This... Halloween "event"...

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Aeothegreat, Oct 29, 2014.

  1. Aeothegreat

    Dear Devs...

    If you're going to put in an event, do it right. This event would be mildly alright... in an MMO 10 years ago. Do this right. Don't make pumpkins ONLY spawn during the alerts. However, you can make the alerts increase spawn by 50-100%. Also, as a free player, when it comes to fremium games, there is nothing that turns me away from potentially paying than crap like this. Don't make it so in order to get ANYTHING you need to pay. Yes, this game is better than most, but it can be so much better.

    I won't go into detail about my thoughts on other subjects. But this whole pumpkin thing... if there were a cosmetic thing I actually wanted to get and it was as difficult to obtain as the facepaints are now, I'd just stop playing altogether. I'm a busy man, and I don't have time to spend hours upon hours upon days and so on FARMING in an MMO that revolves around FPS style gameplay. If you want to make an MMO, do so, otherwise, don't make things so damned hard for people, especially potential customers, to get stupid cosmetic crap.
    • Up x 7
  2. siiix

    then ignore the event , the event is clearly for people who play ps2 at least 10 hours a day

    i actually got 61 seeds ALL of those when i was not even searching for pumpkins

    100% there is no way i can get 1000 seeds, but hey its better then nothing

    i just think there should be 5x as many pumpkins then there are right now , ONE day there was, but only one day

    aeothegreat you did not actually made a suggestion what type of event you would like to have .. maybe that would help for the next event
    • Up x 1
  3. DatVanuMan

    I haven't found a single pumpkin this whole season.
    IGN would be proud...
    :')
    • Up x 2
  4. Alkezo

    This event felt more grindy than FFXI holiday events...
  5. Ryoken

    The facepaints are laughably easy to obtain if you maintain any sort of awareness while travelling between bases.

    Obviously if you redeploy from fight to fight you won't see any, nor are you likely to see many on Hossin. But on Esamir and Amerish it's almost impossible to miss them. Ignoring Indar because that place is an inner circle of hell.
  6. johnway

    TBH i knew from the start i was never going to get the pumpkins far too many people looking and the stuff for grabs whilst nice was temp so i didn't care about it. you do get seeds if you participate in them so you could walk away with some face paint, but since it was temp i didn't see any reason to bag it.


    So yeah, what everyone else said, ignore the alert and play the game properly. Although i wouldn't have mind a mmo style monster slaying action like mutant pumpkins attacking players and needing the combined might of all the factions to bring it down and rewarded participation for maybe taking the biggest baddest pumpkin. heres hoping for christmas we fight mecha santa and his cyborg monster reindeers to slay for booty.
  7. Cest7

    I'm 114/300 on masked murder. Basing a directive on an optional event is absolutely ********. No body wears masks because they don't want to feed directives and putting on masks for 4 slots of 5 classes is changing 20 helmets, not everyone can be bothered with this.

    The Candycannon and Masked Murder directive is stupid. I'm considering giving up on this disappointing directive.
  8. Degenatron

    ONLY MAKE "EVENT ITEMS" SPAWN IN CONTESTED TERRITORIES.

    Bam! Problem solved. That means you go to where the fighting is and Pumpkins, or snowmen or whatever are popping up all over the place as the fight rages around them.

    The only trick is you need a "growing" animation for them, but that's be pretty easy to just build a scaling animation that makes them grow to full size.
  9. zaspacer

    I think the conception of the event was well done, but they messed up on the spawn rate of pumpkins and number of categories required by Event Directive.

    1) players kill pumpkins for seeds
    2) players unlock (Event duration lasting only) Halloween Masks with seeds
    3) players wear unlocked masks (gives XP bonus to encourage them to)
    4) many players running around with Masks and kill each other
    5) players pay 700 SC or 1000 Certs to unlock either ineffective holiday pistol or new knife remodel, kill with knife while wearing mask and/or kill masked players with ineffective pistol

    All the above are tied nicely into a "Holiday Directive". And in theory, it gets people smashing pumpkins, getting to select and wear masks, everyone running around in masks, and people having Halloween themed fun.

    The problems are (as has been stated) were enough to derail the event for most people. Making it more frustrating than fun.
    1) The availability and number of pumpkins spawns weren't enough (tying the Pumpkin spawns to only periodic Pumpkin Alerts made access to Pumpkins very limited. As has been stated, Pumpkin Alerts should have just been *more* Pumpkins available, and that they should be available at other times/places too.
    2) The number of Pumpkins were too low and available mostly to pilots only. More Pumpkins made available would have meant more players being able to get into the event and running around with masks on. (I am a pilot almost 100% of the time and I have access to Certed ESFs of all 3 factions, and it only took me about 3 Alerts to get ~100 seeds flying on my VS character who always had a large % of the territory controlled by his side; but most players don't have the same option to fly well or pick and choose which faction to use, so getting Pumpkins for them wasn't viable
    3) Because the number of pumpkins was too low, it made satisfying the requirement of killing others with Masks very difficult. So some people just start collaborating with others to rig it and get their needs done. Any event that pushes large numbers of players into using workarounds to circumvent the event is a sign of a poorly tuned event.
    4) Finally, to complete the final tier of the Directive requires 700 SC or 1000 Certs to unlock special items you must get kills with to complete the directives. One requires finding people in masks and killing them with an ineffective pistol (good luck with that one), and the other requires killing lots of people with knife (which a lot of us find to be an unfun grind). So you have to pay a chunk of cash or Certs to finish it, and grind an activity (or cheat it by collaborating with others) that is largely not fun for most (and also a pay + unfun grind style activity that has already been required to unlock black camo).
  10. Cransoon

