Death of the Destroyer: Feedback Thread

**Othinn1**

Anarcist wrote:

contact spam. why did we need to be told over and over and so on that we needed special guns?

So that everyone who came in late can find out what happened and what to do.

News stations sometimes do this. They'll record a broadcast, then replay it at certain points in the day in case anyone missed out.

**Rogue**

One thing I forgot to mention. BRING BACK FLASH TRAFFIC!

**RemagDiv**

I have many gripes about this event:

1. The times at which stuff happened. It seemed most of the interaction
and event stuff happened during the day EST. What's wrong with this is
many people have school and work during the day, so really most people
could have missed the entire event. There used to be a timezone
schedule where stuff happened during the night, like 2 PST to 8 PST
something might happen. This is 5 PM to 12 PM EST which is suitable for
more people then during the afternoon. Just today I worked from 3-9 PM
EST and missed everything that happened today.

2. Not much LET interaction as other live events. We had no
organizational meetings. The Machines didn't even have anyone to report
to. Basically has scripted messages repeat over and over in the system
chat, and had DN1 updates. You couldn't even know when LET was on
because they didn't show up on the Buddly List.

And, my biggest gripe with this event is not only how the "rewards" were given out, but the reward itself (Assassin's Mask):

3. First off, the leak on DN1 telling everyone where these 4 locations
are didn't help at all, but even if that didn't happen, word of mouth
and thinking minds would have all crowded around the Assassin anyway.
Now, the way to get this Mask was for the person to get the last hit.
How is this any way fair? All you have is 50 people spamming the Flit
Gun, there's no strategy or deserving way to receive the Mask. Not only
that, but did you see the buffs for this mask!?

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1524/screenshot122ut.jpg

First off, the buffs on that mask is insane. Something like that shouldn't even be in the game, because the 5 or so people who were lucky enough to land the finishing blow (which is totally random, you have 100 people around him spamming the Flit Gun), now have this uber item that people who don't have it (99% of the rest of the community) will be at a severe disadvantage in combat. The mask should be unbuffed and just for collector's purposes.

**LtCmdr_Tsusai**

Good:

It was a Live Event, and was nice to get going again.

I was starting to miss real inter-organization political B.S.

Bad:

The leak

Ugly:

Local code recompiles. Look, we spent at least 6 months stress
testing Algorithm, where did that info go to? The current server
setup does not have enoguh power to handle the 50%+ of the entire
population in one small area, including when they pvp w/ hacker effects.

Comments/Ideas for improvement:

1) For something this large, please reload the area that will be used
prior to everyone coming in. Maybe this way people won't lag it
so bad to trigger the reload.

2) Have server managers/GMs disable the auto zone reload and make it tough it out.

3) if the server decides to put up the barrier and reload, have the
Live Events Team at LEAST try again after it's done, as many times as
it takes. If it wasn't for the leak, or the post on the next day,
we'd be lost.

4) Get Q/A up and going AGAIN publicly. With the move to SoE and
the combining 3 server sets into 1, things need to be stress
tested. Half of us right now do not mind splitting the servers
back up if it means we can do Live Events without the server kicking us
off to reload the area. I don't think we had a REAL Live Event
since the server merging.

The servers in their current state cannot handle this again. They
cannot handle the max online compacity in a concentrated spot.
Put the notion to get more servers per world, and/or more processor
power on the server side.

**Eidolon**

The Good:

    - Continuation of storyline!

    - Live Events aren't entirely dead!

    - Criticals were entertaining

The Bad:

    - "The fate of the Matrix is in your hands!" Yet there's the outcome written out for us.

    - Minimal amount of interaction

    - Basis of rewarding players

    - Misinformation on method of distributing the Mobius Code lead to missing out on it

    - Annoying use of system messages

    - Absence of critical system messages during the final battles

    - No more Assassin :/

The Ugly:

- Server stability

Main Suggestions:

1) Allow us to add and monitor when LE characters enter and exit the Matrix.

One
thing about live events that has always jeopardized participation and
interaction with the Live Events Team has been that there are no
concrete time periods in which the live events take place.
Fortunately, prior to the transition, we had a buddy list that acted as
our informant on when something was about to happen. Redpills
could jack into the Matrix and mosey about doing whatever he or she
wants, then the moment their system message read (for example)
"Assassin is in the Matrix," they would know that something was about
to happen (or at least that there was a chance for some
interaction). Shortly after the transition we found out that we
couldn't add LET characters onto our buddy lists because of their Admin
status, but now a few were available for adding. The problem is
that none of these characters ever showed up as Online.
We had absolutely no idea of when a character of interest was in the
Matrix. I don't expect interaction to be handed to us, and I'm
sure whoever is controlling these LE characters doesn't want to be
flooded with tells, but this was one thing that really helped redpills
when it came to live events and is one thing that needs to be returned
to us.

