EZ Server

The event was solid. From a foundation standpoint, the expedition, experimentation with public, and scaling of the zone were great. The event was solid with little lag and crashes.. so kudos for bug free. The zone was easy to pull in once you knew the routes and it always seemed interesting which is important when you are talking about long days grinding out.  So like I said... a great foundation.

Like any new zone or implement... it requires feedback to get better and developers willing to listen to the community, which we thankfully have. I believe that there are a few areas that could be tweaked the next time around.

For rewards we were looking at:
The rewards:  Lots of prisms, candy, and plat bags.
6 UW - 25 of each strikes - ez credits
PETS!!
Feast items - 3 types - 3 quests.. pretty cool. (and I forgot to mention it, thanks Hate)

Suggestions:
Prisms: turn into one of the town folks for upgrade: 100 prisms for v2 upgrade, 250 prisms for v3 upgrade. (Make prisms tradable?? good economy thing)

Pets - We can evaluate them and tweak them to get them all working the way you wanted them... may be some initial issues here with some of the buffs.

Candy - We all have tons of these.. we can work on a way to use em more than just tokens. Maybe combine 10 of same into bag to make sugar rush token... turn that into Halloween guy for chance at random monster, Item (would be a wow moment), buff, or even debuff (Trick). Or hand 4 at a time into vendor for the same.

Halloween tokens - add some lower end ez rewards on there... maybe run speed, vendor, or other things. I know I qqed on strikes being missing.. you could put them on the vendor maybe 50 tokens for strike v.

Scepter of time - would give some lower level folks a leg up. recommend we bring them back on some bosses like before so they can collect and combine to make a few scepter X. We can add them to the buy list with tokens as recommended for strikes.

How about a daily expedition that sends you to hell upon day time depop of diablo... he de-spawns, the reaper pops in his place, hail him for exp down to the underworld.. maybe Charon and maybe he requires a coin that rarely drops or can be bought... the underworld chamber can be a fight with diablo.

Anyways, that's about it.. had a great time on the event and it was nice to see so much activity. Cannot wait until next Halloween.

Akk, Hate, Love - Thank you very much for the event. Hate and Love did a great job on the zone with main assist going to Akk (Yes I read your reply on this thread.. had to take a 15 minute break from work to do so.. however, always good intel from you) , and Akk did a great job keeping it running.


Please all feel free to add on... and be nice.

  

 
  
 

I would add the candy guy to randomly pop Ct on turn in like previous years. I would like to see low end items like SLS or plat for Halloween coins. This would eliminate the need to create new currency next year as most would spend them on SLS or plat. I would also take the aoe mez and charms off the mobs as it does hinder low end players from killing them.

I would add more strikes back.  I think a lot of folks were planning on getting some of those.

Maybe 1 per SM instead of 4 next year, or 1 from every pet past CT.

When I started, 0 toons had any pet higher than Stone Monster.
I had about 2 mil plat.
I had 0 augs that were above version 5. I had a handful of 3's, 4's and 5's on my dps.

At the finish of the event.
All toons had the highest pet for their class.  (Flame mistress for melee, chilled devil for casters and everyone has a black unicorn pet).  My Warrior, my zerker and my ranger all have an Insane Gobby pet. 
When I logged out last night, I had 32 mil plat.
I now have 2x FS9's on my zerker.  I now have a IS9 on my warrior (I went back to sword and whip, it seems to way more aoe dps).  I have a 2x NS6 on my ranger. 
I even got my zone holder (a pally) Ultimate Charm 1, a Flame Mistress pet and an Insane Gobby pet for tanking.

It took a lot of farming, about 35-40 hours total but well worth it.  I was just breaking into T7 before this and now I am pretty sure I can handle my own in that zone.  I never got above a BU chain to happen and the 1 BU chain I did have happened on the first day.  I did get a couple of BU forced spawns from Diablo. 

All in all it was a great event.  Thank you Hate, Love and Akk for all the time you spent setting it up and implementing it. 

Click the candy or feast items... ;)

-Hate

Thanks for all the hard work putting the Halloween event together, Akkadius, Hateborne, and Loveborne!  I had fun and got plenty of good loots and cash.

-Reagan

Spoiler??? Damnnnnnnnn it

What is the limit on the feast items? I was using them regularly during the event when suddenly, they were out of charges :(

Idk if it was intentional to have them run out of charges, but that's the message I get when I try to use them now.

