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Let's talk DU events


le_souriceau

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I wanted to talk not about any particular, concluded NQ-made events, but more about their overall direction and organization in future.

 

Can we expect?..

 

1) Prior anouncement (at least week before start, better - two).

2) Scheduling on week-end. 

3) Inclusion of long-term events, where players can meaningfully participate in active stage in duration of several days or even week.

4) Inclusion of more solo/new players friendly events, where they doing more individual goals, not being clearly pitted against groups of veterans.

 

What else do people want?

 

Fire away, we now have CMs that like to read our ideas and feedback ?

 

 

 

 

 

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Thank you for starting this thread.

I live in Australia so I sort of expect events to happen when I'm asleep.  I logged in at 9.30am this morning and began scanning.  I thought I'd watch a youtube video and there I see a video about an event.  The video went live at 2.30am.

I watched the video and thought to myself ..... well that will be all over by now.  Then I thought, why wasnt there a message waiting for me in game to let me know there was an event?

 

So

1)  was there in game notification of the event, perhaps directing people to the video?

2) If not, thats pretty bad.  We already had the 1st event which was pretty much for alpha backers only (since special knowledge was required).  I was fine with that but we should not require inside knowledge or heads up from devs for future events.  Also, after watching a video of a clan participating in this event, they seemed to be indicating that knowledge gained in the previous event was assisting then in this event.  Which kinda made me think.  Is there any point in participating?

3) If there was in game notification ant the time then woo hoo well done.  Please add a notification for people who log in later.

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First of all I am quite happy about these types of events and that such events are organized. So this is all thumbs up for NQ and the excellent work on this (not sure they will actually read this :))

 

Now to the "critical" for this event:

 

I have been informed by a co-player that such an event happened and it was notified in-game at the moment it happened.

 

However when I logged in many hours later, there was no information nowhere and no confirmation of any event. Talking to my corp, I was informed that apparently additional information was available on Twitter and here I just skipped it all. If this is true that information is available on Twitter, that is a no-go for me, I have no Twitter account and I do not plan to have one and I do not expect this game to give any information outside of the game itself. Even having to watch Youtube or go to the forums is actually already a no-go for me as all this information should be available to all players equally in the game.

 

Second thing is that following this message I was unable to get any additional information and therefore just did not bother to follow up on this.

 

Conclusion:

 

I actually am quite thrilled about these types of events but I agree that content should be created for all players equally and not necessarily on a first come first served basis (not really sure if this is the case as I have little information indeed). Also it should not be on a "winner takes it all" basis.

 

Events should actually be: the ones who play a lot and long should get a lot and much, while casual players should get casually something. Of course a "random" effect should make some players "luckier" but eventually no one should go out empty handed as this will just mean that some people will not even bother as they will be discouraged.

 

So this is all about communication in the game and do not point me to any forum threads or communication in there, lots of people are paying to play the game, they do not pay to read the forums.

 

Regards

 

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1 hour ago, Ochiniwa said:

no one should go out empty handed as this will just mean that some people will not even bother as they will be discouraged.

 

 

 

 

This is already botched - because solo players and small orgs will automatically get discouraged because you can be damn sure you will never be able to get the rewards when large, RICH, organisations waltz in with 1000 ships, surround the planet and claim the riches for themselves, making them even richer.
So, yeah, solo players and small orgs will definitely get discouraged and will not bother to even attempt to be part of this anymore.

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2 hours ago, sHuRuLuNi said:

 

 

This is already botched - because solo players and small orgs will automatically get discouraged because you can be damn sure you will never be able to get the rewards when large, RICH, organisations waltz in with 1000 ships, surround the planet and claim the riches for themselves, making them even richer.
So, yeah, solo players and small orgs will definitely get discouraged and will not bother to even attempt to be part of this anymore.

It'S jUsT LiKe ReAdY PlAyEr OnE!!11!1!

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11 hours ago, le_souriceau said:

I wanted to talk not about any particular, concluded NQ-made events, but more about their overall direction and organization in future.

 

Can we expect?..

 

1) Prior anouncement (at least week before start, better - two).

2) Scheduling on week-end. 

3) Inclusion of long-term events, where players can meaningfully participate in active stage in duration of several days or even week.

4) Inclusion of more solo/new players friendly events, where they doing more individual goals, not being clearly pitted against groups of veterans.

 

What else do people want?

 

Fire away, we now have CMs that like to read our ideas and feedback ?

 

 

 

 

 


Excellent questions, @le_souriceau ❤️ I passed this feedback along to the team this morning, and have returned with some answers.

1) You're right, and this is a goal we're actively striving to meet. :) (As the NQ team and game grow, so to does our ability to develop better processes/alignment between Community, Marketing and Game Design; the trifecta of event-related departments.) Put plainly, we're getting organized and finding our rhythm. The earlier events are announced, the better. (Unless of course we purposely want to sew the seeds of mystery & surprise.)

2) This one is tougher to do at present, but it's not out of the question in the future! Running events in/for DU is obviously a newer experience for us, so the first handful we run are not indicative of what will happen down the road. We'd love to try some weekend events eventually, we just have to do some serious finessing on our current iteration of events. Once we've hit an events 'sweet spot' as it were, we can staff for weekend coverage and go to town. Right now however, we want to stick to weekdays so everyone at NQ is at their desk and ready to jump in should anything happen.

