Pumpkin Crowns: the good, the bad

Firstly, I'd like to begin by stating IMO that the crowns were a great idea on the dev's part.
They brought people to actually participate in events. The events were NOT boring until after about 20 minutes and then the Mad Thorn King starts to repeat himself. The actual AI provided user-game interaction that is unseen elsewhere. Items couldn't be traded for gold, another good move on their part.

I don't know anything that can really constitute as bad, so I'll leave that up to you people. Constructive criticism for the devs always seems to get attention.

EDIT: Happy Halloween! Ingame treats are fun...

Kind of a useless topic IMO. It's just a nice little holiday gift/game...

I enjoyed the king says game w/ emotes...very creative and a great way to put to use some emotes that never get used; on the other hand..it's pretty funny how not so many people caught on to what was happening during the game.

afterwards i enjoyed a little witch brew, squash sirum, and the absinthe (sp?) fun..while spamming the monsters in a box i had recieved for being a good listener...old but funny jokes too

thanks dev's; great idea

As far as the event goes, Anet has pretty much been right-on with what pleases us, the players. They've given us an event that promotes community interaction, and have even rewarded us with little gifts which are pretty neat in my opinion

The only uncertainty I have is in the 2:30 hour wait between visits by the king. Hopefully, the event will go on a bit past midnight tonight, and everyone will have a fair chance at their pumpkin head

Hmmm Yes i love this Update
/clap for ArenaNet

only bad thing tho is i was only able to get the pumpkin for my necro.........and i want it for my other 3 characters as well.....i also think that the mad king should appear in ascalon since noobs who just joined the game will not be able to get a pumpkin head and will complain much later on. i also believe that the Mad King should last at least a week since some of us HAVE HOMEWORK!!!!!!!AND JOB!!!!!!!!!!!gahhhhhhhhh.

One question that springs to mind. Are you more vulnerable to +x% damage vs plants weapons when wearing it..

ROFL!

I heard that you can put runes into the pumpkin but cannot dye them. It would be better if Anet could modify the pumpkins a little so players can PvE with the pumpkins but not lose armour.
If not, they should certainly be dyeable IMO.

I managed to get a pumpkin for all my characters and have got myself a fair amount of goodies too. My monk has got 3 pumpkins, lol!

Fantastic event Anet and that Mad King Says is probably the funniest thing i have witnessed in GW! So many people...simply unable to read. Hahahaha.
You all deserve a treat!

I love how the NPCs interacted with people. It seemed quite flawless in my opinion.

From the npcs running around screaming, to the dead krytan on the floor who says your name when you stop on him, to the Mad King who picks people from the district to play rock paper scissors with him. Very nice job with the AI

It would be better if they were not customized. Those who acquired them should have the right to sell them to other players for high prices if they want to. If the other players didn't wanna buy them, no one would force them to.

It also sucks that they have no armor. They don't have to be uber or anything, but it would have been good to give them a decent armor level so they can at least be used during normal gameplay.

Look at RS and what happened with Santa Hats. THAT IS A DISASTER THAT SHOULD NOT SPREAD TO GW. Just my two cents.

I would have liked it if you could wear it as a sort of hood over your existing helm. THAT would be fun.

Big applause for the devs over at Anet, and thanks.

Absoloutly not, the results of every single aspect of in event will be analysed for days I should imagine!

This will be a turning point in what people will now expect to come in future events, not just for festive things, but possibly for actual in-game story line events..

It all 'seemed' automated very well therfore they could have these kind of mini-events going on in other places, the idea interacting with balthazaar himself sends shiver down my spine, also, this adds depth to the game that would make leveling seem more insignificant.

personally, Im fedup with online ROLE player games, turning out to be just min/max power stats / grinding games whos story line is boring tedious and un-inspiring with no REAL role-playing involved at all.

Its pretty obvious that people will do ANYTHING or pay anything to get hold of rare unique items, im one of them.. i dont care if its useless in pvp or whatever.. it will be added to my collection or strange items

The one big problem with all the items this haloween is that it means I now have 5 slots taken up, permenantly.

