Assign gift drops to characters instead of making it a nasty free-for-all?

Apologies if this has been addressed and please close the thread if it was. I ran searches for "gift", "present", "festival" etc and explored a few current event threads, but I haven't seen it suggested.

So... last Wintersday festival, after the hats were given out, presents dropped in the hub cities and were assigned to players, just like item drops anywhere outside outposts. People were able to pick up their own gifts and eventually scrape up the ones left behind by absent players.

In today's event, the presents were dropped and free for anyone who could get to them first. People were camping known spawn points and screaming and swearing at sugar rushing snipers. My best friend and I had some fun picking up gifts in the morning, but by afternoon everyone was awake and online, and it was an ugly sight. We both gave up and logged off, because people were getting so territorial and angry over internet gifts that it simply wasn't fun anymore. The whole holiday mood was just over.

I'd like to point out that I'm not trying to be whiny about the gifts themselves -- I was up early and got plenty of presents, and I'm not the type to make long sobby posts over missing out on a handful of rice cakes -- but the atmosphere was less of "Yay, there's another present for me!" and more like "THAT WAS MINE YOU [censored]ING [censored] I'M GONNA [cencored] YOUR MOM!!1"

It wasn't like this on Wintersday. At least, nowhere near this extent. Is there a practical reason why we can't assign event gift drops?

ETA: Didn't wanna clutter up my own thread with posts. Just wanted to point out that there's still a free-for-all at the end, when the AFK players' gifts become open for all. It just sucks when the whole event's run that way.

/signed alot for future festivals

I returned lots of charges and got nothing for it as people with better Ping were all stood on the spawn points
Also when people are all yelling "YOU GREEDY ^$^%$ LET SOMEONE ELSE GET SOME &%&% PRESSENTS" it does definatly ruin the happy party event atmoshpere

I don't mind "useful" rewards such as cash, I don't mind "randomly" distributed rewards such as gifts being dropped on the ground, but mixing the two gets a bit iffy. Personally I didn't mind - it's free stuff either way - but it's a shame that so many people can't be mature about it.

If it was up to me, I'd make the gifts drop only stuff like firecrackers and champagne, while giving each player one set of whatever worthwhile stuff you want to give out like pets or cash and whatnot.

/notsigned

Because stealing people's gifts while moving 50% faster is fun,

Oh and the people raging, that adds to the fun :P.

i have had no problem before when things are dropped all around town for anyone to get but then i wasnt lagging every two seconds so managed to get my fair share. overal i think assining the drops would be alot fairer

ur just plain evil ecli[pse

/signed

People were pretty hostile during the dropping sessions. I joined a district and got told where to go by some guild. Saying they were there first etc

Christmas was a much niver atmosphere. Bring back assigned drops!

The drops do need to be individually assigned as before, especially considering the recent ridiculous lag issues. It is a simple and fair system.

/notsigned

Simply put, DEAL WITH IT. Get the boost, or deal with it. Call me harsh or W/E but, these pressies are nothing compared to the X-Mas ones. I mean COME ON! the best your getting is 1k, compared to CC's and what not.

Wile it is a shame to see some people handle it in such an immature fasion, take solice in the fact that they are that pissed over a virtual prize that is, well, worthless.

yeah when the gifts started dropping everybody entered horde mode and just started getting angry..

How are people supposed to JUST DEAL WITH lag? It can't be fun for the people overseas and those with poor connections/older computers. Plus, with all those people in every district, most of us slowed some. Even with the boost, if you're getting two frames a minute you're not getting diddly.

/signed to return event/festival present drops to an assigned.

Well, tis a shame, but I dont see that as a good basis for argument, A-Net wont change it around just because some people dont have a solid connection.

(BTW, hang out in the ID districts, you will go from a red dot to an orange, or perhaps the fabled green dot.)

so very much /notsigned

The free-for-all present game is the best thing in any of the events. What else are in-town speed boosts for if not for madly dashing about racing others to the spawn.

Baloney. I have a T3 line at school and CPU with 512 ram and a solid video card. I still get 1500 ms ping on a good day. Holiday weekends like this... more like 3000-4000 ms. There are some serious problems on a.net's servers reccently. If they want people to keep playing their game, they better make it playable.

I 100% agree, the lag has been terrible as of late, but just play through it. Your just hitting Semi-colon + Spacebar. Even at noon at the height of people being on, I was still pulling in 30 or so presents.

/notsigned

Reason why anet probably did this was because during the last Christmas event there were at least 900 presents laying around because people left there characters in the district for a hat. Leaving presents after a while these presents stack up. I got 120 presents on a crappy run in Kamadan on Christmas making them free for all got rid of the lag the stupid afk people would have caused leaving hundreds of presents on the ground.

Im on dsl and I don't lag a bit my video card is not up to date with the new ones and I have 512 ram and I have 120-150 ms ping usually lag for me is 1500 ms ping. Why don't you try -image and -nosound. Or just clean your computer of all your porn.

I preferred assigned drops. The atmosphere was unpleasant enough at this festival that I didn't come back after my first finale experience. It just wasn't fun.

/signed

People are greedy. Then they get abusive and angry.

I couldn't believe they didn't stick to the assigned method used during Wintersday.

/signed

There is something you guys are probably not seeing.

With assigned presents and the rain of present lasting for lets say 10 minutes and a present dropping every 30 seconds for each person you would get 20 presents.

Now with unassigned and the rain of present going on for 10 minutes and a present dropping every 30 seconds for each spawn point ,there is really no way to say how many more presents you could pick up.

I only participated in one of the visits and only picked up prices at one of th ose visits ,however because my district was medium to highly populated the place where i was standing had 7 present spawn points near it, so you can see where im going with this, at thats 30 second that presents spawn i could pick up 7 presents.

If i was really present crazy and had picked up all 7 presents each time i would have gotten 140 presents .

PS : I wasn't that crazy about the presents and every now and then someone would run past and pick up one of the presents on their way,not realizing that was a nice spot , I gave half the contents of my present to guildie.