Feedback: 3rd Anniversary Events

Honestly, I think for an anniversary event it wasn't that great. I've been playing since a little before Christmas and the Christmas and Valentine's day events were both more fun & rewarding to me. This could be because I had higher expectations for anniversary events over the other 2.

Best parts of the anniversary event: golden tickets, 15% exp boost, weapon boxes, and raccoon quest. Not much to say about these 4 things as I think all 4 were great and fun additions. I would've preferred maple weapons over boxes but no big deal there. I also wish that the raccoons weren't all the same as somebody else commented.

Worst parts of the anniversary event: JQ, cream puffs, and cake boss. To me this says a lot when the worst parts of the event are the bulk of activities. I agree with all the previous comments about the JQ. It was too RNG driven, crowded map, and just didn't feel worth my time to complete. Cream puffs felt unrewarding because the cakes, flags, and bandanas rates were way too high imo. Cake boss took a little long to kill and didn't really spawn too often for me (curious how many times total it spawned and maybe by time zone or day?). Would've liked to see the boss spawn in towns or event map every x hours as somebody else said because at least that is consistent throughout the event. Would've also been cooler to have instanced event drops when the boss dies instead of trading in cream puffs.

 

The only thing that bother me in this event was the stealth quest, i know is for a little bit of challenge but i didnt get why you need to random the Gingerbread Guards spawn from one to two in one side, its not fun its make you waste time at the beggining of the special event. Everytime i see this i just get hit on purpose just to get the easy way to finish the quest.

 

Thanks for allowing all users to participate, as always.

While it felt same-y to the snowman, it also was a piece of cake to beat - just sit there and swing away at it. I wish there was a HP bar or @bosshp command of some kind to know where you were at progress-wise. I appreciate that it was an optional way to earn puffs and not the only one. Maybe something could be changed to make it more interesting, such as smaller cakes being spawned on the various platforms above that everyone has to work together to kill before the boss actually spawns. The total HP for the encounter would be unchanged, but spread out in 'stages' to make it feel a little more interesting.

The concept of this is fantastic, IMO. Offering an optional JQ to earn rewards is great. Tying it to server time rather than wait 24 hours before trying again was also a smart move. The actual JQ was frustrating though, as it was RNG on where the mobs went and how they moved. If there was some way to force them to walk side to side constantly, it might have gone better as then it would have been all timing-based.

Still, fantastic concept. I'd like seeing this kind of thing again with some minor tweaks.

I miss the old days of gMS when every mob would drop every Maple Item, but I understand that can be a tall order. The boxes also mean they don't clog up a ton of Equipment space unless you want them to. However, I'd rather see an exchange rate for what kind of box you want. If you wanted to open lvl 64 weapons, you would always get those - same if you always wanted to open lvl 35 ones. It'd be a nice change.

For the puff exchange on the whole - eh. Having events be lottery-based has its pros and cons, but it's always frustrating for those who commit a ridiculous number of hours to getting some item and end up short at the end of it all. I think there were too many high profile items and too many low profile items - the middle ground should have been more boxes or some other options. I only played the last week of the event and fortunate to win what I did (2 chairs and a 2 Att PAC), but I know others who played the entire event and ended with a lot less.

I do appreciate the cake hat being very easy to obtain though.

Felt like a nice quality of life change for those that cared about this sort of thing. No harm done to those who don't.

Meh. Don't care, never have, never will. This part of events is never for me in the first place.

I didn't participate in it, but sounds like it was a success overall, so great job.

Always appreciated.

I felt like I found them fairly easily.

Overall, solid event, and I appreciate having one over not at all.

