148267-winterfest-feedback-thread-non-cash-shop

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First day or two of any new in-game event is always going to be a crowded mess - and the first day of Winterfest was no exception! Even as early as 5AM CST, Thayd (Entity) was already packed. By the time I got back to the game at 2PM CST, it was a mad house (in a good way!)
 
The decor is wonderfully WildStar and perfectly Protostar. The heaps of snow and colorful bows, packages and candy-striped pillars make a wonderful addition to the usually-dull and drab Exile city.
 
Oh, did I mention THE MUSIC?!!?!?  Of course I did! You know why I mention it? BECAUSE IT'S AMAZING. Once again, Mr. Kurtenacker weaves familiar melodies with the themes of Nexus to create something beautiful beyond words. Seriously, go listen.
 
The dailies are fast and not hard to understand. Catch Plushies, no problem. Deliver packages to the proper races, no problem. The snowblower-jumping was fun on the PTR but I didn't get that one yesterday - though I expect the occasional lag and over-flowing population will make that one tricky for a day or three. Anyway, none of them are especially hard or confusing.
 
Caught one of the Snowball Fight Events just as it started. Took a minute to figure out what I was supposed to do - and even then with all the hundreds of people participating, I don't think I hit more than one snowman. Still, 5 free ColdCash and the joy of seeing so many players in one spot, not bad.
 
Solo'd the Mall In The Sky. Again, nothing was especially hard to understand, and even the events I hadn't seen before (I ran it once on the PTR) were easy to figure out. I expect I'll be getting Gold on this a lot more now that I've seen everything and more or less know what to do. The only optional quests I missed were by 1% each time - so I think I got this.
 
The ColdCash Rewards are wildly varied and the usual high quality we've come to expect. If you plan on making a holiday-themed plot, or a toy store, or an Elfin workshop - or even if you want some new string-lights for your bar or tavern - now is the time to stock up! My favorite piece (oddly enough) are the Winterfest Fence and Gate. I just *love* the arched look, and once I get my Rowsdower Slippers, the rest of my ColdCash is going toward buying up all those fences I can afford!
 
As I noted elsewhere, the costumes are hit and miss. I love the Clerk kit, but think the Papa Phinneas kit is way to garish for me to enjoy. For those who like goofy, odd-bally costumes though, I am sure it's a dream come true.
 
Anyway, there's my feedback. I hope others will post their non-cash shop related feedback here as well, and not in the troll-bait Haterade thread.
 
If you want to give Cash Shop Feedback, please go here:
 
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/148236-winterfest-cash-shop-feedback/
			
				
	Edited December 17, 2015 by Tex Arcana	
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			I loved the Sky Mall. We need more expeditions with a "do X out of Y" random assortment. It makes things more replayable.The ski slope made me exceptionally happy, even if the execution wasn't perfect, simply because that was something I asked for last year! I tried to find my thread but apparently the back search for the forums is limited to one year now. In any case, the simple fact they tried made me happy. It was small and you moved a little slow, but it was there!Maybe next year we can couple ski slopes with hoverboard races and get something approaching City of Heroes SkiingPS- hearing the old CoH soundtrack does make me nostalgic. Plz get CRB_HernCo to yodel for next year. kthxbai.
			
				
	Edited December 17, 2015 by Lemurian	
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DUDE!!!
 
Skiing Races (like the zTracks) would be an amazing addition to this entire event.
 
Heck, I'd love to see an race or two as a part of EVERY event of this kind. Thematically done, of course. Whitevale/Northern Wastes track for Winterfest. Grimvault/Blighthaven for Shade's Eve. Farside for Space Chase. So on and so forth.
Racing was done SO WELL during the Back to the Future event, we needs more!	
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			As much as I loved the zTracks, I want something more consistently downhill going. I know we were going fast, but going fast uphill feels slower. :)	
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As much as I loved the zTracks, I want something more consistently downhill going. I know we were going fast, but going fast uphill feels slower. :)
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I really like the event =)
Got most of my costume now, just shoulders left. The slippers were a first-buy :)
Will post pictures in costume thread when I'm done :)
 
I'm having the same issue with dungeon as during shade's eve... not possible to solo as lowlvl :( 
But since I can do it on my max lvl it's ok. I can do the other dailies since they are easy on any level =)
 
Since I have the costume soon, perhaps I will have time to get mount flairs for my main as well =)	
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			I did like Jack Shade adventure... SkyMall I do not like. I dont think I will be farming cold cash as much as I farmed Shade Silver. It is nice to see the parody for irl chirstmass as protostar made it as commercial as your usual corner mall/shop but even if I get the joke, I refuse to spend my time in there.	
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I did like Jack Shade adventure... SkyMall I do not like. I dont think I will be farming cold cash as much as I farmed Shade Silver. It is nice to see the parody for irl chirstmass as protostar made it as commercial as your usual corner mall/shop but even if I get the joke, I refuse to spend my time in there.
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			There are some hilarious scenes set up in the decorations if you look for them. :3	
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... most of the mini-games are painlessly non-combat oriented platforming, combined with some clickery ...
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UGH.  I already hate it and I've not even seen it.  The unavoidable platforming is my top gripe with Omnichore-1.
 
That said, I'll do it at least once.
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			*likes platforming* :s	
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*likes platforming* :s
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What don't you like?
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			That's understandable. I find the whole Protostar thing hysterical, but I can see how it would just grate on the nerves of some people. xD	
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Protostar christmas event is exactly like reallife.....especially like black friday and last minute shopping....
 
Money is power as it makes the world go round.	
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			Thank you all for your feedback! Please keep giving it as the event goes on. The more constructive criticism we get, the better we can make events in the future -- so letting us know what worked for you and what didn't is hugely helpful. We had a great time making the event and I'm glad most folks are finding it amusing. :)	
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I made my feeling known in the morning coffee thread yesterday, im not really a fan of the event and its mainly because im not into the whole timed challenges/platformesque style of it.
 
I like events that have more fighting in them so im not really upset about the event as I know mmo's have different styles of players who like different things and its wrong to get your panties in a twist just because an event doesn't suit your needs. Plus if I need a fighting fix pretty much the entire game is full of fighting so it's not like im going to run short of it. 
 
I am glad people are enjoying it but its just not for me and although I am doing a few of the events to get the mount flair and the slippers and a couple of other things, im not spending remotely as much time as I did in the Shades Eve event. Although I have had the shopping event bug out on me twice now when killing the turrets, it doesn't register them as being dead and wasn't switching to the next phase.
 
The challenges I dislike the most are the car one where you need to interact with the vehicles, the snowball one to stop the flames and the jumping on the shelves to grab the items avoiding the sentry bots one. The events are easy enough plus I got a purple lvl 70 hat today and in typical fashion it was a support hat for my DPS Stalker......but it looked nice so I unlocked the costume.
 
The one thing I really like is the decoration around Thayd and I love the music, so looks and sound wise are awesome.
			
				
	Edited December 17, 2015 by Scarran	
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			Despite the bugs (things not showing in the shops / housing vendor, no credit for completing the public event), this event seems to be pretty good.  Less stress than Shade's Eve, for sure.  Cash shop feels are in that other thread (polar opposite, just fyi), but so far, I like the mini-events in the Mall-in-the-sky, I'm okay-fine with the rest of the quests so far, and I'm ecstatic about the new aesthetics: the overall look to Thayd / Illium and the amazing availability of all these decor items, the music, everything.  Very Protostar, very Winterfest.  (Mostly) good job, Carbine.	
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Great, can't enter the game cause of server lagg, and have two characters stuck in Thayd cause of too may people. Can't you guys do something about it? I realise re opening another server would be a bad idea because after the population spike I'd become abandoned again, and I do get it that you want a big crowd so that it won't look like the event is abandoned. But what if you'd create two or more hub for event? For example: one in whitevale, one in Thayd and one in...I dunno. That way at least the capital city wouldn't be THAT strained.
 
