Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Epic Week 2020 Feedback

Hi all!

We're a couple months out from Epic Week 2020. Now that we've had some time to rest and reflect, I wanted to see how you felt about it.

Did you like the new quests? Did you miss the old riddles? Did you enjoy the time travel plot?

Let me know what you thought and what you'd like to see considered for future years.

I did not mind not having the riddles per se. Personally, I rarely took part when they were on.

I did like to see that continuity of the plot across the 6 years which was a nice catch up
I also liked the graphics, videos, dinosaurs...

Feedback wise, my 1 remark to give is this... Space out the Epic Week contests more fairly and evenly later.

Fighting monsters, collecting stuff, playing doubbutt endless times, coordinating different players in RPR-Discord across different time zones, crafting bottles and so on is fun to do but (when combined with real life work and duties) it is challenging and at times rather mentally exhausting.

We had no time to recover from all that effort by the time we were supposed to be submitting the finished work for some of the contests. We barely a week to think about, design, collect, create and build the crafts and poems contests which became taxing and not as enjoyable as it should have been because you start out these tasks already tired and pressed for time from the Epic Week itself. It felt stressful to have so little time, even when we pushed back deadlines a few extra days.

You struggle to find the energy and interest for those short deadline contests, especially when you consider the digital art contest gets a full 3-4 weeks to create and perfect which is better paced.

The cooking, the poems and the crafting was completed but overall rushed and underpressure (especially with real life in the middle too). It would be far fairer and more enjoyable, likely get more participants too, if they all close at the same date/time and all of them get the same 3-4 weeks to create the stuff

I still enjoyed the overall creations and achievements though and would sign up all over again in this race against time if it comes to that

This was my first epic week, so I don't have have anything to compare it to. The Doubutt game was enjoyable and was a really big throwback to old school computer games, so that was fun even if I was terrible at it.

The only bit of feedback that comes to my mind right now would be with the quests requiring you to write prompts or advice or what have you. It would be nice to be able to submit them anyway, even after the batteries were at full power and epic week closes. I had some stuff saved in drafts and timing was a bit off when it came to me being able to actually submit them for epic week battery charging. I know some of them get used throughout the year for various things (like Friday RP Prompts), so it would be nice to be able to still submit them so they can be banked for whatever reason since time was put into filling those out and saving those drafts.

I loved the plot, and I appreciated the quest mechanic a lot! However, I also much missed the puzzles, riddles,, and code cracking. But I know they're a lot of extra work, and many players don't find themquite as engaging, so I understand the decision.

This was my first epic week... due to all the warm up to this one i was looking forward to riddles and games. But I felt like battling dinos and playing doubutt was all I got (and if there was more I missed it).

It felt a bit repetitive and exhausting. After a couple of days I was just worn out of it and didn't feel as inclined to engage further. Honestly, I think it would have been more fun if there were the challenging riddles as that was what I was most looking forward to. I sorta felt expecting of it even- from all the videos and stuff of previous epic weeks.


The extremely narrow window to turn in things felt unachievable before a new hoard of monsters popped up.
Refresh rates for stamina and HP felt so low compared to the the monsters that I felt like I could barely participate. with as much as there were, I think higher refresh rates would have been fine due to wave after wave of mobs being so overwhelming.

I think more 'easy' stuff to turn int would have been preferred like doubutt playthroughs. but other stuff that required more thoughtful write ups or even art was too time consuming for those like me who have so many other things going on (adulting) that we cannot dedicate so much. I do understand that everything was geared for different people, it was just impossible for me to participate in it when I might have liked to.

The site lag was definitely bad for me... I know it can't always be helped but it was so hardcore I had to step away and do other things because I couldn't handle it after a short while.

I did like the discord add on. Not everyone has discord but it was nice to get some faster coordination here and there.
I did like the accolade rewards later showing how much each of us participate. My friends and I got a hoot out of it. I did like the weapon loot. Can't go wrong with loot.

Overall while it was fun, I dont know if I would go out of my way to participate again for more then a day or two if its the same build unless friends asked me for help taking out mobs. here and there. There is only so much doubutt I can do ;.;

I've personally participated in Epic Week the past two years (2018 & 2019, since I missed out on 2017 due to joining after the Epic Week).

