My (LONG) opinion on events in general (LETS TRY TO BE CONSTRUCTIVE) | Forums

[Zel4sh]

The thing that made me to post this post (what a great sentence to start) is, that someone wrote "this event is great". I decided to think about what makes events great at the moment and why is it BAD for the game overall in the long run. (Just to make things clear, I like the games mechanics and see potential in it, otherwise I wouldnt write this semi-essay) And Ill try to write ONLY about things connected to events, not to other stuff, but cant promise anything, I get side-tracked easily.

Before I start - I know the devs are saying that IN THE FUTURE, there will be something SWEEET (when I see that word used by dev, I immediately think about something shady but thats maybe just me not trusting devs after so many games failed to deliver on the promise of IN THE FUTURE, and WAIT, HANG WITH US etc)

ORIGINALITY: For the months since the game release, we had two types of events. One where you collect stuff in the lockers, second where you collect points for cards. To me, the word EVENT means something new and original. Do you think that this is original after repeating it over and over, just with different theme?

NEW CARDS RELEASE: Lets talk about the releasing of cards in the event and then locking them up (to be honest I dont care about that, but some people, collectors, didnt like this aspect). No new released cards found its way to the meta decks except MAYBE for Medusa Bebe. The others were just outshined by other versions of the cards. So why even care if the cards are released or not. They change nothing, and improve nothing. Maybe you dont want to upset the balance so you release so few new cards, but than again - why lock them from the lockers after you put them into an event (maybe so people will buy MORE packs specific for the event?).

THE POINT GATHERING EVENT: I saw people saying "this event is great, because I play sci-fi". I caught myself saying the same think previous week - I play fantasy, this event rocks. But after thinking a bit - am I really this easy to please? After events of doing the same thing, Iam happy that I can do an event without being pissed about the card choice in a GAME. Game that is supposed to be FUN in the first place? Or to be specific, in an event that, in my subjective view, should add to the general FUN factor of the game? But when you think about it, you dont give a damn about the event itself, you just want the rewards because they are so scarce if you are F2P player like me. And when the time goes by and you see two TERRIBLE christmas events (and a weekend without and event), you are so MENTAL about fantasy event you can participate in. And then its gone and all you remember are some mats you got. And people PRAISE the devs FOR AMAZING EVENT, which was the same thing all over again just with different cards (not even a new card or an update but ok, IN THE FUUUTUREE). And then, we get a point event for sci fi, which I think was the theme that had THE MOST events already (Iam not 100 percent sure about this tho, but I think it was the third sci-fi event already). And after the praise from the previous event (you can use TWO cards from other themes than fantasy, just wow), they change it back, because maybe TOO MANY people participated before, and they dont want that to happen much? I just dont know, I dont play sci-fi, but even for sci-fi those cards werent THAT good. (Iam not even going to mention Barbrady and Starvin Marvin, as they were in just so we cant say that there are two neutrals for EVERYBODY to use). Also, fantasy event had two reward slots filled with clothes, this sci-fi didnt. (just remember, first time fantasy event, third time sci-fi)

DE-RANKING: In their latest stream, they said that they despise DE-RANKING. I never did this, but as a legend player maybe a week before the rewards, I cant imagine falling down 2000 ranks just to be frustrated with an event that in the end doesnt even reward that much. I saw people going mental for 2000 coins - you can get that almost daily. Still, I cant use all the mats just for some event where devs throw darts into random cards to chose and then laugh in the stream at rank 34 how they pwn ppl (I loved how mecha timmy bugged in the stream and controleld man-bear-pig forever, they didnt even say a word about that). When I tried the second Hanky event, it was maybe the most painful experience I have ever had in a multiplayer game - it wasnt even grind, it was making the game completly frustrating. But back to de-ranking - If you dont want to make people de-rank, do something with the whole structure of events and PVP packs. You couldnt have possibly believed that people are honorable and wouldnt do this when you designed the game - or maybe you could, as in the streams and in the posts you seem so innocent, happy and naive about everything (thats just my opinion again, but just saying, people in this time are not very patient, they want instant gratification and they may not even know it - they will not wait for THE FUTUREEE, if they can have things now).