Love the event though. Especially the city decoration. Though its kinda irritating that the housing quest (the microphone one) doesn't show which color that I'm missing, but overall very nice job!
			
				
	Edited December 17, 2015 by The Youkai clan	
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I love the event, it's very well done. The music is fantastic, the scenery in Thayd is very pretty, the missions are funny and relevant, and I will treasure my rowsdower slippers forever like the consumerist that Protostar has turned me into!
 
I still have only done the Mall In The Sky once, but it was fun and I'm looking forward to doing it several more times as the event goes forward. 
 
So I anticipate that this will do a great job of giving people something fun and new to do over the holidays and keep them engaged, it's really an excellent event. Nicely done!
 
I'll go ahead and offer a few constructive criticisms that came to mind for when you're thinking about next year, but the Winterfest season is looking good to me!
 
First, it'd be nice to have earlier access to the Winterfest housing decor. Housing is a huge timesink, and it's hard to get something put together that feels Winterfesty and uses that decor when you can only start collecting it a week before the IRL holiday happens.
 
Second, The Mall In The Sky instance is so brilliantly fantastic in terms of its layout and tone that I found myself wishing that the event vendors and such were actually located there and it were repurposed as an open world zone that only shows up seasonally and can only be reached by teleporter, sort of like StarComm Basin or the Farside Biodomes. It's got just too much awesome to limit to "active small group PvE", it's a giant, busy, bustling shopping mall, that's exactly the sort of thing that large open-world crowds would only enhance the feel of the place rather than detract from it.
 
Third, the instance is mostly fine in terms of gameplay, but I found the sheer number of golden plushies/toy robots that needed to all have the same thing done with them to be a bit tiresome after I'd already done a dozen of each and still several to go. Those might be improved by simply reducing the number to collect and the timer in which to collect them in parallel. It's not a big deal either way, although I may feel more strongly about it by the tenth time I'm doing it.  :P
 
Fourth, I know a few players who were very interested in the house you're offering in the cash shop until someone mentioned that the decor items placed inside of it come out of the item budget allotted to the plot exterior instead of the plot interior. Generally, the exterior is where people are going to run into the decor limit first because that's where most of the uber-enthusiasts of housing build structures on top of the existing houses. Both people basically lost interest when they heard that, and I suspect that many of the housing enthusiasts would do the same. So that's something you might want to think about for future designs that allow you to construct multiple separate houses on the same plot.
 
Finally, the Snowtron 9000 event was fun, but a bit hard to follow given how many people show up for it. As a general statement, it might be best to use the mechanic of ground-targeted AoEs and large telegraphs for smaller and less densely populated stuff--when 100 people show up, all those AoEs just make a huge patch of red around the target that makes it effectively impossible to sort out whether you're doing much of anything--and the targets went down almost instantly the moment they appeared, because dodging all that red is also effectively impossible.
 
Eh, FWIW--I don't want the fact that I'm really enjoying it overall to get lost in a bunch of minor critiques. The bottom line is that I've had a lot of fun with it and expect to be having more fun with it throughout the event. The tone and theme and setting are all pitch-perfect, a very funny jab at the worst aspects of the holidays.
 
I'm really enjoying it, nice job!	
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The music is amazing. So good. I would rather listen to these Protomas tunes over anything else. Why do we even have other carols in real life? Proto-Proto-Prooooooooooto Protostar~
 
But, more importantly, the cut scene opening/closing the instance is. so. amazing. I watch it every time. I can't stop. I admit to skipping the Shade's Eve one after the first few times, but HOW CAN YOU SAY NO TO PAPA?
 
You can't. That's the answer.
 
Thank you consumerism <3 :lol:	
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			Something I discovered when I took a few minutes to look around the sky mall this afternoon. The Ferris Wheel doesn't work. This makes me sad. It would be great to just ride it up even if just for screenshots.	
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Great, can't enter the game cause of server lagg, and have two characters stuck in Thayd cause of too may people.
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Except for the snow-a-tron public event in the capitals, I think I've liked most of what I've seen. The dailies don't take long, the decor that people are more likely to use in bulk is fairly cheap, Illium and Thayd look pretty spectacular and the mall is a pretty fun distraction. Also, the mall looks awesome. Makes me wish it was open the whole year and that it was an actual city, because it's prettier than the actual cities!
 
Random complaints about the instance and the public event:
1) I know that you are supposed to throw snowballs at the robots, but 99% of the time I got a 'Can't do that yet' message. I still don't know what I was supposed to do, if anything, or if it's just that I have to target the robot. If you DO have to target the robot instead of using a 'grenade' telegraph...well, that's terrible. Remember the Anti-Air-Tower FABkit challenge? It was terrible. This is basically the same but with low FPS and a TON of other unwatned targets for your click to select.
2) In the instance, the one event featuring 'checking' the vehicles out doens't seem like it's solo-friendly. There's a short delay before the cars become interactable. It was very annoying when soloing.
3) It would be nice if we were told what we get from completing the optional objectives. More cold-cash seems like a given. But do we get different reward tables at the end, too? Or is it all RNG?
4) I saw a Mechari talking with a Mordesh in the instance. How come NPCs can do that but players aren't able to either chat with the other faction OR visit their Plots-in-the-Sky? If you are going to insist to segregate the playerbase based on that the Factions Mean Something, then the least you can do is stop rubbing in our face how much They Don't Actually Mean Anything.
 
Other random thoughts:
1) Some winter-themed-but-not-necessarily-christmas-themed decor appears be locked as RNG rewards from the event (or as Cash Shop items), when maybe they should be on the housing vendor or available for Cold-Cash. I'm looking at you, snowy bulbous tree on a rock!
2) The Papa Phineas outfit is horrible and completely unusable outside of the season (unless you are a goofy man). It looks like a random doodle. Which I guess is fine if that was the purpose but... it's still ugly. No complains about the sheep slippers, though.
 
That's all I can think of right now.	
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3) It would be nice if we were told what we get from completing the optional objectives. More cold-cash seems like a given. But do we get different reward tables at the end, too? Or is it all RNG?
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I've enjoyed almost all of it so far. So, consider it a great job on anything I don't mention, especially the decorations and the music. So amazing!
 
I do have some minor issues and one major issue. The minor issues...
 
The mic shouldn't cost ColdCash. It's not because it cost too much, but because using the holiday currency discourages some from participating. 'Why buy your own mic when there are other players who have done it already?' sort of thing. Some would rather use that 5 ColdCash on some other holiday thing. I mean, we're not hurting for mics out there to carol on, but if the mic cost like 5 silver all players would have more incentive to buy one and participate.
 
Scanning the hoogle in Thayd that turns you into a dawngrazer totally ruins the gift delivery quest. When you dispel the dawngrazer effect you lose the present throwing toolbar and the only way to get it back is to abandon the quest and start over. This might be more of a bug than an oversight. Who knows. 
 
The mics shouldn't rely on color effects to tell them apart. Different skies drastically change the color of these effects making it hard to tell what mic is what. Also, color blind people exist. Every mic should have had a distinctive icon or effect or mouseover label, not, in some cases, different colors of the same effect. 
 
