Valentines Event 2018, Day 3 (Response to Liinxy Livestream/Community/Devs, Shorten spin time, Some quick Maths)

[powerup]

Hey All,

 

I'm gonna try to keep this short (lul). BNS Devs and Community Manager, please read this in full (players, just tldr). Thank you.

 

First, as we all know, many trolls and mean players on this game came out in full force during the first few days of the event. People were trying to get their 100-kills of each faction achievement, so plenty of dying and killing was had. You got bombed with bombs from the Pinchy area while you were trying to spin (those players didn't have to equip the faction outfit to throw bombs, so they were immune to reprimand by other players. You can't PVP someone who's not wearing a faction outfit after all), or someone waits til the last second of your spin to kill you; tldr, it was completely impossible to spin.

 

By Day 3 a lot of this has settled down, which is good news; however, toxic/trolly players are still out here in full force. And when I say this has settled down by Day 3, I mean the wheel area is much calmer at 3:00-4:00AM Server time, which was when I spun 124 essences over several characters yesterday. Call me crazy.

 

From what I could see late at night, it seemed like Channel 1-2 were quieter for spinning and Channel 5 was crazy open-world PVP, with long lines at the wheel. At least by now, players seem to be respecting the queue and PVPing on the side, not at the wheels themselves. It takes a lot of restraint not to kill an entire line of the opposing faction (I would know, I was waiting in line when all of a sudden some very...interesting player walks up to us and range-kills the whole line execution-style. That was a Warlock, but I was also griefed by a Gunner who blew his Tab on me 1v1 at the wheel while I was spinning).

 

Does this event foster community? It does in the sense that those more civil of us can complain with each other about how many seconds it takes to spin the wheel: I had 124 essences over three characters, which appears to only take 124 * 18 seconds / 60 = 36 minutes of spinning; however, given that I was queuing up with 3-4 other people at any given time, it took me at least two hours total. You know what I could have been doing with two hours? If BNS made advertising revenue off this game, then shout-out to the Developers for thinking of a way to keep players in the game for long periods of time without any quick means of gratification: fantastic job, whoever came up with this idea definitely has a future in increasing ad-sales. I would say that 5 seconds, or even 10 seconds, is more reasonable than the current 18 seconds it takes for one spin (I won't ask for an instant-spin time). You can totally still PVP someone if it took them only 5 seconds to spin the wheel, if that was what the Devs intended.

 

Most of the dialogue with my fellow civil, queuing wheel-spinners was along the lines of "How many essences do you have left" "I am getting so many Sacred Orbs!" "What's the drop rate for crystal" (btw drop rate is good, about like 70% from what I could see) "We need 65 crystals of each color!?" "How long have you been here for" "I am almost done!" "Congrats!" "I'm going to sleep now lol". The primary complaint was the following: "This is such a ------ event" "Why did they make the spin time so long?"

 

Why did the developers make the spin time so long. This is seriously a problem. If developers wanted to foster open-world PVP by allowing players to gank and grief each other at the wheel, in particular while someone is spinning (which trolly players do, btw), shortening the spin time would still allow this open-world PVP interaction to exist. Think of the players who are spinning without being PVP-killed at the wheel. These players finally found some peace and quiet and just want to spin a minimum of 65 * 2 = 130 times to get crystals, assuming that they achieve a lucky 100% drop rate on crystals. 100% is of course not the real drop rate: the real drop rate is closer to 70%, which means it would actually take closer to 130 * 10 / 7 = a more realistic figure of 185.7 spins to obtain the True Heart cosmetic item. If we round that to 186 spins, it would take approximately 186 * 18 seconds / 60 = about an hour to obtain all required crystals for one True Heart aura.

 

Nevertheless, let us recall that there is always more than one player queueing up to spin at any point in time; this line can range from 3 players to over 10 players. So that could mean standing there for something close to 10 hours, doing nothing but spin. Grab some coffee, have a snack, you may as well pay someone to spin for you while you go out of the house. Of course, this is 10 hours over the course of 6 weeks, but that is an insanely long time. I could probably achieve 50-60 runs of DT or EC in 10 hours if I were speed-running dungeons. I can fly half-way across the world in 10 hours. Unfortunately, you don't really get wifi on international flights. Please let us just spin and move on with our lives, running dungeons with clannies or enjoying other parts of the game. Don't keep us captive at the mercy of a slow, rusty wheel.

