Printable View
This game is real fun and i hope it will be on from time to time, but there really needs to be done something against the afk-ers and quit-before-it-starts-guys.
My last game was 6 versus 0, yeah, a ton of fun, guess who won...
Edit:
Next game is 1 (me) versus 3, with 2 afk-suckers in my team. This ruins the whole event...
Okay, okay, okay..... Hobnanigans is hysterically comical. This is a good thing. LotRO needs as much *Fun-Factor* as it can get.
1. LOTS of fun to play but reeeaaalllyyyy frustrating because the PHYSICS of it are so weird.
2. Would be better as a Permanent Activity than it's current fly-by-night-we-have-no-idea-when-it-will-return randomness ...thing. This would also make other unacceptable things acceptable -- namely the high prices for goodies, the slightly over-long duration of the games, etc. Maybe make the games held only during daylight hours of the game to prevent over-kill ??
3. Need to be able to TARGET them dang birds like as in combat -- them chickens never die but trying to click on 'em is frustrating (too).
4. Needs an Event Announcer or something; and spectators in the stands cheering/Bronx-cheering...
Yeah, it's buggy, it ain't perfect, but it's fun (!) and has potential to be awesome if yall clean it up a bit. *Thumbs-Up!*
Those are very good points which I had not considered.Quote:
Originally Posted by PKCrichton
One thing which would be quite useful, for when a match starts and in general, would be for the client to flash in the toolbar at significant events. Rift does this when you're alt-tabbed and an enemy engages you in combat, and it's a really useful way to alert you to something important happening in-game. If you happen to be alt-tabbed while waiting then at least you can be informed when the game starts.
Another thing I have noticed is that players are free to leave the field before the game starts, even though the quest description tells you not to, but the quest does not cancel. If a player leaves the field before the game starts then I think it's only fair for those who remain that the quest is cancelled for any leaving players, and sticks respawn for other players to take up those positions.
In terms of the afk, I am not sure what a good solution could be but it certainly needs to be addressed in some manner.
I played so many games my fingers went numb. Very fun but the frustration of spending a weekend on bugged fields really kind of upset me. A simple guess is more than half the games I played was spent standing around after the chicken flew the coop. (Ie: went out of the arena) I would suggest the prices be dropped a bit for the rewards and make the chicken re-spawn in the arena if it hasn't been kicked in over 30 seconds.
The other thing I would like to see is the boarders be fixed so the chicken doesn't get hung up there for two and three minutes while players try to beat it free. Perhaps making the boarders have a bit of bounce back build into them to get the chicken back on the playing field, or make it so you can actually be closer to the wall than the chicken can be. I was in one game that spent over two minutes trying to free the chicken from the wall and honestly, that makes the game less fun and more aggravating.
A few other things I noticed.
I saw many people not playing, just collecting the small reward and rep. That really needs to be fixed.
I seen one person get so mad after losing a game, that he went to the other side where the team had been staying pretty much the same people. He took one of the sticks, then left the field to try and punish them I supposed. Make sticks re-spawn if someone leaves with them. If someone stays on the field and doesn't move. Don't reward them with rep or tokens. These should be fairly easy things to fix I should think.
I see a great potential for this being really fun if things are fixed. All in all, I had a pretty good time.
Multiboxing or afking in this event is not inherently disruptive to the Game's normal playability. On Riddermark 19 minutes ago there were exactly 2 characters in the entire area. There were no additional layers running. Both characters were on the same field (a 3v3). The rest of the sticks were in place. Now, and often since the event started there have been plenty of available slots to play, either 3v3 or 6v6 available. Keycloning is not required, nor is any special client modification. One client, one keypress, one action, is all that's required. Because of how 'select nearest' works, there's not even a way to grab the entire field at once, so players can choose to get on the field while the other player is still trying to get setup. Stand there. Ready to grab the quest, grab it and go grab a stick! Got others you're wanting to play with? Just stand there ready have them do the same =)Quote:
4. While playing the Game or participating in related services, you may not exhibit or partake in behavior that is disruptive to the Game’s normal playability, causes grief or alarm to other players, or degrades the service performance or other players’ client software (for example, deliberately using game bugs or loopholes to disrupt the game or dropping excessive items).Code of Conduct
As for grief, there's many other fields. They're waiting in line to play, that's one thing but they often aren't, There's plenty of slots, all of the active players just aren't in the same field. What's wrong with someone using slots in one if there are others open? I can see how some players might be alarmed by the sight of a bunch of characters standing around doing nothing, if they don't understand the policies surrounding multiboxing.
