The Halloween event feels really lacking in terms of “fun factor”, gameplay wise. I got on a few times for about 15 mins, sitting in plaza, waiting for the guy to spawn, but that was just really boring for an event. It quickly struck me, this is a mostly AFK based event (overused in too many games, and found to be the least enjoyable). Not sure how others feel on those events, but I find them very unexciting and just can’t do it anymore, not after doing it for 15 years throughout past MMO’s.
Since TU is mini-game based game, I think the event really needs some games to play (one of those carnival balloon pop games for prizes for example, but Halloweeny) Something to make it more “interactive”, rather than press E once on the NPC that spawns.
"Interactive" is the key word I really want to emphasize. This holds true for all events, any game, any season, any time.
The decorations and look of the plaza are great though, if we could have the plaza keep its look like this until the next event, there would be no complaints here. You guys nailed it with the decor.
Hopefully this will be useful for future events. I suspect most will feel similar in regards to event gameplay.
Edit: The lack of the event duration info is also worth mentioning. I believe it is a pretty important piece of info so that people may plan, and not suddenly log-in to be having vanished, or having a last minute panic as they only have 48 hours left.
In fairness though, the event has to be judged on what it is, and we can’t assume if it will make it back in. The dev logs don’t show anyone working on fixing the event issues and Mac hasn’t said much in the forums other than what you mentioned.
Still remains fair criticism, especially for what needs more focus down the road (If there is a tradeoff - focus on gameplay or decor?)
The communication revolving around the event itself, both how long it runs, and what will be the case for those missing games, is rather weak compared to their usual.
We are working on optimizing the minigame events so that they can be added back into the game. This has been displayed on the daily dev logs for the past 2 days now, showing the hard work that @Zak and @macdguy are doing to get them in order.
Once they get to a state where they they are enjoyable on a dedicated server, they will be added back in.
As far as the event duration, the Halloween update (including all the themed events and minigames) will run throughout October, and probably the first week of November. We will put out a heads up in advance when we plan on ending the event.
I agree with this. While it is miles better than what we got last year, it’s lacking and not very fun. And for the love of whatever, can we please stray away from the “press E/LMB on stuff”-type events? The halloween is composed entirely of them and at least some of the upcoming “regular” events seem to be based on the same premise (cutout smash and unit grab).
The event was pretty cool when it came out, servers were populated and people were helping each-other find the trick or treaters and i had some fun with the remains, but after i got all the items there wasn’t really much else to do. It might’ve been my fault for getting them all so fast but i found that between the cauldron and trick or treating, there isn’t much else than to stockpile items that you might never need. I love tower unite and I only criticize because I want tower unite to be a great game, and this event was fun, but only for the first two days.
I mean, the event is pretty much just a glorified Spintowin wheel. Go somewhere, press E on something, hope RNG gives you what you want.
It’s better than nothing, but not great. At least in my opinion.
If you read the daily developer logs, you’ll notice that I’ve been focusing most of my time and effort on the minigames for Halloween.
Unfortunately, because of some technical issues, they had to be disabled. The Halloween events were never designed to be only the Forgotten Remains and the Character visits. It was mainly designed to be the minigames with those other events mixed in for breaks. We didn’t spend that much time on the Forgotten Remains/Character events (excluding the dialogue system, but that was used for all the stores).
I am hoping to have the minigames in a stable condition soon, but I have been overworking myself (we stayed up till 3am two nights in a row) and at the moment my computer’s Steam drive crashed so I’m kinda preoccupied at the moment. There was a patch being made, but I believe it’ll be out by Friday.
The developer logs do definitely show that we’re working on the minigames. The patch included several changes to help get the minigames up and running and there’s another patch being made right now.
The 1st one isn’t specific as to whether it is for Halloween or not.
The 2nd one is incredibly hard to understand for anyone who has no understanding of that lingo. I imagine 95% of players have no idea what to make of this one.
A simple “worked on fixing Halloween Event” I think would say a lot more to most. So it comes down to understanding (and your understanding of English, especially if it is a 2nd language)
Thanks for responding, I believe a bit more of an open announcement via the announcement thread would help a lot more understand things. Lately the forums are so active with upwards of 40+ posts a day.
I know you mentioned the mini-games thing, but it was a bit hidden within other posts, and this is also to emphasize on priorities and what people would like, especially with future events, so that focus shifts in the right directions ideally.