I think that just as adding new proffesions means we get more slots, it should also mean that if there are more items in the game, there is more need for space! - Comon ANET, its about to you addressed storage space

How is it useless, I just want to see what other people think of it as a holiday item...

It also allows the Devs to consider what they did right and what was done wrong

I smell Christmas Cracker with the Halloween Items (RS players will know this).

In Runescape Christmas Crackers were dropped on Christmas, yes DROPPED, no event required to sit through or anything to get it - they just dropped thousands of them onto the landscape. They were 1 use only also (like the Halloween items in GW) - you pulled it on a partner and it disappeared and you or the other person gets a partyhat (which are another item I am refering to).

Skip a year...Christmas Crackers are THE most expensive item in the game.

Skip another year...Christmas Crackers are insane - and the entire economy has focused around buying it - and the similar items (like party hats). Theres a gap where anything useful costs about 10million tops (money is easier to get in that game). And those all cost 60million+.

Not saying that a huge money suck isn't bad for the people that collected more money than they can actually use (farming and such) though....

FORESEES FEATURE (If the Horseman are removed and the halloween items are not avialable after today): A year from now, I login, and get offered 250 Ectos for my Witch's Brew...

my views

1. I think its pretty obvious horsemen will disappear and not sell that stuff after tomorrow or soon after.
2. Whoever said its stupid because of christmas hats is an idiot. The pumpkin heads are instantly customized = no resale value
3. The only things that will gain in value are one use items but not by a lot because they're useless. Dont konw anybody willing to pay over 1K for something that is one use and useless.

He was obviously referring to the witches brew and collector items. Which better be made untradable or they will destroy the economy of guild wars. (It happened in Runescape and the devs regret it 100%)

Just a side note: the Ghost-in-a-boxs are NOT useless, since when the little summoned ghost dies, it triggers soul reaping. Thus they're effectively energy potions for necromancers.

Who the hell cares if a year from now people are offering 250 ectos for a witches' brew? If you're stupid enough to pay ridiculous amounts of money for a "useless" item then that's your problem. And stop comparing this to RuneScape, I can't even begin to tell you how different GW and RuneScape are to one another.

EDIT: And how many times have we heard of the "doomed economy" because of such and such items? People said the same thing about green items and it's been about two months since Green Items were introduced and the economy hasnt been "doomed"

He was refering to the Halloween Items.

And YOU.WOULD.BE.SURPRISED.

There are people that have 100k on each account, and 1mil in the storage, and ectos out their mouth that would just LOVE to collect up "rares".

The dev's in Runescape didn't think Crackers/Santa Hat/Halloween masks/etc would be a problem since they were one use (cracker/Easter Egg/pumpkin) or had no stats (masks/hats).

THEY WERE WRONG...Those are THE most expensive items in Runescape...nothing "useful" is within 40million dollars of their price..

Yep..all for an egg, or cracker you can use once..or a Mask that has no stats.

Jagex (the RS devs) kills themsleves alittle everyday for letting that happen (and every holiday item since is non-tradable [customized in GW terms])

I am not comparing the 2 games. I am comparing their history and thier economy. GW does not want these items to be worth 250 ecto. If they did, they would cost 250 ecto! Not 3 stinking charr hides. BTW potions for necros could never be worth a lot. I'm just saying I think we need to keep a merchant in Lion's Arch who trades those items for 5 charr hides and he says something like, "I found these underneath one of the candy corn giants. Do you want to buy some?" thatway the economy wont crash and they will go up in price for a general amount.


BTW I got that useless halloween mask. :P

Let the idiots pay their 40 million for a cracker. It sure doesnt affect me at all. And I dont see why you should care so much either.

at least RS learned there lessons

Bunny Ears and sickles were untradable

I care because I care about the future of item drops. If the devs see something like that happen they might say, "Our players aren't trustworthy, looks like we will have to take away events." BTW if you want to see something rediculous I can show you a page showing some halloween items in rs. Think of it as a foreshadow of what may be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneSca...#Holiday_Items

http://www.runescaperealm.com/module...d=28#di scont

This...isnt....RS.

RS is a mainly RPG game where items and grind are the focus. And basically there isnt much else to do in that game. So naturally such stupid useless rare items such as crackers would be the focus of such entertainment starved fools.

