Feedback: 3rd Anniversary Events

Not a big fan of the way cake boss is spawned, specifically how everyone has to farm drops to make it spawn. Also don't like how you get a certain amount of event pieces to exchange for rewards for killing it. Just feels like the same recycled version of the Xmas events, except you get maple weapons. Especially with obtaining a weapon that only lets you use normal attack and deal the same amount of damage as everyone else (exact same as the xmas mittens and snowballs). It's pretty much the exact same mechanics. Would be cool if the boss cakes spawned in the towns based on timers like old MS. I get the idea is to essentially make things equal so that no matter what level you are, you can participate and get rewards instead of high levels dominating cake bosses and the maple weapon market. However, the event was just too similar the Xmas event. I'm not sure right now how to make it like the old GMS and also make it equal so people who deal more damage dont have an advantage, but the community driven events are too repetitive. Anniversary events, summer events, and Xmas events all involve killing mobs, collecting event drops, and giving them to an NPC to make something happen and get rewards. It's the same process, just with different maps and items.

 

Hey, I just wanted to say that I really like the golden gachapon tickets. It was really nice having those drop as it saved me from being an "INTLord". I liked being able to pay for them occasionally as well because friends/alliance knew that I paid 10-15m each. However, I found out some players were only paying 3-5m each and "lowballing noobs" at gs2 which I think is wrong to do. I really do think that AP resets should be somehow achievable within the game alongside voting. Voting alone for AP resets takes 9 months for HT (as a NL) and that does discourage people. In my opinion it would be really nice if they were tradeable. Would definitely help in getting the newer players funded while also helping the older players finish up washing. It would allow us (the older players) to make more attackers rather than be dedicated to one specific class at a time. That was just an idea that I came up with on the spot but I would be happy with ANY method to obtain them

 

Link to the thread: https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/maplelegends-3rd-anniversary.20923/

Summary of events:
1. Collect cakes and spawn Big Puff Daddy, rewarding in Puffs to exchange
2. Jump Quest to go to the Lit Cake Party, rewarding in Puffs to exchange

Spoiler: 3rd Anniversary Taiwan MS

3. Anniversary boxes to get random Maple items
4. Golden Tickets to exchange for AP reset or Hunting Gach Ticket
5. Anniversary hair & faces
6. Hide & Seek quest
7. EXP- & drop-rate increase

Something I'm wondering about is how the drop-rate of the Cake Pieces were. These were done with a new drop formula. Do you think the drop-rate was equal for the different classes and skills, or is that hard to tell since there was no competitive aspect to it this time?

 

I wasn't really a fan of the daily jump quest, it was the most unfun grind I've experienced. It's completely random, the map you get, the jump quest itself, heck even the rewards. Whenever you get super lucky you don't really appreciate it, but when you get unlucky ITS FRUSTRATING. Also, redoing a jump quest is rather boring in my opinion. I feel that the whole point of a jump quest is that it's an accomplishment, the rewards shouldn't encourage players to grind the jump quest. Overall, I feel that the rewards for future event jump quests should be less random and more substantial (like an equip or something), the reward should also not incentivise players to daily grind the jump quest. (Maybe encourage players to do it x number of times, but definitely not encourage an endless grind till the event is over.)

My favourite parts of this event are that you can get anniversary boxes from any mob, that you can exchange AP Resets for the cost of a hunting gach and of course the 15% exp buff .

 

Personally, I thought the jumpquest was a bit too difficult and frustrating.
Bday cake pieces: I didnt really have a motivation for doing big puff boss =/.
Gold event tickets: very good, gives some ease to hp washing/ getting money in early levels. Droprate of them was ok.
Anni boxes: these had an ok droprate and were fun. Unfortunate for people trying for a maple gun though.
Hide & Seek: very nice event and pet is awesome.
Exp and droprate increase: no explanation needed.

 

I didn't like the JQ at all, it could be very frustrating to do sometimes and the bonus stage was even more frustrating when it had several people ksing you. I would had prefered a smaller solo map for the bonus stage. Puffs amount you got was extremely inconsistent due to the amount of people, I got 0 sometimes, I got 12 as most.
I really liked the increased exprate and anniversary boxes was cool, just wish they had a slightly higher droprate.

 

Would like item drops in Cake Town next time to be invisible. Saw a white scroll dropped in front of my face but can't pick it up. It's bad for my heart

 

The RNG of the JQ was VERY irritating, also hated that everyone got sent to the same bonus stage..

Cake boss took way too long imo. Almost felt like it wasn’t worth going there because of how long it took to kill.

I liked the golden gachas and would like them to stay, boxes was very nice even though a slight buff to droprate wouldn’t have hurt. Exp & drop always nice.

Good event overall but hated the JQ too much to enjoy it.

 

I agree the JQ and its rewards were pretty inconsistent and it was pretty annoying when someone would come onto a platform that you're just casually killing and last hit your mobs lol. Would definitely add another or better method of gaining puffs as a daily. Dailies are great, but it sort of sucks that the mobs inside the JQ changed every time either to make it super easy or almost impossible.. once I got 2 mobs on 2 platforms 3 times in a row, then another time 2 of my platforms had no mobs whatsoever?

