But what conclusions could have lead to making Agency type event?
Maybe something like this: “They complained everytime, so lets make something really bad! Response will be better in future when they will remember how bad it can get!” 
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A couple of notes:
- The event has been extended until 8 August. The date has not changed in the client yet.
- The date in-game will change either Monday or Tuesday during downtime.
- No progress will be lost, it is only an extension of the currently running event.
Feedback here and from the Test Server Feedback thread have had some small impact on the August events, however due to how long it takes a lot of the underlying changes to occur, it won’t be until nearly September or October before we start to see a lot of the functionality improve.
I’m moving along.
This is turning into a much larger issue than we expected. It is hinting at some very problematic structural weaknesses. The 0 second problem is really a symptom of something potentially much larger and unrelated to the Agency. We might find a work around in the next few weeks, we might not.
I would prefer to pull the August event if we cannot fix this problem. That is not up to me.
This is intended and something we may build upon later. We’ve thought about leaderboards or something like that. No design has been written for this yet, so this is a long ways off.
That’s okay because you provided us with very good feedback. We are working on a few of these already.
The login boosters are no longer included in future events until we add that functionality. I’m hoping to have it for October or November.
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Is there a chance to get the classic and overall well received events back soon? I’m still convinced you will get stuck in a dead end with “the agency” style.
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First I would like to state I like the various events, and especially ones using the new format. So props to CCP wanting to continue with refining the concept.
However compared to Shadow of the Serpent, this one doesn’t even want to make me try. I do on occasion since it takes a few minutes, but unlike SotS, it’s more because I know I can just warp into a belt, shoot a few rats and I’m done.
With SotS, we had a small group roaming around, running the sites together (as the overall completion was counted for everyone in the site), and there was always an element of conflict as people grabbed the loot.
Now - people who warp into the site, wait cloaked until the loot is available, steal it and warp out, I have no time for, but when there was a race for the prize, that was always pretty good.
Not saying there weren’t flaws in SotS, but it encouraged multiple people working together to clear the sites quicker, as everyone was rewarded with the completion.
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I’m sure you’ve already noticed, but they’ve extended the end of the event to help out people who found out about it late and/or people who were afflicted by the stuck-at-0-seconds bug multiple times.
I’m personally going to make it to 380 later today, Saturday (48+ hours in advance of the original deadline), but I would have been there 2 days earlier had the stuck-at-0 thing not happened to me twice, once the first week and once the second week, wiping out 2 days of points.
I’m sure others that weren’t doing as many of the tasks (usually 4, 5, or all 6) were even more hurt/delayed by it than I was, so it’s good they’re extending it.
It’s already at 23 hours. As soon as you finish a task, if you check the Agency event window, it’ll say “22h 59m etc.” on it for the new empty space.
23 hours is really not that much better than 24, since for most people, doing most or all of the tasks will take more than 1 hour.
Others have suggested 20 hours at the MOST, but really 12-16 range would be nice too. But yeah, 20 hours is still a plenty long timer to prevent people from spamming points from the tasks and gives people the chance to do the event at the same time of day for them every day (if that’s convenient for them) instead of it getting pushed back again and again.
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How much effort would it seriously take to just make the next event cycle with downtime? Why cancel the event because of this 0s refresh bug? Just do it the way it should have been done to begin with?
And as far as variety, didn’t the promo for the event say something about doing a bunch of different things and forcing players to experience more parts of the game than they might normally get to? Its the same exact things every day, and 90% of it can be down by warping a T3/battlecruiser to a random combat site and then swinging by a belt on your way back to station to hit a couple more rats.
Though I’d have to say its not quite the worst run event I’ve ever seen, its a close 2nd. The worst was the player intervention of the serp/angel drug/research stations out in null/low. That event was a total cluster.
You see, this exact thing has been a problem on the Test Server Feedback for years. Teams developing new features rarely ever respond to or incorporate feedback. Its one of the main reasons my accounts went on ice for a couple years after 5 years of actively being involved in the game and on SISI and posting constructive/critical feedback only to be told “its too late to change anything anyways” or “well your feedback doesn’t reflect how the general populace would react” to “its not broke, we don’t know what you are talking about”. Then by the time whatever change pushed to TQ and there was massive backlash the first response would always be “we didn’t see this coming” or “if we had received feedback we would have caught this”. Every single time. Devs would only respond to a feedback thread for the first couple of hours at most, and even then most of the time it wasn’t the devs that were actually working with the content in question.
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I think you’re exaggerating a bit, but how much individuals enjoy the events is certainly a subjective thing, so you’re entitled to that feeling… however, to add my opinion to the mix, here’s how I feel the events were (to me)… warning… long post reviewing each and ever major event in the past 2 years of EVE:
tl;dr:
Blood Raiders 1: 3.5 stars
Operation Frostline: 2.5-3 stars
Guristas Hunt: 4.5 stars
Shadow of the Serpent: 4 stars
Purity of the Throne: 4 stars
Blood Raiders 2: 5 stars
Guardian’s Gala: 3.5 stars
Rogue Drone Swarm: 3 stars
Agency: 2 stars
original Blood Raiders Crimson Harvest: 3.5 stars out of 5. A lot of fun, loved the skill training boosters, did not like that the skin (that went straight into your cargo, btw–that’s a feature they haven’t used since then) was only an Abaddon Blood Raider skin. One whole skin for the entire event. Most of us that grinded the event a lot got like 40, 50, 60 of 'em.
