Help us Improve Events

[Nominei]

That was a nice survey. Very detailed >D
For the next event like this, I'd suggest making the "grand prize" of the event something not publicly known. But then...I kind of like secrets and surprises >D

[Serenith]

Stealing art..

Is not cool :/

Finished the survey.
I wasn't too happy with the event, all you were doing was clicking buttons after 20 seconds, quite boring.
I would much rather have a battle thing going on like last year where we fought users.
Where there were different forums for each team and such. Here there was no way to differ between teams.

The items were cute, and the story line was nice otherwise.

EDIT: I would have been happier if you'd allowed both teams to keep their skins, still soul bound.
And came up with a different form of grand prize.

[PinkFae15]

Did the survey. I gotta say..this event was one of the best I've been around for. The zomg aspect was really cool. I loved reaching the achievements and unlike some previous events they didnt feel so daunting to do, which keeps it fun rather than a stress of wanting to finish in time.

Kudos on the amount of components. boo/sin profiles and pms. Actual manga updates, the art extras. The actual event itself. I gotta say though..you guys took the easy way out with giving the shopkeepers either a boo or sin affiliation rather than having to draw up all new halloween costumes.(Since they got new art you couldn't just use the same ones you've been using for the past couple years.) That's really my own complaint.

[Miss_Neno]

^_^ The artwork really was lovely. I don't personally mind that an evolving item was delayed for it, considering how beautiful the manga is, but I know others quite disagree... >.> I liked that all the NPC's got halloween outfits, I liked getting a feel for which characters would go on the side of good vrs. the side of evil... I loved the items, the were all pretty. The gameplay on the actual event? Repetitive, a bit boring, and getting followers was really spammy and dull. =_= But, most events are like that. The only real exception for me was the Rejected Olympics, which still ranks as either my first or second favorite, and I only have trouble saying for sure because I got really involved in the Alien Halloween. :3

I still think soulbinding and removing skins kinda kills the event for me, though. It's hard for me to enjoy it knowing that I can't get all of the lovelies, no matter how hard I try... ):

[death_note_kira light]

i think there should be another side in the demonbusters war.maybe chaos

[Graven123]

well i think you guys made things wayyyyy too complicated.

last years halloween event was a lot of fun and you didnt have to have facebook or gaia cash and you didnt have to manage resources and it was still a lot of fun, PLUS you got cool skins you could keep and items too.

if you MUST do resource management then please make something so you know what resources you have.

[AloysiusWeasley]

Did the survey, it was very detailed and allowed me to express exactly how I felt. Please do more of those. 3nodding

Anyway, might as well post up here about the event. I'll start out with the good parts - zOMG, hands down. New badges, items to work for, and the combo of regular game bonuses (rings and orbs for tooling around in portals) as well as zOMG loot made me keep coming back for more and more and more. Names of the animated were HYSTERICAL. My suggestions for improvement would be to have ToT'ing in Barton drop the occasional portal loot item as well, to help those that can't do as much portal work as they'd like. I'd also like to see a staging area next time for when we go into portals (so everyone isn't slaughtered right off the bat), solo players allowed to fight against ALL the animated (letting them not play against Night Frights was SO not cool), and please, please, please give us something to do during the daytime hours in zOMG. I understand why ToT'ing is only on the night cycle, but I saw no reason why portals couldn't be open 24/7, I would have been happily doing it for hours at a crack. With having everything at night, it interrupts gameplay/flow and is somewhat annoying, particularly when coordinating with other players.

As for the site portion...well....let me say that the manga and storyline were really neat, and I did enjoy the main Demonbusters page very much. The items were also pretty cool, though I must say that in order for an item to be truly loved on here, it really has to be versatile, something that people will want to use again and again. Jewelery is always a plus (I'm constantly using the Dark Elf Circlet from last year, for example), and weapons are always good, along with skins/eyes/tattoos/wigs.
As for what I didn't like about the site portion, no offense meant to you guys, but the whole click and wait and click and wait and click and wait makes me want to tear off my skin with a fork. The amount of missions and time required is truly excessive, and makes me thing it's done solely to keep people from getting in mules. I'm not even done on my main yet (still have the 500 missions yet to go), and I can think of a whole host of things I'd rather do than even THINK about taking another account through all that again. Things like understanding calculus, reading Shakespeare, and things involving Klingon pain sticks applied to sensitive regions. Gathering followers was not half as bad as I thought it would be, but the GC part made me curl my lip in disgust, and it also led to lots of spam outside of the event forums. Speaking of spam, please make it clear next year that asking for followers is only kosher in signatures and in your home camps, then the main event forum can be saved for people asking for help figuring out the event, guides to the event, and whatever other fun stuff Gaians can come up with, like gifting threads and the like.