    The pumpkins don't just spawn only during alerts. They hotfixed that halfway through the event. There are fewer of them, but they still exist. If you drive around on Esamir looking for them, you can easily find a bunch. I found 5 in about 10 minutes once, although it's much easier in alerts. I got all of my 131 pumpkins for the last tier in 3 days on the weekend, over the course of maybe 2 or 3 Esamir pumpkin alerts, and 1 Amerish alert. I have over 360 pumpkin seeds, AFTER owning 6 masks (only 1 of which I bought with SC at the very beginning of the event).

    Honestly, it's just a matter of committing yourself to the event. Getting 50 slasher kills took me maybe 2-3 hours of stalker cloaking. The final tier of pumpkins probably took me about 3-4 hours total combining all the alerts I did. Leatherface naturally gets completed through the pumpkins. Galact-O-Lanterns are dumb, and not reliable, obviously. Mask kills are a matter of farming the crap out of the enemy (see: Playing the game normally), although 300 does depend a lot on luck of people wearing the masks. The only objective that I really feel is really unreasonable is combining the luck of masks with the crap of the candy cannon.

    Am I saying it's a great event? No. Could it be better? Absolutely. But I don't think it's as extreme as you're making it out to be. Just isolate the things you need to work on, and work on them. If you really want to finish the directives, you'll find the time for it. ;)
    • Up x 2
  11. Tommyp2006

    There aren't enough pumpkin alerts IMO, I tend to see roughly 2 territory alerts for every pumpkin alert. Or, simulatneous alerts, need to happen, so we can have more pumpkin alerts. They mentioned ramping up the event, but other than the single change they made, because people were complaining that the event was boring, they haven't really done anything. I hope the event runs a week or so after Halloween.
  12. KnightCole

    I really find it funny that in a massive planetary war between 3 factions, who are so opposed to each other's ideas, short on supplies and all that, we have an alert that involved shooting pumpkins.........

    This game is more a Virtual cartoon training simulator for the recruits then any kinda massive war...

    Come easter is there going to be hopping pink bunnies we have to shoot? With the explosive effect being chocolate?
  13. siiix


    so you saying the pumpkins spawn only where they fights are ?

    that would explain why i was driving around for at least an hour and found none, but when we finished a base i see a few, one occasion i seen 3 between 2 bases, once i seen one right outside the crown in middle of like 50 people
  14. DrPapaPenguin

    Wait, there's an alert on? :D
  15. TraatAdmiral

    No, that's not correct. They spawn everywhere. If you always redeploy to get to fights you won't see any, because they tend to last longest out in the wilderness.
  16. uhlan

    Just like the Directives the events are very hard for casual and new players to enjoy.

    I honestly don't know what SOE and the devs are thinking when it comes to player retention and stimulating interest.

    It wasn't even a "fun" event. It was a grindy, immersion destroyer. Popular amongst those who play a lot and find themselves bored with nothing better to do.

    Ok for them, granted, but utterly pointless to anyone else.
  17. Ryoken

    As TraatAdmiral said, pumpkins spawn everywhere. They will, however, get seen and destroyed faster in high traffic areas.

    Use a Flash/Harasser to get from the warpgate to where you want to go and you'll see plenty.
  18. Irathi


    I'm with you on this one, I really dislike the halloween event thus far. Not so much because I don't like the halloween theme, but because it brings nothing fun to the game except farming and it brought with it more bugs and more problems with low fps, crash to desktop etc.

    All I want is to play a stable game with good fps.

    If you can give me that I don't care if it is halloween or flying ponies around.
  19. Goretzu

    The mask earning and pumkin finding ones are annoying and badly thought out, but doable.



    The kills with mask (and also wearing mask) one is just plain aggravating - a couple of night ago I got 79 kills and 4 were valid for that objective - pure silliness and no Dev can really believe that is working as intended.

    The Galacto-lantern ones are as bad, still never even seen one.
    • Up x 1
  20. Meeka


    I don't know.....

    I've only went Pumpkni hunting on two pumpkin alerts; and I have 60 seeds on one toon, 30 on another.

    I imagine if I had actually gone out on more pumpkin alerts, I could have easily gotten 1000 or more seeds multiple times.

    I just had no interest in looking.