Otherwise; 100mil plat, NS8, 20 IG pets(one on all toons), 12 MoF, bunch of arcing chilled whatever wherever they fit, 24 BU pets yay! so. That was a good haul lol. I very much enjoyed this event.

Didnt want to start a new thread. Hate is the new pet weapon pack going to be beastlord useable in the future?

Thanks for the shout outs. Just for clarification, I did step in and help with content side this time and it was something Hate, Love and I had the opportunity to be more immediately collaborative on as well.

Since we're done I can go into some of the specifics.

The foundation of Housegarden I put together with a developer friend of mine a year ago (Tony Scarboni) he used to play on EZ some time ago, when we were talking about this years event I brought this up as something that should be re-used and retooled from EZ's uses.

Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGRINKNVx5A

I never had much time for Akka's Funhouse and especially around Halloween time last year I was moving so that literally blew releasing it out of the water, I also had no room for extra things so it just made sense to use here on EZ given the time already put into it.

Hate and Love did the heavy lifting on the content modifications on the base of the housegarden zone, I worked on getting model support and anything they needed help with. There were a lot of odds and ends that I helped with and overall even considering launch issues and bugs, they were fairly insignificant and our bounce back was quick.

I also added the 'feels' in the Nexus, it was nice to have the time to not have to worry about getting content done before taking care of the spices of other aspects (Nexus). I went through and added the fog and effects along with all of the models in Nexus and cross referenced the files and what models they contained versus the models loaded in the local assets.

This was also tricky because if people have inconsistently different files loading in their client from customization's made from other servers, it would have been client crash city and I would have been troubleshooting client issues (They are tougher than server because of lack of visibility).

I was able to also have time like loading in a slew of character models for Nexus so the random costumes could be assumed for NPC's and clients, I felt like that added a nice overall touch to Halloween. Then of course the music and all of the other effects really brought it home in my opinion.

Hate and Love did a great job taking a base of something already made and within a very short amount of time mixing it with some old stuff as well as their plans to deliver something different to the EZ Server.

This also gave us a chance to stress test a lot of recent modifications to the expedition system, in which it revealed some bugs and inconsistencies and quite a few things have been smoothed over even up until last night. People don't realize how big this is because expedition system can and will be the foundation to other types of events, I'd just like to make sure the bugs are ironed out since it is a very large system.

All in all I think Halloween went very well despite the small issues that were to be expected. Last night there were some worldserver issues that were annoying related to the tell queue, this is when a player is sending a tell to another player while they are zoning or offline. I don't know why it decided to blow up last night but it did repeatedly and everytime I would bring the worldserver back up, the worldserver is designed to start groups and raids from scratch, so all the players that were already online would have to reform groups and raids which was I'm sure was extremely annoying but either way we got to the bottom of it.

I was iffy at first but turned out to be a great time. Got a buncha stuff lots of plat and my new uw8. Ty a bunch

Thanks guys for the fun event. Special thanks to Akkadius who fixed my problems with getting into a private expedition. Public was working great but it had all my toons stuck in a private expedition even though it said none of them were in an expedition.

End of the day, I got 2 days worth of farming in there. Got all my toons MF, BU, and IG. I also got about 80 mill plat which is insane.

I didn't loot much plat compared to everyone else (maybe ~20 million or just under), as I had limited play time, but focusing on tokens alone I was able to get MoFs on all six of my main characters. I probably had about 65 CTs, 20ish SMs, and about 6 IGs. Never got beyond IG to spawn, but I had a blast anyways and got everything I wanted.

The zone was amazing and the system was about as fair/pleasant as you could ask for. Great work by the whole team on that one. I think this was the best Halloween yet, and Hunter would be proud.

My Halloween, summed up:

WOOO new zone!
WOOO plat bags!!!!!! (seriously, I made around 2million in an hour, and this was late in the event when I was practically single-pulling)
WOOO a boss spawne .... OHSH!T I'm dead. huh. that sucks.
WOOO look at these new strike augs I got from all that money!
WOOO farming T4 armors!
WOOO T4 essences, MOAR STRIKES!
WOOO someone gave me an IG! _{holy cow that thing is powerful}

I dont want to be the bad guy...

I am going to be taking a break from the server....

I just feel that things are changing in a way that its making all the hard work we have put in trivial.. I guess the capper for me was seeing UW's on mobs... really? Items I have had to put in hundreds of hours to achieve are now event loot fodder? It is what it is I guess but I feel that all of the work meansI  nothing now... So I am going to spend my time elsewhere But that's just me and maybe I am a killjoy...

