149165-sim-chase-feedback

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Okay, I looked, I really did.  I did not find anyone doing any sort of breakdown on the Sim-Chase like we had for previous events.  This tells me two things: 1) Fewer people are playing right now, especially the more vocal ones.  (I know the most vocal players in our guild are off trying Blade and Sexy Costumes.)   2) We're so burned out on fail event after fail event that no one even cares enough any more to give feedback - obviously you aren't listening, if even the simple stuff isn't getting addressed!
Seriously, Carbine, hire a Q&A person who does NOT resemble Homer Simpson.  How can it be that EVERY SINGLE EVENT has mis-information on the website?  Yes, I understand that the event started late.  As SOON as that happened, you should have had someone updating the website with your new timeline.  IMMEDIATELY.  Also, you need to have someone double-checking EVERYTHING.  What stuff drops in each loot box?  Did someone who writes the website actually look at the loot tables, or just go on a bunch of hand-written notes on a stained napkin?  Because I know for a fact that at the very least, the music isn't dropping from the correct loot boxes (I got "Darkness of the Mind" from an Exo-Lab case).Speaking of music - once again, there is no way to preview music.  Why, for the love of glob, can't you put links to the music so those who are interested can preview it?  Again, the fact that no one is asking doesn't mean it isn't needed.  It means that you have failed your player base to the point where the people who care are just giving up.
 
To get beyond the website issues:The adventures are... well... adventures.  It takes a while to grasp the goals on each one (especially if you're doing Crimelords), but thank you for at least fixing the notoriety meter, that really does help.  I like that you are driving more people to this underused content, but perhaps the reason it is underused is that people don't understand it well enough to enjoy it, and having to find a complete group to run it, given the low rewards, isn't all that fun.
 
The event rewards are on par for time invested, and the variety of decor is about what is to be expected, and actually a decent set for two different styles of plots.    Once again, allowing people to trade the rewards from grinding adventures is a nice touch, allowing those who would rather spend time playing the content they enjoy to pay people to run the content they don't.Overall, the event is on par with Space Chase. Fails and all.	
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			I liked Sim Chase... my Plot thanks me for enjoying Sim Chase.... sorry it's not what you wanted... *slinks back into super cool Eldan themed plot....*	
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Okay, I looked, I really did.  I did not find anyone doing any sort of breakdown on the Sim-Chase like we had for previous events.  This tells me two things:
 1) Fewer people are playing right now, especially the more vocal ones.  (I know the most vocal players in our guild are off trying Blade and Sexy Costumes.)  
 2) We're so burned out on fail event after fail event that no one even cares enough any more to give feedback - obviously you aren't listening, if even the simple stuff isn't getting addressed!
Seriously, Carbine, hire a Q&A person who does NOT resemble Homer Simpson.  How can it be that EVERY SINGLE EVENT has mis-information on the website?  Yes, I understand that the event started late.  As SOON as that happened, you should have had someone updating the website with your new timeline.  IMMEDIATELY.  Also, you need to have someone double-checking EVERYTHING.  What stuff drops in each loot box?  Did someone who writes the website actually look at the loot tables, or just go on a bunch of hand-written notes on a stained napkin?  Because I know for a fact that at the very least, the music isn't dropping from the correct loot boxes (I got "Darkness of the Mind" from an Exo-Lab case).
 
Speaking of music - once again, there is no way to preview music.  Why, for the love of glob, can't you put links to the music so those who are interested can preview it?  Again, the fact that no one is asking doesn't mean it isn't needed.  It means that you have failed your player base to the point where the people who care are just giving up.
 
To get beyond the website issues:
The adventures are... well... adventures.  It takes a while to grasp the goals on each one (especially if you're doing Crimelords), but thank you for at least fixing the notoriety meter, that really does help.  I like that you are driving more people to this underused content, but perhaps the reason it is underused is that people don't understand it well enough to enjoy it, and having to find a complete group to run it, given the low rewards, isn't all that fun.
 
The event rewards are on par for time invested, and the variety of decor is about what is to be expected, and actually a decent set for two different styles of plots.    Once again, allowing people to trade the rewards from grinding adventures is a nice touch, allowing those who would rather spend time playing the content they enjoy to pay people to run the content they don't.
 
Overall, the event is on par with Space Chase. Fails and all.
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Sim Chase was great until everyone left for B&S. I was getting 1000 shards a day, now I'm lucky to get 300 because no one is queuing up.
 
