Please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments on the [Dev Diary] Valentine 2020 Event below.
The original post can be found here.
Happy commenting!
BB_Malkun
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Please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments on the [Dev Diary] Valentine 2020 Event below.
The original post can be found here.
Happy commenting!
BB_Malkun
Name: Valentine
Effect: +200% to resources, refiller and XP!
Targets: Completed Co-op & Multiplayer adventures
Condition: Three (3) active Valentine Card buffs
As long as this conditional buff is active, the owner will be able to take advantage of increased loot from their cooperative adventures, including Flower Refills!
Only thing I need clarified. Is if the buff must be active before the co op adventure begins. If I can beat up the entire map. Get the buff active, close the adv and have my troops en route back home to send out again.
Being able to complete 3 co op adv in a 3 hour period is going to be near impossible.
And hardly worth it when I have to jump through a flaming hoop just to get the "benefit" of additional flower refills.
Meanwhile I can still run second and OIL all day long.
This is where I wonder. I see a bundle like this and I wonder how disconnected you designers are, from the capability of us players.
Nobody wants or needs a second Anslem.
Of the 3 COA, he is the least used. So right off the top, you've lost my interest.
The proof that someone loves you:
1x General Anslem
1x Endless Iron Mine
1x Large Riverhouse
1x Small Riverhouse
1x Improved Warehouse
1x Prestigious Friend Buff
1x 7 Premium Days (2x3 Days, 1x 1 Day)
3x Hugs and Kisses
Ya know. Offering an endless iron mine sounds nice. For that 25k gem value. But we did not all agree it should be priced that high to begin with.
We have industrial iron mines and refills. And we have multiple geos to give us improved iron mines. And we have Bakery.
We really don't need an endless Iron mine. Endless copper actually holds more value. We would eliminate many small cycles of searching and upgrading by not having to click away at keeping copper mines going.
Large waterhouse. I can buy one for less than 1/10 price of bundle. I'll just do that. Buy the rest from guild mates markets which they will not buy.
So yes. I may be limited to buying only 7 from my market. But I am free and able to supply a friend with the flowers to buy more and send them my way.
2x Assassin
2x Big Catapult
2x Rain of Arrows
2x Rain of Flaming Arrows
2x Ballista
This has a total cost of 3190 Star coin, taking only 2 day's to be able to purchase these items.
With 3 Laboratory, I can produce 3200 star coins for the cost of 256000 plat ore and 12800 coins. Taking roughly 10 days. With less Laboratory it would still be under 20 days. As infrequent as we are required to use such powerful buffs, we are more than capable of exceeding the cost to maintain.
I just bought a PFB without even checking my balance of SC.
The bundle as a whole is a very ineffective purchase. There is no exclusive value in acquiring the package.
And yet. You dangle it. As if we are supposed to drop a hundred bucks to get the gems to get the flowers to get the bundle.
Birthday, you did the same.
Christmas, another big bundle nobody wants.
Right now, two massive bundles that hold very little value.
You are aware of why nobody respects EA right?
You are starting to walk that path. Probably not the best idea.
These bundles over and again offer endless iron mine. Which seems to be your go to valuable item without the realization that we have better options than an endless iron mine. It is an ineffective building. As if I will buy a bundle for a second vargus, when I can buy a second vargus.
Hm.
If you really are convinced that bundles are the new go to. Maybe a reform would do you good.
My thought would be to sell a ticket.
So here buy this bundle.
12500 Gems.
1 medal of bravery - exchange to recruit 1 of the folliwing. MMA, vargus, nus, OGG, ygg, etc.
1 explorer map - exchange to recruit 1 of the following scouts.
1 Valuable pickaxe - exchange to recruit 1 of the following geographers.
Contractors deal. - imp floating res, small river house, mag res.
And then throw in a buff pack. Condesing over 16k gems of purchse into 12500. You are really only giving 30% priced reduction but granting the freedom of choice. The value of that freedom is more attractive than "you get what we offer".
The buffs need to be active before you end the adv as long as its active all 3 farms buffed then you will get the bonus loot...am curious what c0-op you doing that takes that long ? I can do 2 sieges every 30 minutes my own and the one I join ...and if I am using the observatory would be around 20minutesQuote:
Originally Posted by Snaketeeth01
The event on the surface looks great, until you realize you have to obtain even more event resources in 2/3 of the length of a normal event with less opportunity to get them.
Proof of love is a nice bundle, if you can gather the resources for it. I can't say I really have all that much use for either a second Anselm or an endless iron mine, but it's nice to have the possibility to get them for something other than gems.
