Notice [Feedback Thread] Winter Holiday Event 2023

I was told Mr rat had a copypasta ready to go for this moment, but he's nowhere to be found

 

Just like was previously promised, this event delivered in terms of how large it was in scope and scale, just like 2023's Anniversary Event. There was a lot to like about this event, but I think there were also pretty important lessons to learn. While I have a lot of personal opinions on this event, I'd like to actually first begin with a deep dive into Snowman PQ, especially when compared to Demon King Tower, as this is the topic I both have the strongest opinions over as well as feel like is the most important for staff to improve upon going forward (at least, in my opinion).

This is going to be a long post, so strap in.

Snowman PQ vs. Demon King Tower
Demon King Tower (abbreviated DKT going forward), in my opinion, was the single most fun thing I've done on MapleLegends, but just like Snowman PQ (abbreviated SPQ going forward), it was quite divisive in the community in terms of being beloved/reviled. Surprisingly enough (or unsurprisingly enough), I did not enjoy SPQ nearly as much as Anni's DKT, and I'd like to do a little exploration of why here. Despite my preference for the latter, I will try to remain as objective and impartial as possible for this comparison so that we can try to identify the best of both and create an overall better experience.

Here is a quick side-by-side comparison of the two PQs in terms of APR and Time spent:

https://media.discordapp.net/attach...d598c6ec5387a7&=&format=webp&quality=lossless
You'll notice that the 120 APR calculation is below the 155 cap. For those who didn't participate in Anni, this is because the remaining 35 ARP could only come from Puff Daddy kills, and even those 35 were only theoretically attainable as no player on the server got 5 Coupons in the first week pre-maintenance. Given each Puff Daddy kill took around 2 minutes to kill, usually required around 5-10 minutes of waiting, and rewarded (after the first week) 2 Coupons per kill, realistically this was +30 APR at the cost of an additional 180 minutes. I will point out though that duo attacking (or more) was viable for this though and you could also get +30 APR on additional characters at no extra cost, but we will assume purely one client for the sake of this comparison.

The Time to Clear stat for both PQs assumes a fairly competent PQ with realistic average clear rate and time between runs factored in. While I realize that the actual theoretical best time to clear for both is well under this number, we're looking at a typical run for comparison, and it's unrealistic to assume every single SPQ is clearing in 3 min and DKT is clearing in 12 min.

With Puff Daddy factored in, we're looking at a total of 150 APRs from Anni for 340 minutes spend, versus 1,550 minutes (or just shy of 26 hours) for SPQ.

Here is a breakdown of the total NX value or APRs you could farm over the duration of SPQ post-nerf assuming you were farming 2/4/6 hours a day, every single day.

https://media.discordapp.net/attach...f64e003a7e55eb&=&format=webp&quality=lossless
Given that very few players could even commit 2 hours a day to the PQ, and even fewer could commit 4-6 hours a day, it should come as no surprise that for the vast majority of players, the total APRs rewarded were significantly better for DKT, with the added benefit of costing a fraction of the time that would be required to "break even" with SPQ.

Now let's compare the two in terms of Raffle/meso value instead of APR:

https://media.discordapp.net/attach...5bfdce8650bc4b&=&format=webp&quality=lossless
With an expected average earning for a single character for DKT at 264m mesos requiring 160 minutes of gameplay, SPQ would require 422 minutes to match that. While the time to match for Mesos is noticeably lower, almost a third of the time as NX, there is still a drastic difference between the two PQs.

There are also more subjective pros and cons to both in addition to the strictly numerical differences. I will do my best to list the entire list of pros vs. cons between the two here without giving too much favoritism to one side or the other.