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The event rewards are on par for time invested, and the variety of decor is about what is to be expected, and actually a decent set for two different styles of plots.    Once again, allowing people to trade the rewards from grinding adventures is a nice touch, allowing those who would rather spend time playing the content they enjoy to pay people to run the content they don't.
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			Rally down and solo Hycrest or whatever your dirty Dominion equivalent is :P i think it's somewhere around 100.. it's quick and easy and you don't need to wait for others in a queue.	
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 2) We're so burned out on fail event after fail event that no one even cares enough any more to give feedback - obviously you aren't listening, if even the simple stuff isn't getting addressed!
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The problem with the event IMO is a large percentage of players don't care for decor at all (straight from my butt it's gotta be at least 50%), for the event to truly be played by most there has to be even a minuscule chance for the mount (the item most players would be interested in) to drop on completion of an adventure (in this case), with the percent chance being relative to the amount of time and effort/difficulty it generally takes to complete the adventure. This would get most people playing it and probably rotating all of the adventures.
 
When my chance is slim I'll get a good prize I'll still grind it, when it's zero, well, I'll probably spend more time on the forums than actually playing the game like of late...
 
Also when the general rewards for doing what's required of an event (adventures) are terrible for most players there's even less chance people will enjoy or even participate in an event, at least with the Boss Killer event killing world bosses is actually rewarding. However, once again, giving players even a minuscule chance at a key dropping from that event would have turned that into an event most people would have been happy about. Completely locking things behind the store pisses people off. Give players with the time the chance to grind for it in the event and those with money and or no time the chance to RNG box grind it in the store.
 
Unfortunately the focus of events seems to be "how much money can we make from these events this instant" instead of are we keeping the players happy and interested in the game to continue to bring revenue in. I can't emphasis enough how much even a minuscule chance keeps people so much more interested and happy.	
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I honestly think the problem with this event is twofold: First, unlike the previous one, it cannot be done on your own at all. That's cutting on all the people who are solo-only but also on everyone who would otherwise do the event between other activities.
The second problem is that adventures can be pretty long if you don't use the optimal path (and avoid all the optionals). Yet despite taking longet than Shiphands they don't reward proportionally more exchange bits than them. The exchange rate is still 3 shards per 1 actual useful currency*, and the most you get is about 150 shards per adventure. That's what a run of Fragment Zero gave in the Space-Chase, if I remember correctly.
 
*Also, while we are at it: why the fudging pretzel do we have this exchange system? Why not give us the ACTUAL coins we need to buy the decor directly? Seriously. I can't fathom what's the purpose of that step. 	
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I honestly think the problem with this event is twofold: First, unlike the previous one, it cannot be done on your own at all. That's cutting on all the people who are solo-only but also on everyone who would otherwise do the event between other activities.
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I was having a hard time getting motivated to log in, much less be excited about, research, or even acknowledge this event.
 
I was pretty disappointed with the last event, I just couldn't get excited or motivated for this one. All I did was run dungeons all day like I always do.	
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			Sorry, I was playing Bewbs & Sexy.  :lol:	
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Rally down and solo Hycrest or whatever your dirty Dominion equivalent is :P i think it's somewhere around 100.. it's quick and easy and you don't need to wait for others in a queue.
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I didn't do any adventures. I bought 50+ of those boxes and didn't get the mount. I stockpiled all the decor in my bank to sell later.
 
That was my sim-chase experience.	
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Level 50 players (maybe even 40's?) can solo the first adventure, even when rallied down. 100 shards each run, faster than waiting in queue.
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Vadim is the one at the end, on a large outdoor platform, with 4 adds at the start doing the wave thing, right?
 
You're a warrior, right? I think it's a class thing - ranged class imba. My Esper breezed through that fight, while Medic had a harder time. Although, I do remember dodging his lifedrain-in-the-air ability more than once (pure luck, probably blinked out of range at the right time).... so maybe there's a prompt when he's about to cast that ultimate. Will have to go back there and see.
 
Hmm, just read that the order of bosses are dependent on options selected. Fighting Vadim (or even Jarak) in a wide open area is defnitely easier than in that tiny room.	
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I didn't do any adventures. I bought 50+ of those boxes and didn't get the mount. I stockpiled all the decor in my bank to sell later.
 