For some servers with the low-turnout for this event, being AFK or IAW is not even unexpected. We're talking 15m+ in some cases to fill a field. Flashing the taskbar indicator would be a start right before the game commences (perhaps a 30s countdown to game start, or a ready check that auto boots players if they fail to hit ready fast enough)
Being afk once the event starts? there's no good way to handle that in an automated fashion. The random nature of the skills granted (especially the interrupt!), the varying cool-downs, the immunity granted to targets of certain skills after a single use, and pvp aspect means that choosing to use or not use a skill, or move, or even whether or not to kick the ball toward your goal, your opponents goal, or just sideways, is a matter of strategy. Since there's no viable way to replace players in the middle of a match without 'pausing' the match, there's no point to kicking out the player once the match starts. They may not wind up participtaing, but they may decide to as the match progresses. The best we can do is ensure all players are present, and the 'sticks' respawn if someone leaves the field (losing the quest) for any reason. When the sticks can reset reliably, it would also be nice to remove the 5m cooldown between swapping fields, in case some players want to leave their 6v6 that isn't filling to do some 3v3s
You guys want players to be more active? Increase the fun of the event, reduce the grind. I doubt most of the multiboxers would bother if they could earn the currency at anything remotely resembling a reasonable rate. That is, as long as you make the 2 gold quality tokens a barter option (even if it requires Kindred!)
This is the 2012 Anniversary Festival snafu all over again.
Yeah, but that would be easy to get around as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by SouthernBelle0927
I don't think we're necessarily going to be able to solve this problem via chat comments, but I really think Turbine needs to fix the issue, that's for sure.
I've played a lot of Hobnanigans, and it's a fun event. If people find a game like this too boring to be worth their time then they should go find something else to do and leave the fields available for those who do enjoy it. Laziness, boredom and greed are no excuse for ruining it for everyone else.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crell_1
The tokens are available like candy out there, being unbound. I disagree it's a burdensome grind. Not everything needs to be in our hands yesterday.
If you starve your player base long enough, eventually they will thank you for bread crumbs..(there, in bold so you dont miss it)
In one sentence sums up everything there is to say about your latest efforts with "take sapience to isengard" and hobnanigans... and even about these latest changes, additions you announced...
Having reached Hall of Famer with one character and well on the way with another, I have additional feedback.
First, I would like to write about emergent behavior resulting from bugs on the various fields, with Landroval as my frame of reference.
On Field 2, Blue team goals do not count towards the score. As a result, players in the know rush in to grab red sticks, play aggressively to score exactly one goal, then go AFK. Continuing to play offers absolutely no tangible benefits to Red or Blue team players, and the more people who take that field knowing this, the more AFK players you will see there.
On Field 3, no goals count so the game essentially always ends in a tie. Players who know this grab a stick and immediately go AFK because no matter how much they try, their efforts will never be rewarded. Again, if a bunch of players knowing this take that field, it immediately goes AFK.
On Field 1, there is a hole along the east side of the field. In addition, the chicken can end up on the goal posts, out of reach of players. Games on this field usually go normally until the chicken goes out of bounds or ends up on a goal post, at which point everyone goes AFK. Some teams will get one goal up, then intentionally hit the chicken out of bounds, again resulting in an AFK field.