Demon King Tower
Pros:

• "Easier" clear made it more accessible to carrying less-skilled party members
• No punishment for taking breaks or going slow
• Less total time required to hit "max" rewards compared to SPQ
• Capped rewards meant you had a concrete stopping point
• Much higher Mesos/hr and NX/hr than SPQ
• Significantly higher Mesos/hr and NX/hr than any other possible non-event activity
• Has a powerful Event Equip tied to its completion as well as a unique Chair

Cons:

• Capped rewards rewarded players with multiple high level characters, punishing newer players
• Much longer learning curve, most players required several hours of learning to clear
• Longer run time could negatively impact scheduling
• Event Equip tied to DKT makes DKT feels "required" even for those who do not enjoy it
• Raffle rewards were dependent on having a 4th job character to maximize value

Snowman PQ
Pros:

• Quicker runs make it easy to jump in and out of compared to DKT
• Uncapped rewards allowed players to farm as much as they liked
• Uncapped rewards put single client and multiclient players on equal footing
• More chances for skill expression during SPQ compared to DKT
• Significantly higher NX/hr than any other non-event activity
• Marginality higher Mesos/hr than any other non-event activity
• No exclusive item (Event Equip/Chair) tied to SPQ means SPQ doesn't feel as "required"
• Levels/Job status is irrelevant; all players are on equal footing regardless of level

Cons:

• Uncapped rewards encourage playing as much as possible throughout the event in potentially unhealthy ways
• Uncapped rewards incentivizes cramming in as many clears as possible in as little time as possible, encouraging parties to be sweaty and exclusive
• No downtime or chances for breaks, requiring constant focus for long periods of time if running repeatedly
• Much lower Mesos/hr and NX/hr than DKT
• Pretty much impossible to solo carry, incentivizing you to only invite skilled teammates

So, where does this leave us? Up until this point I've tried to leave personal biases out, but for this final bit of analysis I'd like to introduce my own personal thoughts and feelings on both, as I feel like the player experience is also important when comparing the two.

I personally found SPQ to be exhausting over time. While at first the active skill-based gameplay was fun and exciting, it quickly lost its edge, given the fact that the PQ only takes 4 minutes to clear. Repeating the same 4 minute window for hours on end became quite tedious and I found that after a 1-2 hour long session I'd be about as burnt out and tired as I would normally be after Auf. There were few chances to be social or chat without hurting your or your party mate's EVs and parties were both difficult to get into and difficult to make as players tended to only want to run with skilled players who could consistently clear in fast times. Running with less capable party members hurt a party's clear time and often hurt the party's ability to clear at all.

If we were to compare this to DKT, there was very little pressure to rush or be sweaty. The longer run time meant it felt less repetitive, and combined with the fact that you didn't have to run it as much led to less feelings of burnout. Carrying less skilled and slower teammates was both possible and comfortable, as waiting for teammates meant you had some downtime to chat and be social. One of my favorite parts of DKT was helping friends who were struggling clear while having fun chatting and joking around. Because rewards were capped and players had a hard stopping point, there was little to no pressure to cram in as many runs a possible into as little time as possible, as you would reach the cap regardless without too much effort. In addition, the cap gave players a concrete goal to work towards, whereas SPQ could drag on for hours and hours with no end in sight. As a personal side note, I've found that game design that gives players observable goals tend to feel more rewarding than mindlessly grinding to infinity with no end in sight.

While SPQ certainly put all players on an even playing field, the amount of playtime required for a player to invest into a single character to surpass the equivalent rewards with DKT was an enormous ask, as even playing 2 hours a day of SPQ is not possible for most players. Whether this indicates SPQ is undertuned (which I personally don't feel it is, I think the rewards are actually at a pretty healthy spot) or DKT is overtuned (which again, I also personally don't feel it is as having high-return low time required activities during events is a good thing) is up for debate. I'm personally of the school that these two "larger" events should bring with them game-warping activities that give players a huge boost for a short period of time, so I kind of lean towards the reward weighting that DKT had but I can see arguments for both sides as being valid.