That was my sim-chase experience.
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Spellslinger. Fought him in the the landing pad. Everything goes fine until he goes into health-draining mode. It kind of undoes all the damage I deal to him. I know it's an interruptable channel, but the cast seems instant and disarms the target. One time the skill would bugged out and did not bind me to the air. That allowed me to run to my weapon and stop him from zapping my life. However, I have no idea how that happened.
 
Having another player stun him before he completes the channeling would make that battle very easy. But then I imagine it would be more efficient to do Crimelords instead.	
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Here you are talking about the previous model of payment in WS (p2p), so you pay before and get rewards while playing. If carbines put mount in event - there will no 0% of idiots that will actualy buy that boxes. And the case is - ppl don't like RNG loot, they want to buy exactly the item that they want. And definitely carbines could make more money if they do so, but.. the devs not listening anymore.
 
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The second problem is that adventures can be pretty long if you don't use the optimal path (and avoid all the optionals). Yet despite taking longet than Shiphands they don't reward proportionally more exchange bits than them. The exchange rate is still 3 shards per 1 actual useful currency*, and the most you get is about 150 shards per adventure. That's what a run of Fragment Zero gave in the Space-Chase, if I remember correctly.
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I was thinking about that and I'm not sure how to 'solve' it or, at least, encourage people into not repeating the same adventure/shiphand over and over. Maybe there should be some kind of diminishin returns for multiple runs of the same adventure? Or a daily bonus for tackling different adventures: if you run Crimelords once, you get the bonus. If you run it another time without playing some other adventure first, you don't get a bonus. Then you have to play a third adventure, and so on and so forth until you have basically 'cycled' through all of them.
 
Though to be honest I don't see many people bothering with Malgrave even then. You basically need an addon to run that thing comfortably.	
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I was thinking about that and I'm not sure how to 'solve' it or, at least, encourage people into not repeating the same adventure/shiphand over and over. Maybe there should be some kind of diminishin returns for multiple runs of the same adventure? Or a daily bonus for tackling different adventures: if you run Crimelords once, you get the bonus. If you run it another time without playing some other adventure first, you don't get a bonus. Then you have to play a third adventure, and so on and so forth until you have basically 'cycled' through all of them.
 
Though to be honest I don't see many people bothering with Malgrave even then. You basically need an addon to run that thing comfortably.
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So, YOU may not like the RNG boxes, but in general most people do. F2P producers have known this for a while, and thats why it worked so well in SWTOR and other F2P games. It's also the same reason Lotteries and similar events are so successful. People like to gamble...
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. . .but there is a way to preview the music. It's right on the page on the site: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/2016-01-06-the-sim-chase-begins-january-13/ If you'll notice it is listed at the bottom of the list for each of the case's contents. 
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Veteran adventures give, what, level 68 rewards? You can buy level 65 gear from a vendor. Nobody's going to group up and spend that kind of time for gear that's only barely better than vendor gear. No matter what decor rewards you stick on it. Leveling adventures are even worse: they give one piece of good but disposable gear in the same amount of time that you could get five or six pieces of good-enough gear solo -- and the solo leveling gives about 3 or 4 times the XP/hour. Adventures look fun. But there is no point in this game where the rewards they give make sense relative to the time they cost.
 
Expeditions give even worse gear, but they had the advantage of being quick and easy to solo. I knew from the beginning that Sim-Chase was never going to be as popular as Space-Chase.	
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			I am not level 50 and everytime I tried to queue for the event no one shows up, I think the devs need to re-evaluate the rewards for these events and make them also available for players who are not level 50, I tried to do one of these events by myself and didnt pass the first mob.	
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I am not level 50 and everytime I tried to queue for the event no one shows up, I think the devs need to re-evaluate the rewards for these events and make them also available for players who are not level 50, I tried to do one of these events by myself and didnt pass the first mob.
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			I know they are not meant for solo players but what can you do when there is no one to PUG for the adventure and you just wait and wait and wait until you get tired of waiting. These events are a big fail for many players, only those who have a "group" pre-formed already can tacle these events, marginalizing almost 70% of the player base.	
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I know they are not meant for solo players but what can you do when there is no one to PUG for the adventure and you just wait and wait and wait until you get tired of waiting. These events are a big fail for many players, only those who have a "group" pre-formed already can tacle these events, marginalizing almost 70% of the player base.
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			How do you level a toon to level 50 in 2 days, I struggle to get enough experience to manage to gain 1 level a day????	
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Because we already know the quest objectives and routes; and with addons like Perspective, we practically autopilot the quests while doing something else on the 2nd monitor.
 
