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."