I hope that everyone has fun and enjoys and Maybe I will see you all down the road somewhere:) been a fun few years ....


A

It's a special event, we made it special. It's now over.

Stop being so dramatic

no drama...I am not mad...

or even upset...

it has just stopped being a fun way to spend my time...

Maybe down the road that will change but for right now I do wish you all the best:)

all candy gave me was stonewall, tried 80 of them

(http://assets.diylol.com/hfs/3fa/8fe/770/resized/diagnostic-house-meme-generator-it-s-just-as-i-suspected-butthurt-d1ee7f.jpg)

To get this back to a feedback post...

Great event, took time to build up the points to get all the pets we wanted on everyone, but the extra xp/plat from previous years was great.  The lack of strike augs I think was balanced out by the increased plat.  The few UW that showed was an /ooc surprise and very cool, that sort of thing should be super limited and was done at the right time, and announcing how many were left helped spur us all to pull faster.

Question: No sign of the Sceptre's of time?  I know they get replaced anyways at the top end, so maybe having a lvl 1 SoT available for Halloween tokens might help the lower end tanks finish there's off like it has been done in years past. (A lot of you old timers know what I mean, when you had a 10 it was mostly done at Halloween)

Balance feedback:  Stone Monster being much harder for many to deal with than the IG or the BU seems rough.  The un-resistible mez going off at the exact time of the tank charm is just ugly beyond balance... Pre resists adjustments you just had to have your tank above the charm lvl and he could bring the group back with the Instant cure group, or even the pally aoe cure if you used one to tank with.  The resists change has been challenging, but interesting and fun on the server, and I don't want to revisit that ever again (don't want to see Hate loose his mind :) However with that change the SM has become very unbalanced in relation to his place in the "chain" of bosses.  We did kill a few with our 2 groups but it felt like it had more to do with luck (does the charmed tank go right after the dispellers first or not) than tactics or skill.  And once he was down the IG and the BU seemed very easy in comparison (IG's charm without the mez is an easy fix with multiple dispellers).  Having his effects going off at more random times or looking at the charm resist again would be my suggestion as the aoe Mez being un-resistible was per Hunters original design.
Once the rare loots were officially all done we didn't even bother to kill SM's any more... was faster to just loot the CT corpse and then come back in and continue pulling to get the points needed to finish purchasing the pets from the vendor.

Was a great event, we had a ton of fun per usual, Thanks to all who helped make it what it was :)
Lastly, gotta say we loved the addition of the charm upgrades, was nice to work on those off off main group chars that usually don't get the love they want  :) ;D :D

they were giving me tons of high end buffs, 7.0 shaman click, Ancient Oak 3, etc

when i seen my UW5 show up in the loot window i was immediately surprised followed by terribly worried as im one of the few who actually worked up a UW8 by farming all the essences (with no double loot), the amount of time it took to farm all those essences was mind boggling so i can understand your concern. If they were dropping like candy then i would probably agree with you but only 6 dropped, even if i didn't get one i think i wouldn't be that cheesed about it, would be a different story if like 20+ uw's were handed out and we now had new players running around with a UW5-8 they knew nothing about, or what it even takes to get one outside of the event. Out of the 6 i know that me and i believe Clove was another? we both already have high rank UWs so we def put our time into the game for the halloween UW to not exactly be a freebie.

and mine was only a 5 so im not looking forward to farming abyss again for essences :P

Digz, yes already rolling on UW X.  Similar sentiment as you.  Saw the UW drop, thought they were dropping like candy and thought "oh shit there goes the server".  Hit the forums and see Love had informed the population that only 6 dropped, it is no longer a game breaking function and instead just a super rare chance at something amazing.  

That being said, this Halloween event was really refreshing even if that UW had not dropped.  New zone, several new pet tiers, new bosses, new currency, quests, a separate time related boss spawn mechanic, and more.  Could it be tweaked over the years?  Sure.  Hunter tweaked his.  This will be no different.  

As with all things on this server.  Balidet, throwing a tantrum gets no results (Hunter used to Dump on people for doing this, don't think the new bosses are any softer than Hunter was).  Provide information on what changes you propose with as much detail as possible and hope for the best.  The feedback so far looks mostly positive with some negative more so with newer players or lower tier players.  Give Hate/Akk/Love suggestions on what you would like to see.  That is what we call, feedback.

