Events need a massive overhaul

[Arkdra]

Having just started the mgp event, I am immediately throwing down the gauntlet and challenging the FF14 team to do a seasonal event that doesn't involve a journalist or children.

[Roda]

Imagine your local fair is in town. You want to join in on the festivities so you head on down to see the fun to be had. You head on down, get through the gate, and while there's a lot of really nice set dressing and the suggestion that there's things to do and things being celebrated, the only way you can participate is by talking to a few of the workers and listening to them vent about their life for ~12 minutes. Hey! but at least you get a booth prize for doing that! You can get a few more goody-bags if you talk to other stall workers as well (maybe). No, the Ferris wheel is made out of cardboard, you can't ride it, and driving the bumper cars if for staff only, you can watch though. Axe throwing shows and demos? Yeah that's totally here, trust me, people are loving it, you can't see it though. You CAN use [FANCY BUTTON] on some staff and get some fireworks though! :^) This is what most xiv events feel like.

The events in this game that have actually resonated with me are the ones that actually take advantage of them being in an interactive medium and in a massively multiplayer one at that.

The halloween haunted house games were great! I'd love to see them really flex that idea and possibly expand it into a light-hearted multiplayer mini survival horror level. Final fantasy spins on games like silent hill or resident evil. Maybe make a cooperative survival mode? You get more rewards/currency the longer your team survives, if you die you turn into a friendly ghost to support the surviving party members? Or maybe repurpose the forlorn system with FATES to spawn special mobs during FATES around the world and have a ghost hunting/busting trains in different zones at every hour? Like have every FATE have a HIGH chance (maybe 100%) of spawning a special ghost miniboss that you have to fight to trigger currency drops from FATES?

I also REALLY REALLY appreciate the addition of THE TOWER in the Moonfire Faire! It's such a fun little activity that you can conquer with the whole server! I'd love to see more games scattered around Costa Del Sol that people can kind of just play around with? Bring back some of the old GATEs like "The Time of My Life" "Skinchange We Can Believe in" and "Vase Off". Have a fishing tourney! Or maybe have a crab racing minigame? (either trying to guess the winner, or doing a minigame where you try to make your crab win against other players) Just little reasons to hang out at the party spot once you've finished The Cutscenes~

The Valentione's event also had a few good ideas with its tarot readings and the little twoman dungeon. Maybe there could be a dancing FATE that pairs you up with a partner and you both have to follow along to dancing instructions at similar timings? Or how about a tunnel of love rail shooter that's like a coop version of "Airforce One"! Or, I don't know, a Fantasy dating reality show where the audience periodically gets to help an eligible bachelor(ette) find the person of their dreams by doing events or quests to help out their favorite candidate? (you can say that all of them eventually break up and go back to the show to explain repeats :P) The "choose the new representative" event was an interesting idea, I LOVED the community engagement that happened from it, unfortunately in practice it was a bit flawed :T Live and learn! :P

Make It Rain is kind of a hard one to do? Since it's nestled in a space that already HAS periodic fun events I don't think it's in too bad of a place.. But! If we're boosting the other events, might as well add to this one! How about spawning something like the golden monsters in maps but around the open world and in dungeons? Anyone who helps kill it gets a nice payout of MGP! For balance sake, probably don't want to make them level with the zone 'cause high levels will just poach them, and you don't want to make them max level because that's not accessible to lowbies, so what if they had a buff that reduced ALL damage to 1, and they need x amount of hits to kill? That would be kind of a fun little rotational puzzle to figure out for lower APM classes. (BLM get ready to ICEFIREICEFIREICEFIRE!!!) Idk if the game has tech to dynamically scale ambient monsters, if they can that'd be good too :P

Hatching Tide so far has been kind of a nothingburger? I legit can't form any memories of the event outside of "dang, she really likes her eggs doesn't she?" which is... not ideal >.< Honestly this event could act just like the mog tome event, finding eggs in various sorts of content, and be fine enough. Though... What if the tasks were delivered in a more cryptic manner? and rotated every few hours? So you'd have a legit scavenger hunt? Maybe have a server announcement for the first person on each server to find the egg source first!

Starlight celebration, hmm.... Snowball fight events/pvp is the easy idea. Snowman building contests? The judge sets a theme that you have to build a snowman to and you have to choose from a selection of assets to decorate your snowman with? OOH How about a short coop stealth mission mini dungeon where you have to deliver presents to the children of whatever city the event is in? You would get a bunch of custom skills to help hide you or help distract patrolling "witnesses" so they don't catch your teammates while delivering The Goods! Yeeaahh!

I've got nothing on little lady's day and heavensturn. Those celebrations don't really exist in my culture (or in the way they do in xiv) so I'm not sure how to go about gaming them up?


TL;DR, Events being parties where you have reasons to hang out at them for the duration of the event, with active gameplay and community involvement > events that are just limited time cutscenes where fun is more implied than practiced.


(In my ideal world, I'd like to see them make achievements tied to your service account so all of your characters can benefit from their major item rewards, that way they can make events have more involved gameplay while still being able to get all the rewards on alts without getting burnt out.)