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M'aol Summon 2.0 post-mortem

Started by Beerstein [1322136] on in General Discussion.

62 replies · 1.55k views · thread synced · 3 days ago · View on torn.com
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  • Qfiffle [2557282] Committee · 33 likes ·
    I found it magical and great to be part of but I'm disappointed that as so often in Torn, there is little consideration of non-majority timezones. There's been two M'aol summons so far, both around my midnight (australia), and in …
  • Andyman [471591] · 19 likes ·
    The elephants in the room 1.) An event that relies on players being locked out from playing (traveling and/or sitting idle overseas isn't playing) to keep the game from crashing is an obvious issue. 2.) Strategically designed chaos is fun …
  • Qfiffle [2557282] Committee · 1 likes ·
    I'm not 100% sure of the demographic split but my gut sense is that our timezone is a lot lower represented, so even if an Asian timezone player gets it next time, long term over years, a much larger proportion …
Beerstein [1322136] · #1 · edited

A little early but wanted to go in fresh

 

Broader event

  • More minor and quickly addressed stability issues, great success with ramp up start.

 

Broad Picture Torn

  • Prize changes/distribution was great. The treat rewards really help spur people on. Overall huge success.
    • Would like to see a few more minor relics from each (the current being considered major) just for a little more broad excitement.
  • Minions a huge success as far as smooth and limited frustration.
    • Some decision making to be had here, hard to fly back and forth between longer distance countries but didn't feel left out despite it.
      • Improving mechanic could be M'aol moves to the last one as it's defeated (prevent the exodus trying to get ahead somewhat punishing those trying to finish the last minion)
      • I'm not sure if tickets count on failed attacks on the last 10% as I wasn't there, but if not it should be damage reduction to give fair tickets (maybe it is?)
  • M'aol moved too fast to even be moving at all.
    • Maybe a simpler just shift between Mexico and Canada (given flight times) would do here, mostly to protect the servers.
  • M'aol messed Torn servers up bad when in Tornhub.

 

Personal Experiences

  • Liked the organization, thanks Cthulu Discord participants, it's clear these are just too big to work against Torn from smaller groups. A huge plus for all participants.
  • Lost some energy on random resets on the first minion but nothing too painful, those that flew were refunded some energy which was cool. Thankfully I didn't, so a loss of energy but I'd rather have the extra hit chances.
  • Had plenty of energy through the means Torn gives us, still got tons available as I write this, so that's great!
  • As a level holder I had to be a bit picky about what, when and how I targeted minions, much easier to get 1 hit, harder to survive.
    • This resulted in a few hundred million in revive fees (many were around 15m with the peak being 23m) my revive % got below 50% despite my care, eek!
  • M'aol froze up in Mexico for a bit causing me to use newsletter refill (only abroad refill option) only to attack the NPC it SAID was in Mexico so I lost my abroad refill for nothing as it sat there frozen for a bit (sad times)
  • M'aol in Torn was a disaster for me, and I'd guess everyone a bit. Basically before total server collapse the queue time exceeded the 15 minute location duration, so that kinda sucked for a lot of us.
  • My rewards so far have been 2 small treat bundles which I wish were more, but RNG is RNG.
  • Overall pretty happy/successful, but see some areas for small QoL and enjoyment improvements.
  • Some periods where distraction just wasn't triggering for players during times of more severe lag.

 

At the end of the day, despite the pretty extreme event rewards, there are a LOT of reasons to spend those rewards right away in this event, it's big and feels great.

 

From the community, I think a more organized revive effort for next year would be a huge improvement, even if it's at 10m fees. I also see it as a way to make pretty extreme amounts of cash for newer players going a bit of revive/basket rather than NPC/basket.

 

Intrigued to hear others thoughts and experiences, and good luck to us all on M'aol loot!

 

Now for the logs...

 

 

 

Beerstein [1322136] · #3 · edited
  1. Correct but I was in Torn parsing through my revive fees anyway lol.
  2. Probably will! That's M'aol 2.1 but I don't see too much changing between 2.0 and 2.1
  3. Marios meatballs

 

I just don't see much more that'll be able to be added of value here between M'aol now and M'aol corpse.

SeaLion [250755] · #4

I just won't even chase him anymore. I sat in Hawaii when first came to Torn and there was no discernible time frame or damage point that he would move to the next country. After they moved him to Mexico it seemed like the would never move again, then they moved to Canada, and now finally hours later Hawaii. Whereas in the beginning there were dedicated times it would travel. This served to help distribute the load on servers and reduce time in queue for players, but if there is not some type of logical metric being followed then why will the players be inclined to travel in hopes they randomly move M'aol there. 

Krytical [3342314] · #5

Agreed, need some clarification about the moving times. He was in Mexico for 40+ mins so i hopped on a plane for him to move to canada 1 min before i land. I watched him then sit in Canada for about 1hr 20 mins so i payed 10 mill for a BCT for him to move to Hawaii 5 mins before i land.

Abetting [2016807] · #6

My theory is that the best two relics are on the first one and the third one, and those happen to be shorter flight times. 

 

Most probably don't care as much about the last 2, and they are far flight times so many probably either burn all their E hoping for higher quality relics and can't keep going or they just don't view it as worth over grinding treats

 

A potential solution is to time gate the minion releases and put the better relics at 3 of 5 and 5 of 5 to ensure people stay interested to the bitter end. 

 

Your idea of having him spawn at the last location would likely help as well. 