Chocolatier produces some potentially interesting buffs. One viscous drinking chocolate is better than two barazeks, and sugar glue is better than hide glue or resin (though the 16 hour time is meh).
I wasn't sure what utility love tree would have due to the long cooldown, but it seems quite nice for events with farms. Not sure how I'd use it beyond that unless I had five of them.
Paying event resources to upgrade buildings? Yeah, it still sucks.
Five more explorers pending additional nerfs.
Not upgrading any of those buildings to level 7 either. I'm not sure what I actually would upgrade.
So Keener is basically Intrepid but a little more so. The river buildings are okay I guess. I doubt anyone can get 3 Chocolatiers and 3 Love Trees fully built up in time. Then again, I see no real need to go above the second upgrade for the Chocolatiers. The last upgrade just gives you a weak version of Rain of Arrows that you can't use with other arrows. Pointless really.
This year it's harder to get flowers and items cost more.
Adventures return 30% LESS flower refills.
Explorers return 30-50% LESS flowers.
Lovely Explorer costs 40% MORE at 2099 flowers. Last year it was 1490 flowers.
Charming Geo costs costs 44% MORE at 1149 flowers. Last year it was 799 flowers.
You get NO flowers from Collectibles, Calendar doors, or Achievements.
Last year I was able to make 6000 flowers.
I bought an explorer, a geo, and the observatory and star charts.
Buying one Choclatier and one Love Tree will cost 5490 flowers.
Upgrading each will be another 3000 flowers.
A Keener explorer is 2899 flowers.
Not to mention up to 7 Water mansions for 2249 flowers each, and up to 7 Large riverhouses at 1495 each.
Lots of nice buildings and specialists, but way less flowers. Flower packages anyone?
The flower refills from adventures are insufficient. To get refills for 1 day of flower farms will require up to 24 Tomb Raiders. BB made a huge mistake limiting the refills. To make matters worse, the 70%/30% return of flowers doesn't work. 14 Tomb Raiders, and 1 time I got the higher refill. That's 7%, not even close to 30%.
PFB - Not even a mention for an event that is all about co-opt.
My guild buddies are already lining up swaps but nothing is said about how this PFB will affect the other buffs like Flower Bouquet or Valentine Card/Valentine buff. We need to know if they will cancel each other out or help each other.
Actually the level 3 chocolatier buff is one thing I look forward to.
It as access to a form of arrow without spending SC.
So instead of focusing on how powerful it isn't. Why not focus on the fact that is is cheap on resources?
For the cost of making one of these cheap arrow. You can snipe a camp which you normally would lose 82 MS to.
Bam. Drop one of these cheap buffs.
Now you only lose 37. Nice.
Now you are saving platinum bars, platinum, coal, brew, Elite racks time.
Whatever individual resource you are suffering a bottle neck in. This cheap buff is a no SC resource that you can cut back your costs while you work to alleviate this pressure. Be it gaining more ETG, more friary, whatever you need. And as a "hidden" bonus. You can cut back on MS and knight loss on any camp that you want.
I have not done siege. I do not have observatory.
So lets take your example of siege being the best case scenario.
For most, maybe 40 minutes from when you start the adv, to when your gens return. Supposing you have the ally to do it with.
Just so happens. I can do a second thief and return in that same time.
Maybe in best case with the valentine buff active, siege would pay out more flower per ls than the second thief.
But hold on..
I am being paid 30kc for the second thief. I am getting hundreds of grout. Thousands of beans.
And check this out. Thousands of deposit refills for saltpeter and titanium.
It is likely that I am going to pull 500 grout. It is easy to sell 1k grout for over 200 flower. So. Do you think a siege is going to drop over 200 flower? I don't.
The depo refills come in increment of at least 1k.
*** goes for 1:3 salt for 1:4. So there is another 4 k in gold.
Second thief can also drop a TOW map. Which you either pocket and use for future use in your weekly challenge. OR as a mid level player buying into the LS for 30kc, you can then sell this adv fr over 35k and make their investment back before even looking at the loot rewards.
Second is going to give me over 100k thousand xp. siege gives me 6k. So for that same 40 minute investment. When I need over 140 mil xp to gain a level over 72. That 6k xp is not worth my time and clicks. I do not care how much focus you try to put on "oh hey, co ops give flowers woo!".
Well. The loots from second outweigh anything siege can offer.
In october I bought multiple imp storehouse for 16kc. Bought multiple DC for under 20kc.
Waited. Waited. Waited.
Christmas came.
