If you do halloween stuff each year on this server, you most likely know prontera zombie event and how shitty designed it is. Idea alone isn't that bad, but execution is really bad. Since Terp has hard time admitting failure and agreeing on someones else improvements, let's show that it isn't just 1 or 2 people that are tired with this bullshit.
First, let's list problems with this event:
1. It's fucking BORING and too time consuming
This is the main problem with it. This event is walking. And that's all. Really. And you have to do the same exact mindless, boring walking from few dozens of times to few hundreds of times. There are no surprises. In my case it wasn't that bad because I already had few hats from last year so I had to farm "only" 370 tickets (gave up last hat and stopped at 320 after over dozen of hours), people who joined within last year had it worse. Not to mention one of the hats has bonuses at refines, including +9. If someone works or something and doesn't spend all his time on the PC, but only something like 2 hours daily, he has to do nothing else but this shit for a week or two.
2. It's easy to manipulate
Because we have stat resetter, everyone just switch to 120 agi, luk, vit builds to get over with it faster. On top of that swordman class has great hp regen and thief class has free, additional flee. When almost everything misses you anyway, you can just set up macro for it.
Another problem is AI is dumb. You can rush just one or two entrances and soon those entrances will be almost completely devoid of monsters. Then even without resetting build you can just walk in straight line. You'd need multiple people entering the event to tp monsters at good rate. Also additional warp in the north.
Warp placement also isn't perfect. Might as well just rush one warp for statistical 1/3 chance, it isn't much worse timewise, and definitely is less suffering.
So how do we improve it to be more enjoyable? Here are some options:
1. Increase stakes and give incentive to go to all warps
If people have no stake in it, they don't care. By increasing stakes we can make people pay more attention and vision of losing something you worked for is enough to keep things interesting. It works similar to gambling. This can be done by increasing rewards for consecutive wins. It can be either multiplicated or it can always add flat amount. for example:
multiplier of 2
1 win in a row = 1 ticket
2 wins in a row = 2 tickets
3 wins in a row = 4 tickets
4 wins in a row = 8 tickets
or flat amount of 1
1 win in a row = 1 ticket
2 wins in a row = 2 tickets
3 wins in a row = 3 tickets
4 wins in a row = 4 tickets
or flat amount of 2
1 win in a row = 1 ticket
2 wins in a row = 3 tickets
3 wins in a row = 5 tickets
4 wins in a row = 7 tickets
etc
Of course death would reset the counter and player would be building the streak from scratch, getting low amounts of tickets and increasing it again. This gives incentive to visit other warps if the closest one isn't the one insetad of dying asap and rushing same closest warp again for statistical 1/3.
In case of reward being multiplied there would be need to make the event harder because it'd grow pretty fast. Flat amount of 1 or 2 would be easily fair amount for current difficulty, maybe with increased hit rate on monsters in case of 2 so you wouldn't be able to flee evade everything. There wouldn't be even need to play with AI because walking over whole map would force tp monsters.
If you want to be fair, adding safezone in starting position, similar to the one in Fire Basin would be nice to prevent osing streaks just because monster is randomized exactly on starting tile, although it isn't big deal considering people reset builds anyway so everyone can start with few k hp.
This change is enough to fix this piece of shit event and I advise to implement it in any case. But let's see other possible attractions.
2. Additional objectives
We have whole fucking map full of monsters and just 3 warps. Additional objectives can be in various forms. It can be quests, for example saving someone, as in finding lost (randomized position) NPC. Buildings could be strongholds of survivors and you could be messanger or you would have to deliver meds or some other supplies to people in need. There are many scenarios. I'm not super creative so I'd just seek inspiration in zombie movies or something.
Another thing could be adding shiny monsters that drop something. Like 1 monster of each type on the map. They could have MvP-like spawn pattern, just with huge time variation. For example spawns every 1 hour with variation of 3 hours which means it can spawn in 1 to 4 hours.
3. Competition
Each day, or every few days player with highest count of something could be rewarded for the effort. It could be total amount of wins, longest survival time, amount of quests completed, highest win streak, highest amount of monsters killed or whatever. Of course each check scores should be resetted. I advise making tickets prize for this, not something special like unique gears, because records always require huge dedication or some autism and events shouldn't be about that + the point of this thread is the opposite of spending 24/7 in this zombie snorefest.
4. Randomization
Randomization is often the easiest and one of the most effective ways to make things less boring. Randomized starting location seems like the easiest option here. Another option would be replacing 3 static warps with 1, always sure warp, but its position would be randomized. This also encourages walking all around the map, but I'd still limit possible positions to buildings and gates or something. Not to mention NPC mentions warping people into random places sometimes.
5. Additional ticket sources
In case you are retarded or worse at game design than I thought and think suggestions above are OP or something, at least make tickets obtainable from other sources like candy holders, event monsters etc. And if you don't want even that then at least enable butterfly wings on the map so players wouldn't have to look for monsters to kill themselves during rushing just 1 warp to lessen their suffering.
Other suggestions are welcome in this thread.
Of course event should be changed for next year halloween. Changing it now doesn't have sense because event is nearly end, and it wouldn't be fair towards all those players who already put the effort to go through this shit.
And Terp, I know that the moment you read how you can cheese this zombie shit you'll rather think about how to make it harder and not cheesable insetad of how to make it fun enough to no need for cheesing it out of boredom. Cease this faggotry at once. You know how much work you put intot he server, it'd be shame if all of it was wasted because you go overboard with your idea of what "real RO" is "difficulty". There is huge difference between difficult challenge and mindless, boring grind. Currently even mindless solo farming of juperos is much more interesting than zombie event. This is general advice because zombie event isn't the only example of your tendency to go overboard, but this thread is just for zombie thing. Don't be a hypocrite who talks shit about mindless, shitty, not really needed work and does event which is exactly the same thing, just digital insetad of real life.
I got unmotivated after like 50 tickets or something, and that's a really small amount lmao.
