[Feedback] Christmas Event 2018

3.5 Stars out of 5

It was a decent event but in my opinion it lacked some of the merriment of past events. The Doors contained some really nice items, but the loot from Adventures was low. As mentioned by others, it was a great event for my Explorers. Next year the focus should be on Adventures, Adventuring should be the best source for presents. The Weekly Quest should be deactivated during Events. The Christmas Skin for the Mayor's House needs to be enlarged by at least 200% the building was too small. The Gift Tree is too big, make it smaller, or, make the big tree without decorations available in the Merchant Store.

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Next year the focus should be on Adventures, Adventuring should be the best source for presents.

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As far as I remember, Xmas never had presents drop from adventures. I _think_ a BB even mentioned that's intended so people can spend time with their families, don't quote me on that though.

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Originally Posted by Ceruhe

As far as I remember, Xmas never had presents drop from adventures. I _think_ a BB even mentioned that's intended so people can spend time with their families, don't quote me on that though.

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lol quoted :p anyway yes that is what they have said and I am happy for that, especially this year when we had Easter which was constant explorers and adventures for event items, followed by a soccer event which was constant explorers and adventures for event items, then an anniversary event which was constant explorers and adventures for event items, and then the Halloween event which was constant explorers and adventures for event items... Frankly Christmas with just explorers was a nice break. Please DO NOT add adventure grinding to Christmas too.

Next year please allow a reasonable amount of time to acquire enough presents for all the things we need to get. Maybe eight weeks or so.

I agree. I liked the break. The event resource costs on new items are so high often for seemingly no reason that every event becomes a grind. Christmas was a nice change of pace.

Yep totally agree that adventures should not be part of Christmas event. They never have been and never should.

If lack of explorers is an issue for adventure advocates I'd suggest skipping a few fast food meals, putting that money in a gem fund and get some explorers for yourselves.

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Originally Posted by HortonsWho

Next year please allow a reasonable amount of time to acquire enough presents for all the things we need to get. Maybe eight weeks or so.

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Yeah! 2 months of xmas like irl. :D

okay... so no adventures....

I felt the presents rewards we got were underwhelming. I finished all quests, opened all doors, got all achievements, but still was very far from being able to upgrade my Christmas market. My explorers were constantly on the move, and that helped a bit, but it was not enough. I used some coins to buy presents in TO, but that gave me 1 upgrade level... I don't expect to be able to get everything from the shop, but since in my humble opinion the market was the novelty in this event, I think it should be possible to upgrade it - and the game mechanics should provide enough presents to do it. Alternatively, greatly reduce the upgrade costs. Maybe the plan is to wait until next Christmas to get the next level upgrades, but I don't like that direction.

I was a bit disappointed with the event, not enough achievements and not enough presents, but it did feel like a more relaxed event. I'd say a solid 6/10.

The halloween event gave pumpkins for adventures, Christmas event did not. It would have made the adventures more appealing to do if we had that.

The gift tree was very expensive in presents for the once a week gift it would give. I ended up not purchasing it.

Christmas market level 1 is almost useless. the 5x5 area barely covers anything. It has to be level 3 before it is useful.

Improved floating residence was a good gift!

I agree that this event does not need to involve presents in non-event adventure loot - puts less pressure on the players during a family-oriented season and is a break from other event formats.

Also really liked the new Imp floater.

The Gift Tree's loot table needs some help. It is ok for the lower levels, but IMHO as the player level increases into the next tier, the previous tier(s) loot table should be closed (so loot a level 15 can receive is never awarded to level 60). This way the tree becomes more than just a deco that accidentally gives weak weekly loot for the higher levels. Also, the loot mechanism is broken for this device. If anything happens in the background (geo or exp sent/returns, collect found, buff is placed, etc) between clicking on the tree and showing the loot window, the window never appears and the player has no idea what the loot was.

The Market was an interesting new add, but personally it will sit in my Star. It's not worth it to me to rearrange my island and storehouses to take reasonable advantage of its mechanic (or to remember to trigger the buff twice a day).

Overall, I enjoyed the event and appreciate the work that went into it. It is not feasible to expect every aspect to be useful to or enjoyed by the entire player-base :)

Thanks!