The public event... What even is that? Like some have said, maybe it wasn't designed to work with a crowd the size of Entity Exiles. But, it should have been. It's not like there's a whole lot of servers to take into account when designing content. I'm not bothering with it again. A failed event, zero points, and 5 ColdCash isn't worth it. 
 
I wish gift recipient NPC respawned faster or were located all over the city. Entity Exiles side this quest could get pretty obnoxious. Felt about right Dominion side. 
 
One of the ways into the Dominion holiday area obnoxiously dismounts players. 
 
Noticed some holiday NPCs laugh with the wrong voice. Odd to hear a male mordesh laughing with a male aurin voice. 
 
As for my one major issue, see almost all of this https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/148236-winterfest-cash-shop-feedback/
 
Other than that, I'm having a blast with the holiday. Great job! 
			
				
	Edited December 17, 2015 by Atomicpanda	
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While I do enjoy the expedition, the thing I am not liking is how difficult it makes it to farm ColdCash.  This instance is longer than Shade's Eve, yet you get far less of the holiday currency for completing it.  I did it with one failed objective (Chain Store is such a pain in the ass since one slip is all it takes), got a Gold Medal and ended up with 37 ColdCash.  You got nearly twice that for Shade's Eve (62).
 
This makes it much more difficult and tedious to get everything you want from the holiday vendor since you're practically having to run twice as many expeditions.  I mean, just getting the Papa Phineas costume would take getting gold 10 times.
 
Yes, there are the dailies and, coincidentally, the new "Flask of Festivity", but still.  37 really isn't much considering the length of the expedition.	
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Second, The Mall In The Sky instance is so brilliantly fantastic in terms of its layout and tone that I found myself wishing that the event vendors and such were actually located there and it were repurposed as an open world zone that only shows up seasonally and can only be reached by teleporter, sort of like StarComm Basin or the Farside Biodomes. It's got just too much awesome to limit to "active small group PvE", it's a giant, busy, bustling shopping mall, that's exactly the sort of thing that large open-world crowds would only enhance the feel of the place rather than detract from it.
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			Expedition is most annoying thing i even expirienced in any  mmo. Bots stunning or confusing you  all the time . Don't stay in red they  say. Hard not to stay in red when bots are all over the "cupcake "place .Can't  even use item under "T" without  being interrupted and dying after 30 sec .How about  timed reward . Fun is more fun when  someone count every single second of it. But  you can group up it's easier with other players more lags and game crashes ..There is Bugged  public event that  no one is doing anyway. RNG   daily missions copy paste from shade eve.  Awesome failure.. <slow clap>	
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Actually, one more thing I can add as Feedback, but it's mor of a general thing that is really annoying. Just as it was during Shade's Eve:
 
Stop with the 'someone picks it up and it's gone for everyone else' quest interactables. You know the quest: there's a Escaped Plushie and someone picks it up. Now you get to wait until it respawns. Except there's other 20 people and only 10 plushies in the area.
Can't you ask the guys at Guild Wars 2 how they did their system? When someone picks up an interactable or a node in that game, everybody else is unaffected. It was pretty great.	
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I'm REALLY glad we finally got some boot/shoes that don't go all the way up to our character's knees, it's great for some of my characters that tend to dress more casually. BUT, we can't dye the socks! I'd like to have the socks a crisp clean white, not the brownish/yellowish/gray that makes them look like they were pulled off a back alley bum...  :(
 
 
 	
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			Non-dyeable parts on gear make Nau a very sad/angry cat. :|	
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			Undyeable sections on clothes is another thing I will never undertand in this game. Just like the Meta Faction Divide, it makes no sense.	
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All the decorations in Thayd are really beautiful, and I love that they're all available in housing. The art in the expedition is amazing - I love the snowflake projections. Holiday events are one of my favorite things in MMO's, so I really appreciate the amount of work that went into creating this ambitious event. I hope there's a winterfest hoverboard next time :).
 
Cash shop feedback: (even though the thread says "non-cash shop")
I am disappointed with yet another re-skinned mount. I bought it because it is cool and I want to support you guys and it's limited-time. 	
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I'm disliking this event less than I thought I would, from the brief time I was on PTR. But there are some things still bugging me:
 
I really wish that there was at least some Winterfest decor in the regular housing vendor, like there was for Shade's Eve. Having to pay ColdCash for literally everything is not going over well with me. *Especially* the microphone, since it makes random teleporting for caroling even less do-able. The red gift bag and the green gift box would be nice to see sneakily added there in a quick patch, since having only 4 boxes and 2 bags makes it harder to decorate those shelf-trees.
 
In Illium, we got the exact same three dailies two days in a row. Was this intentional?
 
The difficulty in the SuperMall challenges is all over the map. Some of them, like BOGO, are super-easy, maybe too easy. Others, like Door Buster and Plushie Panic, are about right. But I really loathe Chain Store and Price Cutter, though -- being chain disoriented if I make even one mistake, really not fun. And the timer on Pest Control is just a little too tight if you ask me, especially given the size and complexity of the area; it turns it into a 50/50 random thing whether or not the nests will be close enough together to make it possible to score the optional.
 
And speaking of the SuperMall optionals: there doesn't seem to be any way to tell from the UI how I'm doing on optionals. I guess the UI doesn't support randomized objectives, but it's way too hard to tell how many optional objectives I've missed.
 
But the biggest problem I have with the event is that it doesn't seem to make any kind of a difference how well you do in SuperMall. Bronze, Silver, or Gold, I seem to get the same rewards every time: 37 ColdCash and the exact same purple loot bag. How is the loot system in this supposed to be working anyway?	
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It's not unlike any other similar events I played in other games.
The sky mall mini games are pure fun.
The interiors of the various shops are splendid.
The city decorations are beautiful,and the few quests available are well done.
Protostar is devoid of any responsibility and is pure evil as always.
 
Where WS takes the ball home and scores above any other game is
with housing.I adds another level of awesome to seasonal events.
 
For future events,I'd like to see more zones than the cities and instances involved.
A bit of extra decoration here and there,in main camps etc,wouldn't be bad.	
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But the biggest problem I have with the event is that it doesn't seem to make any kind of a difference how well you do in SuperMall. Bronze, Silver, or Gold, I seem to get the same rewards every time: 37 ColdCash and the exact same purple loot bag. How is the loot system in this supposed to be working anyway?
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Awesome failure.. <slow clap>
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For future events,I'd like to see more zones than the cities and instances involved.
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That is pretty weird. I'd take your bug though, :P cause silver only gets me a blue loot bag and 12 less coins.
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I enjoyed the winter-fest instance, easy gold medal runs and got some cool side looking flairs for my hot rod and there were also fun short quests in that area as well
 
I am glad they kept the visiting each house for currency thing from Halloween, it was nice seeing other ppl homes
 
The con is i didn't understand what i had to do for the meta :/, take a snowball  throw it at a snowman and still failed huh??Plus there were a bunch of clueless guys spamming their abilities overcrowding the area........... sigh F2P crowd -_-
 
About the patch before that
I didn't want to grind the expeditions for the spaceships parts but there were so cheap on the Ah that i just brought the parts for it. 4 p for a full racer ship yay :)
			
				
	Edited December 18, 2015 by jvjd	
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			So, we're a couple of days in, and I haven't seen the Snowblower Jumping Daily yet. Did that get scrapped? It's been the deliveries and plushies since it started, and the watchers and lost packages twice. I mean, no big deal, just curious.	
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So, we're a couple of days in, and I haven't seen the Snowblower Jumping Daily yet. Did that get scrapped? It's been the deliveries and plushies since it started, and the watchers and lost packages twice. I mean, no big deal, just curious.
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			Weird, I didn't have it yesterday. Thought dailies are usually the same for everyone?	
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			I never got it yesterday either but im guessing the dailies are different per server and that's how Syl got it.	
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			Yea I think the faction has different rotating quests, I remember this was the case for Shade's Eve daily as well. Dominion had the snowblower one Friday.	
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I had it yesterday tex. I had a lot of fun... using the jumppack to err.... explore places >.>
 
Seriously, such a good climbing tool 
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Well, that's cool. Glad I just hadn't seen it yet. 
 
