Casually walk into town, AFK Event!
Trying to train your skills, AFK Event!
Wanting to be productive, AFK Event!
I just want to log off for the night, AFK Event!
The party board is flooded now, AFK Event!
All the parties are full now, AFK Event!
Tarlach is a town of statues now, AFK Event!
Even when one AFK event is over, more AFK Events!
Hoping for those 1% prizes, AFK Events!
I can't possibly hold all of these potions, AFK Events!
Nobody is around for group content, AFK Events!
Banquet is silent again, AFK Events!
Nobody remembers old content now, AFK Events!
So bored we beg new players for something to do, AFK Events!
Endlessly browsing the market, AFK Events!
Even in the forums, AFK Events!
Trying to think of a satire topic, AFK Events!
An event got bugged again, AFK Events!
Even when emergency maintenance appears, AFK Events!
Someone claimed all the top raffle prizes in an hour, AFK Events!
Never get anything good, AFK Events!
More timed consumables than I'll need, AFK Events!
What about our electric bills, AFK Events?!
Even if fishing or sitting in our homestead, AFK Events!
Sometimes set to now flooded locations, AFK Events!
Waiting hourly to play for 3 minutes, AFK Events!
Someone botted the event again, AFK Events!
Don't you see? The next event is already an AFK Event~
Comments
You get a gold star.
But very true.
And I'm honestly tired of it.
Just run dungeons with your friends for a few hours, that way you get to play the game and clear the stay-online requirements at the same time?
Because people like to complain about everything. This includes complaining about an event that works by you simply being there doing anything you want, including nothing.
Because eventually, you run out of things that are fun and fresh to do.
An Event is supposed to be something that's happening, not just something in the background, like these AFK Events.
They add nothing to actual gameplay, any actual REASONS to stay on and play the game.
Who grinds for 5 whole hours EVERY day? Or stays in the exact same party for 5 whole 30 minute chunks, with no dips below 3 party members or CCs?
Some players, but not everyone. And probably not the 3~4 pages worth of parties on the party board that are literally parties with variations of "afk wingheart" in the name.
And so, when they can't actually fill the time actually DOING things, yet they still want the prizes/coins/fortunes from the events, they have to stay logged in, even if they have nothing they want to do.
Events where you actually DO things, or even are limited to a set amount of things per real day are more engaging.
Events like the Meowbinogi event where you could hunt monsters to your heart's content. Because you could hunt monsters to let yourself get more out of the event, it encouraged NOT standing around in towns doing things not involving killing monsters.
Or like Samhain, that had its own storyline. Same with Little Ghost or the Alyn events.
Reasons to do things, not just stay on. Or things that are new, to break out of the usual grind.
At least this isn't that horrible street sweeping event...
There are times where people do want a event to be "light" in terms of interactivity. Events that only require log in times are great for when a person needs to do a routine of "dailies" and have limited time to actually play the game. You have 2 shadow mission dailies, 3 types of possible apostle raids, 30+ types of adventurer seal dailies, Iria field raids, lord missions, Avalon raids, on top of any other spams or goals a player might have at the particular instance. Things like dungeon spamming for materials, material farming, Baltane missions, Tech missions, gold farming, commerce, festia etc.
I for one, am thankful that afk events are around so I can still get some nice bonuses from them while still have time to do other things like material farming without having to sacrifice time for it. For me I just consider it a little bonus saying "Hey thanks for playing the game, I hope you enjoy what you're doing". Also I still fail to see the hostility towards them, either they are there are not does nothing to interfere with your game play besides using up a bit of space. You are being GIVEN free stuff for just playing the game, which if you enjoy just amounts to a little bonus on the side you can either use, throw away, or sell (if the option is there).
If you need something different constantly, then actually play a different game entirely until a major update rolls around. No matter what you do, unless you REALLY enjoy grinding a lot, sticking to a singular game will get boring even if they dump a ton of interactive events on us. The fact is that any interactivity from an event is pretty much a rehash of what we normally do anyways, they are either, grind tons of monsters for drops, complete a mission, or view through a story, run a dungeon, or in some events, the requirement is to actually do in-game dailies. Rather than being enforced to run a particular content, I rather do it when I personally have a need to for my own devices.
Finally, a bit food for thought, the reason for the prevalence for so many afk events is that believe it or not, people do prefer these kind of event for the most part, some consciously, some unconciously. They are easy, not obnoxiously in the way, and reward you for doing what you do anyways.
My solution would be to have both running. Due to the ease of creating these types of events, we see much more of them versus events that require participation.
In any case, they should not substitute for those types of events. Ideally, events should be reprieves from our daily doldrums lest we stop playing Mabinogi out if boredom. They spice up the game, make it look alive.
The coin event does not force anyone to afk in the game for 5 hours. The intention of the event is to reward you for playing the game for more than 30 mins, up to 5 hours. You get a bigger reward if you participate in a mission/dungeon/production party during that time. If you choose to spend that entire time doing nothing in Dunby, with seven other people who are also doing nothing, and followed by complaining about doing nothing, then... that's on you.
There's plenty of permanent content to play and revisit. The chance to pull a really nice homestead item while going about my normal gameplay is just icing on the cake.
Personally, I don't like the events that require you to do a boring daily chore because I'd rather not waste half an hour every day boarding ships/raising orphans/baking cakes/digging graves/running around in haunted houses. They're not fun after the first round, and they take away the precious little time I have for playing the fantasy life rpg I signed up for.
If we're going to have actual events with active content I'd like the content to actually be kind of fun to do rather than be dead beat content. The only active content that stands out in my memory have been the hillween nightmare/lorraine's nightmare, mysterious girl halloween, and catching tails events. Of course you need a good reward or there'd be no incentive to run the events, but I liked these ones because they incited team work and competitiveness into one.
Nightmare - Work together and get as far as you can for better rewards
Mysterious Girl - Work with a rag tag partner to get to the end before the others
Catching Tails - Work with your team to out pace the enemy team (though I didn't like this one as much because there wasn't that much strategy to employ)
About those events...
There's also something to be said for events that literally have a daily limit.
With events that have no daily cap, it always feels like if you aren't constantly doing it, you're losing out on potential event prizes.
But those events had limited daily entries, so you couldn't do it all day. And therefore if you wanted to get the most out of the event you DIDN'T have to do it all day.
You could actually finish with the event for the day in a reasonable amount of time. And events that bring players together to play with each other are good.
Even if the Belisha event did usually end with everyone waiting for the timer to tick down so you could fight the boss.
For me, about two hours is the max I'm comfortable with putting into a daily event. And even then, that's on a slow day, if I'm actually busy playing the game in other ways, then I might not have the time.
More than that and it feels chore-like, and when it comes to login events like this O-mikuji event and the Wingheart Coin event, after that amount of time, I basically AFK for the rest of it, in the case of Wingheart at least. Can't exactly "finish" logging in for Fortune's Fees for the day, since they just keep coming every 36 minutes.