There are XP enhancing things like rested XP, guild buff, flasks.... and don't forget that fusion rune (leg slot).	
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Bear in mind that when they say 2 days, they mean ~48 hours of playtime.  If you're managing one level in an hour or two without stacking experience buffs, you're doing great!  There are some leveling guides that you can read to help speed things up if you want.
 
Most of the players you'll run into leveling up are focused on hitting the level cap before bothering with multiplayer content, because the experience gain tends to be greater and more predictable in solo play.  There's also this pervasive idea that gaining levels is the long last step in the character creation process, but that's a gripe for another thread.	
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I like the event in theory (most of us do, I think) but as has already been pointed out, the rewards just aren't there. The decor is cool but it's not enough to motivate most players and adventures are quite a time commitment compared to expeditions (plus adventures normally require a group). I assume the gear drops can't be improved much since adventures are the stepping stone before dungeons. Though why not throw in some really nice gadgets that are on par with dungeon drops? Or have adventures drop superb rune fragments (I know they'd probably be dropping high fragments, as well) and other runecrafting stuff. New pets, new costumes, maybe throw an exclusive mount in there :). Some players still wouldn't care (and we really can't improve the gear drops with the current system) but a lot of us enjoy hunting for pets and other fluff in our spare time.
 
That being said, I was able to run several veteran adventures during the event. Queues popped very rarely but it was generally easy to grab groups from EntityLFM. I had never done most of them and honestly had more fun than I expected. Crimelords was especially great, the dialogue cracked me up (plus I got a group that picked Protostar and that was awesome). However, I don't mess with housing very often and didn't need/want the decor so my main reward for completing them was extra platinum from selling decor and shards :p.
 
I was sad about the RNG cases, though. I get why RNG boxes exist and don't hate them as much as most people. But man, I would have loved the option to purchase some of those rewards separately in the cash shop :(. I've seen very few people with the mount and I know a lot of us would happily pay even $20+ for it. I was also kind of bummed out about some of the decor/NPC pieces. I wish there had been a way to get them/have a chance to get them with shards or by running adventures. I had wanted the Caretaker, for example, and it would have been cool if there had been a tiny chance of him dropping during the adventure run itself or something. Having an even slim chance at getting some of these rewards while running adventures would have motivated people to run more, I think. I would have also loved to purchase the music tracks but I've given up on that since we already had that issue during Space Chase. I'm not going to buy 100+ boxes to get one music track when I don't want the decor.
 
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I know they are not meant for solo players but what can you do when there is no one to PUG for the adventure and you just wait and wait and wait until you get tired of waiting. These events are a big fail for many players, only those who have a "group" pre-formed already can tacle these events, marginalizing almost 70% of the player base.
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How do you level a toon to level 50 in 2 days, I struggle to get enough experience to manage to gain 1 level a day????
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			And what an amazing finale... Shutting it down early.  Well played, Carbine.  Well played.	
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And what an amazing finale... Shutting it down early.  Well played, Carbine.  Well played.
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GOD F'ING DAM-MIT!  I was short a few hundred from what I was trying to do.  This really was the icing on the cake for this event.  Seriously... the website says;
 
"...the end of the event on January 26, at 11:59pm PST."  -- http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/2016-01-06-the-sim-chase-begins-january-13/
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			 How do you forget to update the most important web page of a promotion and simply blow it off like it was nothing... this isn't the first time carbine has pulled these shenanigans.	
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Ah, see, there's the thing - it wasn't ended early; it was ended right on schedule.  The schedule was unique to the event, and not posted in the main article about the event, but they stuck to it!
 
The people tasked with presenting this event made some serious mistakes (including misrepresenting the contents of the RNG boxes that cost real money) that confused and misdirected players.  Again.  I know these mistakes are unintentional, but they're alarmingly frequent and we're the ones who pay for them.	
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Definitely an ongoing problem with communication. Carbines, if you're in need of a hot, Canadian, communicative, English/Linguistics academic with a serious gaming lust that's not dimmed in 25 years... I will need a job in August. :P
 
That said, the event is primarily about getting decor and that was done just as well as Space Chase, plus the items themselves were mostly quite cool. So I still consider this event a success. 
 