FURTHER FEEDBACK ON THE INSTANCE:
 
My ability to get Gold is almost 100% dependent on whether or not I get the Auto-Rama and Shop 'Til You Drop events on the same run. Auto-Rama is my least favorite of the lot, and the only one that I have consistently failed every single time. Yes, I use the speed boost. Yes, I use the Shields. The lag-time between cars activating is way too long. It should IMMEDIATELY click over to the next random vehicle, not leave me standing and waiting for 10 seconds with the timer counting down. If not immediate, then at least twice as fast as whatever it is now. It's the only event that is at once too fast and too slow.
 
Shop 'Til You Drop makes me groan a little inside. In principal, it's easy enough. I load up on the big items then try and get at least 90% before turning in. I hit the Speed Boosts as I can - but I have only been able to hit the optional success once BARELY. Every other time I've come within 1%-3% and failed. Either slightly increase the pick-up time, the walking speed when encumbered or the carry percent. Any one of those would make this event more tolerable and still challenging. As it is, it makes me want to cry.
 
If I get both of these events, it's basically over and I may as well drop and start again, especially if they come early. Other than that, everything else is well-tuned.
 
FURTHER FEEDBACK ON COSTUMES:
 
Okay, I ended up buying the Papa Phinneas kit. It's too dorky not to have. Couple the two full holiday kits with the freebie Chrome set earlier this week, and guess who ended up spending the rest of their NCCoins on increasing theirHolo-Wardrobe.  :lol:  Tricky, tricky, Crabine. 	
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			I'm new to the game so maybe I'm missing something here seeing as how this is my first event of this kind, but I am totally lost.  I'm trying to do the sky mall objectives but I can't tell what I am supposed to be doing most of the time, can't tell if I am making progress or completion, and on that last stage with the level 50 turret bot thingies -- I just die and it never seems to end? 	
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I'm new to the game so maybe I'm missing something here seeing as how this is my first event of this kind, but I am totally lost.  I'm trying to do the sky mall objectives but I can't tell what I am supposed to be doing most of the time, can't tell if I am making progress or completion, and on that last stage with the level 50 turret bot thingies -- I just die and it never seems to end? 
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Shop 'Til You Drop makes me groan a little inside. In principal, it's easy enough. I load up on the big items then try and get at least 90% before turning in. I hit the Speed Boosts as I can - but I have only been able to hit the optional success once BARELY. Every other time I've come within 1%-3% and failed. Either slightly increase the pick-up time, the walking speed when encumbered or the carry percent. Any one of those would make this event more tolerable and still challenging. As it is, it makes me want to cry.
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I love this event very much... Though, it seems out of all holiday events any MMO hosts (if they do), Christmas always seems to be my favorite.
 
I have no complaints yet. Keep up the good work Carbine!	
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The overall event I love dearly: the music, the decor, and the atmosphere.
However, it does feel like a reflection/rehash of Shade's Eve in terms of how the dailies feel.
 
The Instance, is a different story.
While I love the concept of a dungeon being literally a mall in the sky (are we still above Nexus? The moon(s) look different O.o), a lot of the mini-games feel a bit annoying with what is needed to be accomplished, except the final one - that one is alright. I can't recall their exact names in the instance, but the ones that really stick out are: The Automotive Mini-Game, The Battery Recharging Mini-Game, and The Eliminate the Price Reducing Bots Mini-Game (where it's perpetual confusion; heck I got glitched through the wall on this one) that are just downright frustrating - at least soloing it.
 
The rest of them are 'eh' I guess? A few of them I liked, but not by much.
To me, it just doesn't seem anywhere near as fun as Shade's Eve was.	
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			The music is fantastic! Is it different between Thayd and Illium?	
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1. You get five mini-games to complete. Each has an optional goal, but all of them can be completed as slowly as you want and you'll still get coin at the end. You just get MORE if you complete 4 of the 5 optional goals.
 
2. Each mini-game will have counter and timer in your quest side bar. If you have a lot of active quests, you might need to scroll up or down to find it. It's under the Events heading, I believe. That's how you track each game.
 
3. I haven't done the instance on a sub-50, but my advice on the turrets is to focus on one at a time, bursting it down and then moving on to the next. Also, stay out of the red as much as possible (as always!) The turrets have a "tell" and a pattern that's not too hard to avoid if you take your time and don't panic. Also, healing shots.  ;)
 
Best of luck!
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Thank you. Yes, I think I must have had my quest window for events closed. I still can't finish it because at level 24 I can't figure out or manage to take out those turrets but oh well.  :P
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			Instance make me feel suicidal and depressed at the same time. Done it over 50 times today (around 20 of them i just  quit half way  through)  .Didn't get a single gold medal for it   .Failed almost all challenges dying on this  bots or security guards  that  melt my lvl 50  toon like chesse.Best part is when you  running out of time  because  reasons :/	
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So I have a big question!
 
Why are the sparkling colored and warm white lights in the Protostar instance NOT available as decor?!?! D:
 
To those people struggling with the Protostar instance - I highly recommend going in with one or two other people. I run it with my husband and our friend, and it's a breeze.
			
				
	Edited December 21, 2015 by Naunet	
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Why quit half way through? The Main Event Showroom fight has no timer and no bearings on your medal standing. My fresh 50 have died on that fight, rez up, kill them, and still get gold. The fight also doesn't revert phases. If you died on the last phase, you don't have to go through the four-turret phase again.
 
And unless you specifically wanted the gold achievement, there's really no reason to quit half way through because you still get 25 ColdCash with silver medal.	
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			I have to say I really like this event. It's funny, it's christmasy and the overall atmosphere with the decorations and especially the music (Jeff MVP) is just so cheery and carefree. And the new decor is awesome. I don't have any complaints, listening to the soundtrack in Thayd I can't be mad at anything.	
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... My ability to get Gold is almost 100% dependent on whether or not I get the Auto-Rama and Shop 'Til You Drop events on the same run. Auto-Rama is my least favorite of the lot, and the only one that I have consistently failed every single time. Yes, I use the speed boost. Yes, I use the Shields. The lag-time between cars activating is way too long. It should IMMEDIATELY click over to the next random vehicle, not leave me standing and waiting for 10 seconds with the timer counting down. If not immediate, then at least twice as fast as whatever it is now. It's the only event that is at once too fast and too slow.
 
Shop 'Til You Drop makes me groan a little inside. In principal, it's easy enough. I load up on the big items then try and get at least 90% before turning in. ...
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There must be some way to force the Auto-Rama sales to pop more often, because I have gilded this at least once. But it almost always takes me about 2 cars after the timer runs out.
 
Shop Til You Drop you almost have right. 80%, not 90%. Four runs of about 80% will fill it. I haven't failed that one yet.
 
Chain Store, on the other hand, can die in a fire. There are way too many of the security bots, and way too many shelves that are just barely too high to jump onto. I have yet to get the optional on that one, not even once. So I can reliably gild the Supermall as long as I don't get both Auto-Rama and Chain Store on the same run.
 