Overall, to me the core issue is the uncapped nature of rewards that cannot be obtained outside of event gameplay. For meso-value rewards, by introducing a cap, Staff is allowed to also up the rewards distributed, making the activities higher yield, which everyone enjoys. Capped rewards also tend to have a much more healthy gameplay cycle as players are not encourage to just cram in as many hours as possible, and there's less incentive to be excessively sweaty or exclusive when forming parties. While it's true this gives an unfair advantage to those who already have multiple high level characters, I would much rather see some player unfairly benefit and EVERYONE have a more healthy and enjoyable time with the event than have a well-balanced event that encourages degenerate gameplay that leads to burnout, and there are already cases for uncapped reward systems like SPQ where players who can play for extremely long hours also benefit unfairly. I find that uncapped rewards also grant unfair advantages to players who have more time in the day to play, meaning that no matter what, some group will have an unfair advantage regardless. I believe uncapped rewards also impart a sense of FOMO to those who cannot play as much, whereas capped rewards where the cap is easily attainable provides a more satisfying event experience where players don't feel like they're missing out as much.

On the other hand, I think uncapped rewards work well for rewards that are not exclusive to event gameplay, most notably Meso-value items that can be bought or traded, especially if the yield per time spent is not significantly higher than normal gameplay. Since similar value can be generated through normal gameplay, there's little reason to commit huge amounts of hours to the event, whereas rewards that cannot normally be obtained (most notably NX/APRs or excessively high yield meso rewards) through normal gameplay and can only be seen during Events provide massive incentives to take advantage of the limited window to obtain such rewards.

In the future, I would like to see one of the two scenarios for "large" Event PQs:

1. High-yield rewards per time spent with a cap (similar to DKT) and level restriction (to disincentive making new characters and degenning anyways)
2. Lower-yield rewards per time spent with a cap on APR (no NX distribution, explained below)

For the former, I believe the advantages granted to multiclient players are easily worth the improvements to overall experience during events, and players are less likely to burnout pushing themselves to generate the most value possible. For the latter, assuming the rewards are tuned appropriately so that Mesos/hr are only slightly higher than heavily optimized normal gameplay (similar to SPQ), then the main incentive to continuously run is for NX. Capping the NX provides a target goal as previously mentioned, and there's less incentive to play for degenerate hours for only slightly increased meso gains. Although it's possible to create workarounds by creating new characters for NX, no such workaround is possible for Event APR which is not transferrable through the Cash Shop, meaning a system to distribute APR with a cap would be required.

To me, it feels redundant that the Event gameplay loop is the same as the regular non-Event gameplay loop. The game already revolves around repetitive play rewarding those who can spend those longest, most degenerate hours. Events are a great chance to break that for a short period of time and give even casual players a chance to win big. Bringing more casual players into the mix also gives a valuable sense of community as players of all levels and skills play and interact together and work cooperatively, something I saw a lot of during Anni with DKT and something I see very little of for Christmas in SPQ. I'd personally like to see Events focus more on everyone having a good time and having more of a community feel to them than trying too hard to keep things balanced.

One final point I'd like to write to pre-emptively address the inevitable "just don't play too much and you won't burn out?" comments is that everyone's gameplay choices and style is their own decision and judging others for choosing to optimize and take advantage of presented systems is pretty lame, especially in an MMORPG where personal choice and expression is the crux of what makes the game feel good. It's true players can choose not to be degenerates, but I would much rather just not have systems that encourage such behavior in the first place. Blaming players for following the carrot exactly as it's presented to them comes across as holier-than-thou; effective game design should prevent these scenarios from becoming reality at the developer level and it's the responsibility of those running the game to treat your players with care.

As to the rest of the event, there's little I can criticize. I appreciate that farming points this event was much less of a burden than Halloween and we had several easy-to-access avenues to farming points, allowing everyone to get whatever cosmetics they wanted to with pretty much no issue. Most of the rest of the event is pretty standard cut-and-paste Christmas with Happyville, Snowflake Pendant, etc all making a return. Raffles dropping in the overworld was nice; I think the drop rate could have been slightly higher but overall it was unimpactful to the overall event experience that even a higher drop rate would be largely insignificant.