 

Was not a fan of the random teleporting, waited for an hour in Hawaii just for him to go to Torn and have to chase him back and then the game crashed. Luckily I still got my hits in...61 in total... Incoming lesser arca

Qfiffle [2557282] Committee Committee · #7

I found it magical and great to be part of but I'm disappointed that as so often in Torn, there is little consideration of non-majority timezones. There's been two M'aol summons so far, both around my midnight (australia), and in both cases all the minions were dead by my morning. Only Maol himself remained, and the first time he was also mostly dead by then.


People are fond of saying, "some timezones will always miss out" but most of the time it will be the same ones. I also suspect if an Australian or NZer or South East Asian player summoned, they would feel pressured by their faction, friends, family and the players at large to do it at a time that works for more people and just suck up the late night.


This year I stayed up for the fights, I really wanted to be part of it. So I got 1.5 hours sleep last night, feel like cr*p, and my husband is kinda mad at me for letting a game intrude that much.


It wouldn't have been hard to implement the minions in a way that made them last longer so the full thing ran across more like 24 hours before Maol himself, or in intermittent ways at random times through the week.

chaoticsoldier [2752977] · #8

I also suspect if an Australian or NZer or South East Asian player summoned, they would feel pressured by their faction, friends, family and the players at large to do it at a time that works for more people and just suck up the late night.

 

No way. Everyone else can get stuffed. I'm in Australia and if I ever got the chance to summon, I'd do it in my morning. I probably wouldn't even announce it.

No need to worry though. I'll likely never be able to do it.

Aleks-ODBird [2259658] · #9

I stayed up until 545am just to hit all the minions. Only fell asleep once Maol is up since I figured he should still be alive by the time I woke up 2hours later. Luckily my company still have Work-From-Home arrangements.

 

That said, I don't think I would have liked random times since it's much harder to predict. Rather hope that an Asian timezone player unlocks it's next

Qfiffle [2557282] Committee Committee · #10 · edited

I'm not 100% sure of the demographic split but my gut sense is that our timezone is a lot lower represented, so even if an Asian timezone player gets  it next time, long term over years, a much larger proportion of the summons, maybe almost all of them, will be awful times for us. It's like with RW: very very rare to get a start time that favours our timezones and we just kinda have to suck it up and expect we'll be gaming at 2am if we want to be competitive (and then enjoy EU having a meltdown if they get a 9pm start because they wanted an early night, lols)

Andyman [471591] · #11 · edited

The elephants in the room

1.) An event that relies on players being locked out from playing (traveling and/or sitting idle overseas isn't playing) to keep the game from crashing is an obvious issue.

 

2.) Strategically designed chaos is fun and exciting, disorder and confusion are not. Seeing the Mexico mishap with Ladso'myna early on was a bummer. The m'aol-related crash after being in Torn for a bit was frustrating. There were also little unpolished things like instances of tool tips not matching what was actually coded and Proxima somehow getting hit with insanity which wasn't supposed to happen to summoners as I understood it. 

 

3.) The pinata tests turned out to not be a clean success. Kind of like passing an organized crime with a green result but still getting jailed. Clearly more work to do here, albeit marked improvement from a year ago. 

 

4.) Bogie is doing a great job keeping folks informed of what's going on in the main discord(s). The chain restorations were quick and communicated well; that said, every minute counts on this event when you're trying for 50k+ chains. Virtually any down time during treat-gain time really stings.

 

5.) The lag for the first several hours of the event was really rough. I personally ended up playing a different game while I had stacked energy (something I haven't done in over a decade) and didn't get a Xanax off until nearly 5 hours into the event. I imagine I wasn't the only one.

 

The event is still great and I'm enjoying it. My fingers are crossed for the upcoming Elimination event.

Korten [290467] · #12

Second this, slept through last years, slept through this years, will no doubt sleep through next years.

At least M'aol is up across the workday though.

 

 

We do get good timings when it comes to other things though. Anything reliant on the Torn devs to manually do (e.g. Dukemas), occurs at ~8-9PM. So we're usually around for that. New Zealanders are the ones that truly get screwed. But they're all leaving that country anyway.

SpARkS4206967 [2175802] · #15 · edited

This exactly. As a player from SEA its also an event where to noticeably participate beyond 1 NPC or 2 if I push it, I've had to be active overnight.  (Its 9am now and I've gotten maybe a couple or so hours sleep)

 

Works out for me being on a night shift schedule/weekend but I can't imagine what others from similar or worse timezones have to do to get in.

 

It really would be nice if they had higher HP or some other way to have them last across timezones.

Pasta-Man [2758734] · #16

I was saying the same thing earlier. I'm not sure if it's a bad take, but I do feel such an event that basically everyone in torn looks forward to all year should have been more inclusive. I did not have a problem with my time zone for it In fact it worked out perfectly, but I was saying to other people it could be a real problem and may not be fair. 

 

Besides the fact it started at a time that is not good for many parts of the world, from the time it started until the last minion was defeated it was under 6 hours. And on top of that in order to do more than two of them you would have to use multiple BCTs which further limits the type of player. Again, not an issue for me and I can afford BCTs and I use them, but in my opinion, such an event that is so looked forward to and is so unique being it's not simply an attacking event, should have been more available to everyone and not be forced to do everything in a rushed way with such chaos.

 

I managed to get loot from three of them and I'm hoping I can get at least one attack in on M'aol, But it's not looking so good Apple chasing him around for hours and waiting in certain destinations only to finally leave and then he moves again. Despite that it was still fun for me most of them last year but I still feel it could have been spread out longer and potentially lasted more than one day. But that's just my opinion

Beerstein [1322136] · #18 · edited

I knew I'd be incoherent by this hour.

 

So far staff stopped him moving, were a little unclear about it but implied he might maybe stay in Hawaii (jk) and dropped his end battle shield to get it done and sleep.

 

No issues here. Also f**k my revive % is toast lol

 

My last set of attack logs and revives...