I barely participate in these things as it is, just because I lack in creativity in general with rp alone. So trying to come up with stuff for Epic Week isn't usually on my to-do list.

The fact I could barely do anything to charge the batteries kinda was annoying and a bummer. I get it. Were trying to get people to be more active and do things. But to have to sit and come up with (exaggerating here as I don't honestly remember the number) twenty rp prompts, just to charge like 5-10% battery...is a no go for me.

I mostly just do what most consider the boring repetitive stuff: Check the castle, go exploring w/e we are at (or in one case go fishing), mosey through the forums to possibly obtain something, and attack the monsters or w/e we face.

As someone mentioned before me, trying to re-find who it was but no luck (pardon me, it's after midnight atm I'm tired), the fact that the monsters or w/e heal faster than we ourselves can is also a bit ridiculous. But I oddly am used to it (I play PS Vita games which I believe love to annoy me by God moding like crazy) so it's not too bad. Though it also sucks when your stuck waiting for what seems like ever to go back in and attack, only to find the creature's health is back up if not fully restored.

Honestly I do bare minimum just to get the little cake icon, and then I go silent. Sometimes I participate in raffles (be it run by Kim or someone else), sometimes I just hop on to do the castle/walk search, check for rp posts, then I hop off.

What would get me to engage more? I honestly cannot answer that at the moment.

Oh! As a reminder/suggestion from last year: If there ever comes a time again, where there's all these lights and or screen wobbling from side to side, may we please have an option to not have that kind of stuff happen? I do recall asking if there was a way to stop that, and Kim said at the time there wasn't. I think it was last year when we had spiders. I happened to fight against them at night once, and with a headache I had the whole screen shake/wobbly made my head worse.

So to have an option to leave animation like that on or off would be nice too.

That's my 2 cents. Also thanks for putting up with my minor side tracked posts at times in parenthesis.

Ciao,

-Winter

The plot felt like a proper payoff for us old farts but also seemed like it was accessible and cute enough for people who'd just jumped into the site recently, too. I liked it a lot!

I miss the riddles! Though I do understand they might've been a bit much with all of the other events and revised structure, this year.

Epic Week hot on the heels of the switch-over was also just a hotbed of performance issues and it did unfortunately kind of corner me into stepping away out of sheer frustration a few times when I tried to jump into any sort of battle or otherwise timed event. I know that's still a living and ongoing process and that's not necessarily a staple of these events, but it did make for some tense moments.

I'm kind of in the Mipps and Somnom camp otherwise - I liked the setup of the revised quests but I did feel like the window was supremely narrow to turn them in between hordes, and that compounded with the performance issues kind of meant I had a couple drafts sitting for days at risk of being forgotten, entirely! I don't recall submissions even making that much of a dent in the batteries, either - it did kind of draw me back to grinding instead (as long as I was capable of doing so)!

I really enjoyed the riddles and was sad not to see them make an appearance this year. I loved the story, full of twists and actual suspense. The fights felt 'epic' and the requirement for teamwork at all levels really demonstrates this site's drive towards cooperation, mutual respect and community involvement.

I loved the artwork that comes out of this and the growth of ideas that are shared as a consequence. The Friday RP prompts are an excellent way to stimulate new roleplay and I can absolutely tell you that I have incorporated a few of these ideas into my weekly Star Trek Adventures and D&D tabletop (online) games.

The level of planning, from the videos to the artwork, writing (404 castle game) and the very concept of Epic week shows clearly how this organization not only cares about the membership but also engages directly and seeks to build a community, a family and a caring atmosphere throughout the RPR.

If I want riddles, I can google search them, if I want to feel part of a community, I go to the RPR.

It seems clear that if we do the quest stuff again, we will need to have a "cool down" between submissions.

Each time someone submitted a quest, there was a dice roll. If the dice roll was botched (landed on a 1) some new monsters would spawn.

There were some people who were very good at lining up browser windows and hitting submit on all of them within a second of the portal opening, so I'd often end up with a pile of submissions mostly from just one or two people. But this meant that all of their submissions would trigger the respawn before other people got a chance. A timer for how fast you can submit quests would have helped a lot with this.