So in conclusion - the events are not real events. They are glorified grind with different cards, that vary on frustration level depending on which theme you play, which rank you are at and which cards did you level up, just to give you (in most cases) meagre rewards. They are here so the devs can "tick off" their weekly task to "do something NEW each week", or to make people wih weak will to buy packs to upgrade the cards they would never use anyway (I know everyone wants to get money but this is too "in your face").
Really think about it, after a month we got ONE new card that most people didnt even get or play if they did, 3 card specific themes in a row, and one week where they couldnt even put some random thing into the locker so we can farm it. Was it FUN? IS this the definition of having FUN in a GAME? Have we all become sheep that are over the moon with upgrading their paladin butters ONCE to give him +1 after grinding out an event? Again, I KNOW you dont have to do the events, and I KNOW I dont have to play the game at all. But I want this game to be good and successfull, its South Park after all.
And before you start writing - "so make up some better ideas for events" - I dont know about the game technical specifications, so I dont know how much can be or cannot be done and with what amount of effort. But I would personally like more fun and originality, even with less rewards (the rewards are bad anyway).
In the end, the only thing I wanted to do was to make you think more critically - if something is better than it was before, doesnt mean its good overall. And if someone read this whole wall of text, congratulations to you. I hope it made at least a bit of sense.

[Geerti95]

I agree with you on most points but not all.
In my opinion there are still to many hackers and almost everyone wants it to be fixed by now.
Priority should be hackers but after months still nothing.
To complete the event i spend 5000 coins on scifi... the cards where actually pretty good... alian queen program stan awesome.. butters...
For me completing it was a lot of work but not hard.
The rewards dis dissapoint a lil but because there was more effort involved ... instead of 125 or 165 you had to score 200...
There not being clothes was nice but dissapointing as the rewards where not that spectacular.
Not compared to some other events.
I am also f2p... and I enjoyed the event and think this is a good thing so people will try new decks.
Generally i play adventure so had to make a huuge switch and it went so well despite that...
For me they should first fix the game itself, the hacking, the mecha timmy and some stat balancing.
I would be absolutely okay with it if they fixed the hacking but they didnt. So that is just lazy and unprofessional.
New cards are fine but they shouldnt be priority.. the hacking and bugs should be fixed first..
After that some card rebalancing especially mecha timmy...
since they did not do either of those I agree with you that they are not doing a good job at all.

I can however easily make up a fun and friendly event for everyone.
Make a separate route in pve...
Like a fighting stage... make it challanging and at the end a fun bossfight like for example ... beat lord randy...
The route consists of 5 stages...
Each stage getting harder.
Last stage is the lorde randy bosfight. Other stages can have fun mini bosses. Or eveb the possibility to introduce new cards... as a bos... like they do in all other chapters.
Or even a new card as boss at the end.
Points would be based on stages cleared and the stages level.
For example level 1 gives 1 point.
But the second stage of level 1 gives 2 points ... 3th stage 3 points and so on. For every stage. For the boss level 3 points could be given and increasing by 3 for ever chapter so... boss level chapter 1 gives 3 points ... boss chapter 2 gives 6 points.

Because the new players could grind all the lower levels this is both doable for powerfull high level players as low level players.
For example a low level could grind the first 5 chapters for all levels... but a high level could grind only the boss level to very high chapter and get the rewards.. possibilities are endless this way.. have difficulties with one stage.. try another one.
You could make the goal 300 points for example and like the usual events every time you reach a certain amount of points give rewards. On top of that the stages could give rewards aswell.

This events added contebt to the pve would be bennificial to all of us but could also only be open for a limited time.

So no, its not that hard to make up an event...

For me the hack fixing should take priority over everything before the hackers end up with all rewards.

[Zel4sh]

Yes, well the server stability and dedicated servers (which would help with cheaters and hackers, maybe also with the pre-game quitters) should have been the priority even before lunch. There are many posts about that, but I just wanted to show how easy is to make us happy with something that isnt even that great of a content. And I dont want this game to go stale just because "the community" wasnt a bit more demanding - as we are going to get the servers soon which means (I hope) cheater free game. After all this time after release. And when it happens, some people would see that as some NEW and GREAT update/work and praise the developers for that, while it should have been with us since the beginning and they should have been making NEW content, not fixing the bugs that were here from the beginning. Its like I would start teaching at school a subject I know nothing about, and tell everyone to wait till I learn it myself, and then be praised, forgetting the half a year I did almost nothing important. I think players got so used to being test subjects for the game companies that it got out of hand and they accept being beta testers for fully released games with a thank you.