I was a huge fan of the boosted boss pouches dropping additional coins instead of the previous Event's increased pouch rate. The boost here felt infinitely more tangible as there was clear feedback when you got "rewarded" and I'd like to see this stay in future events with pouch boosts. Pushing players to do more social content instead of just strictly farming is a great goal for Events and something most Events of 2023 did well.

Overall this event was a lot of fun and I think it was well done. It would be naïve to expect every single large event to live up to 2023 Anniversary which was simply lightning in a bottle. This Christmas event is more in line with what I would expect from a typical "large" event and was effectively executed. I hope to see improvements made on the PQ and reward structure in the future, but this was still some good work Staff. Thanks for the event and keep 'em coming.

 

On the other hand, I felt more fomo with weekly reward caps of dkt than uncapped snowman. If I was under quota in snowman by the end of the week, I wasn't suddenly presented with a limited ability to yield earnings as I would have if I really just couldn't be bothered to do tower on all my characters in the middle of event.

Should the game be expected to limit all players' ability to play the game because some players cannot ration their time? I don't think it's right to blame players for playing into how the game is designed, but I also disagree with players blaming the design for their own problems. By the end of this event, I felt like I had my fill of snowman and could send it off. At the end of tower, I still felt like I needed to toil away at getting my last week(s) runs of all my characters to maximize my content.

Anyways, as far as this event goes, I've scattered my thoughts around here and there. The quick and dirty is Snowman was better than most other events, but wasn't as epic as tower. This may have been because of the multipart component of tower, but i actually think it was also because of the lower need for movement in snowman than even just tower boss. Once you knew what you were doing, snowman became very much a hold the dpm button and jump occasionally content, while demon king fight was more likely to force a player to repositon.

I loved the scroll boxes, and liked that the best way to get event loot was by interacting with event content (and not just farming as usual). Raffle counts were probably too high globally, leading to chair stonks plummeting too fast. It may be a hot take, but I think raffle chairs could be a bit rarer.

Even from afar, this version of increased pouch rewards is easily better than halloween's style, though I didn't really get to boss to feel it firsthand.

 

I told you shitters to ping me when the thread went live

 

Rat post needs a tldr

• Quests
  • Skipped

• Party Quests
  • Skipped

• Raffling and Rewards

• How do you feel about unlimited rewards during the Event period?
• It would be nice if there was an alternative to farming raffles outside of doing the PQ or straight up grinding

• Do you enjoy skill based content as a part of Event content?
• I suffer from Chronic Skill issue, so no.

• Were the rewards available from the Raffle satisfactory to you?
• I got all the chairs from the raffle so it was nice.
• REMOVE PENGPENG POPSICLE MOTHERF-
• Getting potions in bigger stacks like 75 Minimum would've been nicer, Kinda awkward using up 25 pots.
  New players could also sell em to other players

• Was the inclusion of the Magical Coin Pouches something you enjoyed?
• Yes

• Miscellaneous

• Was the Event's duration satisfactory?
• Yes
• Were you overall pleased with the Event and its contents?
• Well it was nice playing with you all. MapleLegends has lost another active player due to event incompetence. Don't take me the wrong way, you guys have something great going on here. It is just unfortunate that you can't fix the bad events on MapleLegends. At the end of the day I am at least glad this happened before I donated the $100 I put aside to support this project. Oh well sh*t happens and life is not fair, cheers to all of you guys on MapleLegends and thanks for the Chairs, see ya when Valentines event.

• Did you find the Event Post on the Forum informational enough to help you understand the different aspects of the Event?
• 404 Not Found
• Was there any part of the Event you felt was missing and/or lacking?
• Poll hair/faces for future events or I complain more

FORMATTING THIS SHIT IS TEDIOUS

Spoiler: HOT TAKE 2024

This game rewards time over effort it's tedious in nature much more so then it is difficult. And overcoming difficulty is what makes me feel accomplished, slugging through tedium numbs my mind. In layman's terms I'm tired of doing repetitive shit in this boring game.