 

It does seem like the event is alright in the sense that it brings our community together in our mutual commiseration of a poorly designed event. That's the persisting train of thought which I've observed thus far. The event's first issue was that people ganked, griefed, and otherwise trolled people who were spinning at the wheels. The second issue is that, even when you are not being player-killed by someone while spinning, spinning still takes an crazy amount of time. Third, that crazy spin time scales exponentially when the number of players queuing up to spin increases. Remember I said it takes perhaps 1 hour to get enough crystals for True Heart, assuming a 70% drop rate. Remember I also said there is more than 1 player in this game...An upper limit exists on the number of spins this wheel can take over the course of 6 weeks. 6 weeks * 7 days * 24 hours per day = 1008 hours of spin-time, which means only 1008 players can obtain the True Heart item per channel. So far, there has been 5 channels in the area, so we can say 1008 * 5 = only 5040 players can obtain the True Heart item at the end of the event, assuming maximum utilization of spin time with no lost seconds or hours of the day. Since no one could really spin the wheel due to too much PVP on the first few days of the event, we've already lost the maximum efficiency and utilization of the wheel.

 

Please don't require players to spend ungodly amounts of time spinning at a wheel where they are free prey to anyone of the opposing faction. I will note that "ranged-privilege" certainly exists; you will rarely see a melee class executing a line of players at the wheel in this event (save for some Destroyers on the Day 1 of the event, when everyone was at the wheel and Destroyers used their "Spin-to-Win" move that makes them immune to attacks while cc-ing other players). It's quite frustrating to be politely queued up in front of a wheel, only to have someone come up and insta-kill the entire line. Neither the game nor the event has rules against this kind of toxic player-killing, but we players should have some common courtesy. Just because someone can attack someone in real life doesn't mean we do that, right? So why should we attack players in a line? Respect each other please.

 

I believe it would have been a better idea to have designated an open-world area specifically for the PVP aspect of the event (for example...Pinchy's Pit or some other desert area nearby). I understand that in that case, perhaps many non-PVP oriented players would not have even gone to PVP. In that case then, it would have been a good idea to create a demilitarized zone around the wheel where only those equipping faction outfits can enter the area near the wheel of their respective faction. This could be something as small as 16 meters of space, but 16 meters of DMZ area would be much better than no DMZ area at all. The current design lacks a DMZ area, instead opting for a design where only white factions can spin the wheel on the left and only red factions can spin the wheel on the right, while allowing players of each faction to be near the opposing faction's wheel.

 

TL;DR drop rate is like 70%; please respect lines; it takes about 1 hour of spin time to get all crystals for True Heart; the maximum limit of hours in this event is like 5040 hours, so only 5040 players can get True Heart if they don't get ganked at all; remember that lines are long so you are gonna be waiting (# of players in line) * 1 hour to get your item. Oh yeah: Please don't feed the trolls...but open-world PVP is all about that troll-life.

 

For the BNS Developers: Establish a Demilitarized Zone and shorten the spin time for a better designed event. Devs, you dun goofed! But all is not lost; know that you have brought the player-base together in our mutual commiseration of long-spin times and being player-killed mid-spin. Philosophically, all is fair in love and war, and great time/dedication is required for love. However, this is an event in a game, and you really don't want your player-base to hate you. Remember that the point is to make a fun game and keep players p(l)aying. You already have lootboxes and cashshop items as a means to increase revenue; does creating a difficult-to-participate event really facilitate either joy for players or revenue for the company in this game? I understand that it can be difficult to foresee player reactions to new events. In this case, a good rule of thumb is: don't make events extremely hard to do, because if anything can go wrong, it will; and if any player can make another player's life miserable, they will. Remember that we are all humans playing this game with our flawed human selves. Us flawed humans treat each other so cruelly in real life; it only stands to reason that our even darker sides are revealed online, in-game. Cyber-bullying exists!

 

This is only Week 1, let's see how the dust settles mid-event and if the rush comes again on Week 6. I'll keep you posted. Much love, besos y abrazos, xoxo <3

[Souba]

This is the best, most well thought out description of what this event has done to the community. I also like your solution- they have created "no PVP" zones in aion to separate the factions, so there's no reason why they couldn't make small safe zones for us  in BNS as well.

[Quantum]

9 hours ago, powerup said:

TL;DR drop rate is like 70%; please respect lines; it takes about 1 hour of spin time to get all crystals for True Heart; the maximum limit of hours in this event is like 5040 hours, so only 5040 players can get True Heart if they don't get ganked at all; remember that lines are long so you are gonna be waiting (# of players in line) * 1 hour to get your item. Oh yeah: Please don't feed the trolls...but open-world PVP is all about that troll-life.

You're forgetting that there's more than 1 channel.

[DustinMcDohl]

22 minutes ago, Quantum said:

You're forgetting that there's more than 1 channel.

you're forgetting that there's griefers in Every channel.

