ATL Destard Event (in Fel) Feedback

Now that the weekend is over I wanted to provide the Devs with some feedback based on my experience. If you don't want to read through the details/reasons and just want the elevator pitch; it was a blast and I really hope they can incorporate Fel somehow for the remainder of the event.

I'll be honest, initially I wasn't sure how things would turn out with the event being in only Fel for the weekend because I was thinking what probably every other non-pvp person was thinking which was it would be lambs being led to slaughter (given it was the only place for dungeon drops) but this wasn't the case at all.

This is what I found based on my experience this weekend. 

• Most importantly this weekend was hands down the most fun I've had for this event and it wasn't even close.
• There were absolutely zero scripter bots (ie piles of throwers/archers etc) the entire weekend.
• There was (for me) almost no lag at all. It wasn't even close to Tram.
• Outside of the first couple hours that the dungeon was activated there was not some kind of buzz saw where as soon as you stepped foot in Destard you were immediately PKed. 
• Players policed themselves for the most part. There was probably max 4 reds in Destard during the peak hours that disrupted killing stuff but all that was needed was to announce in GenChat that "reds are in Destard" and people that wanted to PvP quickly showed up and suddenly the reds became preoccupied with the people that came to PvP. There were also a couple of occasions where a blue tried to PK my sampire (they turned grey) and both times people helped kill that grey person. A few times a lone red would show up and try to kill people and usually that red ended up dead.
• People helped people. Even though there is a shrine in the back of the dungeon I had a few people rez me and heal me (and I did the same for others).
• The number of drops I averaged per hour was 20-40 drops per hour (obviously higher during non-peak hours) without a potion. At my best in Tram during non-peak hours I think I hit like 18 (no potion). 
• I collected my fair share of death robes (mostly by spawn but also by PKs) but I didn't mind because I was having lots of fun either killing dozens of spawns at a time getting drops or running from a few paragons / reds. 

Overall I had way more fun than I initially thought. I think I played more this past weekend than I did the entire rest of the event combined. The drops weren't crazy high like the first day or so in Tram but I also felt that I could actually achieve enough to claim whatever rewards I wanted (if the event remained in Fel).

It was a bold move to turn off the Tram spawn but I give the Devs credit for doing it. I hope that they were able to see the impact that was made by switching over to Fel only. I also hope that while they were switching over on Friday (ie turning off Tram) they were able to clearly see all the unattended scripters and action them. 

What was everyone else's experience on ATL this weekend doing the event?

I see almost universally here the dev's are blamed and/or given credit for decisions. I simply want to point out that developers do not typically make these decisions.  They just carry them out.  I think you should direct this at the product owner level or higher.

I also as a non Atlantic player would like to add I'd love to see the spawn active on both sides (tram and fel) on my servers but not one or the other.  We have had issues in the past with certain guilds effectively shutting the spawn down in Fel.

"i actually only saw max 20-25 people in the dungeon, 
bearing in mind there are often 40+ people fighting in yew town in the evenings it was not a popular event"

I concur 100% with what was said by Keven.

To reiterate some of his points and add my own two cents:

This event in Fel was a ton of fun.  It reminded me great deal about what I loved from the Fire and Deceit events.  Since it was limited time only, I spent as much time the past three days in there as I possibly could, re-running the spawn again and again.  Fighting dragons in bottom section of first floor when the spawn was off. 

I popped a good number of potions in there to fantastic results.  If the spawn popped 3 to 4 times during the one hour potion timer, it easily meant 30+ drops and was well worth the price.  Much better results than fighting on the Tram side and dealing with “the pile” and having to fight for kills with scripters just running a “Target nearest” macro on repeat.   The UO store definitely made some money off of me this weekend.

There was definitely a fair share of dying… as Keven described, it could have been from spawn, being PK’ed, rez-killed, etc.   Not much different than what happens during a Fel spawn on a normal basis.   If Reds were dominating the spawn area for a bit, usually enough other PVPers showed up to fight them off and move the PVP activity outside the spawn area.   I mostly got chased, but did a little chasing myself depending on who was trying to target me.  It was a fair challenge and a good bit of fun.

My one note of critical feedback (or perhaps more of a question) is that the scroll drops from the Rikky were surprisingly low.  In almost every case, I only received one powerscroll and mastery book, even when I was one of only two of three people fighting the boss and achieved enough damage to get the scroll.   If this were a non-event spawn, I would have expected 2 to 3 scrolls most of the time there as the main Sampire tanking the boss.  While I wasn’t doing this event for scrolls, I still expected to get more, similar to the Fire and Deceit events.   Did anyone else notice this?  Was there some change in the scroll dropping mechanic here? 

I know some people were unhappy about the Fel event only being on Atlantic and being shut off in Trammel.  I am not able to comment much on that being an Atlantic home shard player, but it was well worth the benefit from my perspective.  I hope this was more than just a gimmicky one-weekend type of thing and that the developers took notes to make some changes before re-activating on Tram side.  I very very sincerely hope that the developers give consideration to opening on Fel side longer (and re-opening with Tram side) to give us more options for participating in the event.

Were transfers to Atlantic open over the weekend?

Transfers were open.  I transferred a character over to Atlantic early Sunday.  Not for event purposes, but yes, the transfers were open.

With transfers open anyone who wanted to could have. 

McDougle said:

With transfers open anyone who wanted to could have. 

You assume everyone has transfer shields... they don't.

Archangel said:

McDougle said:

With transfers open anyone who wanted to could have. 

You assume everyone has transfer shields... they don't.

No but they had time to buy one if they wanted to go as i stated before most pvpers already have fully developed characters on multiple shards that being said I feel that
A. Should be open everywhere 
And more importantly how does the tram population of the most populous shard feel about being left out for the weekend?

McDougle said:

Archangel said:

McDougle said:

With transfers open anyone who wanted to could have. 

You assume everyone has transfer shields... they don't.

No but they had time to buy one if they wanted to go as i stated before most pvpers already have fully developed characters on multiple shards that being said I feel that
A. Should be open everywhere 
And more importantly how does the tram population of the most populous shard feel about being left out for the weekend?

True.
Thankfully I was out partying all weekend so I missed missing it!  XD

I am glad you all had fun. That is the goal right @Kyronix ?

Pawain said:

I am glad you all had fun. That is the goal right @ Kyronix ?

The goal appears to be certain statistics, which may not include fun.