The Xmas Spirit
CCP Falcon released the annual Yoiultide event notes today, and there is a profound lack of the usual fair in it. Admittedly, CCP is not well known for creativity. However, the holidays are often one of the exceptions. In years past we have seen fun and lovable emails, and story lines about the CCP members (typically wearing prosthetic ears and pointy hats) to give the players a sense that our developers and administrators are also part of the team and including us in on the joke.
Typically, past Yoiul events had two major parts. First there was an event of some kind along with either daily goodie drops that range from the clever “coal in your pod” to the somewhat ubiquitous snowballs and launchers. They were never particularly valuable, but items like the cerebrum in a container were used to commemorate important events that happened through out the year.
This year we only get the event, which is expected to look just like all of the other mini events of the last year: fighting NPCs using/testing what ever the latest version of the advanced AI dropping skins and accelerators. The skins on first look don’t even appear to be very interesting compared to the “Frostline” skins of previous years.
As an added bit of insult to the missing loot, there is also a skin sale. If you can’t be fussed with going out to run the sites to get the skins (if the drop rates are like previous ones they drop in large quantities) then you can just buy them with PLEX on sale.
Why The Change?
It really feels like CCP has gone for minimum effort this year. This notion was reinforced by CCP Dragon’s (here to referred to as CCP Grinch) in the minutes of the release.
“CCP Dragon continued that previously players haven’t had to do anything to claim their Christmas items, but they would like to make it so that players would have to fly around a bit to get them. CCP also is looking into the idea of a Secret Santa system, so that players can randomly gifting items around.”
On the one hand, sure, getting your pilots to log in and fly around is a good thing generally. I could buy that if it weren’t for two small facts. First, the trinkets handed out in past events are basically without value. Go log in right now and look at the various stacks of fireworks if you doubt me. Next there is the glaring inconsistency with the hand out of hundred of CONCORD hulls to the folks who attended Fanfest. If the idea is to make people do something to earn the swag, then be consistent.
A Simple Fix
Even the selection of the event and NPCs is extraordinary by how little it even attempts to play into any sense of a holiday spirit. Another Rogue Drone event? Why are they dropping ice blue skins again? There is no story whatsoever in the release notes. Just “oh, the drones are loose again.” I’ll head my-elf (see? even I can write an elf pun) off before I rush off into another long rant on why story and message is important. But a tiny bit of effort on the part of CCP Grinch to tell us why the drones are fighting Santa would have gone a long way to make us interested in taking part.
