Help us Improve Events

[panoptes]

Remember the alien invasion XMas event? That was fun. I liked tipping cows and probing humans.

Collecting pumpkins for saltwater? Not fun.

I think you guys can definitely lay off the flash. The less time we spend using a flash applet, the better, IMO. Gaia's about the forums, remember?


Also... yeah. Soulbinding equips. Still a b***h move.

EDIT: before i forget!

MORE STORYLINE. I would take a simple event with a longer comic update over a complex one with a few rushed pages.

Seriously. Events are what bring this site to life.

We're not hard to please. You just need:
good items
storyline
a forum for us to play in

And we'll love you forever.
(as long as it's not soulbound)

[JB_DIAB]

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=

I have to whole heartly agree with this, its been a long time since I seriously got into an event (The G corp zombie event which I played for nine hours stright. @-@) and this was just boring. While I've not encounter the Zomg event nor did I know about it either the main event was highly tedious. I even found the stupidity of the mission descriptions annoying, the follower spamming was highly frustrating and finally theres obvious rigging involved.

Quote:

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.

Gaia cash is becomming increasingily frustrating too as its starting to push players out of events (the aquarium which I love is near impossible to maintain at any standard), and I do not want gaia going anywhere near my facebook account. >.>

[SaitohNoOokami]

the event was pretty cool, looked wonderful and was something different than previous events so kudos there smile
even though i was unable to play the zomg event it sounded fantastic (damn you travel! gonk )
My #1 issue was time and i am soooo glad to see you taking a survey on the events because this is the
main thing that ruins the fun for me.
I'm a working adult so i dont have a lot of time to spend on Gaia as fun as it is. the fact the events dont really
start when they say they will and never seem to get extra time to make up for that leads to sadness sad
if you could, since i have noticed events tend to end on fridays let them run
through the weekend and have them end a little later?
That would be great biggrin

[Mark Pierce]

I love the event, and just did the survey. I had a few problems with it, of course; the fact that the event launched and felt completely untested was one of the most egregious, as for the first few days it had balance errors and coding errors that made gameplay... odd. Also, clearing up how the scoring system works would be nice too.

Good:
Plot line
Items
Artwork (Nekkid Gino however, was a bit creepy...)

Bad:
Point-and-click with cooldowns - Instead of cooldowns, lets use energy or something like that. Something that replenishes over time and can be replenished though items (Cash Shop Goldmine)

Followers - This did nothing to improve gameplay and spawned more spam than an explosion of a corned beef factory.

Coding - Hoo boy... the bugs at the start were a bit much. There was no reason for them to have been unanticipated, unless the developers were sleeping on the job and/or developing at 3am in the morning, or it simply wasn't tested. Please please PLEASE test more thoroughly. Also, there is a potential exploit, since you used the 'get' method (from a PHP standpoint) to pass the mission parameters, unless you're validating the long string of numbers that track the mission session, you can easily set up automation. I won't elaborate any further here; the people developing the game will understand what I'm getting at. Bottom line is since there is no real reason to save the URL of the mission send beyond testing and exploiting, this should have been done via a 'post' method or whatever counterpart ASP has, if you use ASP. (Assuming you're either using ASP or PHP to handle client-server transactions. Not sure if any others languages even exist...) I placed the details of this in my comments on the survey.

Disclaimer: I am only an amateur web developer. There may be reasons for why these things happened that are beyond my understanding. This is just my viewpoint.

I hope to see another event like Demonbusters with more features and more streamlined game play. Also the SIN skin is great 3nodding

[mechanicaljack]

Mythril Dragonfly

Done and done.

I don't know what people are talking back in terms of items. The Jack items are the same boring Black and Orange schtick (and will never be worn outside Halloween) and the items from SIN and BOO are equally bland. But whatever.

Personally, I like events that utilize the forums.

I bet from all this you can tell which survey I filled out. XD

I actually like the Jack items and will likely reuse the mask and gloves after halloween.

[mechanicaljack]

The overall gameplay, items, manga, story and characters were good. My only beef was the amount of bugs, which points to a lack of playtesting, or at least proper or extensive enough playtesting.


What would also have been nice, would have been a link on the B.O.O. and S.I.N. webpages that listed all members and follow links so that we could have avoided the 'follow me!' spam in the forum.