I have not played enough on Field 4 to note any emergent behavior related to bugs.
When the area lacks sufficient players to start a game, people will often grab a stick, wait a minute or two, then leave. This results in uneven matches when the game finally starts. Uneven matches quickly lead to players going AFK.
The net result is that current bugs lead players go AFK a lot. Rather than implementing any of the elaborate 'vice control' policies suggested in this thread, I recommend fixing those bugs and putting up the event for another round of testing. It is my belief that when score actually matters, competition will dramatically increase.
On the subject of multi-boxers, I played quite a bit late at night and spoke with a few of them. Personally, I have no problem with them using otherwise unoccupied fields. In fact, I was able to complete perhaps half a dozen games with their help, when the area otherwise lacked sufficient players to get a game going. Multi-boxers must control each account individually, so normal players can quickly and easily take a field back from one. Again, I would not do anything until the bugs get fixed and the event goes through another round of testing.
Having played many more games, I no longer believe any of the game physics need changing. Experienced players can and will use wall battles, timing, positioning, skill lag, field topology, and backwards run speed to advantage. Definitely fix the hole in Field 1 and definitely prevent chickens from roosting on goal posts.
Targeting the chicken takes skill. Using the F10 key helps. Using Target Assist helps. I would not mind seeing a 'fast' way to target the chicken, but the game works fine in the current state. People must expect a learning curve to compete against more experienced players.
I do not like how skills change position on the little skill bar during a game. I also do not like how skills 'queue up' to fire. However, I have adapted to these mechanics.
After all the bugs get fixed, I predict games will become much more active with teams of 'ringers' brutally trouncing pick-up teams. Ten minute games work great with fairly even teams, but when one team vastly outperforms another it makes for very long and unfun games. This may well detour 'casual' players from joining the fun and thus deserves consideration.
Now let us consider the rewards. A single emote costs 150 or 300 tokens. Assuming an even win/loss ration, a player must complete 15 or 30 games to earn one. Each game takes 10 minutes, with perhaps 5 minutes between games, so figure 3.75 or 7.5 hours per emote. If we presume a typical player can spend 4 hours on the event each time it comes around, it will take 7.5 months to acquire all 5, per character. If a typical player desires a couple emotes and a pet chicken per character, it will take years. Having reached Hall of Famer I have yet to see anything accept a White Chicken Token. Frankly, I think the entire rewards scheme for the event requires revision.
As a final comment, the game continues to offer a great deal of fun when two dedicated teams go at it. I personally prefer the 3 on 3 matches. :)
LOL not to me they are not. I spent Thursday, Friday & Saturday morning playing & I had just enough for 2 cosmetics- 450 tokens. I stopped playing because I am just burned out with this ridiculous grind. Something like this should not be a huge grind. I am not the only one who thinks this.Quote:
Originally Posted by frickinmuck
Haven't played at all, but what I have noticed in the various channels are lots of players with totally and obvious bogus names, none of whom can be inspected, so if people are making characters with the intent of "bottng" not good at all. If there's a way to cheat, be sure people will exploit it.
Event stopped being fun now. It's turned into ridiculousness. What a waste of potential!
I play on Brandywine. 2 of the 4 fields are borked and don't keep score, so you get 5 tokens no matter what. Naturally everyone wants to play on the one field that works right. So there's always a mad scramble every 10 minutes to pick up those 6 sticks. That's where the entertainment ends. At this point, inevitably half of the 6 players on field 2 go AFK. If queried they get nasty and say "Well Turbine allows it so why do you care?" I care because if I'm not one of those 6 to grab a stick, I'm out of luck for a shot at 15 tokens. The other fields generally fill with multiboxers, but more often than not everyone is waiting around for field 2 to be free so they can scramble like mad for the stick.
The fields need fixed. They all need to actually keep score. And this afk thing...why are we so concerned with making sure that people who don't want to participate, get their due as well? There's the AH. These things are all tradeable. If some servers are having that much trouble getting a game going, maybe something should be done about how grindy and buggy the game is, and some ingame advertising done beforehand so people actually know the event is starting.