 

Hello, I noticed a fair amount of sneak bullying over lower skilled players in the snowman PQ. Perhaps for the benefit of the casual players, the next event can include AP resets back in farming content?

 

SK1Ll3d pL4y3rZ 0nLy

 

i think if the server wants people to take up hp challenges, nx rewards should be scaled down and mixed with other rewards. not sure how it was overlooked but if the server wishes to achieve some effect with players taking up challenges, they shouldn't actively encourage the same players to helplessly obtain so much concentrated nx that can only used on 30k projects

 

The event was good for something new. I will focus mainly on snowman since that was the most notable part.

The alternative to snowman sucked. The rewards were worse and it wasn’t easily possible to consistently beat it because it was janky with the knockback mechanics which defeats the purpose of an easier alternative.

Onto the actual snowman pq, the fact that the snowman boss was way too difficult in the first week or so was kinda lame, but by the end of the event I wished I could try that version again. This is mainly because once you become a player good enough to leaderboard the boss is kinda boring. The difficulty in snowman PQ is getting 5-6 consistent players more than the PQ itself once you play it a bunch.

Once I got good, the only time it felt fun to me was when I was on a leaderboard team. This is because you have to always take it seriously. You need to always be in practice just in case your next run is the coveted 55 second body 2 clear. There are so many small things you have to learn and do to maintain a 3k body DPM consistently. This makes the PQ fast, rewarding, and engaging to play.

When you are on a subpar team, none of those things matter. They will never clear fast so it doesn’t matter if you hit 3k dpm. There is no longer an incentive to try to play your best. The only skill expression becomes smart healing to keep your team alive, which still sucks because there is a lot of unfair mechanics that create massive risks for healers. So basically you end up jeopardizing your own rewards if you do that.

Being on subpar teams also sucks because your rewards are made far worse. It doesn’t feel satisfying at all when you earn the same amount of NX for a hard fought 7 minute clear over a 3-4 minute clear. So on both fronts it’s just not as satisfying. To alleviate this when I was on weaker teams I usually had anime playing on another monitor to kill boredom.

I think the best solution for this in the future could be an individual ranking system. Maybe the MVP (highest dmg/heals) gets an additional tier 1 reward. Or if you meet a certain “par” DPM you get a reward regardless of team after tier 2.

Overall it was still very enjoyable for me after the maintenance fixed the boss. I probably got like 150 APRs total which was nice. The soundtrack there is cool too. Is it better than demon king tower? Nah, but it was novel and I hope staff continues exploring new ways to make events that everyone can participate in.

 

I lack purpose without snowman

 

The overall event was.... ok?

Adding Christmas Pouches to bosses was a nice bonus. The visual confirmation that it was a Christmas reward encouraged myself and others to run more bosses together, bosses that I otherwise wouldn't have run.

The raffles were... ok?

I'm neither for or against how the raffles were implemented. The "uncapped" nature of the raffles was an interesting way to handle solo/multi-client discrepancies, but rewards weren't enough to really change any behaviour.

The party quest was... deep breath

Two main issues...

1. Ever never seen the level of hostile behavior that I experienced while forming groups for the PQ. I've never seen that many new players given direct feedback they weren't welcome to play the game. I've never been kicked from as many parties as I was during this event. The nature of uncapped rewards made it such that groups became very exclusive. Which has it's merits, but I would have much preferred the boss from the Demon's Tower, as the discrepancy between skill levels made less of a difference, and there was even an benefit in the form of an ego boost when you were carrying players with less experience.

2. From a game design perspective, the visual indicators in the PQ were.... bad. The snowballs were hard to see. The boss's attacks were hard to see, but most importantly, holy sh*t what parts of the tree can you and can't you stand on. I would have much preferred the boss from the Demon's Tower, where the visual indicators of what you could stand on, what the mobs were, and where the attacks were was very, very well designed.