[Geerti95]

Yeah, spot on. Exactly what I am thinking aswell xD

[Xoulrath]

I'm just going to throw out my opinions on your posts in no particular order.

First of all, we can say "they should have done this, they should have done that" all day long. The reality is that they didn't. So at this point, yes they need to fix the hacking and a few other glitches. But as someone who has some experience with programming, and several friends who are full on programmers, I can promise you that it isn't as easy as you may think. Again, yes they should have had these issues fixed in beta, but they didn't. They know there is a problem, they have said they are working on it.

Second, as for card releases, I can assure you that you don't want more than about one new card every month or two. It can easily cause massive game imbalance for starters. And it can quickly become overwhelming trying to keep up with all of the new cards that you want to add to your deck.

Number three: the events are fine. They aren't perfect, but there isn't anything inherently wrong with them. So they have theme focused events. Great! I play Sci-Fi/Fantasy main deck and this event was of huge benefit to me. On a side note, I didn't put much effort into the Fantasy event as I just wasn't in the mood to play the game at all at the time. No biggie it happens.

I'm not sure what other games you play that have massive, sweeping changes during their events, but this is a pretty typical model, at least for a new game. Clash Royale has been out for two years now, and only in the last few months has the game really had some interesting additions (2v2, Football mode). Other than that, Clash events are pretty much just "here, play this event, use these cards, win this."

As per the de-ranking, well that's a problem that really isn't so easily fixed unless they tighten up the PvP Ranks more. I know that I, for one, and not even going to bother to hit 35 until my cards are at a level that I am comfortable with. So once I was about to flip to 34, I just started using a secondary deck with weaker cards. Win-win for me as I get to try out new strategies (even though I know I will more often than not lose), and I drop several ranks. More recently, I decided that I wanted to use some of my completely neglected cards so I dropped all the way to mid 20s to do so. Of course, unlike most players who drop, I didn't do it to troll. But even so, without simply making a wall every 5 levels, you are going to see players drop.

Now I do agree that they will need to get more creative with events in the future. They at the very least need to add a third type of event that allows us to earn points in a different way than the two we have so far.

With regards to what could be done in the future, well they have a lot of potential options. I personally wouldn't mind seeing an all Commons or all Rares event (regardless of theme). 2v2 is a potential option (though for events that can be frustrating if you get a lackluster partner). They could always go with the tried and true double energy event (these are fun but they definitely favor certain cards and can be irritating). Then with time, they should be able to make a different mode of play that they can bring out for some of the events.

But at this point, I think the fact that I didn't have to deal with two outfit pieces that I couldn't care less about, and getting guaranteed Epics, makes this event great for me (as I mentioned in a thread that I started).

Welp, that's my $0.02 (or $0.20 lol).

[Zel4sh]

Just the point with new cards and outfits - I didnt mean to write it like I need new cards or outfits, just that the introduced cards werent really that good or impactful. I would rather have less cards that can be used than the opposite (and I dont like outfits at all, they just take the spot of another possible pack).
Well, yes, Clash Royale is running for longer. Thats enough time to see what worked and what didnt, and learn from your competition. And the decision not to do separate mode for events (like tournament mode in CR) where you wouldnt drop ranks or dont need to level up useless cards is still very strange. I doubt friendlies will change that, as friendlies are super easy to abuse in events. But with a separate mode, you could have an event when every card you had in your deck was a variation of one existing character, like 4 types of kennies, or something like that. Or a mode where you would only see the cost of the card, and it would play random character of that cost (hearthstone is good example with its brawl system). Even that Hanky event would be awesome, with amazingly randy leading the band of underused cards vs other underused cards.

Last thing - just because most games nowadays are half - finished on release doesnt mean every game should do it, or we should be ok with it. Or that competition is lazy with events, we will be lazy too. This is South Park after all, it has a brand, and they have lore, units, sounds, fan following - almost everything set, perfect starting position - shouldnt that help?

[Geerti95]

2v2 ... that seems pretty fun :O

I would love a 2v2 mode
But not more then 2 on 2.

[Geerti95]

that the introduced cards werent really that good or impactful

I fear that this will get worse since they will make the epics and legendaries better...
That's very dangerous to touch those.
Right now the balance of common rare epic and legendary make it so all cards seem to be pretty usefull.
If they do buff the epics and legendaries to hard this will get waay worse :\