I think doing something about the grind would go a long way toward fixing the afk problem. People afk to get lots of tokens because they want the stuff, and I totally understand that. It's the same reason people farm the heck of out instances when goodies drop from them.
Maybe going to an instanced system would work better. We tried to get a kin event together Saturday, but the hard part was finding a field we could all play on. Just a couple ideas here. This is a fun concept that I would hate to see get wasted because of these issues.
Definitely have to do something about the multiboxers going afk in a game, it is not fun with this at all.
Maybe reduce the costs of the rewards, ban players that do this etc.
To address the intentional AFKs, and perhaps to tie in with the suggestion of extra tokens being given for a higher number of goals, they could maybe offer extra tokens for individual players passing a certain threshold for number of hits (perhaps 20 hits). Direction/immunity wouldn't matter: as long as you hit the chicken 20 times, you'd get some tokens. If this were implemented, I could also see the base participation reward being dropped to maybe 2 tokens, which wouldn't make intentional AFKing worthwhile.
I strongly disagree with this. Some of the game physics definitely need changing. This is supposed to be a fun, recreational, occasional activity. This is not the Moors. I know that there is always a hue and cry when aspects of this game are seemingly 'dumbed-down,' but if any aspect of the game should be made more accessible to a wider range of experiences and skills, then something like Hobnobigans definitely falls into that category. If anything can be tweaked in the timing or structure of the game field or skills, then that should be done.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexendynamus
In fact you go on to provide an argument for exactly this point:
The game should be designed in such a way that all skill and experience levels feel like they can contribute.Quote:
After all the bugs get fixed, I predict games will become much more active with teams of 'ringers' brutally trouncing pick-up teams. Ten minute games work great with fairly even teams, but when one team vastly outperforms another it makes for very long and unfun games. This may well detour 'casual' players from joining the fun and thus deserves consideration.
I wrote a longer write up of Hobnanigans at my blog, here, however I want to copy and paste the relevant parts here so that the feedback is seen. Hopefully this serves as some focused and actionable feedback.
AFK Players
Once a match of Hobnanigans starts, some players choose to go "AFK" rather than participate in whacking the chicken back and forth. This is because even if you lose a match, you get 5 Hobnanigans tokens. Some people see the game as too frustrating or trivial to play but still want the rewards, so they see sitting AFK on the field as a reasonable way to acquire tokens. This causes frustration in players who are trying to play the game as intended. Sometimes you'll join a match and be the only person on your team playing, which frequently means the odds are not in your favor. Occasionally AFK players give you an advantage if you happen to be playing against a team of AFKers.
Proposed Solution(s): There are a number of ways this issue could be resolved, but the two I propose are 1) descrease the tokens you receive if your team loses and 2) award tokens based on number of chicken hits landed. If you only receive one token if your team loses rather than five, AFK players may not feel the reward is enough to take up spots in matches. Additionally, if there are rewards in place based on actually hitting the chicken and participating in the match, the rewards for participating will out weigh the rewards of sitting AFK enough to encourage people to participate. A possible reward could be 5 tokens for every 15 chicken hits landed.
Chicken Hit Mechanics
Regardless of the direction you are facing, if you hit the chicken while it is already in flight in a certain direction, your hit will act as though you had hit it again in the direction it is already going. It is unclear if this is a bug or intentional but nonetheless it can create a lot of frustration. For example if the chicken has just been hit and is close to going into your goal posts, if you try to hit it away from the goal posts while it is still in the air your hit gives the chicken just enough extra push to go through your goal posts, thus scoring a point for the other team.
Proposed Solution(s): It would seem more realistic to have your hit always count in the direction you're facing. Which means in the circumstance above, the hit would send the chicken careening away from the goal. However if this is difficult to implement it might be best to make it so that chickens cannot be hit until the chicken is in a "rest" state again after landing from a previous hit.
