Feedback Christmas 2020 Feedback

In my personal opinion the event was probably a 6/10.

Presents:
I ended up burning out on the grind for presents, kind of similar to the Halloween event, but much sooner. It would be nice if it was possible to gather presents in ways other than just grinding low level monsters. Personally, I would like to see point stack up through normal MapleStory playtime since there are a bunch of activities and quests to do when you come back for nostalgia.

Present Points*:
This was amazing as it made it avoid clogging inventory space and made it more efficient to party with others to gain points. The grindy parts of the event gets boring real quick but makes you feel obligated to farm. I personally did not make mules for this crazy point gain but I did like that I had the option to go even more hardcore into my washing.

Community event:
I did not miss the snowman, but I did miss the social factor where a community gathers up to finish an event.
Mystery present wrappers were amazing since it facilitated the community to do things together.

Awards:
Felt like it was only worth it to farm AP resets since other cosmetics were not as valuable to me as I had grinded the majority of the Halloween event. Do note that I am saying this as a player that played since MapleLegend's influx of players during summer. Also, as someone that is picky with cosmetics, it would be great to be able to farm event currency to transfer over as vote NX for other items in the cash shop one might need. Making it 1:1 with AP resets would prevent it from being abused since we already offer AP resets as an award.

Raffle:
Overall nice but would like to have better options like Halloween. It felt like there was more fluff in this one. I'd rather see less consumables(like ham) for other goods. This raffle felt like the staff was trying to be too careful with the red socks. What I wish was changed is that there was a way to farm both presents and raffle etc items from other methods besides grinding low level monsters.

Bonus EXP:
Did not take advantage of this part of the event.

sub-70:
My HS mule leveled once.... nuff said.

All in all, I guess I prefer community events and would like more of them. Other than that, the event itself was nice and kept things festive.

 

• Events
  • Santa's Beginner Gifts (< Level 70): I felt that the hat & upgrade scrolls would have been more useful at the lower level range than the higher level range. Once you hit 50 you get access to zhelm which makes the hat pointless. I know some new users would probably still use the hat if they don't want or can't get the zhelm. But waiting to level 70 to get it fully upgraded seemed pretty high to me.
  • Santa's Special Pendant (Weekly Levelup Quest): The pendant was great especially because it was NX item so it was able to be worn over existing pendants. I really loved the present npc search game every week and was kind of sad when it didn't pop up after the 3rd upgrade. I know some users said they were glad it was universal because if it was different NPCs for everyone it would have been annoying. I personally think having it different for everyone so they have to actually go around and find the NPC would have been more fun. I didn't even check the guide on forums for the NPC's because I liked to find them myself. It was super easy to find them because you just had to walk around and click the item. The only NPC I found annoying was Grendel because you had to climb all the way up and drop down on him for it to register him as within area.
  • Wrapper Exchange (Raffle): This was basically just pumpkin pieces again. I feel like this was worse than last time. The rates for good prizes was drastically lower, and the amount of items in the raffle was much higher due to the different types of weapons etc. Elixirs as a common prize was extremely high and I have stacks and stacks of elixirs and power elixirs from doing the event. At Halloween, after ~2 weeks of doing pumpkins everyday I had started to get burnt out on the quest. Doing it again shortly afterwards I was already burnt out on it when it started. The difference with Halloween was that not everyone was doing it because some had chose the XP ring instead. This time everyone was given access to the quest, which made getting a map pretty difficult. Also if you are washing and are in the 90+ range, it can be extremely difficult to kill the mobs for drops. Although the server likes to state that it is wash optional, ranged classes such as night lords and bowmasters are expected to wash to be viable characters in end-game. I know a thread was opened during the event about difficulties in being able to complete the quest by yourself when you are washing, which got responses saying "You chose to wash and have a hard time therefore you don't get to complain that you can't complete the event quest" which I do not think is a very good response when majority of the server expects and pressures you as a ranged character, as well as some other classes, to wash. Everyone should be able to participate, washing or not. The presents were made so that you could share within a party and I feel like this should have been implemented to wrappers from the get-go as this was a major complaint from the prior event for Halloween. I would like to see either party-play for future raffle drops, or a new concept that doesn't require daily grinding in order to get a chance to raffle.
  • Roodolph's Gifts Shop (Wrapping Boxes): This was really fun in my opinion. I gave some presents to friends and we also played some games with them (White Elephant Exchange). I do wish that equips could be wrapped. Also please make sure to test that these are functional with Weddings if utilized again
  • Exp Bonus + Bonus Exp for Active Attacking: I could not tell a difference between attacking exp and afking exp but I was not actively tracking the exp amounts.
• Exchange Awards
  • Christmas Points
    • NX Sets, Single Cosmetics, Pets, Hair / Face Coupons: All the cosmetics, pets, hair/faces, etc. were great this time around. I do feel like some of these needed to have been further tested before implementing as multiple hats were buggy and a lot of the hairs were placed on top of equipments like weapons and shields. The pets were not able to be taken to places like aquarium and nautilus because they crash the game.
• Event Drops
  • Christmas Points and its drop rate / strategies as well as the newly introduced Party Christmas Points system: I am a bit split on this. I enjoyed the party mechanic because it made gathering presents slightly faster for a little bit of the day. However, solo hunting felt extremely slow. I was leveling through most of the event and was unable to find parties a lot of the time on my lower leveled character. I guess the strategy people utilized was to make a bunch of low level mule mages and party hunt them to 50 points every day and then transfer the resets via cash shop. So as a level 70, 80, 90, etc (as I leveled) I was either too high for the meta mules or too low for the high levels 140+ utilizing these same maps. As much as people may dislike this, my suggestion for a fix would be to make the points party-sharable via ALL levels but make AP resets gained from events unable to be placed into the cash shop for transfer to other characters. This would eliminate huge amounts of muling every event.

