Summer event fun or is it?

BB,

Please note that I know there may be some errors in this post. I tried to be accurate with all the numbers but it is all an estimate. If a few numbers are off, I still think the points are valid.

Thank you for doing a summer event.

Events should be exciting and fun. Players can work hard, do a lot of adventures and get stuff. I want to feel good about playing the game and earning rewards. I chat with other players and those that I have chatted with want the same thing.

The summer event has no 3x loot adventures. This is VERY disappointing. Prices are high and ball drops are low. I have chatted with several players that feel the same way about this event.

I did some calculations on how many balls one can expect to earn during the event using some reasonable assumptions, e.g. people do need to sleep.

The achievements take a little bit of work, but can all be attained. That is 635 balls. The soccer adventures deliver 1300 (1950 on premo) balls (from wiki site). Then there are the island collectibles, the adventures and the explorers. The adventures are simple enough.

A little math shows that if I do 100 Outlaws adventures, I will earn 2100 footballs. 100 Traitors would be 1800 balls. Let's split it and do 50 of each. So that would be 1950 balls.

Doing 100 adv during the event is certainly making an effort. I have done a few more than that during the last couple of events. And I know other players have done more than I have.

Collectibles on the island? The three times I counted I got 6,4, 7 and 9 balls. The average is 6.5. Lets just call it 7. That is 420 balls for the event.

That leaves the explorers as a source of balls. Everyone has varying amounts of explorers. I am just going to use my numbers which I think are higher than average. 3 tavern explorers 8 luckies, 2 courageous and 16 savage/intrepid.

I assumed that all explorers would be sent out every 6 hours, 8 for luckys. The explorers could be sent out every 6 hours (on average) if someone was willing to give up on sleep.

The returns if sent out every 6 hours (8 for Luckys) for the entire event are:

3 Taverns = 480
13 savage = 3120
8 lucky = 2400 ---> this is actually not every 8 hours. I decided to do 4 hour runs during the day and an over night run. So it is average of the two.
2 Courageous = 960

Total from explorers 6960. That is a nice number, but it is my max (allowing for sleep, but sending explorers out every 6 hours which I wont really do).

So my maximum total is 11905 balls on premo. That is not such a bad number, but look where it comes from. Over half of it is from explorers and only 16% is from non-event adventures. So working really hard doing adventures is not very profitable.

What are players going to get with only a few explorers? Not so much. I have all the explorers that gems could buy, but not all of them from every event since the game started. Let's say lower level players can get 1000 balls from explorers.

So that would give them 4600 balls. That doesnt look too bad but lets look at prices in the merchant.

There are 5 things in the merchant that I consider as either must haves or unique to the soccer event.

Training Field 1499
Snack Stand 4250
Stone Cold Geo 1295 x2 = 2590
Lucky Explorer 2499
Friary 1995

total 11538 or 12833

My max is 11858ish. So I am short of getting everything I would want. Ok, so I cant get everything. Players that do not have a lot of explorers, are going to get one maybe 2 things out of the 5.

Is this a good event for these players?

The Snack Stand is the new building for this event. This event is where the Training Field was introduced to the game. Is it really your intent that most players will not be able to afford those two buildings?

My understanding was that the original purpose of 3x loot adventures was to get players to do adventures that otherwise just sat in their star menu and eventually are deleted.

There are definitely adventures that are too costly for the loot they provide. I thought the event 3x loot was a great idea.

I dont understand why Outlaws and Traitors were chosen for extra loot several events in a row. Some other unloved adventures would have made more sense.

There are a few adventures that need even a better bonus. Wild Mary, Arctic Explosion, Secluded Experiments and SotV come to mind. AE would do well with 3x. The others need a little more boost. Roaring Bull and GunPowder are also plentiful in my star and would get used up if there was more of a reason to run them.

All the coop adventures would do well to be 4x. It is more difficult to get players together to do coops, and there is a little more risk involved when 4 players all need to do their part or no one gets anything.

At this point in the event, the only way to fix what I see as a problem would be to lower all the prices in the merchant. Perhaps reducing all the prices by a factor of 4. That would solve the low ball drop rate issue and bring things in line with other events.

I hope that you can understand the purpose of this post is to show you why a lot of players are not happy with this event. Whether they tell you or not is up to them. It would be great if you could figure out a solution rather than simply tell yourselves, "There is nothing wrong. We don't owe the players anything."

