History lessons: a proposal for accessing old events / letting new players catch up
Keybounce
Posts: 474 ✭✭✭
There's a lot of talk recently about "needing new lessons" for the old players now that professors can start completing their trees with this event.
There's also a lot of new players that are no where near that point, and have a lot of missing/blank event pages.
Finally, there's a huuuge abundance of plain scrolls.
So, idea: History lessons.
The basic idea: For a cost in scrolls, you can activate an old event for yourself. Spawns generated for this would be personal, just like tonic for trace detection spawns.
All the rules of the event would apply, and the same one-week time limit.
Example (assuming a cost of 200 scrolls; adjust as needed):
I have 6 blank event registries. 5 have 2 parts, one has 1 part.
For 200 scrolls, I could take a history course, such as Flora and Fauna. This would result in the "Special" tabs of the assignments having two sets, just like "Daily" has two sets. One would be whatever is current (such as the lost love bonus events ... sheesh, I'm going to need a dark detector party to justify spending that many potions, aren't i?), and the other would be the F&F event, with a one week time limit.
In a serious way, this would permit people to convert scrolls into red and green books, subject to the limit of whatever the game's past events are.
This would not permit anyone to get a lead on other players, but would permit newer players to have a chance to catch up.
As a side effect, it would make game design/balancing easier, as it becomes easier to assume more people are closer to the "max" than otherwise.
Benefit to new players: Catch up.
Benefit to older players: As more people are caught up and needing new lessons, new stuff needs to / will be released.
Cost to design team: Ya gotta release it now :-)
NB: For this example, only F&F would have a total cost of 200. The others would have a cost of 200 per part.
I have no idea how much the actual cost should be. 200 per registry page would be a total of 15 pages (3,000 scrolls) for a new player to catch up, which might be too much.
Comments
Good idea. As an Auror i would love to trade scrolls for red books. I have four lessons to complete but needing 2600 or more challenge XP for 2 red books it is going to take awhile.
I’m not opposed to this @Keybounce. It might be logistically much more difficult from a technical standpoint, but overall I think it’s a good idea.
However, we’re still not even a full year into the game yet, so we have no idea if those past events like Flora and Fauna will repeat in any way.
This is a fantastic and well thought out idea @Keybounce !! Bravo!!
@Keybounce Just to clarify:
If there is already an event active, your proposition would activate the second event on top of the already existing one?
If so, how would you handle following details/features of the previously introduced events:
Also, would your suggestion include only the Brilliant Events or the "other" events aswell - like Day of the Dragon, Crazy in Love, Book Night, Community-Days?
Of course I am in love with this idea @Keybounce . :) but @Lucoire has excellent points, as always. I for one think keeping event bonuses such as with the the most recent event wouldn't be excessive as "catch up" bonuses. Which is to say potion duration / effect. As a drawback the ingredient spawns might remain the ingredient spawns. You could stock up beforehand. How would you fill in the details? Also wouldn't the logistics become a bit of a nightmare? If you only think about the sheer amount of portkeys you'd need to open for two events at a time... that being said: it's a lovely idea :)
@Punkyfins The logistics being difficult to manage is part of the price people would pay for the ability to catch up, along with the scrolls (or whatever) they had to invest to activate the event. And honestly there is no rush to catch up on the old events, so one could plan to do it during a break between new events.
With regards to overlap of tasks between an old event and a current one, we have had multiple task lists active before. People have worked out strategies to minimize repetition (for example, wait until I get to step 3/4 on task list A before I start brewing my potions for task list B so that the same potions can count for both tasks). That could be part of the fun, deciding when is the best time to catch up on an old event so that you could double up with the tasks from a current event.
@Lucoire to your points, I'd suggest the following:
Which would also make it easier on switchers. *which would make me happy, as I am one...
Hi everyone!
I hope everyone had a wonderful February!!! It was full of so many exiting events... I surely enjoyed them very much! Big hand of applause to everyone who created them for us!
We still do not have a schedule for March though...
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When it comes to unfinished previous events... not a bad idea, yet we can not expect that game makers will reopening all the events and make them available for everyone at any given time...
The entire point of those events is to be special for the time of the season when they came out....
I play a lot of video games on PS4...many of the games have special seasonal events....and when you miss out on playing, you miss the event, you do not get full set of new gear, or special new gun...its sucks but, that is how it goes... sorry...
Maybe next year, the event will be repeated, who knows...mean while, let us finish the event that still ongoing ... and I am really excited what will come next...this month we celebrate Saint Patrick's Day...who knows, maybe they will suprise us with a Leprechaun that can take you to revisit any one event from a past, 😃
The entire point of those events is to be special for the time of the season when they came out....
Are you sure?
many of the games have special seasonal events....and when you miss out on playing, you miss the event, you do not get full set of new gear, or special new gun...its sucks but, that is how it goes... sorry...
