What makes an event be good (for you)?
BlackSonatta
Member
in General Chat
I figured i'd do this thread following the fact that there seems to be pretty mixed feelings on the new and current Valentines event (often times being more negative than positive), and i want to hear it from you guys on what you think makes an in-game event worth playing and enjoyable.
In my opinion, having an event that can be grindable for long periods, with good drop rates, and being able to play it with the community essentially lines up with my ideal of a good event. Events like the 2023 Halloween Ghost Hunt, the 2022 Christmas Krampus vs Grouch & the Thanksgiving Cookoffs were the best examples for enjoyable events, and i think the current 2024 Valentines event is the biggest offender of that.
Let me know what you guys think, thanks for reading, and as always, have a wonderful day :)
In my opinion, having an event that can be grindable for long periods, with good drop rates, and being able to play it with the community essentially lines up with my ideal of a good event. Events like the 2023 Halloween Ghost Hunt, the 2022 Christmas Krampus vs Grouch & the Thanksgiving Cookoffs were the best examples for enjoyable events, and i think the current 2024 Valentines event is the biggest offender of that.
Let me know what you guys think, thanks for reading, and as always, have a wonderful day :)
Comments
The ideas are great but there should be easy ways to win in addition to the super rare drops.
Events should not be super grindy to the point where players have to BUY the items. I understand that the events are free and should feel rewarding, and honestly it would feel very rewarding IF you get the heart head. A basic event item should NOT be worth in the 10's of thousands of cubits. The past events have shown a trend of extremely rare items with prices in the tousands. The turkey fish, candy cane, mints, and cake pieces are the best examples for that. I don't know where this surgeance of super rare event items (which tend to fluctuate in importance) came from. The golden easter egg made perfect sence as it wasn't the central goal of the egg hunt and it had the chance of giving your a rare item. The amulets held a similar purpose. The most recent events don't reflect that. Imo the turkey fish was the smallest offende. If you didn't want its swirls, you didn't have to grind for it. However, the mints/candy cane block and the recent valentines pieces express this greatly. If you wanted a dapper hat, you had to grind for the blocks, and even if the mints didn't do anything, now you NEED to get every singe event items. Usually that isn't the case. In older events you didn't have to get every item, and in the case that you had to, they were easily accessible or not as grindy. I, and I would assume that others, felt that the mash events felt a bit too grindy, but they pale in comparison to the recent events.
Not to mention the poor (and misleading) communication between players and devs. Although most players would look back to the fall event for this, I feel like this already started during the monster mash events since I have seen many players wonder why the machine doesnt work (until people found out that it had to be placed in a speciffic direction.) I thought that the fall event was bad. I thought that the xmas event would be the worse this would have gotten. But to my greatest displeasure this event somehow beat that barrier. For example, in the fall event, no info was giventon how rare each fish was, or any sort of percentage chance to have any idea. Not to mentiont the fact that event fish could be caught anywhere when the new SPECIFFICALY stated that they must be caught in the fall hunting realm. I don't even understand the point of this. My best guess was that it was an error. But then there was Candy Cane Hill, the most confusing event (up to its point) ever. At its surface, it was straight forward. Mine until you find the event block, place it, and eventually players will complete it. Seems super simple, but the way the rules were worded and the mints just overcomplicated things. For some reason the mints wer ridiculously rare. Understandably, people thought that they would each give a unique item since they were more rarer. But for SOME reason they gave the same prize. Despite being rarer, and because of that, MUCH more expensive, they had no purpose. "But perhaps they were needed to complete the hill." And I would have thought so too. Near the end of the event, I was seeing a bunch of mints being placed as after all candy cane spots were taken, the mints seemed to be required. Until the prizes were handed out before all the spots were taken. People who spent cubits on mints ended up wasting it all. Not to mention that the event prize was worth less than the candy cane block. Now for the info given on it, it was not helpful at all. First of all, the info just said to place the block, thats it. And that would have been the end of it but the mints keeping messing with everything. We were told that the mints did nothing and that "the hill be completed," seemingly which contradicts the former info we were given. The news says "place a block" but now we were told that "the hill must be completed." But the wording added on more confusion (at least to me.) For instance, does 'completing the hill' mean that the physical hill itself be completed, or all spots. And when all candy cane spots were taken, some spots were left which seemed to imply that all spots had to be taken and that the mints were necessary, but again, the prizes wer handed out despite all spots not being taken, which meant that players wasted cubits and their time on getting a ridiculously rare item which could have been sold at a higher price than the prize.