I sold each DC for over 330 presents, and storehouse for over 200 pres.
So realistically. Any time I sell a second thief for 30-32kc. I am about to buy 2 imp store during off event, which means that gold is giving me 400 pres.
Before I sell deposits or grout.
You can easily EASILY! Get 500 event resource PER second thief run. And can be completed in less than an hour. So dropping a scout buff and running at least 2 within that 2 hour of play time. Is going to give you probably 3695% more beneficial than siege will even with applying the most benefit you can from the event.
Oh. And running second thief costs no more units than a WC. you can easily replenish your army as fast as you would need to.
Again releasing some of of this pressure from a "no cost" arrow.
Which for purpose sake. Specifically within 2nd thief is a camp which I need to tap with MMA multiple times to remove first strike before I can swipe at it with no loss. Here is the problem. You cannot stack your attacks or they get intercepted and attack elsewhere. Other maps have the same issue. So for time sake. I will now be able to drop a cheap arrow and tap the camp much faster and drop my clear time by maybe a full minute. Oh. a minute you say? Hey not bad for an adventure that I run 39 times and take 39 minutes to complete. That is like, and additional run for something I am already doing anyway. And what if I do that set of 39 3 times a year. That is like.. 3 more second thief a year!
Out of one "useless" buff.
Not that bad over the long run.
Sounds like *way* too much work for a game that is supposed to be a fun time waster.Quote:
Originally Posted by Snaketeeth01
I'm missing TSO less and less these days, and this is exactly why. It's too much work for the things that used to be fun. I'm really only here for my Guild these days.
Socialise and support the new players, but as far as actual advancement? BB has made it clear they don't care about me unless I'm an ATM.
I have no room for more new Buildings! I have deleted 58 grade 5 noble houses ( I paid 95 gems apiece for), laboratory's, observatory, pirate res, guild hall, tavern, training fields, White castles & fairy tale castle. So I can make room for the new generals and extra buildings that add speed buffs because for some reason somebody thought it was a better idea then upgrading and buffing. As for the generals I'm so glad we keep getting new ones that make old ones obsolete (especially all the ones I paid gems for). I didn't get any valentine buildings last year and I'm not this year. The xmas market and bakery are the only buildings I'm getting going forward. I'll take what ever explorers there are, I have 73 the more the merrier. Even the 16 geos I paid for are obsolete as well as the iron geos. I like the fact the specialist are specializing. I just wish I could get a refund for the crap I don't need. I'm considering getting rid of the spring parks and snack stands next.
If you want us to have more then one building like snack stands and oil mills etc. Have one regular building and the rest like tribute building size.
12 hours in and I'm reminded why I found last year's Valentine's Event so frustrating. Too many things are about timing. That's doesn't promote 'togetherness'. That promotes frustration.
Ah well, another reason to not spend money comes to pass. If I didn't know better I'd think EA bought BB. O.o
AWESOME ideA!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mouldy
I have no idea how the new players will be able to get enough refills. For lower level players, the only doable coop/adventure with a reasonable drop for refills is Buccaneers Roundup, but the map itself is relatively rare, it is not available in merchant. And with coops, they are afraid to join because they don't have the 'right' generals. Usually, veteran players would help them but the event was just made impossible for 90% of the people. I can't run the coop for them and if I spend time on multiplayer adventures to offer them a loot spot, then I won't have enough refills for myself. So what was supposed to bring us together is dividing us. The game mechanics is broken. Sadly.
Siege is a two player coop, also lvl 26 and is available from the merchant. You can do the entire thing with one YGG which was available at Halloween. Even with a tavern general they only have 400R losses. They also can do loot spots. Players that just started within the last month, yes events have always been more difficult. My first event I just sold the currency because at that time everyone didn't have tons of resources and I wasn't showered with free stuff from guild mates so I used that to buy materials to build up my island faster. I actually had more fun then than I do now grinding these.Quote:
Originally Posted by kzar
I agree, although today I figured out doing 2nd thief is better than doing coops. Coops should be faster but there is almost always someone who thinks they should go walk the dog during one.Quote:
Originally Posted by AstrumLuxLucis
Anyone having issues loading the game ? I had zero issues loading the game this morning and afternoon. It's 8pm eastern time and its stuck at the loading page
Game not loading.