When this event is over, I hope they pull a report from the database of which objectives were most consistently failed and re-balance accordingly for next year.
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Dailies: Pretty great! Fast, easy, not tedious! The /makeitrain one would have annoyed me if the macro system didn't exist in game, so that's fair. Also seeing the top hat being used by npcs made me want one even more. 
 
City: Holy wow. The decorations are amazing. The music and the complete transformation of Illium are just something to look forward to. 
 
Housing: The limited edition sky remodel is pretty great. Subtle yet still visible. Again, the music is just the best. 
 
SkyMall: Whooooo... ok. Looks great, some of the events are perfect, I love that it's non-combat oriented considering that's pretty much all we do out in the regular game world. That being said, some of the events are a little harsh. Car Show is a lot of sitting around waiting while the timer ticks down and there's nothing you can do about it. Slashing prices with the chain bots is just a given fail on the bonus. Having bots that turn around randomly and ugh... just uggh. Fire sale could stand to have the fire be a little more visible? I've never failed the objective, but the event is literally me squinting at my screen for 3 minutes. Otherwise it's fine. 
 
All the other events are great if a little tedious for some of them solo. It just seems that the events that you're likely to fail, aren't made any better by bringing more people and the events that you can't fail if you're not afk are a lot easier if you bring more people. *shrug*
 
The present pet is super cute and I know I got it from the instance, but I have no idea if it was random from the gold bag or what but I've been hoping to find more for friends and alts. Having some idea of what the rewards are for what participation levels would be great for future events!
 
Items: No complains here, only love. the Papa Phineas and Retail sets are amazing and I'd love to see more 'normal' clothes slowly leak into the game. Sometimes you want to be a badass sentai robot with rocket claws, sometimes you want to be a joe schmoe in fuzzy rowsdower slippers. Choices and options are ALWAYS great. 	
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FEEDBACK ON JUMP-PACK SNOWBLOWER DAILY:
 
First, I love this daily. It's fun and I noticed that the Snowblowers don't freaking de-spawn after being activated like all the other quest-objectives this season.
 
Look guys, this is 2015 and THAT IS HOW ALL OF THE DAILY QUEST OBJECTIVES SHOULD BE. Do you *want* me to hate other players? Because let me be blunt, when I am running up to a Watcher or a Gift Recipient or Plushie - and someone else comes along and cuts me off and steals my objective I WANT TO MURDER THEM. I want to punch my fist through my monitor, across the Internet, through Time and Space, just so I can strangle the crap out of the other person. That's not a good feeling and seriously, if you can manage to keep the stupid snowblowers around for other players to tag, then there is no reason the other objectives couldn't do the same.
 
Next time you guys are working on dailies, and you get to the point on whether or not every player should have to find a unique objective please stop, pull heads out of butts and make them all persistent. Thanks.
 
Finally - and this is really important - WHY DO YOU GIVE US COOL JETPACKS AND THEN REMOVE THE FALLING PROTECTION THE SECOND WE FINISH THE QUEST? Seriously, I was having a great time jet-packing all over the quest zone. I had one snowblower left to tag. So I'm bouncing high, seeing the sights, make a note of the blower underneath me and a start to descend ... and the INSTANT I tag the goal, the pack vanishes and I plummet to me death. That is AWFUL. It's not fun, it's not funny, it's not festive. Fix that for next year, please. Maybe let us keep the packs until we turn in the quest? Maybe give us five seconds of free fall after we finish? Something.	
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....The present pet is super cute and I know I got it from the instance, but I have no idea if it was random from the gold bag or what but I've been hoping to find more for friends and alts. Having some idea of what the rewards are for what participation levels would be great for future events! ...
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			The pet not being on the vendor is making me incredibly anxious. @_@	
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			Can anyone tell me what the pet is? I never even realized you could get a pet from doing it. 	
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			This one (post #2).	
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This one (post #2).
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Newb here I found Thayd all decorated and the music - Love IT!  I also lucked into the snowball fight and got on one of the snowmen for 8 seconds, go me!! 
Found  the dailies WooT~~!!
			
				
	Edited December 22, 2015 by Chadeaux	
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Well, after the official responses regarding the Snowtron smash event (https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/148265-snowtron-smash-achievement-not-being-granted/), and the inconsistent rewards, I will not be trying it on any characters anymore. The rewards are absolutely inconsistent.  I have received a bag for being 14th place, and I have received nothing but a few pieces of cold cash (less than a daily) for being in the top three.   
 
 It is only "fun" if there are just a few players, because that's the only way you can see what's going on and actually plan things like where to throw a snowball, or have a snowball's chance in the forges of Kel Voreth of getting to run the snowtron around.  
 
This is about as bad as the exile-only bug during Shade's eve, but at least they tried to fix it.  Apparently, this event has zero priority for bug-fixes, according to their responses on twitter, so I'll spend my time more wisely - grinding the (slightly less buggy) mall event.	
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			I also just found out that the Present Bot pet is bind-on-pickup. That's awful.	
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I also just found out that the Present Bot pet is bind-on-pickup. That's awful.
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{| class="blockquote"
I also just found out that the Present Bot pet is bind-on-pickup. That's awful.
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The capital city decor looks festive and the music is fantastic, as always.
 
The daily quests are alright, randomized and short like dailies should be. The housing daily is back from Shade's Eve and since I usually don't visit random plots I don't use a this player has this color checklist unless I'm in a hurry, so I think it's working as intended.
 
The instance looks great. Randomized events, always a plus when it's content players are meant to farm. Amusing commentary and brilliant music. It's very different from the Shade's Eve instance and also from what you usually do in the game. I had no issues with any of the events though minor polish can be done, such as not having to wait for the cars to light up.
 
I imagine the rewards are great if you're into housing and want to make a winter themed plot. There is a crazy costume and a normal one, so a lot of players will find at least one item they want to use. Some new items should be added every year.
 
The only thing I didn't like was the snowball fight event. It's not really working if there are too many players, aiming doesn't feel right and it's too long.	
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How many dailies are there?  I have found 3 in Thayd plus the trip to the SkyMall one.
Dicey Deliveries
Plushie panic
Skinflint savings	
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How many dailies are there?  I have found 3 in Thayd plus the trip to the SkyMall one.
Dicey Deliveries
Plushie panic
Skinflint savings
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Unfortunately it isnt the only pet in game that is bind on pickup. I don't understand why they are bind on pickup as its a shame because if one person gets it who really doesn't want it yet you have someone who really wants it then you cannot give or sell it to them.
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Carbine is afraid that if they don't put arbitrary BoP rewards in their content then people will not run it because they can just buy it from the AH from the people who do run it. 
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			Veteran Adventures? What's that?	
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Veteran Adventures? What's that?
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{| class="blockquote"
Veteran Adventures? What's that?
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Oddly enough, the only Vet group content I have ever run have been Adventures. They are great fun - and for a non-progression, fun-oriented player like me, they are perfect.
 
Sadly, my play-style should NOT be the target demographic for *anything* ...  :lol:	
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Well... if you played with your guild more often... *STARE*  You could run expeditions, vet dungeons, heck, even get raid attuned.  If you wanted to....
 
But seriously - the content in this game is widely varied for a variety of play styles, and that's one thing that I like about it.
			
				
	Edited December 23, 2015 by Snicker	
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Carbine is afraid that if they don't put arbitrary BoP rewards in their content then people will not run it because they can just buy it from the AH from the people who do run it. 
 
