Light of the Immortal - Developer Follow Up

[Sparton_LOTB]

This post is a follow up for the Light of the Immortal event that ran last weekend.

Our team sat down and discussed the event, its implementation, and the learnings for the future. This event in particular is a great opportunity to bring the community into our process on event design and its particular goals given that this is similar to an event that ran approximately a year ago.

The goal of the event was to replicate what we offered last year but with a more even distribution of 5 star characters acquired across our players. Everyone should have been able to get 2-4 Immortal souls during the event (team speed/Ironite permitting).

Since the aim was for a more balanced experience where all our players could walk away with at least 1 high value Eddie, my solution was to use event challenges. These challenges provided a very clear goal to get one Immortal Soul, and if you completed them all, you’d have solid progress on getting a second.

Overall, that worked as intended; a far higher percentage of our player base got at least one soul during this year’s event compared to last year’s version.

Last year also had a target of approximately 4 souls. However, due to a variety of unforeseen factors, there was a massive disparity of early to mid game players literally getting nothing, and some late game players receiving a very large amount of Souls (in excess of 10-15 in some cases). While that was a windfall for some, it wasn’t balanced or fair for all.

Ultimately, while we understand that people were expecting the event to be as generous as last year's, we wanted to be open and transparent about how we got to this point. We believe the game will be more enjoyable if we better distribute the ability to collect high-value characters throughout the year rather than piling that into a single event. This is why we have introduced Frontier Coins, Lilith Souls, and Heroic Souls, and are working on more ways for you to get the specific characters you want.

We’re working with an ever evolving experience, and your feedback is important as we move forward.

[edsel]

This type of event is my fave. Waking up after the team runs all night to a pile of rewards is VERY rewarding. I ran over 1k ironite and ended up with 2 souls and 38 frags for next year. Many resetting server errors while starting the trooper auto feature happened each night when I was setting up the team to run while I slept. Despite this frustration the drop rate of fragments was quite low, as it should be for hi value Eddies. How could someone get 15 of these in last year's event?

Please run this again or something like it that can utilize extra fragments for Immortal soul.

[blade685]

2 or 3X less shard drop since last year i think
my case:
I played 2 days just not during my sleeping time and: 1 from 500 event shards, 1 really drop and stuck to 479 because of very bad drop particular at the end of event = impossible for me to reach the 500 for the 3rd
All players are very angry because normally it was the best event of the year and finally a disaster

For me a good compensation is:
- for all players near of 500 = gift shards to reach 500 for one soul
- If you won 2 souls (1 from 500 event shards, 1 really drop) = 1 soul gift
- If you won 3 souls (1 from 500 event shards, 2 really drop) = 2 souls gift --> my case
- If you won 4 souls (1 from 500 event shards, 3 really drop) = 3 souls gift ---> impossible with my drop rate

And if you play all the month for example changing the last day gift with a new famous soul(choose what character you want) that all players want

[MrFreeze]

I obviously don’t have the data to look at, but I gotta think the reason a handful of people (can’t imagine it was many) got 10-15 of them, was because they busted their ass playing for 2 days straight. I don’t remember how many I got, 4 or 5 maybe. I remember I couldn’t play much one of the days.

Once an account gets to where most of ours are, you need 10–15 of them just to have a chance at not getting a dupe. It’s good you guys are finally trying to do something about unobtainable characters, but it’s too little too late I think. Personally, I can’t bring myself to farm the same stuff over and over any more (it’s been almost 2 yrs). Slow progress has killed it for me. Give me something new to do in a timely fashion, and I’d love to have my interest in this game renewed.

[JJJ428]

I would love to know how people were unable to get anything last time. Once again I think they look at metrics and maybe don't look past the raw data to try and figure out the why behind it.

At the time I was maybe a 4-5 month player at the time and I busted my ass and got 6 immortal souls and that's only because I had the team for the gunner dungeon and not the assassin dungeon so I just stopped when it became unprofitable to keep trying to clear it. With the drops rates for last year there is no reason for even a low level player to have not gotten one unless they just weren't interested. Another thing I doubt you will be able to "measure" is how many players will quit because of this event, this was hyped for almost a year a lot of long term players expected to get 5-6 souls again if not more and we either had ironite stored or was willing to drop money to this game, and with RNG the way it is I need 10-15 souls to have a chance at the two eddies I am missing. But because this event was so terrible I stopped at 2.

Also because this event was so bad I really am not motivated at all to even care about the current event, it has nothing to do with how the current event is structured, rewards, or anything related to it, I am just demotivated by this immortal event. That is why just looking at raw numbers is not always the best way to look at an issue.