2) Utilize system messages in a more appropriate and useful manner.

Please do not use system message loops for
relaying messages throughout the day. Hearing Agent
Gray tell me about the incident with Ookami every 15 minutes for the
entire day was less than amusing. System messages should be used
to detail what is going on during the real interaction parts of the
events, not to repeat something that could have easily been relayed
through a Message of the Day. Organizational meeting
system messages are great, they work and serve their purpose, but where
were the system announcements during the repeated crashes that many
redpills encountered? If an Assassin character crashed or was
killed, there should've been an announcement reporting just that.
Instead we were left wondering what happened to the Assassin we were
just chasing and exactly how many were still around. Please
utilize the system messages during events but not for spamming
information!

3) Dedication from the LET to allow interaction and conversation with redpills.

Everything was basically scripted leaving very few, if any, opportunities for interaction. The
Assassin isn't much of a talker, and I'm sure the Oracle and Seraph had
more important things to attend to, but there were virtually no times
when redpill presence was even acknowledged. We need dedication
from the new LET to allow for extended conversations and opportunities
otherwise you venture even further from the premise of allowing
redpills to affect the storyline (even though that was thrown out the
window with the slip up at the beginning of the event). Also on
that note, please have some sort of build up to events. I
understand the amount of interaction is being scaled back, but it's
really not a Live Event without interaction, instead it's just a movie.

I wouldn't mind an unbuffed mask for being the target of the
Assassin's Corrupting Bile and Crush attacks after repeatedly spraying
him with my Flit Gun. SMILEY

NightTrace

The Good:

After not picking up the game after the beta ended, I finnally got this
the other day, I've since played every day, joined a great crew, and
just got my first live event!

The Code Frag thing was a cool premise, however alot of things that
could have made it better (hidden HL's,etc) were just dropped instead
of being delt with.

Saturday, I was the first person the Recursion server to run into the
Assassin. I had been in the Wharfs, a group had formed around the area,
and a large spawn of corrupted had attacked when I noticed him. I
beleive my comment was "Oh sh*t." Shortly there after I was gunned down
by him. So to see him and be his first victem in a day was pretty fun
heh.

The Bad:

Felt to me like something that should have taken one day, two at most was purposly just beaten to death and drug out forever.

Loot system/priority, Im a low level character (level 14), so I was not
able to touch the assassin even if I had wanted to. So automatically
there is no way for me to land the "big prize", on top of that the "big
prize" was given to someone by COMPLETE random chance. Add to that the
fact that I couldnt even be present for the finish of this event
because of timing out/crashing. Overall I get an anti-climatic ending
to an event that was shaping up rather nicley, and I have nothing to
show for it.

The fly virus is still around.

General Lagginess, nuff said.

The Ugly:

The fact that there were [b]MORE[/b] problems after the event was over
then during it. After the event was over, there were server
crashes, insane lag, and general moments of *unpleasant person* from the player
base (hey that counts in my opinion of an event, you guys just cant
help it SMILEY

).

The fact that as I am a newer player, I was basically left out of this.
I was able to participate in a fashion the first couple days, searching
for code frags, tossing ideas with my crew mates about how it all
peiced togetether. However, come "game day" when the stakes were high,
(and now apparently the prizes were to) what was a level 14 character
to do? Nothing it seems like. Left high and dry because of my low
level.

The fact that after about at least an hour of "Your account is already
in use"/"Cannot connect to server" errors, I logged in, only to find
out that my Crew/Faction information has now errored, and I cannot use
my crew chat /etc.

Message Edited by FHANight on 10-02-2005 07:11 PM

Message Edited by FHANight on 10-02-2005 07:15 PM
Message edited by NightTrace on 10/02/2005 18:15:58.