Just because this is how other games behave, does that mean we must match their behavior?
What happens if you set your clock back? I've seen games where the dev's official policy is "Change the date on your computer", without any regard to what that does to system certificate validations. I've seen it pointed out that this is trivial on a single-person Microsoft windows system, and very painful on a Macintosh (which is running a many-users-at-once unix variant even if there's only one person logged in).
@Lucoire I make no suggestion for any of the cases you mention. I lack anywhere near enough knowledge to begin to discuss that.
It might pose quite a problem for developers to "replay" the whole event on user to user basis.
I would be satisfied if we would get possibility to fill the page, so maybe shorter "replay" task list and without any special features (like potions lasting for more casts and stuff).
@Keybounce sometimes, with your tone and demeanour, I mistake your posts for @kiheikid!
Personally, I would be a little irritated if they brought back past events with full rewards. Given that I went out with multiple fractures in my foot and battled through anyway, I would be annoyed to know that I could have just waited and done it later. And I say that even though I didn't finish the part 2 bonus task this time, meaning the first event badge I have missed.
Actually, sickness / injury is a wonderful reason to permit people to get something late.
Consider how many people right now have to say "I have an injury, I better not", and miss out.
Removing the need to make an injury worse now, when it can be done later, is a good thing.
(and I'm sorry you had to injure your injury more.)
Overall I like the idea.
But as I pointed out earlier, there are some technical / ballancing difficulties - but none of those should stop people from thinking about it.
What might make people angry / disappointed is that this feature is not backwards-compatible. Situations like the one described by @Magpie31 will cause feelings of frustration given that all that pain could've been avoided.
One other criticism that was pointed out (and that I agree with) is that some "game events" are centered around a certain "Real Event" or "Lore Events":
But other than that, there should be no reason to tie events to a certain date.
I would be all for waiting to see if they reopened those events around the same time each year. Add a new page or piece of the story at that time and then say for (n) scrolls if you want to fill out your prior registry page open certain tasks. I wouldn't give the rewards other than the registry items, but that would allow completionists to fill their pages.
@Sheganer I appreciate your pure positive energy. I don't see past events repeating. You go down that road you can't ever stop, and you can't repeat an event just once. The more events you have, the more repeating them becomes a disaster. @HPWUTeam I like the idea of expanding the game to allow trading surplus event runestones to players who missed completing frames. Of course the mechanics of 'traded event runestones' would have to change to accommodate acquiring any of the fragments missing for any given frame; perhaps provide a single choice per traded event runestone. Either way, introducing a mechanic other than repeating past events allowing newer players to catch up, albeit challenging, would certainly add appeal to the game. Trading is a great way to encourage community interaction... just saying. 😁
I had a random thought about this hisyory lesson idea whilst I was fortressing today.
Surely altering the mechanics of the game to allow people to start and end previous events as they liked would really ruin the current set up and the whole point of the reward system? I mean, what would stop me just waiting until a school holiday, then spending scrolls / runestones / whatever currency to play freely for a week where I can easily walk off my 10 portkeys or get out to play all day every day?
I just really feel like the system as proposed does devalue the events. Yes, offer chance to complete registry pages if necessary, but all the other rewards etc could be abused.
I like that you've come up with something new, but I think it's a bit premature to think that such a mechanic is necessary. At this stage, there is nothing to indicate that Fantastic Flora and Fauna won't return in July.
If the point is to let people who joined the game late to complete Registry pages in their game, then why not just have them wait until July rocks around and the event is run again?
New players will get to fill their registry pages. Players that didn't quite get there will have a second bite at the apple. Players that completed their page will most likely get an opportunity to Prestige their page and try to fill it again - but with higher fragment requirements; as is the case with other Registry pages.
Running each event year after year at the time of year they were released and only having to tweak Dialogue for story and maybe the Assignment Tasks and Rewards makes far more sense than creating a whole new system that lets players burn through multiple Events concurrently. Nothing erks me more than, "that's how it's always been done" attitudes, but in this case I feel like you're trying to fix something that isn't broken.
There is a single Foundable that isn't in Full Colour in my Registry because a Portkey that should have dropped a Foundable didn't. I've always just assumed that I just need to wait for when the calendar rolls around and the event comes back and then I'll smash out a Brilliant Portkey Portmanteau and THEN get on with the rest of the Brilliant Event.
🙃👍
PS. Looks like I need to catch up to you in this forum @Keybounce! Hot **** you've overtaken me. 😜
I have an "all or nothing" problem approach to life.
I think this is a very good idea. My empty events look soooo sad 😢
Have a high price to activate would make it fair to the old player I think. And I talk as a new player myself.
There would be very like cost for the dvlp team so that is a very very good idea 👍