[Sparton_LOTB]

I would love to know how people were unable to get anything last time. Once again I think they look at metrics and maybe don't look past the raw data to try and figure out the why behind it.

Both the absolute number of people who got 1+ was up and the percentage of our playerbase that got 1+ was up (averaged across the days of the event). So even accounting for far more people playing now than 1 year from now, it's up in every meaningful way we looked at it.

Obviously the average amount of souls people got out of those who got at least 1 is down, but the intent was for 2-4 to be obtained by the most dedicated players, so the average being lower was expected.

Also because this event was so bad I really am not motivated at all to even care about the current event, it has nothing to do with how the current event is structured, rewards, or anything related to it, I am just demotivated by this immortal event. That is why just looking at raw numbers is not always the best way to look at an issue.

Your feelings (and their lack of obvious presence in data) is absolutely relevant, I agree, and the tuning of certain events in the future and the framing of how we communicate these kinds of events in the future will take this kind of situation into account.

Also, much like JJJ428 I'd been playing almost 5 months for the first immortal event. Pretty sure I got 4 or 5 Eddies. Needing only one from the list now, my odds are super low to get it. So, more drops would have benefited new players more than long term players who would just have gotten fodder for sacrifice.

If "more is always better" were true, we'd just tune the drops to be able to give infinite rewards and be done with it. There's obviously a balance to be struck.

As noted in the original post, there's more resources to be earned and more ways to get higher-tier characters than the same point last year. The tuning of the event had to change to reflect that, or we completely devalue everything from Legendary Souls, to Heroic Souls, to things like Cyborg Eddie Fragments (and Piece of Mind, and Vampire Hunter, etc). There's an argument to be made about how tightly we tuned it, and there's been great suggestions to improve this (or similar) events in the future, though, and we plan on taking all of that feedback into account with future events.

I couldn't participate in the event because the frags dropped at levels 7-10 in the Dungeon. I was only able to clear level 6 at the time.

The event last year allowed getting fragments at any floor, including Floor I. I literally used the same drop tables as last year, just pasting over older values with revised ones.

The drop rates are better the higher you go, like with any of our events that have this structure, but we've never made it so you needed to clear a certain floor or higher to be able to get fragments.

BUT, that being said, us veteran players who were around for the first Immortal Soul event and who were told that it would be even better this time around have a reason to feel cheated. There really isn't much reason for us to keep on playing, especially for those who don't have time or desire for PvP, other than taking care of our fellow troopers and rounding out our collection of characters.

I absolutely misjudged when I said the event would be "better", no doubt about it. It basically came about for two reasons:

• The only real complaint I recalled from last year's event was people not realizing how much of a grind was needed to get even one soul. I knew that with event challenges I would be able to solve this problem.
• That comment was made well before I sat down and reviewed projections about how many souls people would be able to get from this event (if you think the most people would have gotten was 15, you're way off)

Since the method of solving problem 1 is effectively another soul in the bag for anyone who's going hard at the event, that's why I figured it would be worth saying it would be "better" publicly, but I didn't take the whole picture into account. That's definitely something I'll be more mindful of in the future.

what also makes me sad and angry is that NF does not see that actually changing the event was a mistake and a big one, for them it was really a success apparently.

The world isn't so black and white that I could say "it was a success" or "it was a failure". We had a goal, and we made significant inroads on players getting at least one of the high-value reward without trivializing the effort needed to get it, but had missteps with other ways of measuring the success of the event (which at the very least starts with the sentiment some players have of it and future events).

[Zerynx]

The event last year allowed getting fragments at any floor, including Floor I. I literally used the same drop tables as last year, just pasting over older values with revised ones.

The drop rates are better the higher you go, like with any of our events that have this structure, but we've never made it so you needed to clear a certain floor or higher to be able to get fragments.

I then, apologize for my memory on that matter. Perhaps I felt I was getting a low drop rate, and it would have been better at higher levels. I do remember a lot of older players loving the event and being frustrated that I wasn't getting anywhere. So I do appreciate that matter trying to being addressed. Too bad i couldn't have cashed in last year.

I absolutely misjudged when I said the event would be "better", no doubt about it. It basically came about for two reasons:

That's definitely something I'll be more mindful of in the future.

I gotta say, I commend you for coming in here and trying to explain. I'm sure this wasn't at the top of your list today.

[Saigrim]

Considering the amount of people that were pulling the exact same two or three toons, mostly Visions and Viking, tells me the percentage rate between toons was not evenly split. Way too much for coincidence sake. Just more lip service to explain away the fact the event sucked for a lot of us.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

[Askora]

My guess wasn't too far off.

[JJJ428]

We can keep taking it or we can leave. Complaining does nothing when the data shows people don’t play anymore maybe then they will listen.