Valentines day event fail

I think you are all going far too indepth on this. The 90% of players dont read quest texts, or watch cutscenes. Nobody I knows cares for "story". They either randomly pick the first option available to get to the rewards ASAP, or pick the female option. If given the choice of 2 female options, they take the blonde/pretty one. Goes for girls AND guys in both my guilds.

Hitting on your clients, while being on the way out in RL, is something a lot of people would actually like if they could do it. Its a common fantasy/wish, just that the reality of it doesnt work out so we have to create this newish taboo around it. But almost all romantic ideas of todays concept of love are deeply problematic. Doesnt mean people dont desire them.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

Someone is kicked out a duty and that's fine because "majority" decided that, but when the same "majority" made Astrid win, that is no good? Talk about double standards.

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Some people are saying rigged, but that really isn't the right word. Rigged usually means someone is altering the actual vote and since they haven't given us numbers there isn't much we can say about that.

The issue is the built in bias. If their objective was to produce a variety of results (some worlds choosing differently) they didn't really try to even the playing field. Assuming the devs know their player base, and a little bit about people in general ,they seem to have intentionally skewed it in favor in Astrid.

1. Cute Girl - You need only look at the game population to see this.
2. Familiar Character - Astrid was a part of previous V-Day events.
3. Color - Blue and Red are far more popular than yellow, and since this is a V-Day event, and the dress has a heart motif there would be a bias in favor of Red.

The factors that seem to even the playing field:
1. What the candidates said. (honestly none are great)
2. The outfits can be dyed the exact colors, or any color

Both of those require that people read, either the quest dialog or the website. If you have experience with dye in this game you may be skeptical that the match is exact, and why would you worry about dyes if you can just get the color you want?

People were predicting a landslide victory for Astrid before the event began. I pushed for Bert mostly because I knew he would be the least favored, hoping there would be some variety. I also find his suggestion the least bad.

You see it’s not that people are doubting the majority, but that the devs' objective was not to provide a varied experience. I think this shows that players care more about what they get than content. I’m guessing that the devs suspected this, but wanted something that demonstrated this.

In my opinion I think everyone is taking this waaaay too seriously

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Originally Posted by Niyuka

I think you are all going far too indepth on this. The 90% of players dont read quest texts, or watch cutscenes. Nobody I knows cares for "story". They either randomly pick the first option available to get to the rewards ASAP, or pick the female option. If given the choice of 2 female options, they take the blonde/pretty one. Goes for girls AND guys in both my guilds.

Hitting on your clients, while being on the way out in RL, is something a lot of people would actually like if they could do it. Its a common fantasy/wish, just that the reality of it doesnt work out so we have to create this newish taboo around it. But almost all romantic ideas of todays concept of love are deeply problematic. Doesnt mean people dont desire them.

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Oh come on, 90%? I don't believe that for a second. Yes, lets play a STORY based MMORPG and totally IGNORE the main reason this game exists. I do know people who do that, but I think it's more in the 20/30 percent range.

As for the whole work romance fantasy.....No, just no. Sure it's a common fictional romance theme for various media, but I would like to think people aren't stupid enough to consider it. Even if it was not so taboo and was allowed, it's simply not a good idea to pursue romance in an environment which you frequent often whether it be work or otherwise. If things go south in the romance attempt, that environment can be a rather uncomfortable place to be at.

As for the whole Astrid thing, it's as others said: female, familiar character, and red outfit. Those 3 things combined guaranteed her the win. The bad job idea barely had any effect on her voting.

Most people were probably just lazy and didn't care what the candidates actually said. And why should they - I mean, it's a storyline so it's totally up to the questwriter if they fail or succeed and all three suggestions would probably just end with the same outcome anyway.

Me, I'm lazy too so I just picked red because I didn't want to dye.

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Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

In my opinion I think everyone is taking this waaaay too seriously

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Take my vote for instance, I voted for Astrid. Why did I vote for her? It’s simple really;
1. I know her
2. I like how motivated she is to live up to her sisters skills.
3. I find her blundering a bit cute
4. I like the color red and liked the her outfits name.
It didn’t matter to me what the story was going to end like, I simply picked the character I liked best.

Branching story was a nice idea. Letting cutscene-skipping masses decide how the story ends for everyone was not so good. I would have liked to see the elf guy's version.

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Originally Posted by Wissp

Oh come on, 90%? I don't believe that for a second. Yes, lets play a STORY based MMORPG and totally IGNORE the main reason this game exists. I do know people who do that, but I think it's more in the 20/30 percent range.

As for the whole work romance fantasy.....No, just no. Sure it's a common fictional romance theme for various media, but I would like to think people aren't stupid enough to consider it. Even if it was not so taboo and was allowed, it's simply not a good idea to pursue romance in an environment which you frequent often whether it be work or otherwise. If things go south in the romance attempt, that environment can be a rather uncomfortable place to be at.

As for the whole Astrid thing, it's as others said: female, familiar character, and red outfit. Those 3 things combined guaranteed her the win. The bad job idea barely had any effect on her voting.

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I ve been running a large RL office and now my own company for years. Workplace romance is frequent. Workplace romance is normal, because romance happens where people meet, and doesnt care about the surroundings. The Fallout , inevitably, is a pain to manage, but that hasnt deterred anyone yet. Its one of those areas where I believe trying to taboo it is fighting windmills, but we will see.

90% is probably wrong. I would put money on 70% though - the MSQ is not an indicator at all, because its the only story that people sometimes consider interesting (and even then my guildmates and linkshells mostly consist of people skipping and watching the cutscenes on YouTube to preserve limited game time, while they can watch them on their daily commute, travels or whatnot. You STRONGLY overestimate how many people play a PvE raiding/theme park MMO for the story, and this is a dainty little event about a "holiday" tons of people find extremely pointless and annoying because its really just a consumer excuse and fully artificial - so yeah, for everyone who made a choice, there are easily 5 who just picked the most convenient option - hence every single server deciding in favor of exactly that behaviour.

I mean it really doesnt matter, but this is not the first time we have seen that majority behaviour is FAR FAR different than story-loving RPG player behaviour.

Also, rewards. In MMOs, its about rewards, and Red is the universally accepted color of the love/roses/heart theme.

None of the advices or outcomes were that great, so eh. Went with Astrid because I knew her and red.

He might learn a few things by being with Marcette, or might even pick up a few kinks.

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Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

In my opinion I think everyone is taking this waaaay too seriously

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You are essentially missing content. Programmed, meant to be seen in game content because of other people's shallowness.