 

I personally feel that the event was pretty good and balanced

1. The drop rates for the cake pieces was pretty good. And I like that it is a whole server effort so no one gets left out . However , it sorta unfair for those that donated the most as they sorta carried the rest . I believe there is no rewards for being like top 10. Imagine kirrby or bishi don't exist. There won't be even any daddy for people to fight
2. This map was pretty good as well , I like how people goto jump(work hard ) to get the puffs . It wasn't easy but the rewards aren't small either . However ,it got pretty boring after a few days . If this was all planned then kudos to yall admins . Puffs are not a issue here as sometimes I get 8 while other times I get 0, so it kinda offsets.
3. The whole box thingy was pretty good as maple items were sorta extinct. Lets hope there won't be another of this in the coming years. However, the mage ulti buff was pretty servere I guess .I had a islander friend that gets like at least 5 box everyday . Meanwhile I struggle to get 1 while I spam my genesis for 6 hrs . Maybe the ratio can be revised .
4. This was good as well but my bowman don't have genesis so it was almost impossible for me to get 1 by myself.
5. Good (no comments )
6. Good (no comments )
7. Good (no comments )

Lastly, I just wanna say I saw many people complain about how repetitive the event was and it gets boring. How broken the exchange was as they are salty they didn't get the white scroll .Tbh me as well! But if I thought about it again, if it was so easy ,the server would be pretty unbalanced . So deal with it guis .

To admins:fk those haters. Good job SeemsGood

 

Every event since i joined, droprate from mage ults was lower. However, I actually do agree anniversary box droprate was really low this event for me at petris, it felt as rare as a hunting gach. I would say I get one box every 2-3 days, there was also this one time which I was doing a leech package lvl 105-120 and gotten 0 boxes and 2 gold ticks when my client reached 120. It could be just really bad luck, but maybe tone down the droprate nerf to mages by abit.

 

Here's my thoughts:

What I liked:

The golden gachapon tickets was a nice idea. It gave players who are HP washing a chance to trade in their tickets so they can get AP resets without spending NX.

I love the cake map! It's more of a personal thing, but man it's sooooo cute! I even had fun drawing it for my 3rd year anniversary picture, heh heh. X3

The boost in experience. Do I need to say anything else?

What I didn't like:

The jump quest was pretty irritating. It's always randomized, especially with how the gingerbread move. Also why did there need to be a time limit? It makes sense to have one for the map where you kill the cakes and collect goodies, but when you consider the RNG for the gingerbread man, it gets unnecessarily tedious. I usually just let myself get hit until I got the easiest map.

Let's talk about the map where you kill cakes for prizes. I pretty much agree with everyone in that we each should've had our own map instead of sharing one. It was always frustrating whenever I want to kill the mini cakes, and most of time I can't because someone else is already doing that.

The cream puff drop rate was inconsistent. Maybe it was meant to be luck based, but it just wasn't fun. The prizes you got from exchanging cream puffs was very disappointing. All I got were bandanas, hearty party bears, and anniversary boxes. I'd suggest having less trashy prizes and maybe increasing the chance of getting better ones just slightly.

Now for the cake boss. I was really surprised it wasn't being spawned that much. Probably because the drop rate for the cakes wasn't that great. Although I do like that you got 3 cream puffs after you defeat the cake boss. You can enter the raffle afterwards, but the raffle still sucked.

So overall, it was kind of okay.

 

In my opinion, the event was overall pretty good. I gave my opinions on the different parts of the event below with colored titles:

GREEN = I liked it!
YELLOW = I liked it, but had small issues with it.
RED = I hated it!

Big Puff Daddy's Return!
I am never a huge fan of this kind of rewarding style. It feels boring and grindy. Plus, how it could be unfair to people who don't usually have a lot of time to be online and play. people who are in a less popular time zone would get less big puff daddies. It wasn't because they were contributing/donating cake pieces, it was simply there were less people to work together with to fill up the bar. I understand that requiring players to hit the boss to obtain rewards at the end is a way to combat people farming them from afking, but I am sure there are other better solutions to this.

However, I do have to give a tip of the hat to how GMs designed this big puff daddy compare to the snowman during the winter event. Having the health bar/timer shared across multiple channels definitely improved the lag and prevented cheat/exploit. Also, the fact that we could also obtain potentially even more cream puffs from other ways of the event made it less frustrated to miss big puff daddies.