Or something. I really don't understand why the pet (or the ship decor from Veteran Expeditions) are BoP.
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Well... if you played with your guild more often... *STARE*  You could run expeditions, vet dungeons, heck, even get raid attuned.  If you wanted to....
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LOL! /highfives
 
So Tex, how about dem dungeons? Now that I know you run adventures, the "no time" excuse is no longer valid....  because *ahem* we all know adventures take longer than dungeons. :P
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			Watch out: I'm fairly sure that dungeons take longer because of all the wipes and retries you end up doing until you put the dungeon on 'farm' status.	
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			Most of the fights are nearly identical to their normal mode versions, just with the damage tuned up (and occasionally an extra mechanic). If one's familiar with the normal mode, learning the vet version is doable in one or two runs.	
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The problem is convincing people that dying horribly until you and your teammates learn the fight is worth the time and effort. Or to get carried. 
 
Anyway, more feedback:
-I feel like some of the objectives take too long to complete when you are soloing the instance. When you are in a group of about three, everything gets sorted out fairly quickly. Maybe the ammount of required objectives should scale down a bit if there's less than two people running the instance?
			
				
	Edited December 24, 2015 by Ildur	
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SKINFLINT SAVINGS FEEDBACK:
 
This daily is not bad in principal, but it's also neither particularly fun or provocative. This would be much less of a hassle if the quest gave us in icon to press, instead of having to /makeitrain. Even better would be if it were more like the Deliveries quest, where different costumers needed convincing in different ways depending, say, on where they are standing or what THEY are emoting (kind of like the XAS "training mission" in Galeras, where the different recruits are be taught to aim, clean their weapons, etc.)
 
I dunno. It's just not ... festive, smashing or typing the same emote over and over again.
			
				
	Edited December 25, 2015 by Tex Arcana	
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			Macros, Tex.  Save time AND fingers ;)	
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Macros, Tex.  Save time AND fingers ;)
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You can also push the Up arrow to 'cycle' through any recent text you have sent to the world, including emotes.
 
Incidentally, a complaint about that quest: doesn't it create some nasty spam in your chatbox if you have emotes enabled? Seems like it would be a bit of a hassle to roleplay or talk in the quest area if that happens to be the daily.
			
				
	Edited December 26, 2015 by Ildur	
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			The emote spam has been an extreme annoyance, that's for sure.	
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{| class="blockquote"
You can also push the Up arrow to 'cycle' through any recent text you have sent to the world, including emotes.
 
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I stopped running the dailies a few days ago because there's nothing left for me to buy on the cash shop.  I bought the Pappa Phineas costume and that's it.  The other "high ticket" items are the mount flair for a mount that's only available on the cash shop.  For the Shade's Eve event, the mount and the flair were purchasable by event currency and I had something to grind for. Had the mount been fairly priced in the cash shop (it's still $5 too expensive at 30% off), I would bought it and had something to spend my cold cash on.  I have no interest in housing, so yeah, that's about it.
 
No rant here, just providing my feedback for this event.  It was over for me days ago and that's too bad, because I love Christmas!	
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Since I'm done with the holiday, figured I'd post a bit more feedback. 
 
Again, over all, very well done holiday. I enjoyed it. I'm just kinda burned out at this point. Which is entirely my fault, since I'm the kind of idiot that did the dailies on eight alts every day from day one. Just cause I don't play many of them much doesn't mean I didn't want to get them the mount flairs and a few other holiday items. Stupid, I know. 
 
This is going to sound really odd, but... I think the ColdCash items were too cheap? Or maybe we got too much ColdCash from the dailies? I dunno. I just know that from just doing the dailies every day I was drowning in CC and couldn't spend it fast enough. Besides the burn out, one of the reasons I've been done with the holiday for a few days is that I've got everything I want from the holiday and then some. 
 
On the other hand, this might be good design because most players have a lot to do during the holidays and might not be able to spend much time on a game holiday. Since I'm broke and had no family around this year I could just be the unusual case of someone who did the dailies every day. Yeah, now that I think about it, forget what I said above. Considering how busy people can be during the holidays, it's good that CC was easy to get and that CC items had low prices. In fact, where's that strike though button. Ah, there. 
 
On the third hand, it could be that the prices and ColdCash acquisition rate was based around the inclusion of the WF hoverboard and flairs that weren't done in time. Who knows. 
 
I do think the holiday vendor could have used more variety. There wasn't a lot on him that could be used all year long, like there was on the Shade's Eve vendor. The WinterFest vendor could have used some decor like snowy trees or rocks, stuff like that. I know there's the cash shop pack, but a few of the items in it could have been on the WinterFest vendor. 
 
Speaking of items on holiday vendors, have you guys thought of bags? Holidays could be a great way for low level characters to get a nice 10 to 15 slot bag. Could have been a candy bucket on Shade's Eve, could have been a gift bag on WinterFest. Just a thought. 
 
Minor bugs:
 
Sound kept cutting out in the holiday area. 
 
Exiles jump pack hologram didn't have the jump pack and helmet. 
 
Jump pack did not attach to my female mordesh. It just hovered behind her. 
 
I doubt anyone died from it, but players take fall damage after restarting the last snowblower. 
 
The housing teleport delay many of us have on one alt seems to have started with WinterFest. Hopefully it will go away when the holiday ends and won't be back next year. https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/148221-housing-teleport-bug/
 
That's pretty much it. It was a lot of fun. Excellent job. A few things to improve for next year, but over all it was fun. 	
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{| class="blockquote"
I stopped running the dailies a few days ago because there's nothing left for me to buy on the cash shop.  I bought the Pappa Phineas costume and that's it.  The other "high ticket" items are the mount flair for a mount that's only available on the cash shop.  For the Shade's Eve event, the mount and the flair were purchasable by event currency and I had something to grind for. Had the mount been fairly priced in the cash shop (it's still $5 too expensive at 30% off), I would bought it and had something to spend my cold cash on.  I have no interest in housing, so yeah, that's about it.
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{| class="blockquote"
And I don't remember the mount from Shade's Eve being purchaseable with the event's currency. 
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{| class="blockquote"
Speaking of items on holiday vendors, have you guys thought of bags? Holidays could be a great way for low level characters to get a nice 10 to 15 slot bag. Could have been a candy bucket on Shade's Eve, could have been a gift bag on WinterFest. Just a thought. 
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{| class="blockquote"
 
 
I doubt anyone died from it, but players take fall damage after restarting the last snowblower. 
 
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			Not sure if this was stated in the posts, but I am utterly distraught at how horrible the scaling for the fights at the end of the event are. Sure you may wanna promote getting characters leveled to 50, but it shouldn't be near impossible unless you're lvl 40+. I am in tears because of how ridiculous the last fight is, hating to leave when I'm near the end for tokens to get the last collectible items I had hoped for. Had issues with this during Shade's Eve too. I know they shouldn't be easy, but my goodness.	
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MUSIC: I complained about the music when the event was on PTR, and the measure that was pushing my "crying baby" button did get removed, so thank you for that. But I was still actively tired of it by the end of the event, because honestly, there's only so much Trans-Siberian Orchestra/Mannheim Steamroller I can take. I'm more of a Vince Guaraldi Trio Christmas music kind of guy. More variety would definitely have been nice.
 