I was gonna write long feedback about my experience from this event, but my browser crushed. So you are lucky and don't have to read my long list of complaints as I don't feel like retyping it all. I used to love previous Christmas events, but that's in the past now. This one was a bust for me :(

Overall, I was pleased with the event. I am another one who enjoys the "break" from adventure grinding during an event, so I do not want to see Christmas events start including adventure grinding like the rest of them.

The Advent calendar was generous and enjoyable.

The gift tree is very quirky and does not function well. There's no way for me to know when the next gift arrives. When it does arrive, if i click on the tree a blank box appears but then disappears, so I have no idea what gift I actually received. Clicking on it further gives me the "destroy this building?" pop up. Apparently I missed the opportunity to receive it in the calendar, I'm sure I overlooked it, but that's a shame if I did. But if the interface continues to be dark and mysterious, it won't matter to me anyway, because I have no idea what it is doing.

The Christmas Market is an idea that needs a lot of improvement. I'm curious where this "let's make them collect 2 buildings and upgrade them to perform tasks" mentality came from. The last few events have offered buildings with a similar theme. The problem is, real estate on the islands becomes a critical issue very quickly as players level up. Yes, this is a resource management game and yes, part of the gameplay does involve "do I really need all this stuff?" as part of the management. But I have to spend 11,000 presents to get the building to a functional level, and spend higher level/more costly resources on a regular basis to activate the building. If a player has been playing this game long enough to have real estate challenges to lay it out, plus generate those resources, most, if not the significant majority, are going to need to spend a lot more resources to reorganize their island to accommodate the buildings. I think a significant number of us will deem it not worth the cost/benefit analysis. I was not willing to risk an additional 11k in presents (I barely acquired enough to get the other items I wanted as it was) which I would have needed gems to purchase. The risk was not worth it to me because I do not have my island properly set up for the market, and I was not willing to risk investing resources into island redesign, or risk losing presents because the market would lose its levels if I moved it/tore it down. Last but not least, as a player who balances playing time with other aspects of life, a 12 hour buff after all of that investment, calculation and management? It can't be at least 24 hours? It almost feels like a joke at that point. So no, thanks, I'll stick to relying on Steaks and Red Flying Settlers and other 24hr+ buffs.

Christmas event was good, but not great.

Good: Improved Floating Residence, GB storage.

Needs improvement:
Presents last year were around 60gc each. This year they were 200gc each. Explorers were the main way to get presents, favoring those with lots of explorers. The Christmas adventures didn't produce many. The achievements didn't produce many. If you're going to offer lots of items for presents, then provide additional ways to get enough presents.

Christmas Market seems like a good idea, but it's too limited and expensive. 100% buff is worthless since I can use Aunt Irmas. And having to place it in the center of what you want buffed is problematic when moving buildings is expensive. And the market is not additive, it does not add onto any existing buff a building has. That would have been nice. It would have been nice to position the buff like you do with Efficient traps. Very expensive to upgrade with no good way to get more presents.

Christmas Tree seems ok but 52 gifts a year that are the equivalent of what you get from doing maybe 10 adventures seems kind of limited.

Recycling Manufactory would have nice if it was tradable. Why not?

Smelter recipe at 100% is useless. I'll use Aunt Irmas. Would be nice if it was additive with an already placed buff.

Versed Geologist is ok. I'll use other Stone Cold for stone and marble, Iron Will for iron. Maybe use Versed for copper and others when my level is high enough.

Maybe have fewer items available for presents, but make them really special. Don't build in so many limitations in using the item.
A Market where you can place the buff anywhere, and it's additive to whatever buff you already have, would have been special.
A Xmas tree that delivers an improved building or a Premium day would have been special.

market is pretty overpowered cycling 30 buildings at 300% infinitely, personal use res or for coins, super awesome building, but daily maintenance. I see some great benefits, but also a possible inflation problems in the future?

newer players need a method to get more presents other than base 3 explorers, as years pass and more items get added, just means more missed opportunities.

You really need to lower the present costs for older items / tradable items, or consider adjustments to certain ones. People in trade offer 2-10x more value than event merchant offers, this event was the worst being limited by no adv, and presents were selling for upward to 14-24k / 100. most past events 3-7k tops.. quite an increase on both the seller and buyer.