[frostpow]

You're forgetting they said

 

"An upper limit exists on the number of spins this wheel can take over the course of 6 weeks. 6 weeks * 7 days * 24 hours per day = 1008 hours of spin-time, which means only 1008 players can obtain the True Heart item per channel. So far, there has been 5 channels in the area, so we can say 1008 * 5 = only 5040 players can obtain the True Heart item at the end of the event"

 

Do the math and read the thing man

[Xenosaga]

1 hour ago, DustinMcDohl said:

you're forgetting that there's griefers in Every channel.

Confirmed. I saw one player jumped in other channels and killed waiting players by wheels. I was checking other channels.
So yes, not always safe...

[Xenosaga]

49 minutes ago, frostpow said:

"An upper limit exists on the number of spins this wheel can take over the course of 6 weeks. 6 weeks * 7 days * 24 hours per day = 1008 hours of spin-time, which means only 1008 players can obtain the True Heart item per channel. So far, there has been 5 channels in the area, so we can say 1008 * 5 = only 5040 players can obtain the True Heart item at the end of the event"

If we do it every day... we are already dead from madness. Every day pvp killing thanks to trollers and griefers?
I think much less players have it, 1008 hours is impossible.

 

When i was there... 4 channels are up... that is less than you told. (EU server)

[Quantum]

2 hours ago, DustinMcDohl said:

you're forgetting that there's griefers in Every channel.

Okay?

1 hour ago, frostpow said:

You're forgetting they said

 

"An upper limit exists on the number of spins this wheel can take over the course of 6 weeks. 6 weeks * 7 days * 24 hours per day = 1008 hours of spin-time, which means only 1008 players can obtain the True Heart item per channel. So far, there has been 5 channels in the area, so we can say 1008 * 5 = only 5040 players can obtain the True Heart item at the end of the event"

 

Do the math and read the thing man

The amount of channels could always change. We've all seen it happen.

[RavTH]

I am just gonna pop this here...

 

[Statler]

@Liinxy

Long story short, this is part 2 of the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

The NC-Soft Valentine Experiment but even more worse cause no one stop that shit

 

HM15+ with full gear not just trolling people on the german server, they start bullying by continusly killing people, who want to spin the wheele, for hours on multiple channels. 

 

The conclusion is, many people want to get that Special item but most already gave up, selling their hearts to dragonexpress cause they got tired of beeing permanently trolled by pinchy bombs or killed by high level, max gear bullies.

 

[Maeyria]

I guess this has been discussed to the point of death by now, but I will still allow myself to write in here as well, because reddit only is not always the key.

 

I totally agree with the post (and also actiually read it all, probs to me :D --- jking).

The general problem is: This should be an pvp event.

Now I say 'should be', because that was @Liinxy s answer in one of her streams someone posted on reddit, after ppl mentioned the problems current event has.

In my opinion, pvp does include factions gathering up together to fight for one goal, thing, reward, whatever. It doesn't matter 3v3 1v1 or many against many, but generally, fighting amongst each other to get something.

Something, that doesn't happen in here at all, because there is no benefit to do so, firstly, secondly, one-shots has nothing to do with "fighting". You can say it is 0.5 seconds fight, but  I do not count that as "fighting".

 

If I remember correctly, in the stream they said, that ppl have to gather and defend one to spin the wheel. Now WHY should they?

It takes 18 seconds to spin, which is quite a long time, also considered, that the majority of the people tend to act egoistically, therefore in a "me first"-behavior and on top of that not to forget, that only the spinning Person gets the reward, I couldn't imagine this "defending someone" working from beforehand.

There is absolutely no design to actually encourage ppl to help each other, but instead, encourage all to flock around the spin and all having to spam the f key with the one with the best ping and luck having to chance to spin.

This is nothing near fair.

I actually have though about how that could be changed, like the wheel could drop bundles of crystals that could be traded. But Problem again, egoistic ppl--> will use for themselves or trade them with horrendous amount of gold probably, if it wasn't sellable on marketplace.

At this point, I really think, that having more wheels and a shorter spintime is actually necessary, only to make this event possible for everyone to complete the heart.

Here, I just left the pvp aspect out because I want to split this event into the two aspects, I think changes might be necessary.

Edit: Also, how SHOULD they? Attacks cannot be blocked so they don't hit the spinner can they? I just thought of some pulls of destros, sum ults, bm ults...wl thralls and pools and what nots...so much to "defending".

 

Next thing, now pvp.

Yes, you need to kill other players for the achievement. That is okay.

There are enough ppl who want to do pvp or want the achievement I am sure, me included. But pvp means player vs player, not player vs one-shot.