Or make botching harder? (1 out of 100 rather than 1 out of 20?)

It's a tough thing to balance and entertain those who want to be super involved while still making it fun for those that only want to be casually involved. For 1 style of players, things can become too easy and too boring. On the flip side, once you make it suitably difficult for the hardcore participants, the casual players can't get a foothold. (I don't have a good solution, but it seems like you're already working on this issue)

I'm torn on the Discord thing too. I thought it was good for coordination. But if someone didn't already have Discord, it seems like it would actively discourage them from participating (as it seemed to have the effect of making the epic weeks forums rather dead). Also, the discord invite expired daily. How many new folks clicked on the expired link and then simply never followed up when it didn't work? Sometimes someone would ask and the updated link would be given, but I'd have to expect a whole lot more simply said "oh well" and drifted away.

But overall, I quite enjoyed the monster slaying and the quests themselves!

Agreed with Juls well brought up point

Considering there is no official Discord RPR server... and most of the planning was done there instead of the RPR forum (via chat link) those players who don't have discord or were coming directly to the RPR warrior chatroom wishing to slay monsters in a coordinater manner were sort of left out, radioed into silence.

Discord was good to report we were not able to log into the site at all but it did make the "warrior chat" go mostly dead with obsolete information. By the time links were posted in RPR warrior chat, Discord had already picked different targets

I personally miss the riddles and scavenger hunt style stuff to unlock from previous years, it got me to poke through parts of the site I'd never look at otherwise. The quest submissions having dice rolls that our side didn't know about kind of takes the wind out of the sails, too, knowing that my work wasn't possibly ever going to make it through because of chance. Too many things respawned monsters, the monsters were tough and the poison item was rare as sin to drop for me (I was lucky enough to have friends with higher chances of getting them, but it kept me out of a lot of rounds of fighting). We were doing something new, so I know that the balancing wasn't going to be perfect.

I felt the styles this year were a little lackluster as well, as we've had some great ones come out of previous years and the themes a little too niche for the masses.

I could definitely tell there were huge steps made to make the epic week feel more epic, though!

Outside of lag and the time constraints for everything, I had a great time - and maybe by next year we'll have an Official Discord? (I mostly joke, but it's nice to have that quick chat option to tap into things.)

Hrm.

First, I'm glad we have Epic Week. I enjoy the surge in activity, I like seeing all the people supporting each other in accomplishing things, and I appreciate the event being designed in a way that requires community teamwork. The little plots are always fun, and it's also fun seeing what new functionality there'll be each year. Having at least some ability to trade off stuff we have plenty of for stuff we have more immediate need of is great, even though I do still feel the limits/requirements on that leave something to be desired.

I know that the setup of the combat system is to push teamwork, but the folks bringing up recovery issues do have a point. It takes just a few seconds to end up dead, but a long, long time to recover with often-insufficient healing items, and the status effects can make that extra problematic. So then you're all riled and ready to go, but... are useless. Overnight, when there's very often too few people to actually accomplish anything, also remains a problem for those who are really only here at that time.

I always had mixed feelings on the riddles. I thought they were cool, helped round out the sense that everyone could focus on helping with a certain area, and appreciated the excuse hints gave to show off various mascots through the years. But I also very, very rarely ever felt like I could contribute to them. So often, I'd go in, see a mess of notes and things with no idea what I was looking at, and generally silently back right out again. Some of the variations in how riddles were done - having some be puzzles, some be references, etc, and at different difficulty levels and whatnot - that was still nice, and I occasionally managed to contribute a little. The quests this year were a nice attempt to make it more inclusive, but... mostly ended up feeling more frantic and broken, I think, and gave less of a vibe of "this is a thing that makes sense to be working on for our goals." Even though we added discord to communication, this year actually felt less coordinated and teamwork-y than in the past.

I think I had more to say, but my attention got divided weird and my brain's decided not to process this whole subject anymore for now, soo... posting what I got.

...is it bad that I somehow entirely missed there was a Discord this year, too? 😅

I was wondering why the forums were so slow...