Bugged Scoring
The biggest source of frustration for me is that some fields are bugged out and don't keep score properly. It is hard to pinpoint what exactly is happening and determining any pattern. I've played a number of games on both Field 2 and Field 3. Also for the record I play on the Windfola server, which is relevant because people from other servers have noted the reverse of what I have experienced with Fields 2 and 3.
Field 2 Blue Team
We lost but in a fair way. All the players on both teams were playing but our team was not coordinated and lost. All the necessary score notifications popped up on screen when they were supposed to. This was my and my Husband's first attempt at Hobnanigans.
Field 2 Red Team
Despite winning multiple matches as a Field 2 Red team member (both from other teams being AFK and giving us an easy win and from fairly played matches), the necessary score messages do not appear on screen. No notifications about either team scoring appear though the designated Crier NPC does mention who scored and lights the fireworks. Once the match is done, the Crier yells out who has won though each team only receives 5 tokens. This happens even if the win is a total blow out (10+ goals to 0)
Field 3 Blue and Red Team
I haven't experienced any scoring problems on this field, regardless of team or win/lose. I have only won one match (blue team) and received all the tokens necessary (15). The score messages have flashed across the screen at the proper times. Only issues faced on this field have been AFK players and the frustrating chicken mechanics mentioned above.
Proposed Solution: If you earned tokens based on hits made as proposed above, it would ease the sting of bugged scoring. However the optimum solution is to have all the fields scoring and awarding tokens as intended.
Out of Bounds
Others have complained about chickens being hit out of the Field bounds or onto walls and goal posts where they are un-hittable. I have personally not experienced these bugs. However I can understand how frustrating they could be for the people who encounter them. The obvious solution to this problem is to ensure that chickens cannot be hit out of bounds or on top of objects.
High Token Costs
Some of the token costs for chickens feel a bit high. I understand wanting the chicken pets to be long-term goals so that people continue participating everytime the event is active. However for me and others the cost is quite intimidating, especially when paired with bugs and AFK players that decrease our chance of winning or receiving the tokens we are owed when we do win.
Conclusion / TL;DR
To reduce frustration felt by players who are attempting to play Hobnanigans as intended the bugs preventing players from receiving rewards or participating in matches should be fixed: Fields should keep track of score correctly and award earned tokens; chickens should be hit in the direction the player is facing; chickens should not go out of bounds. Additionally, the reward for losing a match should be decreased to one token while new rewards for successfully landing chicken hits should be added to encourage participation over AFK match sitting.
Well first off good to see the game back working. Not thrilled at all about how many times a chicken would get stuck behind the invisible wall and ruin the entire game. Not thrilled at all about how many times a game would get ruined by cheaters, and people going afk. Played on FF and like 60% or more of the games where not played by the "rules" (people picking up sticks to lower amount of players needed, cheaters, people going afk). Game is way to easy to negatively manipulate the outcome. Played around 11 hours all 4 days it was open and not overly thrilled how little i could get from such a massive time investment.
Changes would like to see:
1. Add a small practice field for people to learn the basics of how to play before they get into a official match.
(Helps them learn with out pressure, and helps lower the chances other players will get stuck with someone who has no clue what they are doing and ruin the match for them)
2. Allow for smaller even match games to be played without having to waste time tossing sticks, and all the mess that happens when people have to do this.