And besides....everyone and their grandma now has at least a dozen of each Halloween collector's item thanks to the numerous Mad King appearances and ease of collecting materials for these items.

I seriously doubt that there's a lack of Halloween trinkets...even a year from now.

True, everything we are talking about is years in the future..

But when you look in the future where drops have to be modified because bones and leather tanned hides cost 1k each..and such..all because EVERYONE is overpricing trying to make enough ectos to buy the Witch's Brew - and you look back..it gets insane.

This is the future problem..not an item that costs alot...Its how it effects everything else.

EDIT:
Firstly - for the before quote - It hasa NOTHING to do with the game...Its the PLAYERS - Rich players of ANY game will ALWAYS want to collect all the expensive trickets that they can...Look at all the people screaming for the removed HoD swords..

Now the quote - The average number of Easter Eggs 1 person had at the end of the day when they were dropped in RS..was about FIFTY(between picking them up and buying them off people and the general store) - which happens to be about how many items I have after 2 Mad King appearences...You must remember a great portion of the items will go into hiding in storage accounts..and even more will be used up tonight (they are 1 use..like you have pointed out) - and the fact that as long as there isnt 400 of them being sold on every dist - the collectors of rare items wont care.




But in the end..it really doesnt matter..We all sort of think that they'll keep them avialable in some form..They already thought to cut the Crown's Tradability..they wouldnt let the items slip.

perhaps you should have kept reading the wiki page. You would have read the conclusion at the end.

"The RuneScape economy is constantly changing. It is these price changes that keep players on their feet. Since it is usually more profitable to sell to a player than to a store and is usually cheaper to buy from a player than from the store, prices are frequently going up and down and are seldom stable over any given length of time."

Nice to see people get so worked up about the disruptive effects of these funny but mostly useless items (even the ghost in a box is of very limited use, I would say. You cannot use it in pvp in any case).

I will eat my pumpkin hat if these items will 'destroy the economy' of GW.

In any case, the event was fun, and well done. I enjoyed the mystery, the speculation about it and the way everything was done. Nice event.

plus i think A-NET have the advantage of being able to learn from mistakes made by other games...

im confident they would have thought about this very carfully indeed, before putting them in.

Im guessing they would put something into the game to encourage you to use them up.

it was quite fun...
i kept laughing at those fools who kept dieing... /laugh
i'm only gonna do it only once... the wait between appearances is enough to just make me do this once.
thanks alot anet... you guys did a great job on this event... keep up to good work.

yeah, i'm waiting for thanksgiving and christmas specials.. special stuffed turkey helm.. lol

that is true

Okay, um, it is POSSIBLE that the Halloween items will end up like the RS items. The thing with party hats is that not many people played RS when they were distributed and when the population boomed, it was a hot commodity.

Of course, the same thing could happen in GW. Players always want the best of the best even if it doesnt provide statistical value and is purely a vanity item (look at FoW armor, how many are farming for that every day?). The thing is: I think that the devs will repeat this Halloween next year except mix it up a bit but keep the same items. This way, the items remain common.

Dont worry about it too much.

hmmmm....
Can you get the pumpkin crown infused?

Just a thought...

You can get it infused. Also you can put runes on it. Sadly putting a major or even superior absorption doesn't work as well since the helmet doesn't have a armor range!

Scenery+Graphical changes: A+
Excellent, loved every bit of it. The mood of the setting was great, and everything looked awesome. Particularly nice that they took the time to dress up the NPC's as well.

Suggestions for improvements
None. Everything was gorgeous, as usual. Great job Anet.

Halloween event implementation: C-
Meh, I despised waiting, unknowing, for the mad king. I sat there for a little over 2 hours waiting for him, and the only reason I knew to expect any general times at all was because of other players.
On my second RP char, I missed a pumpkin helmet because I was out hunting, and when I got there, I was just a teensy smidge too late.

Did you really want people checking in to Lion's Arch every 15-25 minutes to see if the event was on, and if they were missing anything? Not everyone has reliable sources of accurate information.