PaPPy

what event?

first off it was ruined

second it was not friendly with any time zone other than PST

i didnt get to particpate in anything other than killing corrupts and doing some crit missions

the frags iight u put them together and did nothing, no reward

then iight i get my lil gun and the assassin happens to be on early monday morning for me

i run around and do my 10 damage and he dies and i die

so i then go to the lag fest that needs to be worked on (other mmos dont have this problem like wow)

and i hear niobe say everyone that hit him will get something

but idont see anything

so all the running around this whole weekend was usless espically how the sky looks like my little cousin painted a picture

i wish i could get the graphics designed that pulled that crummy work off

so overall i think it was a horrible event and main things to improve is LAG and time zone friendly

Canbus

Good

- We get to kill the Assassin

- Decent critical missions

Bad

- Timing of available critical missions. 'm the type that would finish the critical missions whenever I get the chance, but making us wait half an hour per mission is not productive at all. Not everyone can play the game 24-7. On the bad side, certain people are not able to do said mission if they were helping the mission leader.

Example: Stack helps Lithius with "Free Your Mind" and finishes the mission. Stack is mission leader, but can't call for said mission at all. No amount of /ccrs would get resolved because SOE is busy with other things or is willingly ignoring the reports.

- Lag: The server merge caused more harm than good at all. It was hard enough to go to an organization meeting in a server like Linenoise and being surrounded by fifty morons in the same area. But since the merge happened, everyone's crash galore. I suggest seperating the servers again since three small servers on one just made things FUBARed IMHO. Hell, even fighting the Assassin was bad because of the crashes and we're stuck in our desktop for five minutes because of the "Your character is already online."

- Crashes: See my lag comment. The LET speeches made everyone in the audience crash because there were fifty people in the same room as Niobe/Gray/Flood, and the lag was freaking unbearable.

- Very little LET interaction: It was mostly hindered due to the fact that we can't add people like say "Niobe, Ghost, Gray, Flood, and Assassin" into our friends list because of their admin status. Pre-SOE days, we would see "Ghost is in The Matrix" and we would have some type of indication that something was going to happen due to some people being lazy to update the DN1 website. Sometimes, we also enjoyed talking with said LET characters saying "Hi so and so. How are things going?"

Examples:

Stack had a brief conversation with Morpheus asking if he had spare time. Morpheus told him, "Sorry Stack, I'm busy, but I'll try to get back to you whenever I can."

I had a brief conversation with Al3xandra giving my condolences for Neurophyte's death and told her to tell the rest of the crew that I said "hi."

Ugly:

- Lag and crashes

- Bigger number of morons at Organization meetings: LET needs a tool to cut out people asking moronic comments such as "Will you marry me Niobe." This is more intolerable than the Choices & Consequences event. In an average organization meeting pre-merge, it was thirty morons per organization meeting, but with the merge, it's quadrupled to 120 morons.

Message Edited by Dibol on 10-02-2005 07:27 PM
Message edited by Canbus on 10/02/2005 18:27:28.

**Othinn1**

FHANight wrote:

The fly virus is still around.

Of course. It's a virus. From what I've seen the Corrupted have stopped spawning, and any that are still around spawned before the Assassin died. These last Corrupted and people who still have the virus are the only things preventing it from going away.

NightTrace

the thing is, Im not blaming that on the GMs. Im just commenting
that it was annoying today to log in and immediattly catch the virus
still. This is after almost two hours of "You Cannot Log In" errors,
and time outs.

**Outlaw**

I am frustrated myself. Here I am, a normal player who has been chasing
the Assassin since a week before The Hunt for Morpheus Event. I think
that would be like 5 to 6 months. So after all the times trying to kill
him, and fight him, all I get is this little piece of cake. I mean
don't get me wrong, I like the live events, but I wish I would have
gotten something more from this since I have been chasing him for the
longest time.

**Outlaw**

The Good:

- Morpheus is Avenged!

- The Assassin is Gone!

The Bad:

- The ending. I have been chasing the Assassin since a week before the
The Hunt for Morpheus Event. So that is about 5 to 6 months. I have
chased from Sobra to Richland and to anywhere else he would go,
fighting him no matter what. Now the time has come to finally kill him,
and all I get is a piece of cake? I am sorry, but I think we should get
more for chasing him for over 5 months.

- The mask thing should have been evenly distributed. Final blows isn't good enough.

The Ugly:

- Server Stability

Peer

The Good

The event finally brought closure to the Assassin and the death of Morpheus. I was personally able to chase around the Assassin, and thanks to the nature of the Flit gun, I was actually able to inflict damage to him. That was truely fun. However...