I will always love TU (even more once Arcade hits, and ZM / HH / Accel) and you guys do a better job than most, and as EA players, will have both positive and negative feedback (while remaining constructive).
A couple of suggestions for improvement:
-Event time duration being listed (more specific)?
-More focus to the gameplay over decor if it comes down to prioritizing one?
-Simpified Dev Log notes (as mentioned in a short reply above), many of us don’t understand the complex lingo, and the message either gets hidden, or some like myself don’t want to assume something (fixing mini-games could be either for Halloween, or your mini-games feature in general, so someone who has a bit harder time understanding English, it is a bit more difficult to follow versus “Fixing Halloween Event Stuff”)
-For your benefit, starting a bit earlier on events maybe so there isn’t so much of a last minute crunch?
Don’t get the wrong idea from anything, the goal is to make the game be as good as it can be, because there is so much potential and possibilities here :3
Could we request it to run at least 2 weeks into November, or 2 weeks once the mini-games are put in? We know you guys worked hard on the Halloween stuff, which is one of the reasons I am also trying to push to get the event stay around a bit longer, but also because it adds some variation to how the plaza looks the other 340ish days.
We put out an announcement on the Discord about the minigames being turned off. It’s a temporary thing so I didn’t find it needed to be posted on the forums. The minigames were mentioned in the update announcement. I did not post on the forums about the minigames being disabled on the forums (other than replying to people who’ve asked). The goal is to get them working soon, but I have been extremely busy (I also don’t work Wednesdays or Thursdays). It also takes like 4-6 hours to make a patch.
This is just a feature that isn’t finished yet with the event system. I wanted to get the event system out for Halloween and this would have delayed it by a week - which isn’t possible for this holiday. The plan is to have an event schedule board you can easily see when an event will start throughout the day.
As stated before, I have focused entirely on the minigames for this event. The entire Plaza Event system was finished for this holiday event. I also helped create all the items, which was not decor. Decor for the Plaza was done by one person, Johanna. We also were working on a few other things that didn’t come to fruition in time due to the time constraints and last minute issues.
I think for like those 2 days it didn’t explicitly say Halloween, but the previous days did. We’ve been really busy working on the fixes and staying up late so I think it was just forgotten to put the word Halloween.
We did start earlier. Things come up. It wasn’t a guaranteed we’d participate in Halloween this year because we’re still developing the actual game. We didn’t want to pull away from the real game’s development too much.
-In regards to discord - I think not as many people use it, compared to forums? I myself don’t use it and would think it is true for many who use the forums. In terms of the largest audience reach, forums would be visible by the largest audience.
-For the event duration, I was just meaning the run time, IE: Oct 24 - Nov 13th for example. You guys put all the work in, so please keep it till 2 weeks into Nov :3
-I agree with the last part, as it was one of my previous suggestions. If you had to pick between Halloween event & Zombie Massacre for example, ZM would have gotten my vote. I love events, but also love the looks of that Arcade & upcoming games, and those are permanent additions. The Arcade has been something I have been looking forward to since reading about the game prior to purchasing.
Speaking as one player, I would love to see a Christmas Event, but I would love it even more to see the Arcade or those other games make it instead, along with just some condo decor pieces maybe such as christmas trees/wreaths/stockings.
I was talking to a friend and we were discussing how events/holidays seasons are always fun, but when creators make stuff for them. And how it is a bit of a shame since it essentially gets deleted after 2-3 weeks, when it took 2-3 weeks just to create all the stuff for it. It is a lot of effort for such little usage mileage.
Keep up the efforts though :3 Super excited for all the upcoming stuff, and it is nice to see Devs responding (unlike many certain games I shall not mention, where players are left in the dark forever)
While I know about the cancelled events, and I really, really, really appreciate you guys’ hard work, I don’t think anyone can really critique the event based on what it’s not. “We’ve been working on it, but it isn’t included” doesn’t really excuse that… you know, the thing in question isn’t included.
Again, working overtimes till 3AM is a big feat, and it’s quite frankly amazing you’re working that late just to get the minigames working for us, but that doesn’t change what the event currently is.
It’s not excuse, it’s an explanation. I’ve stated in the past that Halloween could have easily been skipped, but I wanted the events to happen and I am explaining the process behind it.