3. If #2 is not possible change the field #4 to 5 vs 5, and field #3 to 2 vs 2.
4. Add a mercy rule to end a match if one side has a lead of 5 or more with only 3-4 minutes left in match.
5. Have the game end once a teams reaches 10 goals.
6. Have the chicken reset if it does not get hit for 1 minute.
(this is for when it gets stuck behind the wall)
7. Have the referee hand out penalties to cheaters, and afkers.
(Would be a accumulative debuff that could lower token gain, kick you out of the match, locks you out of playing for __ duration)
8. Add a field that requires one of the higher reputation ranks to play.
(This will be for playing with more experienced players for a more difficult match)
9. Create a map for that area so you can navigate better.
(takes a while to track down what barter npc you need since there is no map to look at)
10. Have in-game advertising like you do for festivals, and a easy way to travel there.
( Have a npc give a shout out in chat that Hobnanigans matches are taking place every 30ish minutes to people in breeland) (Auto bestow a map each day to Hobnanigans) (Could add a poster that you can click on that ports you there in bree town. Would be a Hobnanigans advertisement poster that would be kinda like the current wanted posters, but this one is for a port to the Hobnanigans event area.)
11. Add the ability to trade the chicken tokens for regular tokens from a barter npc.
( even if it is for a small amount some is better then 0)
12. Please lower the amount of spam from the npcs. Chat is so hard to read with endless junk post from the npcs.
So I was just buying things that I thought woudl be good to have from the Festival Food vendor... I got a couple of the Banquet recipes memorized them and then looked at them only to discover that that require 10 of the 'normal' Festival Food items in order to be made. The Festival Foods cost 10 tokens each and the Banquest costs 25 tokens each. Needless to say this was a bit of a shock that the banquet wasnt just merger of multiple of the normal recipes. This is a major let down and really needs to be changed. Instead of a Sticky Apple banquet requireing 10 Sticky Apples it needs to require the ingredients to make 10 Sticky Apples. So in order to make 1 Banquet you need to spend 125 tokens. 100 for the normal food recipes and 25 for the banquet recipe.
This should not be the way these recipes are designed. Their ingredients should really be made up of 10x the ingredients of the normal Festival Foods or the normal Festival Foods need to be Multi Use instead of Single Use. Another option as I've stated before is to make the recipes all Multi Use and then in the ingredients have a Festival Ingredient like Fireworks have that we can only buy during festivals. Each recipe would require 1 of this item that we could barter for a stack of 10 of.
If this isn't changed this feature will never be used not to mention people will find out that they've wasted hundreds of tokens when they realize the Festival Food single use recipes stack and figure that they will buy a few to make later on.
This REALLY needed to be put on Bullroarer for testing before it went to Live servers. Not only because of the many bugs we have all foudn but because of things like this that are going to greatly annoy the player base and it could have been found on Bullroarer where the tokens earned/given don't matter as opposed to Live where we expect to get atiquate compensation for our time and effort.
Afk? No points and no reward unless a player tries to hit the chicken once, at every stage of the game. Target the chicken - try to hit it. No big problem with a skill you must click on screen.
Just...three minutes is about my limit for gaining five tokens. Please.
Something I noticed with regards to bartering for the Chicken Pets is that once you have memorized a Tome of the X Chicken you can't barter for that chicken again so that you can give the tome to a friend/kinmate/alt/etc... This feels a little off to me. If you don't want us to give the chicken pets to other people fine but at least let us give them to our alts!
the Hobinigans were a nice change to the daily routine,
but it suffered the general problems that lotro has today, which (will) made the game unenjoyable in a long run:
a huge grind with a very small reward and the inclusion of the RNG which results into even more grind and frustration.
only disclaimer i have to the game itself is that the chickens gets to easily stuck in corners and walls
(not to mention that the game is over if it gets kicked out of the field)
the game itself was fun, and i would be happy to see a permanent field with token reward in the settlements. ^^
but i guess this will not happen...
On the whole I enjoyed belting those chickens but there are some incredibly frustrating aspects to it, some of which you would expect to be easy for the devs to resolve. There are some excellent feedback and suggestions in this thread, here are a couple that I don't believe have been covered:
1. Skills - I like the idea of randomly allocated skills that are gradually acquired, but for the love of Eru please allow us to key-bind them permanently. If you're largely a keyboard player being forced to use the mouse to fire skills, or having to bind them to keys during the game, is tedious and detracts from actually playing. (As an aside I'm not sure why there is this mania for more and more popup toolbars for class response skills, cosmetic/event skills, etc. We have three sets of toolbars (two if you discount mounted combat one) so there are plenty of slots - why do we need more?)
