Hunger Games event 7-18-15

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+Veritas
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Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by +Veritas »

There will be a Hunger Games event on Saturday the 18th at 8:00 p.m. eastern time.

The location of the games will be on a copy of Moonglow island.
moonglow.jpg
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This one will be a free-for-all, so everyone for themselves. You cannot win as a group. However, you may group up during the game. I still hope to see less guild group/circle-of-friends collaboration and more lone wolf participation. If I see groups of people tolerating each other too much, I may pick on the group a bit =).

Players of any age are welcome to play. Equalizing clothing will be handed out for the games, which will make everyone participating have the same stats. This will be a PvP event. Players will be given clothing that will provide skill bonuses for key skills necessary to fight and craft during the game.

During this PvP event, all players will be able to use what they find. Players can also craft items with the raw materials they find. You will not have to mine ore, or chop wood, or skin leather. Most of the items you can find and work with will be found in buildings during this game. Buildings will contain crates, chests, and boxes you can open that contain various items, weapons, armor, and resources. Runic crafting tools will be included in these containers. These items will gradually respawn inside these containers.

Other items you can find are the Tribute Backpacks and the cornucopia weapons. Backpacks are on the ground immediately after you leave the starting area and gradually respawn within the same area. Items that are in the backpacks will also spawn inside buildings on the island. The cornucopia will have two bows and three swords that you can attempt to grab before other players. These weapons do not respawn during the match. There are no other items in the cornucopia.

Placing houses and boats is forbidden and if you figure out a way to do it, you will be punted from the game without a participation reward.

There will be no mounts for this event.

With the exception of the participation rewards, every item you receive during the course of this game will decay within a few hours. You will NOT get to keep any item you are given for this event. or obtain during this even.

Scavenger is not allowed during this event. I can tell when it is on, it is pretty obvious. Also, no other scripts that do exactly what scavenger does but you named something else. If you get caught and say, "I didn't have scavenger on, but I had my script named 'Super Pick-Up 9000'", it will hold zero weight with me. Any use of script or function of a third-party program that allows you to automatically pick up items from the ground around you will result in your forfeit of the game and your participation reward.

Be sure to pay attention to your surroundings. You will likely need to do some crafting to survive. This means you will be looking for forges and anvils at least...

When you die, you will be moved to another area where you will be given your participation reward. Do not leave the area before you are given your reward. You should just walk up to an ankh and resurrect, and stand still until rewarded.

When the game gets to a point where there are only a few players left, then mobs will start spawning that will make survival a bit more challenging.

See you tomorrow!

+V
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+Nyx
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by +Nyx »

A note re: rewards - once you die: res, and then you'll walk over to the sparkles. It'll move you, reward you, and then move you to the exit area. This is a relatively new feature and I'm planning to freshen it up further before the event.
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by Pariah »

+Veritas wrote: This one will be a free-for-all, so everyone for themselves. You cannot win as a group. However, you may group up during the game. I still hope to see less guild group/circle-of-friends collaboration and more lone wolf participation. If I see groups of people tolerating each other too much, I may pick on the group a bit =).
I know this is almost impossible to control, but it would be nice if the groups were a bit more...organic? Being chased by more than half a dozen people from the same guild at the outset lessens the experience a bit. While I held my own, I could see this as a definite barrier to entry if it weren't for my luck with the run at the cornucopia first pick. Perhaps a few more spawn zones to spread the various members out a bit? I know nothing would be foolproof, but just a thought. Fun event nonetheless. Thank you much!
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+Nyx
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by +Nyx »

We're open to ideas how to prevent efficient ganging-up in the event, but it's just a difficult thing to do. I'd like to see this moved to an even smaller island, personally. Even with 65 starting players, moonglow island was (imo) too big and allowed too much time for the groups to solidify without outside conflict. Beyond trying to incentivize players who didn't participate in a group somehow, (better reward if you were a lone wolf through the game? dunno..) I have no really good ideas how to prevent it.
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by Pariah »

+Nyx wrote:We're open to ideas how to prevent efficient ganging-up in the event, but it's just a difficult thing to do. I'd like to see this moved to an even smaller island, personally. Even with 65 starting players, moonglow island was (imo) too big and allowed too much time for the groups to solidify without outside conflict. Beyond trying to incentivize players who didn't participate in a group somehow, (better reward if you were a lone wolf through the game? dunno..) I have no really good ideas how to prevent it.

I totally get that. The mechanics are difficult to figure out and I don't want to sound ungrateful as it was still a ton of fun. I was thinking more "zones" so to speak that dont intersect until the numbers are culled a bit. Again, thanks for the awesome event!
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by +Nyx »

That's an interesting idea but I'm not sure if we can work it out, we'll keep mulling it over
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by culichi »

I don't think theres really anything wrong with the temporary alliances culling the field it fits the theme of the event. I definitely like the idea of a lone wolf player getting an extra special prize like if robroy had managed to win today maybe he could have gotten a unique account bound mount.
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by +Nyx »

It doesn't bother me overmuch on principle except that I noticed an awful lot of butthurt-edness from the players who didn't have several guildmates/friends to group with and got stomped early on by a gang-o-players. It's rather irritating for us to see all this event-hatred scrolling by, and it's our goal to have the largest number of players possible having a great time in each event. If half of them are just griping about it and angry or upset, then it's not a job well-done enough for our standards. Granted, there's some major whiners that attend these events and then seem to relish the griping and whining after it doesn't go their way, but not all of the people we saw tonight were those types of players.
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Deacon
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by Deacon »

I enjoyed the event, it was a blast.