I personally didn't enjoy the snowman PQ, but I'm glad others did. As such, I chose not to participate... choosing to loose out on whatever EV others had determined... in favor of just playing the month as I normally would.

As always, thanks to all the people who work so hard to make these events, and this game, what it is today.

 

J> Clear

The most toxic thing throughout the event that really cheapened it. I only found a party once that didn’t disband or lose members as soon as it failed. Naturally we stuck together and got better and managed to get clears after clears which made the experience positive for once.

I didn’t find anyone doing the other PQ so I don’t event know what it entailed.

I’m super casual and I didn’t have enough raffles to get anything good bar a single chair. Plenty of pots and peng peng and useless equips which I promptly dropped on the ground.
Get rid of useless booby prizes or reduce their frequency! Perhaps allow an exchange of the raffle rewards for like a nominal EXP and/or mesos if it’s something you don’t want. Would make our efforts feel less wasted.

As someone not actively bossing the gelt quest felt too tedious. Since it was capped, could’ve been less tedious since those pots are untradeable anyway.

 

Quests:
I found the quests to be mostly meh. The gelt quest was nice and motivated me to leech a bit more than usual. The event pendant quest was super redundant, but I appreciated that the NPCs were intentionally grouped nearby each other for the most parts. The other quests were repeats so I won't really comment on that.
The one reward I missed this year was the glowing Rudolph nose that gives accuracy. I was confused as to why this wasn't brought back in the raffle this year amidst a raffle prize pool full of fillers/junk.

Party Quests:
Only did Snowman Smackdown. Only ran a few times and was mostly left uninspired to run more. The rewards seemed okay, but it wasn't meant for me. Difficulty-wise, I think it was appropriate. Not too easy right off the bat and was skill-based - and not RNG like Cookie JQ or MMF. The only problem is it wasn't that interesting. If DKT final boss was a 10, I'd put Snowman at around a 4.
The main difficulty was finding and maintaining a squad. DKT was designed really well where you didn't really need a party of 6 to keep going.

Raffling/Rewards:
I didn't really dive deeply into the unlimited aspect of the event - outside of earning a few of the unlimited event raffles from grinding. I was not impressed by the rewards, and I think this is the first event where I finished without having won a chair from the raffle. Things just felt very, very slow, and the mostly junk-filled raffles only led to disappointment every time I'd turn them in.

The redeeming aspect of this event for me was the Magical Coin Pouches. Great implementation. I felt satisfied every time I opened a pouch (even the low rolls), and I like how it had a larger impact on content for bosses that already had high pouch drop rates (PB, Toad). Coincidentally, I ended up with fewer coins earned per day from Zakum than the Halloween event, but I never felt disappointed when a pouch didn't drop as I'd assumed pouch drop rates were just normal (and my data showed that it was). I even added Toad to my daily rotation because the rewards finally felt satisfying enough for the type of content it is.

Miscellaneous:
Duration was satisfying. Event was nice but mostly uninspiring. I liked it more than the Halloween Event, but I think the Anniversary Event will be the gold standard for quite some time.

The main thing that felt 'missing' this event was the open inclusion/communal aspect of events. In the past, recruitment for things like BPQ, daily farming, Bossing Points 30-mans seemed to occur all throughout the day via smegas and at recruitment maps. Recruitment for Snowman felt almost anti-communal, and the server felt oddly fragmented all throughout the event.

It was hard to even recruit people for regular bossing content because everyone just seemed too busy, even though the online population was at its highest. It was really odd.