2. Targetting - Again being forced to use the mouse to select the chicken is incredibly frustrating, sometimes I have been unable to actually target it before the other side have scored. This is obviously exacerbated by the other players and hay bales in the way, and obviously doubly frustrating because the chicken is being smacked around the field! Please make the chickens targetable (is that a word?) using the previous/next target actions.
3. Duration - The game feels to last a little too long IMHO, especially if the chicken goes out-of-bounds, or one side is crushing the other, or you're unlucky enough to get involved with a load of free-loading AFKers. Fixing the bounds and penalising players who don't actually play would help ofc, but perhaps a 5 instead of 10 minute length would be more appropriate?
There's an easy solution to the AFK problem: remove all the rewards and return the game to a purely social event like freeze tag.
Remove the incentive and those AFK'ers will disappear quick smart.
Play the game for the fun, not for the reward. There are plenty of other activities (questing, raids, skirms) that give rewards, this should be a casual thing.
Oh, and I'm not overly happy with spending huge amounts of dev time on this... its a nice distraction for those down times, but its not cannon and its not really what I expect of the game.
Hobnanigans are a fun thing to do, and you MUST keep them going, not like an event.
Don't take away the good things you do and you spent money in them. It would be just really silly...
On gladden, there seems to pretty reliably be a bugged field -- one of the small fields (#3, I believe) fails to keep score, and does not award the bonus tokens to the winning team (presumably because it thinks you have a zero-zero tie).
You can bug the cloak-colors by taking the red-team quest, dropping it, then taking the blue team quest; that leaves you on blue team but wearing the red team cloak (I discovered this by accident by taking the red team quest once and then noticing there weren't any red sticks left, so I swapped to blue team and everyone got very confused by cloak colors!).
Some people don't show the team cloaks. I haven't figured out what the repro is for this, it may have to do with what outfit they are naturally wearing.
If someone takes a stick then drops quest before the game starts, you should respawn the stick, otherwise you get short-handed teams, which is un-fun.
My character appears to be bald when wearing the team cloak; this looks goofy, because my character normally has long hair. Given how much effort some people put into character appearance, you should try to make hair return to normal (or if that doesn't work, you appear to have a hooded cloak variant; just cover up the baldness bug by giving us all the hooded team cloak, ok?)
The large fields on gladden appear to rarely be used for actual games; every time I looked at them, they were either a 5v0 game caused by people picking up sticks for one team and then abandoning the quest, then taking the other team (to get a trivial victory), or being camped by ten people from a single kinship (possibly a couple of multiboxers) who just ran in one goal and then stood there to get a 1-0 game so they could get the tokens. Despite there being enough people actually willing to play (demonstrated by the steady stream of games even on the known-bugged small field), we couldn't get a real game to happen on the large field because of the people token-farming :(
My suggestion to cut down on the token-farming: change the token reward scheme to reward actual play. Instead of 5 for a loss, 15 for a win, make it "2 for a loss, 5 for a win, plus 1 per goal your side scored, and 1 (2 in a large game) per goal you personally scored". That means you can still just stand there for a small number of tokens, but you get probably twice as many for actually playing, and even if the game is pretty darn one-sided, it's worth trying, because I've seen someone in a 3-on-1 situation actually manage to bang in a goal by getting lucky. You could still token farm by having N people standing around while one person just repeately ran in goals, but at least one person would have to be working at it rather than the whole set being afk.
Aside from things that have already been commented on like out of bounds chickens, afk'ers, people leaving a match and the stick not returning. I did happen to get stuck on top of the wall. I was stuck between 2 invisible walls preventing me to drop back into the field and drop off of the field. I was able to run up and down the wall.