Takeaways for improvement:
 
- Check your price increases (again!); the double-cost cases were a slap in the face just like the Winterfest dye fiasco
 
- Ensure the contents are as advertised (I'll also remark that you initially had the case items thematically selected, which is nice, but the Darkness music ended up in the wrong case so it caused the double fail of messing up consistency)
 
- Don't stuff every little thing that isn't decor in an RNG case. You need to market to the broader base of players. That's not just about income either, it's about the community feeling ~satisfied~ instead of ~neglected~, especially with the ongoing content drought. Try to anticipate these situations
 
- Vocal outrage is common no matter what a dev does these days, but you do still need to be aware that more players are becoming cynical because of ongoing problems, which is the last thing you want in a F2P environment. Folks who have been level-headed and helpful are becoming grouchy and impatient
 
- I still love you :wub:   (gif job plz our economy suuuuucks)
			
				
	Edited January 26, 2016 by EsperXIV	
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			Well that's just disappointing and frankly unprofessional.  If you're going to break your own precedent (11:59pm US/Pacific) you cannot do that in passing.  That must be called out prominently.	
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Well that's just disappointing and frankly unprofessional.  If you're going to break your own precedent (11:59pm US/Pacific) you cannot do that in passing.  That must be called out prominently.
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Feel like they should start reusing some of the Chase event currencies and do a rotation. There's still some eko particles/chits floating around, would be nice to use them, and obv. you can't say they weren't earned (off the CX with gold or through farming.)
 
I think that would serve a great function as to not make people feel bad if they can't dump their old currency. Also, make it an actual currency, and stop this whole turn in 3 things to make 1 thing which is what you're actually turning in, too.	
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			I would be surprised if they did not intend to do some kind of rotation with these events, to be honest. We are only missing one that sends you to Dungeons (which might be a bit difficult thanks to Dungeons being all thematically different) and another for Raids.	
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			I feel like I've been the victim of a really mean practical joke. So sad today. 	
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			I sure hope so - that'll make the end time confusion this time around sting a lot less.	
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			Should be somekind of exchanger NPC for this. Or Sim chase will be back later with a date	
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			I don't know what to be more surprised about, Carbine getting the dates wrong or the fact there was actually people doing the event to notice.	
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I don't know what to be more surprised about, Carbine getting the dates wrong or the fact there was actually people doing the event to notice.
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I don't know what to be more surprised about, Carbine getting the dates wrong or the fact there was actually people doing the event to notice.
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			I wanted robots and got robots. About the music preview thing, I can understand not seeing it. The damn link is small and looks like part of the bullet points which people generally just glance over.	
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The problem with the event IMO is a large percentage of players don't care for decor at all (straight from my butt it's gotta be at least 50%), for the event to truly be played by most there has to be even a minuscule chance for the mount (the item most players would be interested in) to drop on completion of an adventure (in this case), with the percent chance being relative to the amount of time and effort/difficulty it generally takes to complete the adventure. This would get most people playing it and probably rotating all of the adventures.
 
When my chance is slim I'll get a good prize I'll still grind it, when it's zero, well, I'll probably spend more time on the forums than actually playing the game like of late...
 
Also when the general rewards for doing what's required of an event (adventures) are terrible for most players there's even less chance people will enjoy or even participate in an event, at least with the Boss Killer event killing world bosses is actually rewarding. However, once again, giving players even a minuscule chance at a key dropping from that event would have turned that into an event most people would have been happy about. Completely locking things behind the store pisses people off. Give players with the time the chance to grind for it in the event and those with money and or no time the chance to RNG box grind it in the store.
 
Unfortunately the focus of events seems to be "how much money can we make from these events this instant" instead of are we keeping the players happy and interested in the game to continue to bring revenue in. I can't emphasis enough how much even a minuscule chance keeps people so much more interested and happy.
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When my chance is slim I'll get a good prize I'll still grind it, when it's zero, well, I'll probably spend more time on the forums than actually playing the game like of late...
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Wish I'd had more time to do the event. :( I was without my gaming computer Thurs-Tues though, so I didn't get hardly any of what I wanted. *sigh*
 
Despite folks' complaints in this thread, I actually enjoyed the event. I didn't enjoy the RNG boxes (and still refuse to touch them), but it was fun queueing up for random adventures. I even managed to lead some gold medal Malgrave Trails, and I hadn't done the Star-Comm adventure since it released. I'd forgotten how fun that one is. I want to do it more!	
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I wanted robots and got robots. About the music preview thing, I can understand not seeing it. The damn link is small and looks like part of the bullet points which people generally just glance over.
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