Edit:

My suggestion - allow different classes of raffles while using the same 'currency'
1x raffles for chance at entire prize pool with junk
5x raffles for a chance at entire prize pool minus junk and a few exclusives like event equips
10x raffles for a chance at entire prize pool minus junk, with increased chance at chairs

 

I reached lvl 70 on my now Dragon Knight and got a nice green sock I am wearing.

goat event keep it up

im not even capping i dont need alot just a bit of extra exp and free raffles is all to make me happy.
I stole some GS2 maps (legitimately accidently killed a few weak people) and leveled up

 

As a relatively new player I found the event to be fun overall.
I agree with a lot of the things being said about the snowman pq. It was overwhelmingly hard the first week that it was difficult to even find a party. Once it got nerfed, finding a party decent to clear was hard in the beginning and then started leaving ppl who just started out because they weren't "good" enough. If you're new and didn't have friends to practice with like tough luck. But I thought this pq was way easier than the demon king so idk..

I will say the only down side was that even after like 200 raffles I couldn't get the chair I wanted (only got 1 chair at the very end T_T) which I know "being unlucky is not a bug" whatever. So being allowed to do the pq for unlimited raffles was nice. This also allows busier people to do the pq on their own time without having to feel like they NEED to get it done within the week or lose out on potential rewards. Like -ovv said it would've been nice if like gacha you open 50 raffles at once you're guaranteed a chair or chances of xyz are higher would be cool.

I did like the party quest aspect of the halloween event better than just fighting a boss, but overall enjoyed the event and all the cute nx.
Keep up the great work! :')

 

Based

 

Late, but SPQ rewarded you too much for doing very little. It was actually fun/good when it was skill-based. It became very boring after the nerf. If fitness rewards you for good, I don't see why SPQ couldn't have stayed the same. Also, taking the first option locked you out of getting anything event related. I don't like the idea of giving out NX only during some events especially since NX farming methods no longer exist.

 

Demon Tower was such a great PQ and a great way for players to earn APRs, and SPQ is probably the closest thing we've gotten to it since. The NX reward to it was really good, and personally encouraged me to run the PQ more. It was also fun to progressively learn the fight and get better at it with each attempt. Perhaps getting a bit tedious once you've learned fully how to do it, but I'd actually argue the same for Demon Tower. In that sense, I liked SPQ a lot. I really hope more events have fun co-operative party quests that have a worthwhile NX reward to them. especially if hp challenges wont replace washing

What I didn't like though was the community in SPQ. Was hella toxic, to be blunt. People only wanting to be in parties with "pros" or ones that can clear. There were even people who would only join runs that cleared fast enough. This really alienates newbies to the PQ especially, cause how tf are they gonna learn if people only take "pros"? Also as someone else mentioned earlier, this sweaty nature of the PQ meant that you couldn't really chat with friends/strangers during the fight, as you could risk getting hit or slowing down the run by doing so. Oftentimes the only time people would chat is to critique someone's play in the PQ ironically. Just didn't have a friendly atmosphere to it overall, even WITH friends sometimes.

TL;DR, Demon Tower > Snowman PQ, but I think Snowman PQ was still pretty fun and rewarding when you had a friendly and capable team. I really hope the team gives us more fun content with rewards that make multiple run-throughs worth it.

I think this event also killed it with the cosmetics. I think it had my favorite cosmetics line-up of all the events in 2023 honestly. The female hairstyles were all super good, and the clothing/pet/label rings were really solid overall.

Raffle was.... alright. Much better than Halloween's, as raffle tickets were much easier to earn, but I think the rewards were still pretty underwhelming, aside from the chairs and the socks.

Last but not least, I really enjoyed the Magical Pouches that the event provided. I thought it was a much more satisfying way to encourage players to boss during the event compared to the "increased pouch rate", as oftentimes the latter just felt like copium, and felt a lot more frustrating when a pouch failed to drop during bossing. Magical pouches on the other hand didn't feel too frustrating when it didn't drop. Basically, Magical Pouch >>>>>> "increased drop rate"

Overall I really enjoyed the Christmas event. In the made-up personal tier list of 2023 events in my head, it would actually rank #2 for me, only behind the amazing Anniversary event.