[Feedback] Sneak Peek: Easter 2015

[Kit_]

The biggest complaint is the total disparity in rewards between the two events. However MMA's or Vet's or the like are never guaranteed but people are howling because last year's shop is realistically only accessible to older players. The game is offering something to you that it cannot offer to new players. Rewards should be offered to all players. You missed out on certain items, so? That happens to players every event. BB is giving you a second crack at the whip when new players haven't even had a chance! If people were hoarding (and that's perfectly fine btw) eggs for this event, BB could have offered a system where their eggs could be traded into new ones. This current method just smacks of being lazy.

I think we agree on some points

I would think that older players with a hoard of spotty eggs will have already bought all the items in the last event and so not be able to use them except for the buffs, the old limits are still in place. And they can indeed swap these eggs for stripy eggs if they wish, it is called trade. Unfortunately many may well sell spotty eggs for very high prices, but I find this happens anyway every event. Lower lvl players may be able to get a few items, and higher lvls can get more, this is the way all events work. This event will be no different. As players stay in the game and lvl up, they will access more. My first ever event I did not manage to get all I wanted, now I can. It's the same for all players every year. Guilds can of course help their members by spreading the wealth. Although the new items are fairly poor, ALL players do still have access to the old event items, which I think is far more preferable to them having removed spotty eggs entirely and having nothing from last year. Maybe if the prizes for this year were a bit better, people would feel it was a bit less unfair.

The idea with the stripey eggs seems to be to get people actually involved in the event more. More quests, more to do, more ways to get eggs, there seems a lot of content, so all lvls can achieve something. And the hoarders will have to participate too, rather than buy everything on day one, and complain of boredom the rest of the event

[Kit_]

You're right, BB has never guaranteed it would even offer any Easter event. Event shops do change, and that's totally fair and acceptable for everyone. They have to change. Otherwise this would be very dull game.

Gold tower is not a good example. I can get it for bean stalks - you got it from xmas event. I can still get it so there is nothing unfair in this situation. You have been just bit luckier for playing longer than me.

But would you be happy if BB would like to offer a Veteran for 2000 stripy eggs but only for players who have been playing less than a year? Of course not because you would have a disadvantage only for playing longer than someone else. And that is not fair.

Well as a long time player I already have 2 vets and i would think most long term players do, so not being offered one would hardly be a problem, and I have no issue with lower lvl players being offered something that will help them. I am extremely relieved that the mma is still on offer this year, I did not get one last year, and would have been extremely disappointed if it was not. I can give a huge sigh of relief, but if it had not been available, I would not be angry, I knew it was not guaranteed, and would have carried on playing without.
And all items offered in events are available after via gems, or as you point out beanstalks. So anyone can buy them be it VET, MMA, explorers, or rarity house with blueprints.

[corona88]

this still wont work as the old eggs will be sold at prices so high as to keep newer players out of the market

but new player will be able to collect enough eggs for vet or mma at least
will be eggs in adventures, colonies, scenarios, quest, explorer

[LillyAmy]

I began the Easter event on the test server ... the new mini adventures and scenario are rather cool, but I found some bugs.
The easter residence doesn't give the number of achievement points necessary to upgrade it from the 2nd level. The new general that we can get for 4595 blue eggs (which I think is rather expensive) doesn't seem to give any advantage - I used it on an adventure using a guide for a regular general and I didn't see any difference ...

I began this game at the end of the Easter event last year and I couldn't get any general, and I really need another MMA for the fairytale adventures, could you make a possibility to convert the stripy easter eggs to easter eggs ? That would be so cool

Many thanks for doing a great job ...

[Brayarg]

this still wont work as the old eggs will be sold at prices so high as to keep newer players out of the market

And what would happen on the last few hours of the event if these highly priced egg's hadn't sold?

Would long term players accept 100% loss or reduce?

In truth the market is very hard to predict. neither you nor I can specifically predict how this will play out.


Because neither you nor I know how many old eggs are in existence nor do we know how many players still require items from the 2014 shop.

[Kit_]

but new player will be able to collect enough eggs for vet or mma at least
will be eggs in adventures, colonies, scenarios, quest, explorer

Those will only be dropping the new stripy eggs for the new event shop, not the old spotty eggs for the mma and vet.