What made me honestly stop doing the event though was the fact that I got nothing but potions every time I exchanged for a random reward.
EDIT: and im pretty sure its because of the rewards such as Chaos / PAC / WS / etc but it would be nice to maybe have other rewards that werent just USE items (random nx, more chairs, maybe put Maple Items in there as well)

Overall i feel the event was well thought of, showed that there was some discussion as to alternatives to the boss and definitely illustrated a lot of effort. It was nice that you could farm for maple items and that the AP resets were droppable. The outfits were also cute AF

 

The jumpquest was a huge let down. It is terribly reliant on luck, some maps were objectively better than others (blueberry vs strawberry & red velvet), and the bonus stage was unbalanced (smol cakes die faster than big ones, leading to KSing).
I really enjoyed summer 2017's Florina beach jump quest for pearls. This jump quest doesn't kick you out for one mistake and has a timer to promote friendly competition. Additionally it is do-able with friends, so we can help each other out and even have mini races, sort of like fitness but more intimate.
Golden tickets are excellent!
Cake boss did feel too similar to the snowman from the winter event, albeit less interesting as throwing snowballs was funner than smacking with a fork.
Anniversary boxes had a very fair drop-rate.
The hide-and-seek quest was fun and rewarding
Hair&Face, Exp&Drop, and puff rewards were all great

 

Pros: Piece of cake

Cons: Big Creme Puff Random Raffle RNG was horrible.. never found anything of value throughout the whole event!

 

I loved the pet quest but it was honestly disappointing that all the raccoons look the same in the end, except for their names.

Also, I know this will be unpopular, but please remove ~DPM from the boss map.

 

-I dislike how mule driven this event was with the JQ and multi clienting during the cake (although i think the multi client thing has always been an ongoing issue).
- The JQ was meh but everyone has already said everything that has needed to be said about that.
-Disliked how there was practically no advanced warning on the boxes change besides the very small SC warning.
-Kind of disappointed how common the bandanas were and that the stats were randomized.
-Liked how AP resets weren't mule driven this time.
-Liked the concept of the JQ more so than the actual JQ where people who missed cakes were still able to obtain puffs.
Whomever made the changes to the maple cape, I will find you!

 

I like the overall idea of this. However, I think the cake pieces should be automatically "turned in" on item pick-up, rather than being an etc item. I think this would cause a more rounded amount of puff daddy spawns throughout the day rather than everybody hoarding etc to turn in at the end of the event period. Also, I think there should be some way to dial down how easy it was to multi-client the boss. I'm not sure how fix this, but tuning the HP of the boss down might help.

I think the JQ was cool, I never saw this one before even though it's basically a copy of the agent event JQ. Randomness is a bit much, but 'eh whatever'. The reward map should have been instanced, ksing was a problem because there were too many people in the map at a time.

This is great! I like that you are guaranteed a valued item (the box) to sell before relying on RNG. I also like that this allows you to get the untradeable maple equips like that hats even if you missed out on the event. But come on, missing out on the speed/jump maple cape on my islander was a little sad.

Really nice. I like the trade-off between potential reward from gach or boosted progress for washers.

Always nice. When I suggested the Soprano hair last year, I didn't expect SO MANY people to want it, sheesh.

I liked this way better than getting the past event pets from raffles.

SeemsGood

Side note on other rewards. The speed candy and the cake hat are pretty broken for being so cheap. The candy should have been much more rare and the cake hat should have been more expensive. And I agree with Chris about how common the maple bandanas were.

 

Very unfriendly to casual players. I got 0 maple weapons this time. Now I have to wait a year to get them again.

 

Hey,
I've only played this event 1 day and I haven't seen everything in the event, but seeing that the event ends tomorrow (i heard), I'll share my experience.
First of all I like the jump quest-event idea, haven't seen such an event before and it was pretty cool. This event taught me patience, but I think i will be more fun if the event doesn't require that much luck. I had to wait on the rope for 30 sec before I finally could move on to the next rope. This is too much if you consider that you only have 3 minutes to complete the whole thing.
Furthermore, at the stage of killing the cake monsters, which drop many goods; the monsters drop way too much usable stuff. My inventory couldn't handle it :S. So yee I recommend to lessen the amount of usable/etc good the monsters drop since these inventories are usually full or nearly full.
Anyway, from what I've seen on my first day playing again, it was a good event. It wasn't too complicated either, When playing an event I prefer it to be simple, like it was now. This event was fun and simple
Ah one last thing. I've looked at the rewards you could get and they were pretty nice, they stimulate me to actually play the event ^^

 

Couldn't agree more. Jq was okay for me. I lost count the number of times people ks-ed me at the smaller cakes, that is really frustrating. Rewards are so-so, what do I do with 60 - 70 party bears? I just wish that the frequency of getting bandana and flags could be lower. Exchanging 200 puffs got me nothing except bears, flags, bandana, and cakes. Maybe 1 apple at most? That's pretty bummed for me. I was actually expecting to see more chairs though.