As for events I loved in the past, my favorites were definitely the Prom event this year, and especially the Summer Olympics last year. On the former, the music was great, and I love that game to shreds. On the latter, the variety of games kept me going back and doing them again and again, and even if you weren't particularly good at one, there were always more. I also liked Halloween '08 - it also had lots of clicking involved, but it was definitely less tedious. I guess what I'm aiming towards is that I really like flash games, but am also cool with forum games, so long as they don't take an unreasonably long time to complete. Obviously making them more complex is better than "click this link to get an item" (though there's certainly a place for them too), but when I've been doing it for days and have to force myself to keep going because it's so tedious and repetitive, something isn't quite right. xp

Lastly, soulbinding is bad. I understand why it was done this time (though I don't agree with taking away losing skins), but otherwise, very, very bad, and should only be a last resort.

[Danzavare]

I did the survey and I think it was well written. My view of the good and bad aspects of the event.

Good:
~ Fantastic art.
~ Epic manga with Gaia's trademark humour.
~ Interesting items.
~ Great new NPCs.
~ Decent CS items.
~ zOMG portion is fun.

The negatives are primarily surrounding gameplay.

Bad:
~ Point-click-wait-point-click gameplay is tiresome. Many people are motivated by the items, but I personally want good items AND a memorable experience, like that of our prom events.
~ Unnecessary use of flash. Flash is good and handy when it's for an interesting mini-game, but having black flash screens just to navigate through text seems unnecessary and just makes the process more difficult.
~ Artificially extending the forum event. The large mission numbers and experience counters combined with the repetitive nature of the event don't make it any more fun, and personally make me less inclined to play. I found it silly that I had to max out three different experience bars doing the same tedious thing.
~ Rarity/luck based zOMG event. This may just be me, but getting the necessary drops to get the items is very difficult when I rarely get them from enemies.
~ Forum user-run competitions, games and the like were pretty much gone with the flood of "FOLLOW ME" threads. Not fun.

Suggestions:
~ Focus on the gameplay experience as a motivational factor, not just good items.
e.g. The DDR style gameplay and music were fantastic during our Prom events, so much so I even wanted it to be added as a game to Gaia's collection. That in itself was fun, the items we're just a bonus.
~ Skill based/ innovative events are loved. I think those should take priority over any endurance-test events that require tedious motions over extended periods of times. As far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy if they were never done again. I could live with them if they were made shorter and weren't the focal point of the event.

I understand that Gaia staff put a lot of effort into this event and for the most part everything excluding gameplay was great, it's just the gameplay that ranks this event below most of the other events I've participated in. This is the one event where I haven't done my best to complete it because simply, it's not fun. D=

[AndyX]

personally i really enjoyed the zombie/Human/vampire/darkelf event a few years back. the "game engine" or battle mechanics seemed to work out rather nicely aside for zombies reviving other players just to croak them off. which was good in itself as i didn't care to play zombie nearly as long as the other races took to play

[Maril]

I filled out the survey and am very appreciative of the opportunity to give feedback that way. When I saw the link I was afraid it was going to be just a basic survey and I would have to go into detail here, but it was very thought out and covered most of what I wanted to say.

I do admit, I agree on the 'point-click-wait' problem other people mentioned, but having only flash based mini games makes it hard for people with lower end computers to play. I still can't play Booty Grab because it kills my computer if a thread has more than 2 or 3 aquarium signatures up : And my computer isn't *that* old... But something closer to the zombie (not grombie) event in 04, and the vamp event in... 07? were good mechanics that would have been fun to incorporate in. Put make it worth posting too (The vamp and zombie events basically made you not WANT to post because you risked getting turned into the opposing team...) it would have worked well with this event if you could have included a 'follow' button instead of making people post links. And a way to show off your personal level status would be good, like what was done for the school event.

Other ways to incorporate this into a more interactive forum based event could have been having the mission requirements be lower, have the user go to the mission page to get a mission, then have the missions be something like throwing something at BOO members, then go out and find BOO members to throw sacrificial clams at xd Or steal clams from BOO members (people who've joined BOO could have a clam appear beside their posts that SIN members could click on) and then toss them into the portal... I'm not sure how to turn that around to BOO sweatdrop

[That_comic_guy]

Graven123

well i think you guys made things wayyyyy too complicated..

I have to agree and the follower thing was rather lame. I play this site all by myself and didn't care for all the extra spam this whole "follow me" crap cause. Yet another event I skipped.

Gaia needs to understand not everyone can buy a new computer every two years.

[Zackraa]

I wish that everyone could keep their skins

some of my friends are in B.O.O. I do not wish to see them sad if they lose and they do not wish to see me sad if I lose

I am rather fond of my demon skin I have been working hard to keep it for almost a week now I'm sure everyone has been doing the same

when this event ends a lot of people will be sad no matter who wins

ಠܫಠ

[The Undead Suitor]

Liked the event.

Filled out the survey.

Tried to nail into your heads what you need to do better.

Commented on how your pushing Facebook like its going out of style (oh wait, it is).

Seriously, you actually considered making iphone apps? *facepalm* Aren't you guys stressed for time already?

How about making a simple event that has a deep story line, instead of making an event that has 3289427809 puddle shallow things to do?

No one likes puddles.

[Pumpkii]

Make collapsable lists truely collapsable, don't make us have to re-do it everytime the page loads, it's truely annoying.

other than that, loved it.