I was please that the collectibles fell reasonably evenly, unlike past events.

Really like the event. that being said, I do have LOTS of explorers. I can see how people with less would find this event less appealing. The floating Imp is awesome as were the window prizes. Inflation hit and gems:presents ratio was expensive as was the present:grout ratio. My biggest complaints are the Christmas tree and Christmas market. The Christmas market...well...others have said it best so the Christmas tree. On one hand, it is nice to have "free" items once a week. But seriously? Some of the things, I have gotten are what two explorers have brought back...I see some of the better items but..... Considering how horrible the drop rates are for pretty much anything in the game, I have absolutely no expectation of ever getting anything good from it. Those two items could have been better. They are just...too mundane and really don't offer anything exciting for a reasonable cost.

Versed geologist is a nice addition to my stable of geologists. Using him for gold searches. I was hoping to move away from =jollies, but that looks like it will have to wait until next year when I have a second one.

The Christmas market is a nice concept. The use of presents to upgrade makes sense, though it caused the complete lack of any presents for sale. Still, even at those exorbitant prices, well worth the cost because of the benefits it provides.

I only got one gift tree because I didn't even realize a second one was on offer. So far doesn't seem worth anything, but I like to have all unique buildings just in case. The first few gifts I have gotten will sit in my star with little chance of being used. Nice to have a random gift once a week, though. Hopefully once in a while I get something worth bothering.

I hadn't even thought of it until someone mentioned it in one of these threads, but yeah, I am getting close to running out of water building locations. Not that I need village schools anymore either since I have 8 of them sitting in my star and usually max population.

I was satisfied with what I got in the end. Everything not tradeable plus two gingerbread storehouses. Unlike the last couple of years, I had to keep going all event to get close to getting everything I wanted.

I think this was one of the better Christmas events. Some great stuff. Just wish it had lasted longer. ; )

The Christmas marketplace buff clearly says 5x5 on it, but is only 3x3.

The gift Christmas trees don't actually give ANY gift at all when the gift icon appears and you click it. Or it does but nothing happens and it never tells you anywhere and it's something you can't find in your star menu.

But I honestly don't think you people give a single care about what your players want, proof is in the weeklies and all the good ideas we all gave you that you've chosen to ignore, so really, you should stop even asking for opinions.

I went broke trying to get all the presents I needed and I have lots of explorers. That being said, I am happy with what I got. I upgraded the market instead of getting the GB houses, there was just no way to get them too. I upgraded my market to lvl 4 and I am very pleased, I was struggling to keep up with resources since the weeklies were introduced. The tree presents at my level are meh. I don't want to run adventures for presents, but if there was another way to get them it would be good. Or otherwise, don't offer soooo many things to get in merchant :D

I think it would have been better that if you are going to have players spend "gems" to purchase Christmas related adventures in the shop, then upon completion of said purchased adventures the player should receive Christmas presents as part of the rewards, not have a "chance" at receiving presents. I purchased one of each adventure & received NO PRESENTS as part of the rewards of either & I made sure I told everyone I could that it was a ripoff & not to waste their gems on them.

I, like many others, really enjoy christmas with the many free gifts we get. another 2 recyclers and so forth. the only thing is.. okay a list of things. We need more demolition people. really we do. And everyone i've talked to wants a improved noble that you can buy and bring up in the normal way. not something with a huge footprint either. Also the limited sale of buildings was fantastic!! One bug, I forget which one does which. But right now I can make manuscripts two ways, the bookbinder and the rph. One dumps it books in star and one in mayors!!! I had to autocomplete a couple to make sure.Oh and that fancy buff that I call 'fourth of july' is really festival something? We need to be able to by them in black market. Badly. The night time is cute too, I'm not sure if we can buy it or not but it goes well with the fourth of july! Also one bug never been fixed.. we can name our generals and we can see that name looking for them, and at the adventure island. But when I choose which generals to send over, I can not see their names! I can see type, but that is it. Anyway otherwise it was lovely. By coincidence I got the manuscript recipe during the event!! Last thing, its not really christmas, but we need more ability to get grout. I have buildings and buildings awaiting the grout. All in all though it was a very enjoyable event.

