Festival Hats no longer "Special"

Im sure i will get a lot of flame for this but I am of the opinion that festival hats dont feel special any longer.

I remember when i first saw that pumpkin crown on someone i nearly fell off my chair. It was so funny to see someone with a pumpkin head. Now its so commonplace that its no longer special.

Everyone has multiple hats and its really not hard to get all of them. You dont have to do anything but be standing in a spot in town.

I suggest a change to the way festival hats are given out. Make it Difficult to obtain so that there are not so many out there. Im sure some people can think of some more difficult ways to win a hat then just standing there.

Take for instance. King thorn. If you beat him at rock,paper,scissors. you win a hat. Least that will drop the winnings from 100+ people to 10 or less per showing. OR make it harder that you have to do all the emotes and not have king thorn kill you. This will stop people from parking there characters there and getting a free hat.

I'll let everyone else make big long flamey posts at you, but simply put: that ruins the point of the special hats. They're there to say "I was there" not to say "The AI picked me and I got this that that people spame me with 'lucky prick' when I wear"

Hats are not meant to be a form of identifying "1337" players. They're suppose to be used for fun. As a matter of fact, hats are only suppose to be used for show. They add no benefits to your character whatsoever. What's the point in having a festival if only 10 people out of 100 will walk away with something joyous?

Many people in Guild Wars (and Guru, apparently) think that titles are the way to show whether your character is "1337". If you wish to try and gain something that other will apparently praise you for, I would advise you gain a difficult title that, in most cases, adds no benefits to your character.

....you want to be set on fire dont you?

You seem to think that there are only a couple hundred people playing Guild Wars. If I'm not mistaken, there are at least more than 1 million players. Now only giving out around 500 hats from one event is just going to make the other 900500 people feel left out.

Really, the original Pumpkin Crown, Yule Cap and Horns of Grenth are still noticable. Plus, it's not even been a month since Wintersday, so of course a lot of people are still going to be wearing them.

you do realize that there are well over 3 million accounts on gw now? compared to the 250k accounts at game launch (chapter 1) Going with these numbers Im going to say almost a half of any player you see has one of the "newer" hats. Its still "leetsauce" however if you are, say, one of the 100k people who have a '05 Pumpkin Crown for those that look at it like that.

Not to mention, for 05 xmas and halloween, we all had no more than 4 characters per account- now extra campaign slots, and surely no store slots. these days it takes ALL DAY to get my 10 characters their hats, now I can just have fun with it again thanks to the hat maker..

yes it is easy to get any hat, and it always has been. but you say its easy "to get them all" as if you had some magic time travel device to go back in time.

that and yes when I see people wearing 05 hats, i know they arent noobs. so in a way the hats do show "leetness"

I don't think they have lost their "specialness" You still had to be there and we still have people whining that they didn't get one. I will say though that I will be a little upset if they bring the Tengu Masks out again...that was supposed to be for the prerelease of Factions ONLY.

I do wish however, that I wouldn't have trashed my original hats (lack of storage).

*passes the torch to someone else*

ANet gave us festival hats to have fun, why the hell would we have to work to get one? Festival = fun, keep it that way.

If there's a bunch of people bitching that they're too hard to get, and a bunch of people bitching that they're too easy to get, chances are excellent Anet has struck a good balance.

I propose they drop from DoA chest only, if you complete all 4 parts in one sitting.

There. That should do it.

You conflate 'commonplace' with 'bad'. I'm not sure why.

Resisting flamation, even though you seem to be wanting it...

It's a festival. They're festival hats. They are only for fun. Even more important, the festivals tend to coincide with "real world" holidays. Not everyone has the time to spend all of New Year's day or July 4th playing games to win hats, but should they be punished for having real life obligations on that 1 day even if they were present and active throughout the week? It would ruin the whole point and purpose of the festivals and the hats themselves.

I do not agree that they should be extremely difficult to obtain, but I definitely think that you should not be able to afk a hat. And I'm mad that anet only gives out the hats on one day throughout the entire event, that is definitely unfair especially on wintersday when alot of us are with family.

I do agree that hats are no longer as special as they used to be, with Paragons and Dervishs running around with generation 1 Pumpkin Crowns and Tengu Masks, but what difference does it even make? No tactical advantages there.

I for one know that they are no longer special because after I stored them on the hat guy I immediately destroyed them all with a great laughter because I no longer have to foolishly waste precious inventory space.

As for making hats harder to get... screw that. They are just stupid hats created for the enjoyment of yourself and others. Enjoyment being the key word here.

The spirit of festivals is that everyone should have fun and the festivities are open to all. Any kind of exclusiveness is directly against this spirit, and thus not called for.

The way we attain hats its absolutely fine. It needs to be simple and fun and NOT time consuming to make it enjoyable.

It also needs to be simple enough to tie into the 3 hour schedules. Something which would take no more then 15-30 minutes each time.

You also have to consider that this only happens over a one day period. Not everyone has the time during that day to take part in the entire festival. Some miss out on getting all if any of tha hats.

If the hat attainment was made more difficult and it took more time and effort to do, then your alienating alot of people who dont have that time and effort during christmas or hallowean.

People do tend to go to parties or family get togethers during these times you know.

And its just wrong to make the challenges individual as you suggested. Doing a one on one paper/rock/scissors challenge is a bad idea, because how are thousands of people going to do that? The NPCs which give away the hats only show up at set periods time for about 15-30 minutes. It wouldnt be possible to do individual tasks.

Do you honestly see people being patient and standing in an orderly line to speak to the NPC to do paper/rock/scissors? Of course not. People would surround him and in a mob to get a go. It would be chaos.

They way they do it now, by giving it to everyone within the district, or everyone who collects matierials, or everyone who copies an action is perfect.

It doesnt alienate anyone, it doesnt cause chaos. Its simple and fun.

Event hats should not be hard or challenging to get, and who cares whether everyone has them. Come next year when a new campaign is released, you will have all the new players asking you where you go it and you can feel all special again.

Sounds to me like your just annoyed because the kid next door has the same toy as you, and you cant show off anymore.