The event itself was fun at first, but even the first time through, it didn't take too long to get boring. Singling out players for Paper, Rock, Scissors, was an interesting idea, sure to be exciting for those players just to have the spotlight on them, but having had it myself... It was rather boring. Just the same as other emote games.
And then, when it was NOT my turn, it was even more boring. I could never track down the person that was chosen, and that was most likely the main reason I just couldn't connect with it.
I would rather it have been another general game for everyone, instead of eating up about 1/4th-1/3rd of the time.

Suggestions for improvement;
Make such interactive events more frequent, or stick a schedule on the website. As mysterious and in-role as it may seem leaving the info out, it alienates the less-informed crowd, and particularly annoys those of us who don't have the time or desire to stand around waiting for something that MIGHT happen for literally hours.
And/or realm-wide announcement, like the, "So and so has won the HoH", but more noticeable, once every few minutes about 10-15 minutes before the events would have been nice.

As for the Pumpkin Crown reward itself, making it auto-customized was a good idea. However, I think making it a customized item for a single character was rather poor.
I would have liked to see the character get the Pumpkin Crown in their inventory AND an account-wide unlock, like the pre-order items, so that people could have them for their future RP chars, and in the rare event something happens and they lose it. (Happened with the pre-order items, bound to do the same with these). Like the pre-orders, someone who somehow lost theirs could then type /halloween or some such command to get it back.
I've got one on 2 of my RP chars, and am AFK on my third in LA waiting for the Mad King again. Might even go to sleep AFK in LA if he doesn't come before I go to bed, since you don't have to actually do anything for the crown. (Which, by the way, a lot of people were doing towards the end of the day. 60% or so of the people I saw in LA died every single time, except for during Mad King Says, because they AFK'd just for the pumpkin helmet)


Overall, I give it a C+. You took a holiday potentially fun event, prettied everything up, but also managed to make it a boring grind much like Mining in the last game I played: Go somewhere, click, and AFK to get the item you want. What made it fun the first time through was the novelty, and if that's all it had going for it, then it can't have been very good.
But, a C+ is slightly better than average, you did put forth a lot of effort into the graphics, and it was fun for most of the first time through. Even if all future events were of similar quality, while they could be far better, I can't say I regret having waited for this event.

Edit: Was going off of the content of the first post, which didn't really emphasize the pumpkin crowns, if you're wondering why most of this isn't about pumpkins.

I suppose what bugs me most about it all is that the art team could find enough time to put out the immense changes for the halloween events but they couldn't finish off the 15k tormentors set?

It was annoying that the Mad King repeated some things, but other than that I thought it was fine. I personally would have preferred an "account customized" helmet (i.e., you only get one, and it has to be on your account, but you can give it to any character on that account) so I could give it to a new character or even a PvP character through storage. Also wish they had the standard 60 armor so at least you're not risking gigantic damage if a monster or player gets a head shot. (although it's possible they actually have 60 armor but unlisted - I don't think anyone's tested it for sure)

Other than that I thought the event was great. The visuals were awesome (personally I think Tombs should stay the way it is now, minus the pumpkins, as it fits) the candy corn henchmen were a great little bonus good for screenshots if nothing else that I hope they do a lot more of, and the Mad King part was flawed but still fun.

I give it a thumbs up and cannot help but say thanks to the development team for the effort to do something for us for the holiday. Everything leading up to the Mad King's arrival over the last few days was was great.

I have to admit I found myself wanting just a little bit more during the lead up while waiting for the king to actually arrive (maybe the skies darken, there's fog, there's more undead walking around - just some things like that to help those waiting and build a little anticipation). Assuming you didnt spend time waiting and didnt need or wish for a lead up, I also found myself wishing that when you saw the King more than once, he had a larger pool of things to say and things to do, so that it was different enough for up to 4 times (random probably) in case you found yourself doing it more than once, as many of us did.

That said, it was hilarious during Mad King Says to see the mass deaths. Could not figure out what was so complicated for some people during that, but it sure was entertaining.

Thanks Anet. Looking forward to another holiday.

Sorry for the stupid question, but does the pumpkin helm have an armor level?

Is it actually armor or is it just for show?

I'm pretty sure that the hat has 0 armor associated with it I Leeroyed it out into a group of Charr outside Piken and some of their attacks were doing 3-4 while a few were doing 9-12 :P