Climbing the Cakey Layers!
I don't like this kind of jump quest at all! It was not the jumping part that's making it boring and bad, it was the avoiding-the-monsters part that was making it frustrated. I would much prefer if it was an actual jump quest like the one we had during last summer. It involved a lot more skills and fun within the community (timer), and not just a painful grind and process that no one cares due to how the monsters move so randomly.

The Lit Cake Party!
Besides the jump quest part, I enjoyed killing/eating cakes to get the rewards. The spawn rate was amazing. I could always find a place to grind even when the map is packed with people. I like the cakes and the candies. They made killing those cakes even more excited and glorious. I got an average of 3 or 4 cream puffs per round, so the drop-rate was very good. Instead of getting a fixed amount of cream puffs, having this random factor to it made it ever so excited and frustrated, not in a bad way.

However, I suggest balancing the cake monsters. Area with small cakes are always the way to go because they were easier to kill, which means better chance of getting more cream puffs, which is the main goal of entering this map. Something like setting the health for all monsters to be the same or increase the drop-rate of cream puffs on tougher monsters would make grinding at anywhere in the map more worthwhile and balanced.

The Gingerbread Man's Exchange
I have never had a problem with these exchange rewards. I feel like the chance of getting good stuff has been significantly increased in this event, and I am fine with that. Since it was an anniversary event, it's cool to be more generous.

The Anniversary Boxes
Overall I like the anniversary boxes. I feel like I have gotten a decent collection of different maple weapons and gear. The way these maple stuff were being hand out was good so that people couldn't choose exactly what they want, thus, balanced the market.

However, I don't know if it's just me or not, it seems like some weapons and gear have a higher drop-rate from these boxes. If this was not the case, then I have no problem with it, but if it was the case, I would much prefer if all of them to had the same drop-rate, especially the weapons since all classes should be equal, we shouldn't nerf the drop-rate of a weapon simply because it is more valuable because it also means there are more people who want/need that specific weapon.

The Anniversary Tickets
Similar to the idea of nx tickets we had before. I really like the idea of adding unique monster drops. The drop-rate was fine.

Although I find the drops a bit less excited for classes that don't need ap reset, so I would suggest adding more rewards for exchange (such as event related stuff, instead of having of chance of getting them from the raffle, perhaps you could exchange 1 or more anniversary tickets for 1 of them).

Event Quest: Hide and Seek!
This is a kind of quest that I personally have never seen. It promotes teamwork and investigation (in the beginning). Although once all the raccoons have been discovered by the community, it was basically just traveling around clicking on NPCs, but it was still very interesting to see all the different cute raccoons as well as getting one for myself with a randomized name.

Miracle Cubes™
It was definitely the best thing we have ever gotten in the game so far.

New Faces and Haircuts!
I have to give a thumb up for providing picture references of the hairs and eyes in the event details thread!!

Party Rates!
Bonus exp and drop can never go wrong (+15% feels great and balanced)

 

Agree with Chris that the way the Cakeboss and JQ mechanics basically provided no down side to not creating a bunch of mules. Even as a dedicated islander, after 2 weeks into the event, I decided to spend 1 week creating 4 lvl 30 islanders just because multiple JQ's and cakebossing at least once a day was too good to pass up (and even easier to spam 30 mules offland)

As far as the cape I was a little bummed out just because I felt like new people were 'punished' for missing previous anniversary, esp. on Islanders who prioritize spd/jump

Not a big fan of the Cake Hat as well when I heard of the stats, but because it is available to everyone, it's not a big deal. However, once again if new players join who cannot obtain it in the future will be a huge disadvantage. Also not to mention I am salty I grinded the Valentines Bandana Quest just to find out my Pink Bandanas are now futile

Agree with Luscious mainly in regards to the JQ being instanced or maybe at least open on multiple channels. It became more about finding the optimal time to do the JQ to minimize KS'ing.