• What are some things you'd like to be improved for next year?
• I would like for either shared ways of obtaining the raffle items (wrappers) or a new method of non-grinding to be provided. I noticed the PQ NPC was disabled this time around, maybe a 2man+ daily PQ? Please remember that all classes are not created equally and monsters do not scale to ability at higher levels. Users should not be punished for wanting to wash to make a good character on the server. Reiterating what I said above, make AP Resets from events non-tradable to eliminate people making huge amounts of low level mules to farm points.
• Another issue brought up in a previous thread was high level users going to low level maps to farm. The reason this happens is because the rates of drops are directly related to the speed in which you kill a mob. So high density low level mobs are for optimal speed. If you don't want this to happen you need to change how the items are dropped. Example: Mobs closer to your level range have a higher rate of dropping the item. This would need to be significant because higher level mobs generally cannot be one-shotted by most classes and require multiple hits. This would result in muling as well though, because low level is still fastest. If there is issues with low levels not being able to locate a map, then maybe create an event grind area? Example would be like how we could go to the Christmas tree decorating maps, but make them all duplicate maps of HHG2? You could even have them level specific so only like level 60-70 can enter this one and it would help with finding parties.

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Going to echo everyone here. Raffle rates were supremely disappointing. Please move repeat chairs to the shop available for purchase using points. I had plenty of christmas tree chairs from the year before and to see 6 MORE christmas tree chairs was just demoralising.
Lowering the level requirement to 95 was great. Ulu3 was criminally underused. I'd collect all 100 before my magic guard ran out.

Christmas presents were great. Met a few nice people while grinding the daily 50 party points. However, I have nothing to spend my points on on my main. I bought everything that I liked and have 200+ points left over. Perhaps a way to convert those points?

Bonus EXP is always welcome.
Glad the snowman was a no-show. It needs reworking if it were to make a comeback.
The pendant was great!

I dreaded the slippery FM entrance and hated to see it back.

A very meh event.