I fully understand and I will make a suggestion for you, to see what might be able to be done.

-BB_Odhran

I agree with the first 85% of this post. I don't think the proposed solution is a good one though. Reducing the price of items in the shop wouldn't do anything to address the primary issue. The problem is that adventuring is not weighted well enough, a hotfix that increases the ball drops from adventures and/or includes a 3x drop adventure list (including some coops) would be the best way to address this problem. Another option would be to add some cheap exhibition matches that cost little-to-nothing in the merchant, but require substantial tactical buffs to clear for soccer balls. That would provide an outlet for the excess tactical items being gathered by heavy adventurers.

I agree the ways things are currently, i am on prem and adventure as much as possible, send my explores out as much as possible, and will be lucky to get half of the items I had planned. It is disappointing to spend so much time trying to progress in the game and get things that will help with that and realize much of that is not possible. I also buy gems regularly to keep on prem, and buy things that i need. It should not be this hard to get event related items.

I agree that the ball drops from adventures are pretty light.

One thing to be pointed out is that everyone can earn a Snack Stand by doing the Host of Responsibilities quest chain. So the one in the merchant is a second one, which is very attractive to get, but even newer people should be able to finish the quests and get at least one. I think that's pretty generous of BB actually.

If I was new and realized I couldn't afford everything in the merchant I'd factor that into my decisions and concentrate on getting a Lucky and a Football Field, in that order. I could always pick up a friary in TO at some point down the road if it didn't work out during the event.

I feel kinda bad that newer people can't get everything that's on offer, but at the same time, I couldn't either when I was a newb. Had to prioritize and get what was the most important as far as being either rare and only available during the event or really expensive in gems outside of it. Heck even after playing all these years, I still prioritize and make purchases in a specific order just in case something comes up and I can't be on enough during the event to get everything I want.

The answer is pretty much already there. Back in 2012 I think, there were event soccer matches with actual opponents:

The Opening Game
Game two
Game three
Game four
Game five
The Final Game

There are two levels of difficulty of each. I ran the harder "The Final Game" with no losses (mind you, that's with 7 MMA, 1 Nus, 1 Var, 1 Ans, a few Dracs, all fully skilled, and was a pain with no viable sims). I got only 90 balls + about 15K xp before premium, no other loot. 90 Balls for somewhere under an hour of adventuring. Probably could be run in 30 minutes or less with a fair number of R losses.

Give every player one set of these - all 6 matches - easy under level 37 and "hard" over level 37, or whatever the cutoff was back in the day. If they all pay out similar balls, so 50-90 or something, that's somewhere around 400 pre-premium for six matches, and for almost every player on the server, they haven't run these in at least 4 years, so it's like new content.

No need to create something, just send one of those gift emails - people that need the balls will run them, they pay out way better than regular adventures, but only in event resources so there's balance there.

The snack stand is overpriced for what it currently does, but I'll still grab it because I'm not passing up on a unique building. It is nice, though, that all I have to do is complete every quest and I can get one regardless. I really like this concept. I expect might come short of getting the friaries, but those are easy enough to come by.

Honestly if I hadn't bought gems on the sale, I would not have been able to even get half of the items. I only get on at night and weekends. I have over 20 evp's and they are my main source of balls. I have already done at least 40 adv's since the event started. So yes a low level player is not going to benefit much from this event,

There were six soccer games in the 2012 Eurocup event. However, they are the parallel of the games given currently from the calendar. The only significant difference is that they changed from combat to collectible-based buff. This may be because collectibles did not exist in the game at the time of the first event, nor was there scenarios. There were also no additional rewards for completing them through achievements, as there were no achievements.

One of the bigger problems is the solitary nature of the event. While the sum of the rewards for a multi-player adventure may be somewhat equivalent to the same difficulty of other adventures, there is ultimately a disincentive for people to do multi-player adventures. Making events effectively a solitary activity has an inhibiting effect on the game community. I would continue to say there is an intrinsic problem with the multi-player loot determination, which has caused other issues over the years, but that is only part of the problem. The prospective increases from cooperative adventures would have been an improvement, but unfortunately, it was not ready prior to the event start.

So, in answer to 'is the event fun?' - like many activities, it is possible to find enjoyment alone, but it would be much better with other people.

honestly these quests where we get 120k xp instead of event loot are ridiculous. yesterday - 2500 sandwiches... i mean really?? it takes me 3 months to use 100 .... this is ridiculous. and then today .. pay 300 balls.. at the rate they are dropping from adv - 3 to 5 at a time... thats basically 1/2 my inventory that i had. and ... for what?? oh ya 120k xp... since when do event quest NOT drop event loot. Sorry but this event is a failure in my book.