Can anyone confirm that all bonus cakes had same drop rate? maybe increasing potential puffs from mid and large cakes would also help minimize KSing

Hide and Seek - I personally never really offlanded past level 35 but Luscious was kind enough to help me get the pet and it was fun exploring offland for the 1 hour or so

Bonus Rates - Always nice to have

One last feedback I had was I wish we have a system similar to the 'Snow Vigor's during Christmas Event since that rewarded those who played more during the event. Having just Cake Boss & JQ meant you could get the same number of turn ins even for not being as active.

Thanks for reading!~

 

Mind going into detail? Did you expect them to have a different color or something? How could you even make them look different?

 

Im not sure if this is what she meant however the different npcs had different facial / personality attributes that made it look like if u got the Grumpy raccoon from the quest, you expected it to look like the grump raccoon npc. Atleast that what i thought haha

 

The Jump Quest needed to have some sort of repetition to it. As it stood, the Gingerbread Men could potentially (and did a couple times for me) keep you from ever getting done. That isn't fun, that's just a big time waste. If the Gingerbread Men were programmed to follow a distinct pattern (like the JQs in Sleepywood, Ellinia, Kerning Subway [with the exception of the Stirges, but those are a fine exception], and Zakum) the daily JQ would be something that could be mastered with practice. The rewards end of it was a little frustrating because some people would invade the area you're trying to get rewards from, and then there are many times you're trying to farm rewards and you just can't get a good spot because the good spots are always taken. If the Chocolate Cakes down below are more difficult to kill, then the drop rate for the Cream Puffs should be increased to make the drops equal across types of monsters.

As for the Cake Boss, it is a little bit too much of a rinse-and-repeat of past events. I do remember the 4th Anniversary had "fake" area bosses (Manon, Geist Balrog, etc.) spawn at random maps that were relatively easy to kill and you'd get cake drops from them. This would encourage players to explore in order to find the drops. Maybe make an Anniversary Party Quest?

 

I think my biggest issue with this event was the sheer length of it. I know these things tend to take long but I would've been fine with a week or two less. It just got so boring at some point..

I am positive about the Golden Gach Ticket. That's a nice little niche. The boxes dropping from monsters is regular, as much as expected I'd say. The exp rate boost is always nice.
I didnt really like the cake, nor the JQ. I barely did the JQ at all because I hated it and the rewards didnt mean much to me. Cake boss was okay-ish but you have quite a big chance of never catching it if you're not online at peak times.

 

Golden gach - great idea. Highlight of the event for me.

Boxes from mobs - good idea. Although a lot of people are complaining about the drop rate of these boxes, I personally think the drop rate was made way way too high and I think there is clear evidence for this looking at the prices for maple weapons. Everything outside of claws and staffs were worthless outside of high stat lvl 64 class weapons. Some balancing adjustments need to be made here.

Raccoon quest - did not participate. Much better concept than having the pet as a random reward from turning in puffs like Christmas/Valentines.

JQ - Not a fan. Too repetitive. RNG makes it so some days you spend 15 minutes doing the JQ and then you go to bonus where it's packed as hell and end up with 0 puffs. RNG movements on the gingerbread puffs also made this quest super frustrating where sometimes the gingerbread men would spend 30-50 seconds not moving at all. That does not feel good and is very frustrating.

Puff exchange - Not a fan. Exactly the same thing as the Christmas event. RNG is too much. Make the box drop rate higher, maybe remove boxes from mobs so that you can keep the overall drop rate balanced?

Puff daddy - Not a fan. Rip off of Christmas event. Took way, way too long to kill. The fact that this and the JQ were tied to the puff exchange problem mentioned above would make things so frustrating. There is nothing worse than going out of your way, spending 10 minutes doing something, and then getting 50 cakes or party bears.

Cake pieces - please make these untradeable next time. It was so annoying watching people not turn them in and trying to sell them; takes away from the spirit of the event. I like the idea where they automatically get turned in on pick-up.

I understand that you can't just hand out chaos scroll and white scrolls like candy, but come on. There needs to be a middle tier of appealing rewards that can be given out with at least some frequency.