WORLD DECOR: Overall, Illium was beautiful. There was one nasty bit of clipping: the most useful of the bank terminals, the one closest to the daily contract terminal, was completely snowed in and unusuable for the duration of the event. The ice-skating rink was lovely, but (1) just a little too small and (2) nowhere near slippery enough. I also feel like you missed a bet not making the sledding hill, just north of Parade Grounds, slippery like the similar hill in the Supermall. My biggest concern is the same one I had about Shade's Eve, though. For an event this big, I really wish that there was at least some Winterfest decor, at least some wreaths on the buildings, in the larger civilian settlements, especially in Algoroc and Auroria but also in places like Galeras and Malgrave. Especially in the Protostar quest hubs like in Auroria and Malgrave! Yes, I know it would be a little extra work to version, but it would really pay off in immersion. Also? I was really disappointed to find out that it was snowing inside Artemis Zin's museum and inside the Enigma chamber and inside Mondo Zax's office and inside Kezrek Warbringer's office. I know you can control the weather in a zone more precisely than that, you do it in Auroria. Please fix this next time.
 
Finally, I have one more complaint that carries over from Shade's Eve, and that's that frankly, both Halloween and Christmas are largely about providing fun for children, and so it continues to disappoint me that there were no children playing in the capital city. In particular, it should have been kids, not adults, doing that dancing-in-the-snow frolicking animation! Without it, it was just one more thing that reinforced another of my big overall complaints about Winterfest: the unrelentingly grim parodic tone, the total joylessness of it. I continue to say what I said on the first day of Winterfest on PTR. Shade's Eve was designed by people who clearly love Halloween. Winterfest was clearly designed by people who actively hate Christmas.
 
CAPITAL-CITY DAILY QUESTS: My main concern here is that six of them just wasn't enough variety. There were 9 for Shade's Eve, and while the extra variety made it a little harder to get the achievement, having only 6 made Winterfest a lot more boring. As for the individual dailies:
 
Dicey Deliveries: Wonderful. Best part of the holiday. Couldn't be improved upon.
Snowblower Stoppage: Many people have mentioned the problem with crashing to the ground after the 6th repair; obviously the "1" button should also grant a 5 or so second immunity to falling damage. But the other problem I had with this was that I felt really incentivized to find a route and repeat it every day, because the thin snowfall against a gray sky with snow already falling made it really hard to tell which snow-blowers needed repair and which didn't. Maybe put a big green light on the ones that are working and a big flashing red light on the ones that aren't?
Plushie Panic: A wider variety of plushies would be nice. The noises they make were a little annoying. But those are both nitpicks; I was fine with this one.
Consumerism Converts: I loved, loved, loved the writing on this one. And hated the graphics, because the holograms spawned overlapping the target. They really needed to be offset in a random direction about 2 or 3 meters. Also, was there a good reason not to let this temp power be used while mounted?
Rising Returns: Loved it.
Skinflint Savings: Loved the idea of this, but the emote spam was a pain. Next year, consider making it a requirement to converse with each of them? That would also solve the other problem I had with it, namely that you can't use macros while in "vehicle" mode, which meant that if I wanted to use a macro for /makeitrain, I had to complete Dicey Deliveries or Snowblower Stoppage first.
COMMERCIAL CAROLING: I love the idea of these, I love the chance to show off my housing plots and to see what other people are showing off. But I kind of hate the implementation. In particular:
I'm really not crazy about the fact that it cost ColdCash to place a microphone. I'm even less crazy about the fact that it cost twice as much from the housing vendor as it did from the vendor in the capital city.
While the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple microphones were a nice easy to remember set, which color you got was hard to see in some lighting. I don't know if there's an easy fix for that, though.
The interaction animation for this brought up the fact that only some character models get a "yell" emote. And I really disliked spamming the "yell" emote six times, it's was unpleasant on the characters that had voiced "yells." May I suggest a less-annoying alternative? Interacting with a microphone gives you a (let's say) 30 second dispel-able buff that shows dancing musical notes over your head.
But the biggest problem I have with this is the same one that I had with the trick-or-treating at Shade's Eve. There is no easy or quick way to discover which houses have what colors. That means that you have to depend on whoever is currently logged in, which means that people spam the same macro each time, which means that only the six houses picked by the most prolific chat spammer get visited very often -- it turns it less into a random journey of exploration and more into a popularity contest. Now, I'm guessing that your database engineer would set fire to your cubicle if you asked him for a real-time query of which plots are set to Public and have (say) a red microphone actively installed. But could you run a batch job once a day, during off-peak, that would build the six lists? And that way you could instead of giving a 0% to 100% progress bar, give six objectives, one for each mission, and make each objective a link that takes you to a random house from that color's list (assuming you were already in Housing Skymap, of course). That way people could see a different red mic, a different orange mic, and so forth each day -- and if they wanted to just macro the same six every day, or go by whatever was being spammed in chat, they could still do that.
SNOWTRON SMASH: Aside from the fact that nobody got the achievement for this, I really feel like this was too punishing on the people on foot. The window between when the reflect shield goes down and when the operator smashes the "freeze everybody within snowball range" button is nearly zero. A global cooldown would make the bots a lot less overpowered, I think. That being said? Thank you for the highly visible count-down timer, I hope Shade's Eve gets one of those next year.
 
SUPERMALL IN THE SKY: I expected to hate this, because I hate malls, but this was oddly beautiful, and very nicely varied, thank you. Even Papa Phineas's ad spam was funny enough and varied enough not to be annoying. (I actively feel sorry for Tony Rey that he had to sing Protostar jingles!) The NPC chatter was great. And I loved the idea of the random nature of it, and I loved the variety of objectives. I do have to say that I hated the user interface for it in one regard, though: it was impossible to tell if I was still on an bronze, silver, or gold run. Is there any way, for this and for the Shade's Eve instance and for instances in general, you can give us a visible count on the objectives of the number of optional objectives we've missed? As for the various objectives themselves, those were wildly uneven in quality:
BOGO: I loved it. It may actually have been too short and too easy. It took less than half the time of any other objective. I think I would have been even happier with it if it had required half again as many matches (as long as the time permitted, of course).
Deals Are Going Fast: Loved it. I failed the optional objective the first time because it took me a few tries to get the hang of the powers and their cooldowns, but that didn't spoil it for me.
Doorbuster: I loved it. It was painfully easy for an ilvl 80 engineer, but I suspect that it was pretty well balanced for most mid to upper level characters. And it was a lot of fun.
Chain Store: As currently implemented, I wish this objective would die slowly in a fire. Every time I heard this one announced, it spoiled the whole event for me because of the depths of my hatred. The aisles are too narrow. Almost all of the ledges are just slightly too high for a double-jump. The telegraphs are red on orange in dim light. The stationary chains go off way, way too often. It seems to be completely zero tolerance for the optional objective. And it is never, ever, ever fun to be stunned so repeatedly that even with a control-break ability you can't move, because you just get stunned again and again and again. Either redesign this one extensively or remove it altogether, please.
Slashing Prices: Almost as bad as Chain Store for getting chain-mezzed. But eventually I figured out a pattern through it that was good enough. It wasn't fun, but at least it was doable.
Fire Sale: Bright room. Dim particle effects. Target areas you have to move away from the center to hit. Particle count so low and particle size so small that you can't see which items are burning. I never once managed to save every item; without much more visible flames I'm surprised if anybody did or ever will.
Bargain Basement: This was fun and I had no complaints -- but, then, I was using Perspective. I have no idea how anybody found those tiny and deeply buried bobbleheads without it.
Auto Mania: I failed this one a couple of times and it always felt like the game had cheated, because of the random delay between when one ride gets looked at and the next one lights up. 5 extra seconds, please, or else shorten that respawn timer.
Batteries Not Included: This one was okay, and the timer was adequately generous, but ... having things hover overhead is really painful for Chua, because we can't look up that high without really bad camera clipping.
Shop Till You Drop: I only failed this one a couple of times, and most of the time it felt like my own fault when I did. But even 5 more seconds would have been more fair, given that sometimes you can get screwed by bad random placement of items.
Main Event: Easy on any of my ilvl 65+ characters. I didn't try it on anything lower. I was annoyed that the proto-probes' area effect attacks weren't always interruptible.
Overall, I hope that you have some way to query the database to see which optional objectives were failed the most often and that you tweak the timers/failure states appropriately. Also, there was a bug with the rewards. Bronze got you a purple bag, silver got you a blue bag, and gold got you a purple bag. I'm assuming that there was supposed to be a green reward bag for bronze victories, but if there was, I'm glad you didn't give it out. (See Reward Bags, below.)
 