Shades of last Easter when we couldn't get on for a week and BB's response was "Yes we know, that's too bad, hope you keep playing!". :/Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazy-Beard
I cannot say anything good about settlers online right now. Loading page is stuck. I have not started the event. please help
I sent in a Ticket. I expect the same answers. At least I tried. Hope to see everyone on tso when I wake up. G'niteQuote:
Originally Posted by I-See-Dead-ppl
Was it Easter or this same event last year. I know I barely played this event and got almost none of the rewards so I think that log in problem was already started this time last year. I remember thinking all this visiting other people's islands and all these coops were causing server issues. This game is laggy at the best of times, I don't think it can handle that extra.Quote:
Originally Posted by AstrumLuxLucis
So i had cards on my farms - making them output 8 per cycle. Like last year - i had a friend drop a love crazed. As it states it will double all single production buffs...
but nope
it did absolutely nothing to my farms;
https://ibb.co/n7KPfZj
btw i have pfb ... so i went to friaries they were 145k / 12hrs buffed b4 the love crazed. THEN after while they each show higher multiples - the output remains. 145/12 hrs
The login problems started well before, but they reached a peak at Easter, with many people being unable to login for days on end, and some people being effected for weeks and a few for months. It was the biggest loss of players we've seen in recent years, both because people just gave up trying, and also becuase of how dismal Support was during the debacle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Narasn
I've kind of found this too. I found chain-running surprise attack to be fairly efficient. But since the buffs involved to make it remotely worthwhile are so short, I didn't feel like I could risk inviting a second person to share a loot spot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Narasn
The Love Crazed Buff says, right in your screen shot even, that "The doubling of buff effects does not stack with other buffs of this kind". While it should probably say "other zone buffs" to make it absolutely, positively, perfectly clear, it's kinda obvious that's what "other buffs of this kind" actually means. Nothing is broken or functioning incorrectly.
I was going to leave positive feedback (or at least soften my criticism), but then came the loading issues. I'll reserve those comments for now, but if the excuse for the changes to the event, which nobody believes, are to encourage cooperation, it would be easier if people weren't making deals to help others out then disappearing for hours because they can't log back in. One lost night is a good chunk of an already abridged event.
In the past, I leave comments based on technical issues. I have not reviewed an event, or at least anytime soon.
I have been playing events from when I started this game in 2012. Over all TSO has been exciting and the events make me want to play more than usual.
I felt like previous events were much easier. (I'll explain) This is my personal opinion. (I don't mind any feedback)
In previous Events I felt the time given was more balanced. I didn't feel rushed to collect pumpkins, eggs or presents.
Whatever was being offered in the store was obtainable. I was able to get everything I wanted during the past two events ( Halloween & Winter event )
This is the first Valentines event I have taken part in. I expected a longer Event play time. Also I felt that this event didn't have enough rewards or Quests to give the player a greater chance to get Flowers. I have a lot of Explorers and have been extremely active on sending them out to get more flowers. Still I feel that I'm not making good enough progress to get a lot of things from the event store section.
I appreciate the daily windows that give all the active players things. That is one of the more exciting things from the events. When it offers a daily window to open.
I'm still trying to figure out how get / collect Flowers at a faster rate. I have off work till Tuesday. I will see how many I can get from co-ops.
My want list:
Proof of Love - 16,999 Flowers
QM Bighearts - 3,599 (3x costs: 10,797 )
Keener Explorer - 2,899 ( 3x costs: 8,697 )
Lovely Explorer - 2,099 ( 2x costs: 4,198 )
Chocolatier - 3,295 (3x costs: 9,885 )
Scouting Post - 5,499
Weather control Station - 3,690
Love Garden - 1,990 (2x costs: 3,980 )
I need just over 63,000 Flowers. Not sure how I can get this in game .....
Good luck all trying to make this many Flowers before the clock runs out.
Don't forget that chocolatier requires event resources to upgrade (5000), as does the love tree (3000). You probably only need to upgrade one of each, but there is still the initial investment.
Even if you could non-stop adventure all day long, the 35 minute production time on flower farm puts a hard cap on what they can produce. It's not extremely easy to reach and does require a fair amount of effort, but it's quite doable with plenty of time to spare.
I'm thinking 40-50k is reasonably achievable if you have enough explorer searches, which is actually not bad considering what I was expecting. Still, there is massive supply constraint on any potential trading.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gwalben
My rough math on the 50+ Explorers I have (most with Skills for speed and bonus treasure), plus Flower Farms running at least Snacks/Snow/etc on PFB (ie 8:1) puts me around 35k-36k max...and that's assuming I keep the Expl out pretty much back to back, and no downtime on the Farms. That doesn't account for the Flowers lost any time I have to buy Depos if my Advs fall behind on my Depo needs. :/
That's about half of what I would prefer to spend.