(i have also yet to find any adventure thats dropping triple loot like easter.)

ciara

I like any way to earn some extra XP, even though some of the quests are a bit silly, like the sandwich one. Small price to pay for the most expensive (questionably priced) event building.

In short:
I agree that this event makes it challenging (to severely understate things) to gather enough balls to get all the "Big" rewards, which is usually fairly manageable during events.
Also, it bugs me quite a bit that like at previous soccer events the ratio between how many you need (or even have use for) of each collectible and how many you end up getting is completely off. The first thing that comes my mind is letting us convert them at say 30:1 into token which in turn can be turned 1:1 into any other event collectible. It would also be cool if we could get sink for the total excess like converting them into balls @ 100:1

An Event Quest that takes 300 Soccer Balls? When it is already difficult to get them? Really????

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Originally Posted by Ciara_Belle

and then today .. pay 300 balls.. at the rate they are dropping from adv - 3 to 5 at a time...

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I want to echo these sentiments, in that it was a TERRIBLE decision to require the advancement of a quest by paying a SIGNIFICANT amount of Event currency. Even if someone is enjoying the Event and collecting loot, when those efforts result in having to pay those hard-earned resources to advance, that has a tendency to limit the amount of enjoyment one might experience.

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Originally Posted by Ensign_Garak

I want to echo these sentiments, in that it was a TERRIBLE decision to require the advancement of a quest by paying a SIGNIFICANT amount of Event currency. Even if someone is enjoying the Event and collecting loot, when those efforts result in having to pay those hard-earned resources to advance, that has a tendency to limit the amount of enjoyment one might experience.

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Agree it hurt giving away 300 balls. hopefully we get them back later on in quest chain

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Originally Posted by Perwyn

I agree that the ball drops from adventures are pretty light.

One thing to be pointed out is that everyone can earn a Snack Stand by doing the Host of Responsibilities quest chain. So the one in the merchant is a second one, which is very attractive to get, but even newer people should be able to finish the quests and get at least one. I think that's pretty generous of BB actually

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Thanks for pointing that out

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Originally Posted by Perwyn

I agree that the ball drops from adventures are pretty light.

One thing to be pointed out is that everyone can earn a Snack Stand by doing the Host of Responsibilities quest chain. So the one in the merchant is a second one, which is very attractive to get, but even newer people should be able to finish the quests and get at least one. I think that's pretty generous of BB actually.

If I was new and realized I couldn't afford everything in the merchant I'd factor that into my decisions and concentrate on getting a Lucky and a Football Field, in that order. I could always pick up a friary in TO at some point down the road if it didn't work out during the event.

I feel kinda bad that newer people can't get everything that's on offer, but at the same time, I couldn't either when I was a newb. Had to prioritize and get what was the most important as far as being either rare and only available during the event or really expensive in gems outside of it. Heck even after playing all these years, I still prioritize and make purchases in a specific order just in case something comes up and I can't be on enough during the event to get everything I want.

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Have you seen some of the things we have to pay for the snack stand,

1500-2500 sandwiches
200-300 balls
Elite soldiers

Not exactly generous when i have to give up o many of my resources to be able to earn one. They are not giving us one, we are buying it with time and resources.

Today was delegate 400 s. So .. i rarely use s... most people i know rarely use them. Therefore i had 120 of em.. So now i'm, clearing my barracks, and re filling my with useless troops when i could be making troops for the adventure we Need to run to do this event. Once again a quest that is counter productive to the goal of the event... getting loot. I think the dev's need to go back to the drawing board for this event b4 they consider running it again. (oh and of course - no loot for the delegation of S (which is 4000 sw etc etc) just xp.

Edit - i miss read it... Its Swordsmen.. ELITE troops... Bloody stupid.

I have to delegate 80 Heavy Infantry. Neeever herrrd of em. :D

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Originally Posted by GHarrold

Have you seen some of the things we have to pay for the snack stand,

1500-2500 sandwiches
200-300 balls
Elite soldiers

Not exactly generous when i have to give up o many of my resources to be able to earn one. They are not giving us one, we are buying it with time and resources.