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Originally Posted by Artemis69

I went broke trying to get all the presents I needed and I have lots of explorers. That being said, I am happy with what I got. I upgraded the market instead of getting the GB houses, there was just no way to get them too. I upgraded my market to lvl 4 and I am very pleased, I was struggling to keep up with resources since the weeklies were introduced. The tree presents at my level are meh. I don't want to run adventures for presents, but if there was another way to get them it would be good. Or otherwise, don't offer soooo many things to get in merchant :D

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You may not want them to offer things in the merchant - however i appreciate the fact they offered many items - as i didn't care at all for the market. I had enough presents to get everything i deemed worthy in the merchant, and still had leftovers to give to my guild.

Different ways of playing, i dont care to be online 2 times a day with 12 hours apart to buff a stupid buff - you do

Thank you for the option of doing something else with my presents than a stupid buff building.

I saw the event as easy for higher level players but very difficult for low level players. i didn't like that adventures didn't drop presents. i also thought it was very weak that we didn't get a nice prize for opening all advent doors. my first year of playing we got a gold tower for opening all advent doors. that was wonderful. since then the prizes for opening all advent doors have gone downhill and this year was the worst with nothing. the prizes weren't bad that we could buy with presents. overall it was a good event for those higher level players. thanks for the work.

Event was ok, was difficult to get everything i wanted, and I was unable to upgrade the market even at my level (71). Seemed as though they were just trying to get us to spend gems. Was not a good event for lower levels or non-gem players. And like Dart said, the lack of final prized for the calendar sucks.

Thank you all for the feedback! It truly does help us with future events and planning everything.

-BB_Odhran

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Originally Posted by Dartanion111

I saw the event as easy for higher level players but very difficult for low level players. i didn't like that adventures didn't drop presents. i also thought it was very weak that we didn't get a nice prize for opening all advent doors. my first year of playing we got a gold tower for opening all advent doors. that was wonderful. since then the prizes for opening all advent doors have gone downhill and this year was the worst with nothing. the prizes weren't bad that we could buy with presents. overall it was a good event for those higher level players. thanks for the work.

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BB moved the final prizes on Christmas days, 24 and 25 December, on players request, to have more time to click it.
On previous Christmas events we were getting a prize on Christmas day and another on final day. Now we get same 2 prizes on 24 and 25 December. Same thing.

Feedback:


Moving final prize to 24/25 - Great idea. Felt like actually getting Xmas Gifts that day virtually.

Nice new explorer! Though - I wish the skin/portrait was more Xmas themed like Santa or an Elf bringing back presents. Please have a Santa or Elf Explorer next year. Thanks.

New Geo. I love it. The 50% more deposit is great. I gemmed to get refunds on my books and placed it on the new geo to stack the 8% bigger deposit with the 50% deposit and he's now my go-to geo for everything but stones and iron.

Xmas Gifting Tree - This needs tons of work - as I have already posted in the technical bug report about the lack of visible indication of the gifts. Please have our gifts be mailed to us so we know what we got. It feels like we got robbed or cheated when the bug of no display or appearance of nothing happened when clicking on them. ALSO- please add in a timer counting down when we can expect our next gift. Possibly just rework the interface when clicking on it.

Xmas Market - Really love it. 300% buff.

Skins - we should be given a "try" it for free for 1 hour skin or 1 fish for each skin type for a very short 1 hour test. So we can decide if we want to spend money on the skins. Some of the holiday skins were not available on the test server after the testing was over so I was not able to see what the Skin looks like for the Mayor's house. I ended up just buying the skins for the residences. I really liked the medium xmas themed residence. It was nice.


I enjoyed the Buffing Adventures with making stuff and applying to the houses, it felt like I was santa and going house to house and deciding which house gets what gifts.

I like the fact that regular (non-holiday one) adventures don't give presents and only explorers. This was a really nice relaxing change of pace because grinding for adventures during the holiday would be no fun. buff adventures was fun though.



As a discussion. I think removing presents from regular adventures is a good idea, mainly because this creates acquiring presents finite. Explorers is the only means of getting presents and collectibles on the island to make are finite - which is fair. It encourage players to trade. And it encourages players to BUY gems to purchase if they want to increase presents count to pour into the economy. Or encourages players to buy more explorers. How else will BB make money during the holidays right? It rewards long time players who have a large collection of explorers - and I think this is fair.