[BATCATGIRL]

Did it mrgreen

[PWNTSAUR]

'

I didn't appreciate the faux civil war dividing Gaians up and even then, amongst the teams, there wasn't any sense
of community - just mindless clicking. This doesn't make sense to me: if you're already on the same team, why do
you need to follow each other....?

edit: I didn't enjoy the event very much. The event didn't engage me because of the mind-numbingly tedious
gameplay. Had I not multi-tasked (offsite) whilst spam-clicking-missions & spam-clicking-followers, I could not have
tolerated it as much as I did. That's a clear indicator of how boring the event was: I wouldn't even devote my whole
attention (b/c it doesn't require that much brain usage in the first place); I sought out distraction. As for zOMG, I
only went near it once so I can't judge, but it's definitely not meant for solo-er's. To make it fair then, let's exclude
my zOMG participation from past events, even then, this event remains the bigger bore.

I completed the survey and from what I could recall from a few days ago, I selected that the event only trumped
over one past event: the school survival guide (that's sad);gameplay-wise, this event did not rise to past event
standards: I cannot stress that enough.

Others have already written the pro's of the event (referring to Danzavare), I'll leave it at that; otherwise, my
feedback won't convey how friggin' disappointed I am with Demonbusters.

If this tomato could, it would
hurl itself at this event -____-'

edit #2: fine, I'll stop being a sourpuss long enough to say that I love you for the POTATOverseer.
I can't stay mad at chu'. Y^Y

edit #3: ok, I posted in the GCD & seeing as some time has passed, and the annoyance has waded some, I collected my thoughts in a less whiney post which I thought you guys would benefit from reading:


Quote:


-Storyline: I loved the demi-god concept; I wish they would've extended the results of the event to all parts of the site; for instance, since S.I.N. won, I'd want to see demons plaguing the whole site: rally, shops, zOMG, forums (darker color scheme) and have these site changes stay in place until the next event.

Otherwise, the story as is, fails; I hope they're not done. At least show S.I.N. and B.O.O. reconciling their differences or sealing them up again (unless they're perm NPC's); or S.I.N. taking over the world like She said she would (rooting for the latter).

Though, I can't say I'm surprised; I knew they had a predetermined ending which we wouldn't affect regardless of which team ended up winning.

-User participation:

From what I experienced, many participated but the event completely lacked that "community"-type feel, even with dividing factions, I didn't get a sense of team spirit, just mindless "follow me; follow you".

I like forum-based events; splashing people with water balloons, biting their necks, ya know, that type of user-to-user interaction; I completely adored this past valentines event. :]

Since I'm more of a solo-er on zOMG, I stayed away from that part of this event. At least with the easter event, I could participate w/out a crew since the egg-hunting also took place inside the towns, & CL didn't matter, but not with this one.

-Items/skins/rewards:

I liked all the event items. Personally, I prefer the consolation prize over the original B.O.O. skin; I think I lucked out w/that one.


Overall: 4
I'm scoring it below average because of the tedious gameplay, minimal user-to-user interaction, poor plot execution, and for zOMG interaction excluding low CL's and solo-ers.

[lilAdventureGirl]

survey done and this is the worst event. it takes too much time and effort to get any item worth anything. I like spending only an hour on Gaia or less because I have to also hold down a full time job and full time education. I lost some sleep just trying to get some of the even items. not worth it in any way. I was very unimpressed.
you'll read about it... if you actually do.
I also thought the "following" thing was frustrating and annoying. Pointless really.
The event items SHOULD NOT be cash shop items. They're event items, and should be won while playing the game, not bought. that's just cheating us out of the fun of winning random digital pixels.
My favorite event was the vampire/human/zombie one. good items, fast to get the items, and really funny. Also played all in the forums, that was neat. have more like that. My other fav was the summer water balloon fight.

[Kakkorot13]

Best way to improve this event..........give the skins to the winning team AFTER the event, that way fewer people whine about "oh, i liked my skin i don't want to lose it after such hard work"
EDIT: although being on the winning team and watching the losing team get pissed off over the potato skins you gave them is rather hilarious.........course i admit i probably wouldn't take it so well if i was on the losing team

[Corinth Maxwell]

Interesting survey. Doubtful that anything I wrote or voted on will ever be read or taken into consideration, but oh, well. The burden of guilt isn't on me if that happens.

Can't wait for more trick-or-treating next year. Great items from that. xd

[indy_cole]

Corinth Maxwell

Interesting survey. Doubtful that anything I wrote or voted on will ever be read or taken into consideration, but oh, well. The burden of guilt isn't on me if that happens.

Can't wait for more trick-or-treating next year. Great items from that. xd

We read and consider everything smile