[corona88]

Those will only be dropping the new stripy eggs for the new event shop, not the old spotty eggs for the mma and vet.

read my and jollyfog2012 post

a lot players including me, don't need old eggs.

only solutions is keep old eggs (pumpkins, presents) for this year(2015) events
next year (2016) will be new eggs (pumpkins, presents) and for every next event (2017,2018....) will be new eggs (pumpkins, presents)

without any mix with 2 shop and 2 event resources at same time

[Sharpielein]

The idea with the stripey eggs seems to be to get people actually involved in the event more. More quests, more to do, more ways to get eggs, there seems a lot of content, so all lvls can achieve something. And the hoarders will have to participate too, rather than buy everything on day one, and complain of boredom the rest of the event

However harsh that sounds - I have >6k Presents myself, they should have simply destroyed them. And they should destroy all event-related resources at the end of every event.
Would stop the hoarding and the outrageous deals people would make off these eggs now.

Event resource transfer between events wasn't much.
In 2013, I couldn't afford many things from events.
December 2013, I broke myself so utterly totally completely from Xmas event that I had 0 Presents leftover, 0 gold coins, 0 Granite and nothing else worth mentioning because I spent every single present on cool stuff (mostly, those adventures) or bought Frozen Manors.

In 2014, my Gem Mines started kicking in: I could finally afford those gem-scouts, so during Easter, I was scouting madly and had leftover eggs.
December, I got so many presents from Xmas thanks to 21 Explorers/Scouts that I gave well over 2000 away just because I could, and I have more than enough to buy another load of stuff.
The same will happen Easter.

Unfortunately, I am an exceptional player and not the rule. You can't balance the game around people like me.
If you want to make sure I don't hoard for next year, the only sensible way is to simply destroy event resources at the end of the day.
This will:
a) Stop the hoarding
b) Help lower-levelled players
c) Create more of a community sharing approach.

[Vystress]

BB, this year Event looks very promising! Guys, I have 8000 eggs that I will trade as follow:

1 egg: 50 new eggs;
5 eggs: 5k granite, Improved Silo or Frozen Manor
2500 eggs (instant MMA): you must wash my car and do my gardening for the rest of my life.

[Zotamedu]

I would like to know why BB decided to change the eggs, is it because of the hoarding and they want to prevent that ?
If so, those are lucky ( and rewarded ) for doing that, while, those who have helped others to get an mma/vet and didn't hoard, can simply look at the shop and wonder if they should stop helping people in the future.
A warning should have been given, or the option to gain some old eggs still. Not like this. It will make people selfish.
Helping guild members acquire a vet or any other item is a huge part of event fun in my guild, i am very disappointed that's gone.

They have changed it because they are really bad at basic game design. They keep falling in basic design traps and then they mess things up trying to get out of them.

They messed up by not understanding that an economy of a long and persistent game like this is completely different from a shorter game such as the regular settlers. There a game lasts a couple of hours at most. So the economy needs to be balanced for that time only. Resources on the map are finite. Here, you have infinite resources trickling into the economy so you need equal sinks to destroy those resources. Granite enters the economy through adventures and then exits through upgrading buildings. So they did not properly regulate the amount of eggs that entered the economy. So now there are too many of them. They could have adjusted the prices to compensate for the inflation but no they nuked the resource instead. And they chose the bad way through just remove them without warning. If they had any sense of decency, they would have put up a warning this year that now would be the last time to use them. If they needed to avoid the power creep they have introduced by limiting the amount of MMAs people have, they could just limit that to one per account and that would be fine. Then drop the new useless general so high level players had something to sink their eggs on instead of just grout. They need major sinks to not mess up the economy. That would make sense and not piss off the players too much.

Regarding the power creep. That's another game design 101 mistake they made. The adventures are balanced around generals having 200 units and no blocks. Then blocks were discovered which disturbed the balance. Not that bad since some players avoid blocks and they could have patched that out if they wanted to. But instead they introduce a veteran with 250 troops that further offsets the balance. Then a general with 270 troops and after that an MMA. Then they realise that adventures are too cheap and that they have messed up the economy so they want to completely redo the combat balance to try to repair their own mess. Luckily, that was mostly shot down and they just removed the weapons from the loot instead. The smart move would be to introduce a new level of adventures for high level players. They tried and failed with the fairytale adventures. Not really enough content and they threw in a bunch more rewards to mess up the balance and economy even more.

I would recommend the devs of this game to head over to Youtube and find the Extra Credits channel. It's great with short 5-10 minute episodes that talk about various aspects of game design. They are written by the truly awesome James Portnow. They have episodes on both power creep and MMO economy that the devs here clearly need to watch. I think next step would be to head over to Codecademy or similar free online programming course. Then they might learn how to multiply a variable with a constant, something they have proved unable to do.

TL;DR: The devs and programmers are utterly useless at their jobs.