I am looking through the junk and if I see a suggestion, throwing it up at the top of the thread.

The UWs were Love's idea actually. She wanted to give you ladies/gents/trolls a small chance at a limited number of drops. Even so, the UWs were limited to 6 and the ACTUAL rank was literally 1-8 on ANY of the UWs. So we have what...two or three UW5+? Unless the others are not forum-going people, they may have low ranking UWs.

To those that got one of the 6 golden loot tickets (UW), congrats! To the rest, hope you got the pet(s) and plat you wanted. :-D

-Hate

All in all I loved the event, yes it was different.  The only thing that I would like to suggest is to change up the boss spawns some.  Make them like T7 where you kill a boss and the next one spawns in another location but keeping the on ur face spot in the code as it is part of the fun.  This would let the people who can kill CT but not SM get the loot from CT most of the time.

I was lucky enough to find a bronze ticket FS7.  and admit that the dropping of the UW made me start working on mine again.

I have to admit my first take on the change was negative.  No (few) aug drops.  Single zone to spend a week in.  UWs dropping off CT.   Every noob able to purchase MoF pets for the bulk of their crew.  I was wrong.

This was an event planned and executed to appeal to the masses... not just the T9/10 crowd.  Elitism aside, I think Akka, Hate and Love hit all the right buttons here. 

If you spent 6+ hours during the week you geared your entire crew with IG+ pets, collected 75m+ plat and had several random chances at a UW, Augs, MoF and AF pets.  I enjoyed the event immensely.  Thanks you three.. for putting together a very solid event.

Augs for Christmas?  /whistles innocently

http://www.ezserverwiki.com/Strike_Augments

We can make these and do more damage??

Hate, Akka and Love:
   This was an awsome Halloween event. I really believe Hunter
would have been proud of this work, and admitted that he coulnd't
have done better himself. You really have outdone yourselves, all
to entertain a complete random and disheveled group of questionable
human beings (myself included,) and I thank you for that.

   From the time I logged in, the NExus looked fantastic. I loved
the random illusions on the players and the overall atmosphere
lended to the place. I think you picked a great zone to fight in as
well. It was the right size and number of mobs, and though the
chains were almost always too short, Diablo spawning bosses really
went a long ways to even things out. The rare loots, side quests,
plat, and alternative point system to get pets was nothing but
crazy generous as an added bonus.

   This event on an ancient game really went a long ways to
making this Halloween unique and special for me. I also enjoyed
trick-or-treating with the family and hanging out, but it was here
that I spent the vast majority of my time, and I really had a blast
and felt all the time I put in was worth the rewards.

      Having said that, there was one thing that I didn't like, and
that was all the pissing and moaning that went on. From the first
day when everything wasn't exactly going to plan (I expected this
as every game has these problems, plus the nature of akka remotely
assisting is difficult in itself,) to the bitching about changing
the event (There was no choice, and even if there was this was
better than the old event IMHO,) to the panic at the news that UWs
were indeed dropping.

    To those who whined about the event catering to the T5+
players: You had plenty of time to prepare. I spent 2 months on
purpose preparing for this. In that time I went from just breaking
into T7 to breaking into T9 and from no UW to UW9 (The essences and
cash I had saved up helped a bunch, had about half of them.)
   
     Remeber that we have only 3 people (who have real lives and
jobs) making free content for us. Also, anyone who couldn't solo
should have done what we had to do back when ct and stone monster
were new (brace yourselves,) TEAM UP. Band together to take out
named mobs, and don't be afraid to ask someone for help. Don't
whine and complain in ooc, simply ask... I guarentee you WILL get
help. I and others I know helped many people get named and clear
mobs. Also, the candy and points went a long way to cater to these
players.

    That's not to say feedback isn't importaint. After all, we are
not only the players but the beta testers here. Post a well thought
out, reasoned suggestion and see if it gains traction. Our devs do
respond to us, which is why EZ is as successful as it is.

     Sorry for writing a book, but this has been on my mind
ruminating and I couldn't just keep it all in. Most of the people
on this server are really fun, easy going, helpful folks: don't let
the few ungreatfuls ruin it for you.

I liked the old ones better.

Waited a while to post my thoughts on this (making strikes, clicking up UCs on newly made toons, triple jumping ROA hell ranks on most toons, rolling around my bed naked in accumulated plat, whatever).

