloot, I do not even care.

I understand how 220's feel about farming the gift items for hours and then not getting the reward, but I doubt that it is any harder or more time consuming than raiding Beast or Tara for weeks.

I am a bit concerned that as lowbie players get their jetpacks, they will stop searching for items, and Tinker's counter will fill in a lot slower. Maybe towards the end of the event, it would make sense to let higher-level nomads to drop more items, and let players turn in a backpack with items, not feed them one-by-one.

[Namiru]

I am fresh-starting a froob fixer (lv.30 atm), and I loved the anniversary content. Plenty of nomads around, they're easy to kill, but still give XP, and I got the jetpack on first raid I attended, and since I obviously cannot get the bossloot, I do not even care.

I understand how 220's feel about farming the gift items for hours and then not getting the reward, but I doubt that it is any harder or more time consuming than raiding Beast or Tara for weeks.

I am a bit concerned that as lowbie players get their jetpacks, they will stop searching for items, and Tinker's counter will fill in a lot slower. Maybe towards the end of the event, it would make sense to let higher-level nomads to drop more items, and let players turn in a backpack with items, not feed them one-by-one.

Game mechanics won't allow you you to turn in whole backpacks of stuff to NPCs. However, at the very least being able to turn in 6 (I believe that is the max items you can give to an NPC at one time) at a time would have been nice.

[Kestin_Doxa]

I am... just very disappointed.

Excellent post; summed up my feelings perfectly. Incredibly disappointed in the few who ruin this event and everything else to feed their needless greed.

The design of the anniversary event only further proves the devs have no idea how to design content for AO's community anymore

They aren't designing for the community as a whole, they're designing for the elitist players who sell lootrights and start their XXth froob account just to hold credits.

[crattey]

They aren't designing for the community as a whole, they're designing for the elitist players who sell lootrights and start their XXth froob account just to hold credits.

You left out the bit where they use the profits to build a laboratory, staffed by world-class geneticists, where they use pieces of DNA they found on an old moustache trimmer and a rare sample of alien DNA they recovered from the spaceship crash in Roswell to create a alien/Hitler clone hybrid tentacle Führer and set off a campaign of genocide and world domination. And killing puppies.

Damn you Means. Damn you!

[Lusos101]

Well, its either that or an abismal incapacity to understand the obvious consequences of gameplay they create for a game where many different people can interact in total annonimity and impunity.

[Seoin]

That jetpack looks nice. I want it to be a back item instead of hud1 so it can go in social (and not dissapere when you go inside/SL!).

[Elliarah]

So, it now seems that the devs are spawning camps of nomads in NLD as part of an oncoming sandstorm, then spawning the jetpack-dropping torches (about 4 of them) once the storm passes. Assuming folks do the right thing, this helps, this also helps get the raid stuff together faster.

A big thumbs up to this fix if it happens often enough.

Still an issue with the whole yalm thing, but so far so good.

Thanks guys

Update: So, having just participated in my second raid, I was fortunate to be on the winning team. However, everytime I could open the loot window, it auto closed on me. The body de-rezzed before I could even loot anything. I've petitioned this. Hopefully something will come of it.

[Hulk]

Wasn't able to get a jetpack because everyone was on top of it just causing grief. They already had theirs and decided it would be funny to stop others from getting it. One player shouted "LOL @ the people who couldn't get a jetpack" and then posted his. Dumb kids just being jerks. Can you guys please make the torch taller or something? :/

[Gimpeline]

Saw that Petas was on when it happend, so I think it was ark event team and not Funcom that stepped in to clean up some of the mess. So thumbs up for the arks

[Elliarah]

AND....as i figured. The answer to my issue/petition was "Run the raid again".

*facepalm*

[deemeo]

Wasn't able to get a jetpack because everyone was on top of it just causing grief. They already had theirs and decided it would be funny to stop others from getting it. One player shouted "LOL @ the people who couldn't get a jetpack" and then posted his. Dumb kids just being jerks. Can you guys please make the torch taller or something? :/

as it's impossible to stop kids from being stoopid, dear devs can we please have a fix to that bloody small and quick disappearing torch NOW?

having the whole desert raider thing somehow instanced (how many times have been suggested so far?) would be even better

kktnxbai

[Dagget]

Means loaded the Tinkerer a while ago and ran a raid and observed - hopefully see some adjustments in a few days.


On a side note, does anyone know if an ARK or GM can be CCed by the system in a crowded area?

.

[Cogline]

Couple of torches were left so 2 of my toons could swipe jetpacks without wading into a rugby scrum. But people will insist hanging about while us Froobs run off and gather items while searching for the purely social stuff.