The rewards:
- Helmet (7.5/10)? The eye sockets are a little disappointing they are just red. I kind of wonder if it would look cooler with the eyes matching the accent color? Maybe slightly lighter than the accent color so it’s not just a color blob if the same color is used as the primary? Some players didn’t love the goofy look of the pumpkin. I thought it was okay to be kind of unique.
- Skeleton gloves (10/10)
- Monkey (I have no strong opinion, is it even possible to give them plunderer/gatherer? if not that would be nice to do with treats. I’ll have to try?)
- Being dyeable was pretty nice too!
- title (requires 500 captures…) RIP.
The quests:
- Catch the monkeys, acceptable? It is creature capture after all.
- Kill 30(aka 25), Kill 120(aka 140) mobs. 2/10 (this is where a lot of complaining will prob come from).
Lets talk about the kill quest here for a second.
[1] It’s essentially sit at the graveyard with a dozen+ other players, spinning in circles and looking to tap the next mob to get credit. The quest -can- be done over a month, but this isn’t how players think. Players want dem rewards asap and will farm them. That would also just mean sitting at the GY graveyards periodically over a month, randomly squeezing it in.
[2] The melee guys spawn disproportionately. The ratio seems like 2.5:1 flyers to melee. This makes the “kill 120(140)” more like kill 300-420 of them.
[3] The mobs were easy to kill. Archers can hit them for 50% their hp. So in a group scenario it was about tagging the mob as fast as possible. There wasn’t really any “grouping” or strong community involvement.
In general, kill quests are acceptable but this one was pretty boring. I am trying to say it nicely but plainly. What makes a kill quest “feel good” usually is that it is paired with some other quest, where you are going to be in that area killing the stuff anyways. It’s extra XP. That, or combat has to be fun/interesting where the activity of killing a mob is fun. Orbus has very simple combat aside from raids, such that it can be enjoyable in small amounts, or while its new. Grinding + simple combat = not enjoyable. Grinding + simple combat + pushover mobs = even less enjoyable. Grinding + simple combat + pushover mobs + a dozen players = bottom levels of enjoyable.
Let’s move on
The season change (10/10). You’ve now set yourself up for expectations of all 4 seasons heheheheh. Also, some maps like the Basin look much better now because they aren’t bright neon yellow, etc.
The monkey pet. It doesn’t hop like the monkeys you catch, but it’s pretty cool. Some players seemed unhappy that it was legendary for being so easy to obtain rather than like epic/blue, etc.
The questgiver - looked pretty rad.
The various deco - not bad, the season/festival adds an extra level of immersion to the game. Logging in and running around felt good. People like the pumpkin alchemy pot quite a bit too.
The duration it took to complete everything. Maybe a couple or few hours? Players don’t want a grind, but more(different) content would have been nice. Like even various quests from the various NPCs (catching some kind of special fish for the fish questline, and so forth…). Maybe the quests could have been a community thing, where we help build up special-event resources towards various extra content being released at set dates, with group challenges that would require people to both group or solo… I’m not gonna delve like 1 hour into this but basically: more community would have been good. Help the chef prepare the feast quest? and so on. Have an actual feast event that players can attend, get buffs from food and maybe some kind of item? Like a chicken-leg tool? Yes please?
Random ideas:
Special ingredients you can harvest (pumpkins?) to make like pumpkin juice + some spiffy event fish and turn into a skelly boy for 5 minutes? Supplies last during the event.
Honestly, a lot of ideas… but I don’t want to explode this thread with just that. If you have any cool fall event/reward ideas, post below.
The…pumpkin? squash? that the monkeys are found in for creature capture? Nobody is quite sure what these are? Banana peels? We are all leaning towards like some kind of pumpkin(like the pumpkin lanterns seen).
The monster models. Honestly, for an event I’d say a re-skin and mob-rename is fairly acceptable. It’s just that they are like every other mob, so it’s kind of a heated topic. However the flying-boi is an actual skeleton, and the big-boi is literally wearing a black body suit akin to:
I think resizing the skeleton model from crypt and slapping a pumpkin helm on him would have actually looked better. The flying boi looks pretty cool, and people seemed to also enjoy the scythes (though he just shot bolts at you). If you were looking for the stuffed-scarecrow look, then like hay sticking out from the gloves/suit might have looked better?
The kill quest would have seen more acceptable coming from the hunter NPC. I’d suppose I’d guess the main skele-boy to have some kind of more interesting questline, though there was some brief lore.
I hate to say like, “more stuff”, but more stuff? I’m not sure how templated your quests are, but I imagine for example the kill quest would have been : reskin mobs (prob would take some amount of time) - spawn them (I’d guess very simple) - set up generic npc, give kill quests (I’d guess very simple) - make special NPC skin (would prob take some time). Make the pumpkin / skeleton hand rewards (would take some time).
Testing for release:
The quest text saying like “kill 30” but actually “25” and kill “120” but actually kill 140. These are simple mistakes, and ignorable, but probably should have been caught?
There is an NPC questgiver with a backwards question mark above his head, which I didn’t notice but 2 others did.
Me and 1 other player had to relog to begin to get quest credit, not sure if this is a generic bug or a bug related to just this event.
In summary, my favorite things were definitely: the 2 rewards, and the immersion of the season and decoration, the town, even the local’s having text about the event. I liked the new questgiver, he looked pretty cool. I think that there could have been a stronger emphasis on community, as an MMO. Rathern than mainly a kill chain, “special event” type of activities, such as special harvesting/loot/fishing with associated crafting, items, etc, could have been cool. Making it all doable in one sitting was also probably ill-advised. Maybe like, make it gradual at the start through some decent chunk of dailies for the main content, and side-content you can do 24/7 (like fishing, killing mobs for special loot etc). And then perhaps for like the last week, for players coming late, remove the limit and let them 24/7 grind it if needed? Or increase the cap? Or maybe they are just SOL?
The pumpkin helmet is tradeable. The skeleton gloves are not.
Sleepy quest name, tiny chuckle.
login screen/music - i like it
The town decoration, felt good. It’d be nice to actually have more of it. The town itself is fairly empty NPC/sight-seeing. Many locked doors, a handful of NPCs. Even many of the rooms with NPCs are just empty wooden houses with a few props. There’s a level of optimization to be had. Perhaps it’s too large? The entire area underneath the tree is just dirt anyways, maybe bring that to floor-level and get rid of the underground? It’d be nice to have a denser, more well decorated area that the eye can enjoy. If you want a good example of your own work, look at the demon caves and stand near the campfire with music on. The ambiance there has real feeling, even though that camp itself could use some touch ups as well. VR can so heavily leverage immersion, and MMO’s do too. Coupling this more often would be schweet.