I didn't have to deal with being ganged up on. Even if I did I wouldn't have any other complaint other that "I shoulda took that left at Alburquerque."
Failed to notice I had a Hungry Man Dinner in my pack until I logged in sometime later :lol:

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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by MhBlis »

I actually had similar throughts to Pariah.

your right you are not going to get away from the Whine and not everyone has that many friends to group with.

Some thoughts I had.

1. Smaller Island amps up the conflict.

2. Divide the island into smaller parts. Lock off from each other. Now randomly seed each section with players. Then either over time or as each sections population drops under a certain number combine the sections.

3. Slowly make the arena smaller. This prevents hiding on the borders and keeps the action going as the numbers dwindle.

4. Somehow create a setup where any aggresive action locks you into a 1v1 situation. ie. Grundy Attacks Pariah. So now for the next 2 minutes the only people who can heal or damage either of them is themselves.

Option 2 is similar to what Pariah has suggested here. This means the number of people is smaller and it is unlikely you can get a whole group of players together like that. It is a little more GM intensive but does help with that. It also amps up the conflict because there just isn't anywhere to hide.

Option 4 is tricky to implement but I have seen it before on a UO shard. What this means is you can still group up but the only safety you get from that is that there are more targets. To kill or be killed still requires 1v1 work. Eliminates the who group action thing.
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by Alex »

Great Event. Thanks for hosting.

Similar thoughts: smaller map would be great, the best part was engaging in a battle and the smaller map allows for this. The grouping aspect is difficult to control, I agree. Unfortunately I cant think of any plausible solutions. Maybe give extra points or resources to killing someone from your own guild ;)

Looking forward to what you come up with for next time's Hunger Games.
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by Pariah »

+Nyx wrote:It doesn't bother me overmuch on principle except that I noticed an awful lot of butthurt-edness from the players who didn't have several guildmates/friends to group with and got stomped early on by a gang-o-players. It's rather irritating for us to see all this event-hatred scrolling by, and it's our goal to have the largest number of players possible having a great time in each event. If half of them are just griping about it and angry or upset, then it's not a job well-done enough for our standards. Granted, there's some major whiners that attend these events and then seem to relish the griping and whining after it doesn't go their way, but not all of the people we saw tonight were those types of players.
This is what I saw as well. Perhaps I was overly sensitive to this as I was able to outrun/tire out the 8 players chasing me. That was actually one of the more fun spots but I could see where others may not have been so lucky (especially newer players). Ultimately, it was a bad thunderstorm here that knocked out my router and +V's relentless mutts that did me in. Perhaps +V has the right idea overall. If there was a way to up the stakes for the 8 vs the 1, this might help with some of that. One person in WC had an interesting idea of forcing Incognito on everyone, but then you'd also have to turn off guild chat, pms, etc. While I understand the argument of "well grouping happens in the books, etc." the grouping there is a bit more organic. Otherwise, it's just incentivizing guild recruitment. Another thought, in the books, it's teams of two. Perhaps you could be bound to a teammate at first? Also, I think if the island itself were a bit more dangerous at the outset, this might create additional "opportunities." Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback on an overall great event.
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by Alpharius »

Personally, what I would like to see is not a smaller gameplay area, but BIGGER one. With 60-odd players all on a tiny island, it's going to be super intense for a while but it will taper off as people get whacked and eliminated. With a bigger gameplay area, it would take a lot longer to do, sure, but that would make it more exciting and suspenseful. Why not have several spawn in areas, and do the whole of Felucca and then stick the cornucopia smack in the middle of the hedgemaze?

Granted, I don't see it being something you could do every weekend, but a Super Hunger Games event once a year in all of Fel that lasts an entire day seems like it would be a blast.

As is, it was a fun event for ten minutes (That's all I lasted for).
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by +Nyx »

All the times we've run the hunger games before this one, it was in much, much larger areas. It wasn't actually beneficial - it took far too long to run (and thus the time commitment for us was too high to hold it very often, and the time sink for the players meant far fewer attendees were willing to do it). There was almost no action going on for huge stretches of time, which got boring for all involved. We've gradually been shrinking the event areas to find the right balance between 'no space to run and hide' and 'this is taking 4+ hours'.
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Re: Hunger Games event 7-18-15

Post by moonsongtx »

I may be odd (okay... quit laughing!) but I found it a lot of fun to be a "lone wolf" in the game. Yes, it may have been easier if I had been part of a group, but I kinda feel sorry for those that bunched up together as I think it took a lot away from the game. I don't mean to speak down against those that did group up. I just think that they didn't get the whole effect of what the game was. I had a blast and even though I didn't make it in the top few, I was proud of my achievement especially since I am not a PvP person. I can't wait for the next one. :D
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