Operation Frostline: TBH, I don’t remember this one too much, but I’d have to say 2.5 to 3 stars… due to forgetability. I remember it was Serpentis rats, and then after the event there was that part where we could get serpentis microchips out of data/relic sites but only in Serpentis space… and maybe ghost sites in all space?
Guristas Hunt: 4.5 stars out of 5. Personally, I loved this event and thus there’s no way that to me the events got worse and worse. I earned 2 Rattlesnake BPCs from it that I later built both of, great drops… an aurum token I sold for hundreds of mil of ISK… I mostly used Ishtars, Gilas, or Tengus… and the therm/kinetic nature of the event worked well for my fave ships (later on for Blood Raiders and other EM/therm events, I’d switch to Confessors, but I hadn’t trained into them by then). Also, the rats were tanky, had tons of HP to chew through, so they didn’t feel as way-too-easy as some of the frig-heavy events have… and there was a different lowsec version of the site with GECKO DROPS as a reward, and a Battleship boss instead of the usual Battlecruiser bosses. Epic event, March 2016… wish it’d make a return.
Shadow of the Serpent: 4 stars out of 5. The SCOPE task system, predecessor to our current Agency task system… but superior in most ways. Instead of a 23 hour timer to get a new task in that slot, you got a new task immediately! (yes, that might have bad consquences in CCP’s eyes but most of us enjoyed it… and it meant the tasks didn’t feel like dailies, they were “whenever you wanted”)… AND… if you didn’t like a task (say a mining task or a kill a drifter battleship in a rookie ship or something like that), you ignored it and it would be replaced by a new task after a certain amount of hours (20-22 or so? depended on the task, I think). Best of all, there were 11 types of event sites instead of just 1 (or 2, like the special lowsec Guristas sites)… or 0 like with the Agency event (so far). And the best site, the shipyards, actually paid a decent bounty if you killed everything on grid. Also, everyone on grid in any of the sites got credit for the “complete this site” task. The can in the shipyards didn’t belong to anyone, so it was a free for all, frigs could come in and “steal” it before the cruisers/BCs/BSes that did most of the DPS could get there, etc. It wasn’t quite the same content as the usual “steal the other guy’s wreck since you lost the contest to him” mechanic, but it was still content!
Purity of the Throne: 4 stars out of 5. a decent event in the mold of the original Blood Raider event… EM/therm weak enemies, maybe a bit flimsy/heavy on the frigs. But good enough. And great skins. White skins for (almost) every Amarr ship. t1, navy, AND t2 hulls. Only things that didn’t get a skin were the Amarr shuttle (an oversight, IMO) and the Legion (which they weren’t making skins for yet).
Blood Raider Crimson Harvest mark II: 5 stars out of 5. the greatest event. both in the rewards, IMO, and the actual on-grid fun. Similar to the original Blood Raider and the POTT events, 2 rooms, BC boss… but every now and then (maybe 2.5 to 5% of the time), a blood raider battleship boss would spawn when the battlecruiser died. Which mean you could get a skill training booster from the BC wreck and an advanced skill training booster from the BS wreck. Talk about a double win. And best of all, again skins for every Amarr ship except the shuttle/Legion. And… Cold Iron skins. Even better looking than the white purity skins, IMO. Best. Event. Ever. Oh, and the event ended in early november but the boosters could be used till early december. Great for our skillqueues and plenty of time to sell the excess boosters on the market to those who couldn’t/didn’t want to run the event sites themselves. If there were any downsides to this event… eh… that there was only 1 type of site is the main one. I guess that there were only Amarr skins (for a 2nd straight event) was another.
and BTW, I wish CCP would release a Purity of the Throne and Cold Iron Legion skin now that Legions can have skins!
Guardian’s Gala: 3.5 stars out of 5. More good original skins, not quite for every Gallente ship… con: Minmatar ship fans felt kinda left out since it was an Angel event (with Serpentis tie-in, similar to Shadow of the Serpent)… but oh well… also, 3 Angel skins. Bad part was the Angel skins didn’t drop from the event, they were on sale from the store instead. Didn’t like that part too much, would have been more fun for them to be super-rare skin drops along with the Gallente skins. Angel rats in an event as the main thing instead of as a side dish like in SOTS, so fun times but… wish the skins had been for every Gallente ship like the two Amarr skin events prior had been, main problem to me.