Now if there was a specific pvp zone where someone wants to play pvp with bad gear (I do still think that is sad because right now, the only ppl actually being able to enjoy pvp are whales with that maxed out pvp gear that literally stomps down everything. So I don't even wonder why all players shifted to crimson legion, nor why open pvp is dead in general, which I think to be sad), then it is still his own decision, or he can go there with a friend and they actually can have some fair pvp (if the area isn't to small).

But forcing ppl to pvp, which they can, by no means survive at all, is questionable game design.

 

Low geared ppl and normal humans like me, who actually have to sleep and work/have school, cannot log on at 5 am to spin a wheel for hours.

The allaround goal of this event is to get the heart-->concludes spinning the wheel.

That is the goal.

But there is no goal to encourage ppl to work together, which is a main aspect of pvp.

This event encourages whales to troll around, because they can.

That doesn't mean they should or will, but ppl tend to behave like cunts in such situations, that is no secret, I could take the whole world as an example, so it is very likely they will abuse the power they have. And I wish, you would have actually though about how to prevent that.

There are some nice whales, who actually were so kind to spend some of their time defending the wheels without getting anything, just because they are nice and wanted to help! But if there were more ppl trolling, even one cannot stop others from attacking the ppl wanting to spin.

And here is the overall problem:

The ones doing good don't get rewarded, while the ones hurting others are.

 

This is by no means pvp, this is a onesided, unfair, massaker.

 

I can understand, that you want to keep your paying playerbase and give them something for what they pay.

That is totally legit, you need to earn money and live off smth as well.

But that shouldn't be an event, which normally, I understand as content for everyone, regardless of high or low geared.

The events I have experienced until now, did balance that more or less. Be it, that ur gear didn't play any significant role or was downgraded.

Ppl very often complained about the droprate, which I was never too mad about, because rng is rng. But it was, in general, fair for all.

 

This one isn't fair and mostly, not for all. It is the 4th day in an on the german server, we already have only 2 Channels because so many quit.

Now of course it is our choice to participate or not, but this situation itself forced the most to not participate and is less their own will of not participating.

The pvp in this game, in general, needs more balance in my opinion.

Thing is, noone cared until now, because if you weren't interested, you just skipped the pvp and farmed all day long but you somehow got to your goal. Just took you a little longer.

Why this now has gotten so big is, this should be an event. Events are for everyone and pvp was forced. U aren't rewarded for participating, u are only rewarded for winning.

We once had a pvp event where u had to go to arena. That wasn't too bad, u still got the coin even if you lost. You got rewards for participating. That is fair.

Here? Nothing.

If you always die at the good deeds of trolling whales and spawnkillers, you get nothing to get you foreward in this event. If you are permanently killed while spinning or constantly thrown into the air while spinning by some troll throwing the pinchy bombs (IF you ever get the cahnce to spin at all that is), you also get nothing out of it.

You are basically punished for nothing.

Edit: The gold, I forgot the gold sorry;

You can sell the essences for gold and get chocolates for the oils and outfit.

Yes, but everyone gets them. So it has not really anything to do woth participating or not and is no "reward" in that sence.

And the gold is nice, but, I think kreoppi did in his video, the maths, you get 70 gold in total if you sell all those essences you get safe.

Even if I am nice and say you get 100gold...100gold for 6 weeks? Every average player who has finished story probably makes 100 gold in 3 days with dailies...and if that isn't enough, with weeklys, you get there. In my eyes, that is no real substitute if you want the aura ôO

Because lets be honest, who wants the Boss Ap +1?

 

And that is, why I personally see this event as badly designed and really wish for some updates to make the experience better.

 

Greetings

Mae

[CharlieIsBoss]

To me, the Christmas event with the freebie premium bonus is still my event.   I am taking advantage of that+clan bonus.

I just have put this whole valentine's day abortion out of my mind and it is working out very well.  I'm working on farming mats + XP and levelling gear while so many people are wasting insane amounts of time getting relatively little accomplished on the cancer wheel of griefing.

 

news flash: y'all have the option of just not dealing with the entire event and cashing out your DC rewards, done...

 

PLUS, if the jerks are all gathered around the pinchy wheel like flies on doodoo, that means they aren't in other areas haha.

[KzE]

Its not that hard to change a single number, from 18 to 2 or 3.

[Nyvva]

Welps, someone spoiled their true intent. I don't know why NCSoft has become more and more cynical against players in recent events. Weird.

[Rmccn08]

the item that you get is pointless so whats the big deal?

[Statler]

The 1 AP  you get is realy useless but it has a nice cosmetic effect and most people want it for this effect, not for the 1AP