Suggestions

it's of no secret at this point, that people have become frustrated with the Night of the Nocturne event's performance the past couple of years. the official thread is littered with complaints, and even i (who tends to prefer lurking on forums to actually posting) expressed my own feelings on just how lackluster NotN has become in comparison to it's first few runs.

since i've gotten all of my venting out into the open, i'd like now to offer some real suggestions to remedy what a disaster NotN has become:


1. please let us melt and hoard-sell the festival apparel! at this point, i'm not asking for this one, i'm begging. while this festival always produces some nice and spooky apparel items, they are a pain. spewing from the strange chests all over the place, they clog up your hoard like nobody's business. trust me, everyone who wants one does not need a safety net stopping them from accidentally selling the item, especially when we already missing the 'select all' feature from this area. please. i do not want any more conjurer's hats in my inventory.

in addition, this could also only be applied to the apparel that comes out of the strange chests, as they are the most abundant and most difficult to sell off in the auction house. the NotN apparel from swipp, baldwin, and the marketplace would not need this feature as, similarly to the elemental festivals, purchasing these items are a conscious choice by the player and usually done to collect a set.


2. create a more reliable place to trade in coli drops for chests. while i was not as frustrated as some others were with the strange chest drop rates in the coliseum, i found myself becoming pretty exasperated with swipp's swap stand, and it's merciless RNG. with all of his regular trades, and the addition of NotN trades, it makes it very difficult to trade specifically for strange chests. the way i see it, there are two ways to remedy this specific issue:

- have a different place to make these trades. simple. move the strange chests trade-ins to a different area so that they're always available. this could become a static feature, where every trade is always there, or a rotating feature similar to swipp (i favor the latter, to keep things from getting too easy). swipp would keep any other trades related to NotN.

- have swipp only offer any trade having to do with NotN. this meaning he shelves all of his regular trades, in favor of strange chests and other NotN items, for the two weeks that the festival takes place. swipp would act in the same way he's done before, with rotating trades every two hours.


3. cycle out the old chest familiars. guys, it's time to say goodbye. they had a good run, but the 2017 and earlier familiars have got to go. the staff made a good decision in retiring the bears (although a little late), and should carry that over to the other NotN familiars. familiars are single-use, and once you have one you don't need more.

in an ideal situation, the familiars would cycle every year. they would come and go just as the elemental festival fams do. however, i do understand that NotN is a bigger event than the elemental festivals, and we don't want newer players to miss out on too many items. so lets propose something different:

have them cycle every two years. simple enough, but just in case i'll explain. since NotN started in 2014, we would've begun there with only one set of familiar drops (duh). the next year, 2015, not much would've changed other than the addition of the 2015 fams. however, in 2016, we'd see a change. the 2014 familiars would be completely gone, not a trace of them in sight, in favor of giving up their spots in the strange chest drops to the new group of 2016 familiars. in 2016, the familiar drop pool would consist of the 2015 and 2016 fams only. the next year, the 2015 familiars would give way to the 2017 ones, and then in 2018, the 2016s give way to the 2018s. and so on and so forth.

this would not apply to the three chest mimics, which are a staple of the festival and should stick around (if only for lore reasons).


4. strange chest apparel drops. again, this could go one of two ways. you could make the apparel drops follow the same pattern as the familiar drops. OR!

make apparel cycle every year, but let the previous year's strange chest apparel appear in baldwin's bubbling brew. for example: in 2016, the conjurer's apparel set could not be obtained from chest drops; however, it could be brewed by baldwin if you so desired an extra set! this, like the cycling familiars, would go away the next year, giving players a two year to collect that apparel before it's retired completely.


5. keep all gem/treasure marketplace apparel items and baldwin recipes. like i said before, purchasing any of these is a conscious decision, and should be allowed of all players every year. they do not mess with strange chest drops, and so they're not harming anything. additionally, if someone wants to put in the time (or money) to acquire the gems/items necessary, then let them. this apparel hurts no one as it's purchase is intentional (aka: not randomly dropped from a chest), and can be placed on multiple dragons owned by the same person.


6. cycle the vistas yearly. like familiars, you only need a vista once and you never need another again. however, unlike familiars, they are impossible to lose once applied to your account. additionally, while nice looking, they are not as popular as other event items. let older players be rewarded for participating and make the vistas exclusive to their year. this would include swipp swaps and baldwin recipes.


7. this one's just a hopeful suggestion, but perhaps consider adding vials of scattersight as rare drops from strange chests? have them join the ranks of nocturne breed change scrolls and unhatched nocturne eggs perhaps? just an idea...


aaaand that's about it. my main points, if i had to pick any, are the cycling of strange chest familiar/apparel drops. during the most recent event (2018-2019), the likelihood of receiving a new item (assuming for simplicity's sake that new items had a doubled chance of appearing as per "The following items will be making an reappearance within Strange Chests. Most of these items will show up at a lower rate than that of newer items above.") was 36/104 or 34.6%. even with their odds doubled, the 18 new items released this year didn't stand a chance against the 68 older items still circulating around in there. obviously, familiars are the biggest offenders, but apparel is still a significant player.

anyway, feel free to share thoughts and ideas. if you spot flaws or think of ways to improve my suggestions, i'm all ears! of course i'd love for any of these to become implemented into the festival, but my main goal is just to get the staff to see that something is broken and needs desperately to be fixed.

1.Yes

2. No. I think, instead of creating a mechanic that does the exact same thing as one we already have, they should just make it so that Swipp always has a strange chest trade. Perhaps they could rethink their recipes for them as well, so that there are more venues that drop both items.

3. No. I would rather they either reduce the drop rate for older items, or give them to Joxar for NotN for one strange chest each. BTW, they didn't retire the bears, they moved them to Joxar's chest, from what I recall. They just removed them from NotN, which, honestly, they really shouldn't have been in anyways, though I understand the reasoning.

4. See Above. Baldwin isn't a viable solution, because it requires materials and gold, so, to me, is unfair to newer players who didn't have the chances to get, for free, the apparel.

5. Yes.

6. See 3 and 4. While vistas are only needed once, with new players registering (hopefully), they should have the chance to get some of these vistas as well.

7. I have thought about this one, and scattervials just don't fit in the theme of NotN. I would rather have a different way of gaining them, though if NotN was the only option, then I would say yes.