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Kitty Mood: confused Kinda disappointed, nyao...

Okay, Gaia Developers, you want my feedback on the last two events I participated in? Be careful what you ask for, for you may just get it!

I've been here four months so far, participated in three events, and I'm kinda disappointed--hence the name of this entry in my Cat-a-Blog. Since this time you actually asked for feedback (for a change), I'm willing to actually score this event higher than the last two just for that alone, but that doesn't mean that I'll give this a high grade!

Okay, here's my feedback on the last three events I was actually around for:

Camp Chaos (Summer Camp):
So these four camps exist just to battle each other for no apparent reason? No real background, no build-up beyond getting us newbies hyped up with teasers, no real point... Could you have possibly done worse? Give us some reason behind the battle beyond "because they're there!", at the very least--say that these camps pranked each other in the past, and this year, each one has sworn revenge on the others--in other words, give us some real build-up!
Then there were those lousy attacks... I joined Nerd camp, or Science camp, or whatever it was called (I can't even remember, the event was so forgettable!), and I can tell you, Nerdebate was utterly pointless! All it did was waste a perfectly good attack and use up energy that could have gone to an attack that actually did something! And Experiment--whose brain cramp was that?? 75% chance of backfiring? What was the point--to screw us over?
What you should have done with the attacks is first, have every attack do something, whether DoT, direct damage, buff to the player, or nerfing an opponent--none of these "do nothing whatsoever" attacks next time! Second, have the chances of lower-level attacks succeeding increase (to a maximum of 90%, 95% tops) as the character levels up--and attacks like Experiment, have the failure rate drop to 20% gradually as the character levels up, and increase the beneficial effect rate by 5% per level.
Overall grade: D+

School Survival (Back to School):
This was an event? I hadn't noticed, honestly! Then again, it was probably because it was totally geared to high schoolers exclusively. You guys (and gals) do know that some of us (alright, a significant number of us) have graduated high school and moved on to college, right?
The dunce cap was kinda cheesy, to put it mildly; the pile of books was nice, though. The globe was a mild disappointment because I assumed it was an item for our houses (which it probably should have been), and the school uniforms being cash shop only (and the supposedly anime-inspired uniform looked like a Catholic school uniform instead of a Japanese school uniform...) were a bit of a letdown.
Perhaps next year you could offer a better selection of outfits, including Japanese-style "sailor" uniforms that actually look like the real thing (subject to the limits of Gaia avatar animations, obviously), and more school-related items given out through the event (and in shops other than the Cash Shop!!! Not everyone has money to waste on what is essentially bits, bytes, and pixels in a computer somewhere, you know!).
Overall grade: C+

Demonbusters (Halloween event):
Okay, this one's getting there--there was some actual backstory here, as opposed to the Summer camp event, and the whole "good versus evil" theme was fun. That being said, the fact that we had to spend Gaia Cash on followers (instead of automatically recruiting virtual followers as our experience increased through doing missions, for example) was a pain in the a**, because even by posting and begging for followers, some of us still couldn't get recruits!
For the most part, the items were nice, but I'm not too keen on the skins being soulbound (there's no point to it, really!) and the losing side losing their exclusive skin. I think that's going a little too far, honestly. I understand the logic behind soulbinding zOMG rings (for the same reason why there are level minimums for weapons and armor in other MMORPGs--to keep powerful items out of the hands of newbies!), and don't have a problem with that, but soulbinding event items? What if some of us want both skins?
Trick-or-treating in the shops was okay, but having to wait 1 minute between items (when the normal times are 15-20 seconds) was a little long IMHO. (Perhaps it could be dropped to 30 seconds?) And I understand that Skittles is a major sponsor, but perhaps between now and next Halloween, you folks could possibly recruit a few more candy companies, such as Brown & Haley or M&M/Mars? (Doing so could make trick-or-treating a little more challenging by requiring players to collect more than one type of candy for the different items, not to mention that having more candy companies as sponsors would make more items available to us players? I for one wouldn't mind having M&Ms characters as companions for my avatar like the Sour Patch Kids Buddies we have now!)
And now for my biggest gripe: the zOMG portion of the event. One of my friends was trying for an Oh My Gumball and couldn't get one, and between my main and alternate accounts, I scored six chances so far to get one! When I gave her one of my two, instead of being able to get a second one to keep for myself, I was told that I already got one and all I was getting was pumpkin guts instead! (And you didn't even have the decency to give me a pumpkin lid or a pumpkin seed amongst those guts, either!) And the recipes--nice idea, but getting the ingredients is an exercise in futility! It took three people working pretty much constantly to get the ingredients together for one lousy werewolf pup! We should have had the chance to put together three or four of the things by now, plus one Jackies for each of us, and one or two Night Fright Eyes per account! Or are you trying to make us want to quit and go to a site that values its players???
Also, for a Halloween event, having it last roughly a week is a ripoff! You really should have started this the second week of October and let it run until the 4th or 5th of November, instead of the roughly week and a half that it's currently running.
Overall grade: C-, although the Sentinel and the Overseer are cool characters and should be made a recurring part of Gaia's events from here on out. (Also, the merman statue standing in for our Overseers in our fishtanks should be added to Phin Phang for a reasonable cost once the event is over--they're cute!)

Now, for the survey--I'm not particularly interested in events that can be played on an iPod because I don't own one, and probably wouldn't bother with them even if I did, honestly. Likewise for cellphone-based events--I use a cheap, prepaid cellphone because I don't use one often enough to bother with a fancy cell that can surf the Web, etc., and since most cellphone plans charge for extra time, etc., I'm not so sure that cellphone-based activities is such a good idea.
As far as frequency of events, I'd like to see one or two major events per year (on the scale of the Zurg Invasion or the Grunny Attack) and a handful of minor events like Summer Camp, Halloween, Christmas/Hannukah/Yule/New Year's, etc. personally, but I know that such events take time, energy, and effort to put together. What I would like to suggest in order to give players like me what we want and still make it feasible is to offer either a special forum where we players could suggest possible future events, or even have something like a contest where we, either individually or as a group, could develop a possible plot (such as the return of the Zurg or an event which introduces a new race to Gaia) and the best (i.e. most developed and best thought-out overall) submission wins as the event for the following year. I would even be willing to freelance for Gaia developing plots in exchange for payment in Gaia Cash and an acknowledgment somewhere on Gaia just to have decent plots for people like me to participate in, truth be told! That's how desperate I am for good new storylines!

I like the fact that you developers are interested in having interactive plots like the above-mentioned Zurg and Grunny events, and are looking for good feedback to make each event better--keep up the good work on that score! (In fact, I recommend that you have a feedback poll after each major event so that you can keep making the site better overall!) I'd like to see more of what makes Gaia unique--the world of Gaia, themed events like this one, and fun games and things to do, as well as interesting forums and guilds. I'd also like to see the "virtual environment" of Gaia expanded so that there's even more for us to do here, if that's not too much to ask. For example, you have a nice world map--one that I'd like to be able to wander around in, using either the zOMG engine or the Towns mechanism. The locations in Rally sound so interesting--why not turn them into actual racetracks where we can do more than just drag race? And Buccaneer Boardwalk shows so much promise--when will it open so we can do something there?

I like what I see for the most part, although there is admittedly room for improvement. Since you have lots of experience in roleplaying and computer gaming, as well as all manner of artistic, writing, and other talents at your disposal here in the form of your players--why not make use of them? Look for people who, like me, are serious about volunteering in different ways for the site and take advantage of us! Let's work together, shall we? >^_^<