Rogue Drone Swarm: 3 stars out of 5. I like the idea of a drone event… but the rewards were very weak. Instead of unique skins like the last 3 event, we got skins that already existed. for all 4 empire factions, so that’s cool… but only 16 or 15 ships per empire faction, meaning nowhere near a complete collection of any of the 4 types of skins. People who sold their drops on the first day during EUTZ made tons of cash from people with huge buy orders up for those (before the event) rare skins… past the first day or two, forget about it. Even first day USTZ the crash had begun. New skins is a much better mechanic, IMO, since there’s no existing orders for them, it’s a brand new thing that will create demand just from… well, just from there having been no supply before the day the event started. Also, there was one feature about the sites I didn’t like… well, 2: the gas clouds in the site were super laggy for me. I have this issue with a lot of missions and combat anoms with gas clouds and have to turn down my shaders to lessen the issue, but the red gas cloud in this site was particularly bad for such a small site. and the other issue was… while the “drones warp in” mechanic was cool and all, it made FOF missiles and drones set to aggressive not work so well. Normal PVE in EVE is instant spawning waves and that’s how those auto-aggressing weapon systems work. when there’s a gap between waves while new ships warp in, it breaks the system. Maybe that was on purpose to prevent “AFKing” the sites, but come on. No one AFKs an event site. you have to warp to it, do it for 1-2 minutes, loot, watch out for contests, warp out, start looking for the next site, etc. missiles and drones are just nice ways of lessening the work for your hands. I did the sites in a pair of Confessors as a result, would have liked to try it with a pair of FOF Tengus but it wouldn’t have worked.
Agency: 2 stars out of 5. Underwhelming reward except the tengu skin at the end, and I’m a huge tengu user… for those who aren’t… I can only imagine the disappointment (for me, if the reward had been a loki skin, that might have been a similar feeling). No sites at all… while it’s cool to make an event you can complete by belt ratting, shooting rats in missions or incursions, and doing combat anomalies and combat signatures… it feels really lacking to not have at least 1 special event site temporarily spawning throughout HS+LS+NS+WH space like usual. Also, the aforementioned task issues. a task you don’t want to do never going away… the entire 23 hour timer system in the first place… i.e. too long, sometimes breaking… BC/t3c tasks being broken from the start and needing to be changed to kill 10 rats in those ships… also, why not a mining or data/relic exploration task? there were mining tasks in SOTS, I’m not sure how much miners enjoyed them (or even did them), but I gave 'em a try a few times… and would have again this time.
Agency seemed so similar to Shadow of the Serpent and yet… was a lesser event in almost every way. Please, CCP, look back at SOTS and think about how to make the Agency tasks more like the SOTS tasks in terms of timers and not having to do a task you don’t want to do… while still improving them in general and making them unique. Good luck!
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Total garbage. Ignoring it plain and simple.
Shadow of the serpent/scope network was great. If you were good, you were able to rush them. If you didnt want to or werent good enough… you just waited the daily timer. It never blocked good players out, like the agency did.
i mean, if the team is new, im sorry for all the negative feedback, and im sure youre told “they complain everytime”, but honestly. Trying mainstream stuff in an mmo that lives from being niche… Just because everything comes with negative feedback doesnt means its always unjustified.
And, because i didnt told it in a while, i hate dailies. They punish you for not log in every day, but block you out if you want to do more.
“Dont got time in week, but want to play 10 hours at saturday? Too bad, the content is 30 min every day.”
I think eve is a lot about building things up and destroying them, in whatever way. Did you ever see someone building structures saying “exactly 21 parts each day, not more”?
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“great” as long as you like grinding 2500 sites in high sec
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Why do people always look at the top reward? Man, even if there would be a platin chest, you wouldnt “have to grind 10000 sites”.
The reward always comes from the difficulty. Gold was “hard” to get, so the rewards where worth something.
If you just made it to bronze, why not?
This is the same thinking dailies come from. I dont care if others get less, as long as im feeling top tier.
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The problem is not with difficulty but with the grind. Running hundreds of easy sites is not difficult, it’s just tedious.
Still better event than current one
Well, I would understand chinese prisoners complaining that guards force them to make tedious work for some internet pixels. But anyone else? Dont be silly people.
Foremost EvE is about freedom what, when, how long, and how and with whom I’m doing.
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Wei Xia Tong, they are onto us! Grab the iPhone ripoffs and let’s run!!1
“…please let us know your thoughts on the Agency.”
Scrap the entire concept and start over. The rewards are pathetic, the interface is bugged, the timers are stuck at 0s, if we chose to participate we are forced into a specific ship type.
The design of the event is flawed from top to bottom. The programming is shoddy and the QA is nonexistent.
1/10.
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PLEASE make the “Agency speed booster” optional!
It’s screwing over freighter pilots!
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@Raudur_Froskur LMAO
We had a little talk on TS and there is one thing people seem to agree on.
Best feature of this event is how fast you can close it and never look at it again.
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Using a jumpclone deletes the log-in booster, it seems. Just sayin.
So youre against grind sites in an event but it’s okay for ccp to destroy the Plex market and force players to grind every month to make game time as long as it doesn’t effect you.
At least that event had good rewards from what I was told considering all the grinding I’m doing to meet Plex costs I would have made a fortune on that event. The hypocrisy is palpable and it’s oh so sweet. Or did I misunderstand your graph in my thread and you’re actually agreeing with me that grinds are bad across the board. In which case my mistake, sorry to be critical of you.
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