The Bad

The timing of the event's closure was unexpectedly early in the day. The only time I ever actually interacted during the "Live" portion of the event was about 4 minutes the evening before, when the Assassin appeared in a random part of the Matrix. After my quick death and forced return to the loading area, I never found him again. I then spent hours looking for a character that probably wasn't even in the game anymore. Having a better idea of when an event is going to happen would have saved me the personal annoyance of rushing home this evening just to discover the event was already over. Times for the events need to be less of a "Play all day, and hope you catch a glimpse of the LET." You don't go to a movie theater at 0800 in the morning and stand out there all day for the 5 minutes they open the door (and each day, the time they open the door is completely random). The film industry would collapse. Well... that's what is happening here.

The Ugly

The reward masks. So much complaining about who got them and the rather nice buffs the masks have. This is rediculous. They are unique items, they should be in this game... It's a frelling RPG! Unique items are what it is all about. Now... people are complaining how it was decided who got the mask... you know what? Ever been to a baseball game? Imagine you're at the World Series. You're out in left field... second level. End of the game, bases loaded... the guy at bat nails a homer... it lands in the glove of the guy right below you. Do you **bleep** at the players on the field that you didn't get a ball, or that the guy's ball is now worth a fortune? Do you demand they take away that guy's ball and replace it with an ordinary one? Do you demand that they give everyone in the stands a ball? No. The guys who killed the Assassin were in the right place at the exact right time. Pure luck. That's the entire point. We're not all winners... we're not all special. That's what makes a game fun and exhilirating when you win. You managed to beat the odds. This is an MMO... not everyone can beat the odds... since the other players are the odds. Else, everyone would be a level 50 with the same exact stats and loadouts... with the same buffs, and no one would be better, it's the Politically Correct Olympics. At the end, everyone gets a Silver Medal, since no one is better than the other.

What fun would that be?

The one thing the mask shows us is that there need to be more unique items. Not more of the same unique items... but actual items that there are 10 or less of in all of the Matrix. We need lore... mystery... and most of all... these items should not have minimum levels on them.

Even a 10-year old can catch that game winning homer. Are you going to tell him he can't have it until he's 45?

Calliente

I said it before, I'll say it again, and if I get into the LESIG, I'll say it there too.

These events are what people play for. A LOT of people only log
in, simply for the event, thus causing a period of abnormal stress on
the servers. If the servers are not prepared to handle said
stress, the events will fail.

If you notice, the primary portion of the people complaining are on
Recursion. I was really excited about the merger, and I thought
it was going to be a really great idea, however the problem remains
that we have a situation where the servers are forced into a position
that they cannot handle.

So, there are 3 possible outcomes that I see happening.

1) SOE works on decreasing the amount of calculations the servers are
required to do, and in turn creates a more streamlined system.
This hopefully would require the system to use less resources, and
subsequently make crashing minimal. This probably will take a
long time, and as such in the time being, the following 2 methods may
have to be adopted.

2) Live Events that reach a broad area. While Method didn't have
the # of people that Recursion has, we DID have quite a few.
During the first Corrupted event, when we had to fight the giant fly
monsters, I did not crash once. Reason being? They used
every single area in the game, to distribute the lag properly, so that
the entire system wasn't straining in a single aspect, and the load
could be distributed properly. With Downtown, International,
Westview, and Richland all being utilized, you didn't run into the
bottleneck we had in Richland/Westview, while DT/International were
working 100%.

3) Server split. This is a fairly drastic thing. However it
is becoming apparent that Recursion might need a server split, and we
might need to create an opt in split to move people voluntarily to a
new server. In fact, it might even be a good idea to create a new
server, and allow all servers to migrate there. I'm not sure what
the situation on the other servers is, but I do know recursion has a
VERY healthy population, and could afford the hit in the number of
redpills.

Those are a few ideas, I'm sure there are more, but my hands hurt, and I'm tired of typing SMILEY

**Stack**

I have to complain about how early the event was. I know you were
trying to accomodate the European players, but I just got back from
eating breakfast, checked the forums, saw "It's already over," and
thought, "They must be joking." They weren't. I jacked in and found out
that the Assassin was already dead.

Even if the event did start early in the day, I at least expected it to
last for a couple hours. I certainly didn't expect it to come and go
while I was reading Calvin & Hobbes with my french toast and eggs.
Granted, I did sleep in a little as I usually do on weekends, so it was
still partially my fault, but honestly... just one more hour or so and
I would've seen it, and it's not like it would kill the people in
Europe to stay up until midnight.

In general, though, I just feel like it was a little anticlimactic.
What would be really cool is if you guys included the death of the
Assassin as the next cinematic and included actual players in there,
all spraying him with insecticide. That would really help give people a
sense that we're interacting with the storyline, even if it's already
scripted out for us.