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BB could offer some people a solid gold brick and they'd gripe cause it was too heavy. Earning something is never without some kind of cost. In reality this is mostly costing us some pixels and some production time that happens even while we're logged out and sleeping. I wasn't happy with the 300 soccer balls I had to pay, but other than that, what's there to complain about? Really?

It's a small resource sink, which I'm sure will expand with the last few quests, but nowhere near the 4250 balls the one in the shop costs.

I have to agree with many opinions that have read so far. There should definitely be some better use for the event collectibles. After all you are asking us to click on 1000 of them to complete achievement:) I will most likely fall short on that again anyway (like I did last soccer event - was missing 45 or so) collecting them 2x a day every day. I absolutely refuse to set my alarm clock for that.
I'm not a big fan of adventures to begin with and if I have to do something I don't really like that much over and over and over again, I would love to see a better drop of soccer balls for sure to keep me motivated. Even on premium is pretty bleak.

I understand we should work hard to get a very unique buildings, but that statement is only valid if the snack stand or soccer field were really worth getting. It was cool to be able to get 2 snack stands and one more training field this event, but if they are going to be linked, look the same and work on the exact same thing, why not offer 2nd level instead? I think it would be better option even for the future events as more players would probably prefer to have an option of upgrading the building to level 3 instead of getting 3rd building of the same design. Building spaces become more and more precious for the higher levels and I simply can not see myself being excited again about this type of the event in the future. I like to be challenged, but if after all that hard work reward is going to just slap me in the face, I don't really feel like I want to participate and possibly will just pass on the whole event in the future to avoid frustration - if I'm still around playing......

UPDATE: by some miracle, I managed to finish click on 1000 collectibles on your island achievement this time :)

I'm mostly fine with the quest chain...minus running a bloody adventure now, gotta coerce somebody into letting me tag now haha

I like the quest chain overall, economy XP on par with adventure XP, something I've been wanting for a while (yes yes I know we can buy the quests from the merchants now, except 1 is still behind a level barrier of course),but came too late for me regardless.

As far as Snackstand goes, just can't get behind it. Provided you get both this event, cutting the time down to 1.5days, that's probably gonna be like that for another 2 years, assuming we get the next chance at a Snackstand with the next soccer event, so that would mean 2 years having 2 buildingspots blocked for something that only gives a minor boost (inflation as well as Rainbows being dime a dozen among other buffs) and you can only get 1 every 36h with perfect timing. Also unclear if the next event/chance to get a Snackstand will give 1 or 2 ooooooooor, BB becomes genius and introduces another building altogether yet again, because reasons. I'd be looking at 486 Snacks with perfect timing, ~450 being more realistic once you factor in Alzheimer, Vacation, running late etc. Dunno, just going to be a starmenu item to me /shrugs

It is not fun. Not a challenge because it is unattainable. Nope.. ain't doin it.

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Originally Posted by ToniT

It is not fun. Not a challenge because it is unattainable. Nope.. ain't doin it.

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Rubbish i have akready bought the snack stand the lucky both geos and the pitch.. and am halfway to grabbing a friary

hades8840 consider yourself very lucky. You either have too much money to spend on gems or too much time to waste chasing balls via trading or adventures. It would be nice if you expressed your opinion (in nice words) about the event instead of trashing other people comments. Thank you!

I've made it a point to just for the most part adventure how I would otherwise during events, although there is such a limited supply of event resources from adventures this time that I could just about get everything I want without running any non-event specific adventures. Explorers are bringing home the lion's share. Normally I just send them once a day, so I am doing that a lot more now, but it only takes a few minutes at a time. Working on getting the snack stand, which I will probably never actually use, and then the building licenses to round it out with maybe a day to spare. No friaries, but they aren't worth buying for balls anyway, at least on Ares.

I have enjoyed the event and have managed to get everything I wanted, including the second snack stand and my second footie pitch, both of which are being used on my island regularly. If my math is correct, I think I can make about 30 rfs a week with the snack stand, which will give me a nice supply of good buffs. This event hasn't been as easy as most but still fun anyway.

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Originally Posted by Schipperke

I have enjoyed the event and have managed to get everything I wanted, including the second snack stand and my second footie pitch, both of which are being used on my island regularly. If my math is correct, I think I can make about 30 rfs a week with the snack stand, which will give me a nice supply of good buffs. This event hasn't been as easy as most but still fun anyway.

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Glad you liked the event!

-BB_Odhran