3) We're heading in this direction! It's always been our desire to hold events that last for long stretches of time. This particular event was obviously limited in some ways, but again - that's not indicative of what you can expect for every future event. We're just getting started.

(If I may add a little comparison for point 3: we've seen the community ask us to please prioritize the fixing of bugs before the implementation of feature changes. This is the philosophy we're applying to events, essentially. Fix any issues with events first, THEN upgrade to weekend event 'features'.)

4) Noted!! One team member raised a good point that I'd like to volley back to all of you: "right now, it's tough to design an event that works for solo/new players that also can't be overwhelmed/overrun with more experienced folks". What say all of you? What kinds of solo events would you like to see during Beta that can't be taken over by groups/experienced players?

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1 hour ago, NQ-Naunet said:

4) Noted!! One team member raised a good point that I'd like to volley back to all of you: "right now, it's tough to design an event that works for solo/new players that also can't be overwhelmed/overrun with more experienced folks". What say all of you? What kinds of solo events would you like to see during Beta that can't be taken over by groups/experienced players?

First -- great thanks for detailed answers!

 

About 4).

 

I perfectly understand difficulties -- I was doing same (on obviously more amateurish level) leading MC server event team. One powerful solution -- adding layers to event, aimed for different types of players. Let me explain on example of your last event.

 

1) Race part. Fun/competition for organized/pvp oriented people, some daring solo explorers. You can keep it completly same. Its ok. 

 

Yet once it over, serious chunk of players felt completly "late to the party" and, considering all valuable content was copied/shown in screenshots and videous -- without much of reason to even visit event location. So let's do 2 easy things (I think they pretty much within powers of your event team toolset):

 

2) Add despenser or two, so every player in game can get some memo item, like UEF flag or poster, or other "devs only" minor decorative asset. Leave it acceccable for week.

 

It gives solo/late players "collector" reason to actualy visit wreck and get their little thing and be participant of grand story (even if humble one). 

 

3) Then ask art team to make several very quick, utlra rough stetches of 2-3  "UEF ships". Lets assume its by lore -- personal sketch albom of second leutenent LaBarr, found on wreck. Publish it. Make it building contest -- ask players to build ships based on this sketches. Builders (who may never even be remotly interested in "race" part) will be delighted too and become involved in content.

 

So now, with very little added trouble (I hope) we have generaly same, but more memorable event with much larger player base covered/busy/happy/not salty.

 

 

 

 

 

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15 hours ago, NQ-Naunet said:

4) Noted!! One team member raised a good point that I'd like to volley back to all of you: "right now, it's tough to design an event that works for solo/new players that also can't be overwhelmed/overrun with more experienced folks". What say all of you? What kinds of solo events would you like to see during Beta that can't be taken over by groups/experienced players?

Events can be like regularly randomly popping up of new sites around the planet or even throughout the system where even a solo, single player can bump into such a ship/wreck/site and salvage it. Players could salvage and bring it back to the Arc Ship for a reward which is based on the number of items/things salvaged including some random reward. There are plenty of games out there who solve this issue quite easily and nicely, get some inspiration :)

 

So in a nutshell have that big event together with smaller events spread all over the place over several days/weeks and the end-result/effect be depending on the number of participants/type.

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Ideas:

1)  For new players:  Mission requires stealth.  Player must be low renown.  No access to people with above  blah blah skill points.  Some people will create new accounts to access it but that will make NQ more money so this should be an easy sell.

2)  For new players or PvE players:  MIssion requires peace envoy:  Character must have zero PvP skills 

3)  For PvP players:  Mission requires Mercenary:  Character must have PvP skills above blah blah skill points or possibly blah blah number of kills.

4)  For orgs that limit org membership:  Mission requires loyalty:  Character can not belong to more than one org.

5)  For open orgs:  Mission requires diplomat:  Character must belong to at least 5 orgs.

 

I could go on and on but I hope you find this helpful.  I'm not used to MMO's so maybe my ideas are easily exploited?  I dont know.

I think it is important that some of what is available to new or solo players is valuable or even vital.  So, for example lets say DU has an ongoing saga that requires heavy research and co-ordination.  Something only a biggish org could pull off.  Something that also probably requires knowledge gained in alpha (like the 1st one) and/or knowledge gained from completing the 1st one (probably the next one).  Well, that vital next clue ...........  make that something only a new player or solo player can complete.   Any major content should involve all players.  The only way that can be done IMO, is by restricting some players.  

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3 hours ago, Underhook said:

I could go on and on but I hope you find this helpful.  I'm not used to MMO's so maybe my ideas are easily exploited?  I dont know.

I like them. Add:

(6) For industry players. Mission requires Industrialist: Character must have at least x skill points in Crafting skills.

(7) For miners. Mission requires Mining: Character must have at least x skill points in Mining skills.

(8) For athletes. Mission requires Parkour. Character must have at least x skill points in Avatar skills.

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If that ship would be in deep PvP zone that would be fun. Some stuff would definitely go down around there.

Now, it's a flying circus with base64 enthusiasts.

 

Event idea:

NQ staff takes a ship on a weekend, some L badass battleship. Arkship announces rogue admiral and provides coords of it (in PVP or PVE space) + puts a bounty on his head.

Players go there, for each damage dealt you get quanta. That battleship randomly shoots at approaching players so you can't just grind it and should maneuver/disengage if damaged.

At least some action...

 

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