Outfits and event hair/face are adorable :3 Hide & seek was nice as compared to the past events for pets, love it! Needless to say, exp and drop rates increment Overall it's still a great event.

 

The cake spawned very rarely compared to other events, imo. Maybe I was unlucky with timing. I hardly got any cake pieces from mobs. Also, it was a bit annoying that the minimap was disabled in the map. I kept loosing sight of my character.

The "JQ" was pretty disappointing, since it was just RNG based instead of relying on skills.

The Lit Cake Party was alright, but sometimes you'd get 0 cream puffs, other times 8. Again, based too much on RNG.

The Cream Puffs exchange was the most disappointing thing I've seen in a while. I got 1 Anniversary box, apart from that it was all bandanas and party bears. Trash chances.

I didn't once get an Anniversary box from a monster.

Golden ticket was great.

Rates were nice as always.

I forgot to do the Hide and Seek quest, but it looked fun.

 

Here are some of my thoughts. It is my opinion that good things rarely need much explanation to back up why they're good, but problematic things should have lots of feedback, which is why you'll see the disparity in terms of writing amounts.

Good Tier:

Exp and Drop Rate Increase
No complaints here. I guess I forgot that the drop rate increased, but that's something that's hard to objectively measure. This is a staple for events, and I dig it.

Anniversary Boxes
Great idea. Loved having the chance to get these while training. Have lots of unopened ones, but I've already got some fine loot from the ones I have opened.

Raccoon Hunt
There's always a need for more exploration-style stuff! Monster Book is coming out with the patch, so that will satisfy a lot of people, I'm sure.

Golden Gach Tickets
Honestly, I would support making this feature a staple that goes even past the event. If you don't want to do that, please consider bringing it back for future events (or promotional periods).


Not-So-Good Tier:

Jump Quest
Like many have mentioned, it was incredibly luck-dependent on getting a "good" map, and also I dislike JQs in general that use monsters as obstacles. You do get a certain skill in doing the JQs after a while, but you're still at the mercy of the gingerbread men, and it just wasn't something that I looked forward to doing.

Cake-Collecting And Puff Daddy Fights
I combined these together because of how closely they are related. Puff Daddy was just too close to the snowman fight in terms of style, and it just felt like the fights were simply too long. Is it possible for future events for users to do damage based on their actual range (instead of static 100s, etc), but still keep track of the number of hits? That way it would still force participation on the users if they want to get max rewards, but it allows for some flexibility in kill times to make it seem less tedious.

Additionally, I think it was mentioned above by Luscious that pieces ought to be automatically turned in when collected. I support this idea, even if it might need some tweaks.

Last note: I train at Crimson Guardians almost exclusively. The drop rate for cake pieces seemed incredibly low. I don't know what your formula is for how they drop, but it would probably take me until next year in order to get enough pieces to summon one Puff Daddy.

Lit Cake Party Map
Should have been instanced for each user, in my opinion. This would prevent KSing which people are rightfully talking about.

Even if it wasn't instanced, I think the way that (at least creme puff) drops should have worked (Or, if it did work like this, should have been advertised this way) is that the odds of the drop are based on the mob's HP. Small cakes took 3 hits, larger ones took 5 (I think). The odds of creme puff drops should be proportional to those numbers of hits, so then it wouldn't technically matter what people were killing.


Satanic, Evil, Spawn-of-Satan Tier:

Creme Puff Exchange Raffle

It is difficult to express in human language how much I disliked this part of the event.

Spoiler: This is the closest to ranting that I might get in a while. It's your choice to read it.

I did the Jump Quest every single day (as far as I can tell) to get as many creme puffs as I could so that I could at least get one of the chairs. I almost always went to Puff Daddy when I was free to get another shot. What happened was the following:

I ended up with enough bandanas to equip all the gangs from several large cities.

I ended up with enough party bears to start an inter-galactic network of animal circuses.

I ended up with enough cakes to give several generations of people diabetes.

I ended up with enough flags to put on top of every mountain in the world plus several on Mars.

I did NOT end up getting a single chair, a single chaos, a single white scroll, or anything else worth noting besides maybe a couple of anniversary boxes. I understand that this is the nature of random chance, but it seems that I am not close to being alone. There needs to be a significant change to this mechanic for future events, whatever that may be. I have never been so disappointed in something like this before. I held off until literally the last Puff Daddy spawned today to see if my fate would be something different. Nope!

Other Random Comments:

I tried to be more active or at least online so that I could take advantage of what an anniversary event is supposed to offer. To be honest, I was a little surprised that I didn't see more staff-run games or events that went beyond the planned things for the anniversary. Perhaps I just missed all of them entirely, but it's kind of disappointing.

This post is generally pretty critical, yes, but I still love this server and the people in it, and that's why I'm sharing my thoughts, critical or otherwise. I just want to make future events even better, especially since summer is coming up and it's important to really put the best foot forward for the influx of members we'll be getting.

If you read all of this, thanks for your time.