Alfgar's Event and Imperial Assault - Why did you make them "random" events?

[Kiara]

SE really need to up their game and make things STAND OUT.

Any event in this game should literally take over the buzz of the city/area when they occur, not just be static. This should apply to all events (seasons, 7th umbral, newspaper, et al)

For example,

a) when its a Seasonal event, say Summer, there should be ginormous parades through the city like in the opening of Uldah's mission 1 cutscene, not just an npc standing static and a few cosmetic decorations.

b) when theres an Invasion, the cities npc army/cavalry should be seen making their way leaving the city and marching to the besieged camp, then make the whole semi-region where that camp is one massive warzone!

c) when theres Cultists, there should be a legion of cultists spawning in the city laying waste to everyone and everything, the city should be visibly in flames, and then after that we go down the purple aehryte (the npc does mention after all his daughter was kidnapped in the city), then once in mistbeard cove or sildiq aqueducts there should be mountains of mobs, traps, fighting our way through to a boss (not just standing still and the mobs spawning on us x 3 til the lolboss spawns) should be like a mini dynamis.

This is a great idea.

Even if it can't be as grand as this (until 2.0), I think it'd go a long way to helping indirectly informing players that *something* might be going on and happening.

Imagine instead of having NPC Alfgar appear and /say "Imperials are attacking!" (in a small radius), that a few more Uldahn Soldiers appear *throughout* the city.

You notice Soldiers near the Market Wards entrance. Near the Aetherial Gate. Doing a Fidget or "At Attention!" etc.

If you talk to any of them, they mention "Garlean Imperials have been spotted near Camp Horizon!" or something, etc.

THAT would subtly call attention (and immerse you) in the fact that something is happening in Eorzea and get you to explore, or incentivize you to find Alfgar or the NPC that might issue orders. Or get you to go to Horizon ASAP.

Instead, too many of these Live Events / Timed Events are 1 lonely NPC standing in a small portion of the city, with many players missing out.

I'm *not* advocating making Live Events handed to everyone on a silver platter, or making them appear ALL the time time or anything. But things like Altanas' suggestion, or Reinheart's where the frequency is upped (even slightly), but still random, would just allow more participation and add *enjoyment* for players who are already starved for content in this game.

[morpheus]

Just another example of the great use of "Random" by SE which is pissing off people yet again. Why this love for random? It basically always rewards a select few and screws over the rest of the population. It's just lazy game development imo.

[Soukyuu]

Except it's not that random as people believe it is... it's a pretty trivial event with the only reward being an entry in the lodestone history which doesn't affect anything... not a +20 to all stats item, so why the complains?

It's the same as with GM reporters, SE replaced them with static npcs now, 3 mole meat and you get it for free. RPing was way more fun, so was figuring out the spawn times (they even been posted here on the forums).

[Neptune]

Sounds like leader of power rangers so I'm cool with it lol.

Anyways yeah if you don't get to participate it's not much of a big deal so it really doesn't mean much at least to me it doesn't if I get in one of them cool, if not too bad but for some this isn't the case for them reason why we got threads up both in JP and EN, JP side is much asking just to increase the frequency they don't mind the randomness if it's more frequent.

Last night was sad on Melmond server Alfgar was up in Limsa and me and my wife just got back from exping our CON and was about to get new guild leve when Alfgar popped we went inside the warp took us to Mist Beard told 3 LS's we have with about 10 people each to see if they are interested to come since it's only us 2 so far. Some guys were getting on there way but they missed it... ended up with just me and wife in this live event lol.

Nice! That is cool though, it's more realistic. Just like if the Monster energy drink truck is nearby and you get free energy drinks. Even if your friends couldn't get down there fast enough, too bad lol.

[Yelta_Sumasu]

I really wanted to do it just for the story alone. While I want the history record and enjoy achievements it has more to do with me wanting to experience the available content. Not everything needs to reward me with a +20 item...

[lordvr]

I logged on to find Addison in LL and then the bastard up and went poof on me while I was talking to him. wtf

[Soukyuu]

I logged on to find Addison in LL and then the bastard up and went poof on me while I was talking to him. wtf

Yes, that sucks. It was either due to spawn time timing out OR 16 players already entering the gate.

[AkiSajuu]

They definitely increased the spawn rate of the NPC. Was camping this today with some LS friends, and it was popping almost every hour. Its just the city is random, so best to camp with 3 people.

[Reabs]

nah..i camped it yesterday from 7pm CST and it popped at 7:07am..thats about 12 hrs or so ^_^ had my bf PC camping one city, me one city and his bro PC the last city.

Depending on if your in DST or not that still could be in the window (I did hear 5pm once before too actually but assumed it was a fluke so that's my bad). But in anycase even then it's still only one hour difference and if the other part of what I said in the post holds true there still would have been a pop the next hour to give you the window of 6-9am/pm pst. I believe you over-camped for no reason and wasted a good 7 hours (Though you may not have wasted them if you were intelligent about how you camped them).

[Mireille]

Hi everyone, I'm just writing to have an answer from SE about this "random" events. All of them are in some way linked to the Storyline, so they are very important, but I couldn't experience all of them just beacause Alfgar wasn't up. WTH!?
I played continuosly since day-one and just for a fatal reason I hadn't the chance to complete Alfagar's quests or Imperial Assault...
I'd really like to have the opportunity to experience all of these events again, just as they are a continued storyline. Why do I have to hope Alfgar is up, or anything else?

While I do wish they had done a better job letting us know these events would only last one patch I have to admit the idea of content that is available for a few months and then disappears is a great idea. It makes the world more of a living breathing place and less a frozen moment in time the way XI was. I hope there is more content like this post-V2. These events in and of themselves aren't that major so if you miss one or two its not the end of the world. There should be some major and involved story events too, but there isn't any reason that even those couldn't change with time.

It would be nice to have seasons and seasonal weather too. Like having monsoons in a tropical region and blizzards in a colder one.