The valentine's event has similar issues. For one, now we don't have any sort of backround information to go off of as the News section has nothing in it. And the 4 "hints" that we were given don't help us in any sort of way. Hint #1: All pieces can only be found on the public mine. This is just not helpful since every single mining event has you mine in mines. The only reason why this exists is to make it clarify that the event items can't be found in personal realms, such as in Candy Cane Hill. #2 Event fishes can only be found in New Eden. At first this seems a bit helpful, but seeing as how the fall fishing event could be found anywhere despite players being told that they must be found in fall hunting realms, the same thing could happen again. And even if they had to be found in New Eden, the lack of effectiveness is clear when you see people fishing in Pen's or in realms, which could ultimately make players waster even more time when they could have been wasting time mining. #3 Bake all the pieces using the stove. Another hint that feels reduntant. If the crafting table doesn't work of course players would then default to the stove. And even then, it doesn't mention the fish. Like, I thought that the fish were useless collector items, like the useless candy in the Trick-or-treat event. And the #4 "tip" is flat out useless. I can say with absolute confidence that nobody on this game is having fun grinding for 8 hours straight mining for 12 rare items (pray to god that you don't get a repeat) and then even more time fishing. No recipies are given, no info on that the fish had to be included, nothing on rarities of items or fish. Its just assumed based off of prices. And steps are left out, like baking things into pieces or making the dehydrated cube, which is the moste redunatant step in any sort of event ever. Players already wasted time mining, fishing, and baking items. Why not waste their time even more by having to make players wait again dehydrating! The only reason why anyone finally undrestands how this event works is because Will actually managed to pull it off. And how did they do it? By spending a whopping 1.5 MILLION cubits. Not to mention the other players broadcasting hollas trying to buy a cake piece 1 for 100k or a cookie piece 4 for 25k. This event just feels like a frankensteined mash-up of the fall fishing, candy cane hill, and trick-or-treat events. Taking the worst elements of each, down to the miscommunication
The only compliment that I can give grindy events is that players end up doing them with friends, allowing them to socialize and have more fun. Otherwise, it would be too boring to the point where watching paint dry would feel more enjoyable. Even then, there is no sense of co-operation as the event has none of it. There is no working together, or reaching the same goal. You can claim that you are helping your friend mine, but players are really just mining the pieces for them selves. Same with candy cane hill. They are mining because they want to get the item and if they don't finish the hill, they get no item, so their goals line up with the goals of the community. The recent also seem to have decent and cool concepts, but feel poorly executed due to the rules of the events or the lack of communication between players and devs.
An event where you have to play for a long time without even being sure of winning something is something I personally highly dislike.
- Well, grinding is fine as long as there's a bonus for it.
- Events that have detailed information and instructions would help to understand the whole event but unfortunately due to lack of communication between the devs and players, players are mostly confused, like in the Candy Cane Hill Event and this ongoing Valentine Event.
that means I can get a video out on the same/next day as the event start. Win win for the video creator and players watching the video figuring out how to participate.
events that don't follow a similar formula (i.e. not regular fishing/mining events) make for good videos too in viewership - for example, my Easter 2021 tutorial video got 2.2k views compared to the identical 2022 event having 600 views less (of course, the upload timing of the video, other creators uploading, etc. all impact views too).