These card buffs are really annoying. Your servers aren't capable of operating without lag and I have had to waste so many because the game won't pick up the first one applied to others. Plus 3 hours is just a terribly short period of time when you have adventures taking 2 hours to do.
Having to keep asking to get these applied just isn't worth the bother and is more annoying that anything.
I actually wonder if the people making these game design decisions play the game much because some of your ideas sound good on paper but they are just so impractical given the realities of low server populations and server issues.
event is too short for the merchant buys, hard capped by explorers and farms / refills which were knocked to lower results this year but BB doubles the merchant buyouts.
correct me if im wrong, farms were 20 mins cycles last event, now 35?, VL/PL searches were cut in half?
last year success only came from an extension of a week+? due to extreme latency during the event. last nights latency was horrendous and practically unplayable even with refreshes (some lag other days, but managable). trying to multitask multiple adv, buffs, and sending out 50+ explorers on medium/long is just painful, let alone up to 6x a day on a day off.
What a total disaster this is as far as the game balance for rewards go. Been playing all week without log in issues (for once), sending out 50 explorers each time I'm on, and so far have enough flowers to buy 1, yes 1!, explorer. There are 5 to buy.
And you BETTER buy all the explorers because you know that the 'new explorer count' is going to go into the future events balancing equations, which are sure to suck more than this event. Good luck keeping up with that.
I'd like to try out a love tree or chocolatier, but I don't want to sacrifice future events for those items, so I guess I'll settle for falling behind the 'max explorer' count by a few and maybe next year they'll figure out how to make their game enjoyable again.
This event is not going the way I thought it would. I was able to take off a week from work. My plan was to run co-ops for 8-10hrs at a time.
Turned out others could not join or play at the same times. This was a waste of real vacation time. I hoped that playing large blocks would show a serious reward, a larger collection of flowers. Idk why this event is so much harder than previous ones ????
It looks like star coins for xp is being shorted during this event for level 80's. Example: I did Split City in Fall four times for comparison, two as player 1 and two as player 2, all four times these were done with the same other player. We compared our generals used and I actually have a couple of Younger Geminis with more Fast Learner skills than the other player. We used the same guides and each have the Prestigious Friend Buff, Premium and Scouting Post on at the time. The results were as follows (xp showing is from 1st loot line only:
First Run: Player 1 (me) 1792 star coins or 1,792,000 xp
Player 2 1,939,545 xp
2nd Run: Player 1 2,243,418 xp
Player 2 (me) 1481 star coin or 1,481,000 xp
Star coins have been based in the past at 1 star coin for 1,000 xp (verified by a mod). The difference from each Player 1's loot is 451,418. The difference from each Player 2's loot is 458,545. Again, this is first loot line only, and we both had PFB, premium and scouting post on so the second loot line would be half.
Unless I am overlooking something else that might affect xp it looks like star coins are shorted. I am wondering if the dev's possibly didn't think about some players being level 80 already and so they didn't take this into account or did the star coins to xp ratio change.
I have done five Split City in Fall this event which means that I'm shorted almost 3,400 star coins from just these, not counting all the other adventures and co-ops I have done this event so far.
I am hoping that the BB's/devs can look into this further and compensate if this is indeed the problem to those level 80's playing.
This event has quickly become my least favourite and one I am least likely to participate in in the future.
An event that is supposed to centre on the ideals of Valentine's Day should be built on the idea of rewarding people for what they give to others, not something that hamfistedly requires people to be on endlessly, clicking away at buttons for little reward against ever increasing costs.
Aside from the debacle that was last Easter, this has got to be the least enjoyable event I have taken part in in years. If BB doesn't fix things quickly, I'm done spending money on TSO.
Players 1 & 2 will not earn the same XP in this co-op due to additional XP being awarded to players based on which quests they complete.Quote:
Originally Posted by Olfred
I did not say that Players 1 and 2 should earn the same xp. What I did say was that 2 different players being player 1 should get very close to the same xp, and that 2 different players being player 2 should get very close to the same xp when all the other variables are the same.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorotheus
I am really disappointed in the size of the water mansion. It looks to be such a beautiful building but is too tiny to appreciate it. I would much rather the old floating residences were shrunk by half and buildings like these were double the size.
In fact, if you are trying to save us space how about making some of the duplicate buildings we are having to get to reduce cds smaller. I would love to have another observatory on my island but I hesitate to do so because it takes so much room.
Will we be able to turn in our unused cards to the mayor's house to get back the resources after the event? It wasn't i Dev's Diary this time.