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Originally Posted by Verdaeni

I, like many others, really enjoy christmas with the many free gifts we get. another 2 recyclers and so forth. the only thing is.. okay a list of things. We need more demolition people. really we do. And everyone i've talked to wants a improved noble that you can buy and bring up in the normal way. not something with a huge footprint either. Also the limited sale of buildings was fantastic!! One bug, I forget which one does which. But right now I can make manuscripts two ways, the bookbinder and the rph. One dumps it books in star and one in mayors!!! I had to autocomplete a couple to make sure.Oh and that fancy buff that I call 'fourth of july' is really festival something? We need to be able to by them in black market. Badly. The night time is cute too, I'm not sure if we can buy it or not but it goes well with the fourth of july! Also one bug never been fixed.. we can name our generals and we can see that name looking for them, and at the adventure island. But when I choose which generals to send over, I can not see their names! I can see type, but that is it. Anyway otherwise it was lovely. By coincidence I got the manuscript recipe during the event!! Last thing, its not really christmas, but we need more ability to get grout. I have buildings and buildings awaiting the grout. All in all though it was a very enjoyable event.

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I agree with needing more demolition. There are some rocks/mountains that I wish to remove because I picked the wrong ones to destroy. Certain mountains give better island space.

I didn't read other comments, so pls excuse me if this is a repeat. A general comment that is applicable to Christmas event as well as weekly challenges etc, I think BB need to get some of their programmers to become (real) players of the game - and by that I mean ppl who are invested in getting to lvl 75, not ppl who "dabble" and maybe reach lvls in the 40's and claim they are serious players. IMO, the "scale/ratio" of cost vs reward is sometimes way off i.e. Christmas market - not a bad idea for a 12hr buff system, but the cost of upgrading it? Preposterous in comparison to what you can use your presents for elsewhere. I left upgrading my market to the very last - because I could afford to buy presents and do some upgrading (but not all the way), many players would have only been able to buy the initial market, if that. My initial thought when I bought it and realised it was 2K presents for just the first upgrade was that I wasted my presents, so I advised fellow players to skip it altogether - to the very last. Weekly challenge? Rubbish! You need to put in a lot of effort to meet the challenge - for what? the same amount of XP that you would get for performing one adventure? And some tokens that allow (slow/torturous) lvling of some pop buildings? Look at your stats, ppl performing weekly challenges has dropped and dropped, hasn't it? Soon they will be like co-ops, almost nobody does it, with the net result that BB wasted precious development resources and money for nothing.

Also, I could use conventional buffs that were a lot cheaper than buying/upgrading the market - so? Probably a flawed idea right from the getgo, serious player input would have veto'd the idea before it got off the drawing board.

BB really need to get some of the game programmers to be full time players (I know, I am repeating myself :-)). I know feedback is supposed to be used and come from the test server, but the flaw with that system is the idea has already been developed and coded by the time it gets to the test server i.e. there is a BIG investment and nobody wants to back away from a big investment. If BB actually had some game programmers who were real players, then (for instance) co-op adventures would never have gotten off the drawing board and so we wouldn't see continual efforts by BB to "encourage/force" us to do co-ops - any serious player would have been able to tell that the original concept was seriously flawed and development time would not have been wasted. Similarly, I fully expect "incentives" to be thrown out sometime in the future to encourage players to do the weekly challenges - although the concept of that isn't bad, it is just the scale of the rewards that create a disincentive, unlike co-ops where it is just downright painful to even think about running.

So do yourself a favour BB, get some developers who actually play the game and things might run a bit smoother - for all of us. Either that or contract some real players and run the ideas/concepts past them before investing in code and development and finding out at the test server that it was a flop.

+1

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Originally Posted by AThunderBolt

... I think BB need to get some of their programmers to become (real) players of the game - and by that I mean ppl who are invested in getting to lvl 75, not ppl who "dabble" and maybe reach lvls in the 40's and claim they are serious players. ...

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Hear, hear!

+1

This is an issue I've seen brought up more than once in my service of TSO.