 

Needs more HP

Everything else was alright

 

• Did you miss the Snowman from previous years Christmas Events? Would you like to see Snowman make a return? (Snowman works very similarly to Puff Daddy and the Maple Tree for those who are unfamiliar).
  • Wasn't here for last X-mas but was here for Puff Daddy and Maple Tree. I liked Puff Daddy a lot (especially before chat was disabled) cause it actually felt like it was a community event vs. just trying to hunt for maps. Had fun hanging out/talking to people at previous events but most talking I did this event was with people asking if I was almost done with the map. I understand why some people don't miss it though.
  • Maybe just make it so you have to go only a certain number of times a day to get a raffle entry if you do bring it back? Or just make it like a 1-time PQ (without the boss part) like anniversary event?
• What were your thoughts on the Christmas Points system and the party points system?
  • Points system instead of etc. + party system was really good. Actually felt like you could accumulate a decent amount of resets. Not sure how newer players felt about this though since a bunch of mules were in low-level maps.
• NX/Cosmetics
  • Liked most of the NX for this event
  • Wish there was more black hair instead of white hair tho. Doesn't look good on non-light skin chars lol
• Raffle
  
  • I wish drop rate for papers was a bit higher, since rarer items seemed harder to get from the raffle this time. Also, if ur a weaker late 3rd/early 4th non-mage and/or washing, farming took forever. Higher levels prob don't find it as bad other than trying to find a Himes map.
    
  • I think the reason this raffle felt more tiring was because of it being a reskin of the Halloween raffle. Having a raffle where you have to grind in back-to-back events made it just feel repetitive, even in the first few days of the event.
    
  • Didn't look forward to doing raffle every day, but it feels mandatory cause I'm poor

Overall I didn't enjoy the event much and like half-way through looked forward to it to end so I could be free from farming. A big part of it is because of having super grindy events back-to-back though

 

I guess it has been a step in a good direction heck, after halloween it was promising enough to make me come back so here's my thoughts

The giftwraps felt more balanced, the curve better, i still wished that Himes, which is like the only option to grind for some classes like CB, Warriors and priests didnt become so crowded, while there's other spots it really sucks for someone on that range to wait for a map filled with people past that, but besides that , i would say it's been managed even better

While i still think it's a bummer than new players will feel left out for this , i would say the <70 events were better , at least wasn't so bitter, so kudos.

I guess i would've liked a reminder or like a lightbulb to remind me when i have the quest ready rather than go to happyville to check if i can do it yet, but again this is nitpicking compared to other times.

Pendant? I liked the idea, the pendant itself felt super nice, i kind of wish it wasn't such a guess-like event , i mean cheats to this even will eventually happen, making it easy for those to look for it and it just becomes a chore, i mean besides the guess thing i liked it, we need more rewards like this.

Point Exchange, just like everyone said, while i didn't want 5 PACs like last event, this was also too many use, i didn't get anything worth for the amount of excitement, but bad luck isn't a bug, i still wish the rates would've been a bit better

Nobody misses snowman, the thing was just
You're online and grinding? well stop time to snowman
PQing? better snowman
Are you offline? Well i hope you're happy missing out on 5 potential snowmans
basically FOMO(Fear Of Missing Out) events, so yeah i'm glad snowman is gone and im glad many people agree

And the point thing, i love the exchange got better, i like the new AP resets bundle very good, but i still think level range for mosnters should've been added
While i like the idea of everyone organizing to hunt together
The fact that people optimized gift hunting at burnt land to cap points, was just ehh it wasn't pretty, as i expected people just like to kill low level mobs to get rewards, and it wasn't as nice, while i felt like missing out for not doing the most optimized it didn't deter me as much

The rewards and party system were good, but if we wanna keep this from circling around himes and fire boars every event, maybe a tweak is needed?

so in summary

Good event, definitely going a better way for me at least
Just needs a few tweaks to improve, but hey is a good step, i enjoyed it better for sure
Also the points not clogging my inventory was a change i didn't think icould ask but one i welcome very nicely!

 

Agree on the raffle rewards being very poor. Perhaps I was just unlucky but I was getting much more useless equips and pots compared to other events.