Here goes:

When i was a kid, the best Christmas presents were not the ones i put on santa's list. They were the ones i got instead. The card games, the cribbage boards, the nylon string guitar my dad handed down to me, the jerseys i wore until they disentegrated... etc.

This was *not* what we asked for.

No SOTs, extremely limited strike augs, no FG/CG items, no unrest mass slayings, no meaningful candy turn ins for people who could smoke the content.. etc.

Early on we laughed at the meaningless quests and kill counts... the retardedness of the stone monster wtfpwning you (or at least being the only true challenge in the zone, still).. The being stuck in a single zone..

And then a switch just got flipped on and it became something amazing that would make even the most cynical person (and my guild houses some of them for sure lol) into that 6 year old who suddenly realizes what he did get for xmas was pretty spectacular.

The double loot plat was intense.. The AAs were nuts when u had 2-3 t9ers teaming up to just intentionally try and kill themselves for 8 straight hours on pulls. The prisms filled out gimp toons in a hurry. The mini pops made it so every pull could turn out to be epic. The pets were amazing and awe inspiring boosts to situational dps.

But honestly the best part of the event was spending solid time with guildies. Me , Harthek, Deamon, and later Krunkley were chained to the hip for a solid week. That hardly ever happens. Someone's in abyss, someones in OC, someones running anguish.. point is, its rare to really experience something alongside buddies for such an extended period of time. And thats what i'll remember most.

I got one Ice 6.. We laughed at deam for getting two Ninja 2s off angryfaces... I'm not even sure Harth actually scored a strike the whole time. It was the opposite of what we prepared for. I may have to run some FG stuff to make up for the kit items i borrowed from guildies to make zerker 3 that i assumed halloween was gonna put in my inventory.. Didn't happen.

And yet... I ended up with a massive amount of DPS boost from the pets thats probably greater than the strike boosts would have given. I boosted my XP mask like 30 ranks.. My tank ROA went from 540somethign to 625. And after i corralled some more SLSs (banking 70 thinking i'd be going from strike V to X instead of I to X), I ended up putting 3 Ice Xs from scratch on priests, making Xs on Zerk 2, and Finishing Ninja XI on ranger. blah blah.. I got plat for days still, ended up with all the strikes i didn't get anyways, and banked a zillion AAs and pets in the process.

And above all else, had one heckuva experience i'll remember first when i look back on my days here in the future. This even will be the first thing that comes to mind, and i barely remember past halloweens beyond unrest and PoN.

Only constructive criticism i can think of is to maybe spread it into a couple clone zones next year, if that is even possible. A lot of server stress all week wasn't serverwide, it was mainly focused on HG alone. I'm not emu expert but was having it all in one zone what was causing the frequent crashes and lagspikes during both peak and offpeak times?

Hell my only criticism comes from not being able to play constantly during it. That speaks volumes. This was built from scratch with the combined efforts of 3 people. And it was amazing. Sincerely, thank you. This was beyond worth it, and the best halloween yet.

Kiwis.

Great post Kiwis, very well put

I'm glad the zone stayed open for another day(s), cause I turned in all my no-drop quest items that I had forgotten about for the three "food" items... and I think THOSE are my favorite item from halloween :)

Kabob - random group illusion? yes please

Yeah, if I had one suggestion, it would be batteries for like 50k-250k depending on item to make the item rechargeable.

Boooooooooo - I didn't see they had charges... and I was blowing them like a madman. Well that sucks.

Limited charges on the race illusion item? whyyyyy? Oh great merciful Innoruuk, WHYYYY?!?!?!!

I that may be the issue... Innoruuk is not merciful...in fact, he is the unmerciful, as are his creations. Problem solved.   You may want to check with Karana.. may find mercy there.

Yes, but Innoruuk is the Prince of... Hate...

... and HE is the one that can make this happen

Lol yes I also was surprised to find out they had charges. I clicked all of them like every 30 minutes to stay buffed and illusioned.. Even after running out of charges I don't see anything on the item description that says anything about charges. I'd love for them to be rechargable in any way or just not run out lol

I'd go for the second option you gave Anuli... ALL PRAISE BE TO INNORUUK, FOR HE IS GREAT AND UNDERSTANDING, AND HEARS THE PLIGHT OF HIS MINIONS, AND IS WILLING TO CHANGE FOOD TO INFINITE CHARGE.