CONSUMABLES: Hated the drink. Not even vaguely fun. The bows were fun, but got boring eventually. (And why didn't we get the bows as decor?)
 
COSTUMES: I ended up getting them both, but mostly only to use on mannequins on my housing plot. They were both pretty ugly costumes, frankly. In particular, the Papa Phineas jacket looks awful on males who aren't Chua. Nobody in their right mind would wear a jacket that short with striped tights; consider replacing it with a trench coat design, or the tights with pants, for any male character with legs longer than a Corporataxian or a Chua? I did like the fez, though.
 
MOUNT FLAIRS: They were okay. I'm disappointed that the hoverboard wasn't released.
 
TOYS: I can't imagine anybody ever used the Nut-o-Mizer head twice. The snowballs were a great idea, but it's a poor implementation -- there's no skill involved. Making them ground targeted would have made them a lot more fun.
 
HOUSING DECOR: I am still really unhappy about a lot of the decor. Some of it was okay; I loved the fence post and the gate, and the wreaths were both nice, and the stockings were okay. The gift boxes and bags were okay, but the selection wasn't; that we couldn't get the foil-wrapped boxes at all, and that the red gift bag and the "big" gift were both ultra, ultra-rare purple bag drops made our displays a lot more boring and repetitive than the ones in the mall and the capital. (See Reward Bags, below, for more complaints about some of the decor.) I liked that you added so many snow and icicle items to the regular housing vendor, thank you. But my biggest complaint is that there were no, and I mean no, decor items that weren't explicitly and 100% Protostar oriented; frankly, that got really old. Even if it had cost 200 coldcash to get a pre-decorated (and non-Protostar) Christmas tree, I would absolutely have gotten a bunch of them, which would have given me more to spend coldcash on. I also really wish that you had included the Protostar Sales Counter and Protostar Merchandise Shelf decor items; I would have had a lot more temptation to buy the shop, or to build my own shops, if I could actually make them look like Protostar shops. A Corporotaxian sales clone would also have been a nice bit of decor to get in a purple reward bag.
 
REWARD BAGS: This is my biggest complaint with the event! I can not believe how unrewarding both the capital city event and the mall instance felt, and it was entirely because of the lousy selection in the reward bags. Thank the Eldan there were no green bags. I can't even imagine what was in them: one consumable bow? But the blue bags gave what the green bags should have: one vendor decor item or one consumable worth about 10 to 25 coldcash. And out of maybe 50 or 60 purple bags, other than a couple of those ilvl 70 hats, I only once got something that wasn't already cheap on the vendor, and that's completely unacceptable. And the one thing that I did get, the mini-pet, was bind-on-pickup? Seriously? And of course I didn't get it on a character I might have used it on, which made me rant and scream like Avatus with a hangover. Please don't do that again. The green bags should have given what the blue bags gave. The blue bags should have given what the purple bags gave. The purple bags should have had a lot, lot, lot higher chance to get some of the rarer decor, and nothing in those bags should have been bind-on-pickup. Half of why I stopped running the event altogether a week before it ended was that I ran out of things to buy with coldcash, but the other half was that the lousy rewards from the mall instance were ruining the whole holiday for me.
 
12 DAYS OF WINTERFEST and other give-aways: The free turret give-away was nice. The orbiting snow-globe toy was great, and would have been even better as a (say) 200 coldcash pet on the vendor. But the heavily hyped 12 Days of Winterfest daily giveway? One prize worth about 30 cents given away for each of 11 days, call it a one in twenty thousand chance to win? That's insulting. The odds on the final day weren't much better. I never even heard of anybody winning, and whoever did win, I doubt they were at all excited. So the breathless daily Twitter announcements were really unpleasant and unwanted.
			
				
	Edited January 2, 2016 by the infamous Brad	
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			Just FYI, the Snowtron Smash timer is still counting down in Thayd this morning.	
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 TOYS: I can't imagine anybody every used the Nut-o-Mizer head twice.
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Edit: Apparently Winterfest is..... back on?
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REWARD BAGS: This is my biggest complaint with the event! I can not believe how unrewarding both the capital city event and the mall instance felt, and it was entirely because of the lousy selection in the reward bags. Thank the Eldan there were no green bags. I can't even imagine what was in them: one consumable bow? But the blue bags gave what the green bags should have: one vendor decor item or one consumable worth about 10 to 25 coldcash. And out of maybe 50 or 60 purple bags, other than a couple of those ilvl 70 hats, I only once got something that wasn't already cheap on the vendor, and that's completely unacceptable. And the one thing that I did get, the mini-pet, was bind-on-pickup? Seriously? And of course I didn't get it on a character I might have used it on, which made me rant and scream like Avatus with a hangover. Please don't do that again. The green bags should have given what the blue bags gave. The blue bags should have given what the purple bags gave. The purple bags should have had a lot, lot, lot higher chance to get some of the rarer decor, and nothing in those bags should have been bind-on-pickup. Half of why I stopped running the event altogether a week before it ended was that I ran out of things to buy with coldcash, but the other half was that the lousy rewards from the mall instance were ruining the whole holiday for me.
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Speak for yourself! I'm gonna be adding this illusion to my "rotation". :lol:
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 Shade's Eve was designed by people who clearly love Halloween. Winterfest was clearly designed by people who actively hate Christmas.
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Thank you, everyone, for your feedback on the event. We're going to take all this and improve on things in the future. I assure you that we, as a group, love Christmas, and this event was just a li'l nose tweak at the way consumerism has become the forefront of the holiday, that's all. ;)
 
Hope you had a good time!	
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Thank you, everyone, for your feedback on the event. We're going to take all this and improve on things in the future. I assure you that we, as a group, love Christmas, and this event was just a li'l nose tweak at the way consumerism has become the forefront of the holiday, that's all. ;)
 
Hope you had a good time!
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If you managed to somehow show that people found meaning in Winterfest in spite of Papa Phineas' attempts to make it all about his personal profits, it would turn my opinion right around, and I'd think that was the greatest thing in the world
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Thank you, everyone, for your feedback on the event. We're going to take all this and improve on things in the future. I assure you that we, as a group, love Christmas, and this event was just a li'l nose tweak at the way consumerism has become the forefront of the holiday, that's all. ;)
 
Hope you had a good time!
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			Oops. Looks like I won costume set, mount, sky and a house. Pretty neat ocnsidering I did log into the game each and every day during holidays yet that was only for daily rewards and some average questing O.o	
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Thank you, everyone, for your feedback on the event. We're going to take all this and improve on things in the future. I assure you that we, as a group, love Christmas, and this event was just a li'l nose tweak at the way consumerism has become the forefront of the holiday, that's all. ;)
 
Hope you had a good time!
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I confess I was kind of hoping for a "magic of the season" component...but when I was hired to shut down the Aurin's that were trying to make it spiritual, and to double talk them into getting on board with the commercialism...awesome. :)
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