So far as I remember, yes

There's an economic reason why people wait until the last days of the festival to start their projects. The adage of selling high and buying low applies. At the start of every festival, there are eager players excited to start their festival goals ASAP who are willing to pay exorbitant prices for materials, new avatar items, reagents, etc. Closer to the end of the fest, when those goals have been achieved by many, prices on all festival items drop dramatically and finally some newer/poorer players can afford to buy what they need.

By announcing at the last minute that mundane items are now rare commodities and complaining about stockpiling, you're essentially saying that the players who seek to profit on festivals are playing the game wrong and should instead be buying, spending, and supporting the system you built instead of finding ways to benefit on their own terms. Furthermore, you're sending the message that those who can't afford outrageous prices at the beginning of festivals, who have trouble defeating zone bosses for loot, or who are casual players don't deserve the break in price once the wealthy players and/or hardcore farmers have been satisfied.

You specifically incentivised players caring for other players' sandboxes instead of their own. Now the people who DIDN'T stockpile materials can't AFFORD to meet your surprise criteria.

What are you really trying to control?

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=79397&page=12#112 Author: Frawn Time Posted: 9/9/2019 at 8:53 PM There's an economic reason why people wait until the last days of the festival to start their projects. The adage of selling high and buying low applies. At the start of every festival, there are eager players excited to start their festival goals ASAP who are willing to pay exorbitant prices for materials, new avatar items, reagents, etc. Closer to the end of the fest, when those goals have been achieved by many, prices on all festival items drop dramatically and finally some newer/poorer players can afford to buy what they need. By announcing at the last minute that mundane items are now rare commodities and complaining about stockpiling, you're essentially saying that the players who seek to profit on festivals are playing the game wrong and should instead be buying, spending, and supporting the system you built instead of finding ways to benefit on their own terms. Furthermore, you're sending the message that those who can't afford outrageous prices at the beginning of festivals, who have trouble defeating zone bosses for loot, or who are casual players don't deserve the break in price once the wealthy players and/or hardcore farmers have been satisfied. You specifically incentivised players caring for other players' sandboxes instead of their own. Now the people who DIDN'T stockpile materials can't AFFORD to meet your surprise criteria. What are you really trying to control?

The feature is intended to use 24 or 36 Agents to complete Sculptures and obtain the pets.

Being able to receive said Sculpture pets by using only 4 (or 0) is not a mechanic of the feature. It is simply a generous bonus that we throw out at the end of these features to help people get some extra pets who may have not quite finished up Sculptures for XYZ reason. Utilizing it as an actual mechanic is 100% not the spirit nor the intention of the bonus. I have never advised nor guaranteed that such a bonus will take place and/or remain unchanged. It is also not listed anywhere in the Overview nor in the feature itself.

Furthermore, currency hoarding is also becoming an issue. There are over 500,000 Sun Tokens on active accounts atm. That is enough to get over 2,500 Sculptures to the auto complete status solely from current Sun Tokens alone.

Supply and demand have to meet somewhere. Sculpture pets are meant to be valuable and all of these decisions are made entirely to just make sure that Sculpture pets retain as much value as they can.

I would argue that the problem here is 100% the announcement of it at such a late date. You can say it's not intended to be used as a feature, but you clearly know that everyone expects it anyway. If we could have had more warning then we would have been able to plan for it from the start.

I haven't seen anyone arguing that the limit is unreasonable. Indeed, it seems quite generous.

The problem is that we all had an expectation, born out by years worth of experience, which you chose to wait until the last minute to clarify.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=79397&page=12#114 Author: Asviloka Time Posted: 9/9/2019 at 10:13 PM I would argue that the problem here is 100% the announcement of it at such a late date. You can say it's not intended to be used as a feature, but you clearly know that everyone expects it anyway. If we could have had more warning then we would have been able to plan for it from the start. I haven't seen anyone arguing that the limit is unreasonable. Indeed, it seems quite generous. The problem is that we all had an expectation, born out by years worth of experience, which you chose to wait until the last minute to clarify.

I can agree with that and I apologize for the late announcement. The "auto grow announcement" has always come at the end of Festivals because I take a look at all of the data and make the final decision at that point. It's hard to do that early on.

It was most definitely not intentional to be a "gotcha" announcement. The Festival is ending so I went through everything today to make my final decision on how everything will work.

I can't speak for everyone, but personally I find it incredibly frustrating to imagine that the tens of thousands of tokens and millions of gold I spent on sandboxes and converting pearls means absolutely nothing. In the end, if I can't suddenly find several hundred more agents in the next few days, everything I've invested in this last batch of pets will be simply deleted.

I haven't been hoarding, haven't been holding back. I've been playing hard all along, buying new sandboxes every time I have enough sun tokens, upgrading pearls every time I get enough gold. And now I suddenly have to find time and resources to collect another full set of agents or that all will be worthless.

I've finished dozens and dozens of sculptures already, been using my agents for myself and others, and thus do not have a stockpile now. Again, this could have been mitigated completely if we'd had even the slightest indication that things were going to change this year. And now we need to scramble in a suddenly overturned economy to desperately try to salvage what we assumed was secure.

For my own part, I've been alternately furious and in tears half the evening, and my hands are trembling as I type this from restrained emotion as I try desperately to clearly and calmly convey just how much this matters to me.

It's been a great festival. I've worked hard and loved it. Just this morning, I was thinking how nice it would be to slow down and coast through the last week with just nurturing and finishing off my last few mostly-done sculptures. If you'd asked me then, I'd have said I was completely satisfied with the festival and what I'd accomplished. But back then, I was assuming that my last thirty sylvorpa would be finished. Now their future is in doubt, and I can't help but feel lied to.

Truly, what does a sandbox mean? If I spend 300 tokens on it, it means nothing without the additional agents?

And that's not even considering the sheer amount of gold I've sunk into pearl upgrades - gold which I could have instead spent on finished pets from others if I'd known it would be simply deleted with nothing to show for it.

I must emphasize, communication is everything. Nothing that you're implementing is unreasonable - IF we had time to prepare. Which we didn't. So now, we're left in a frustrating, terrible, horrible, wretched situation which is causing more distress than anything else I've experienced for months.

The auto complete at 16% or 10% is still one of the nicest things I've seen in a game ;) In fact, not many games have as friendly a community or anything like Sylestia. Which is probably why I'm still here! Hi!
I may have auto completed some stuff in the previous festivals, but I never actually had anything. I just happened to get my two free pots empty on the last day XD *better actually do something now lol*

I have to say that this was a mild shock given that I've been waiting to do my final bit of sculpting until the zone had closed and I knew exactly what I was working with, and it would have been nice to have a bit of extra notice.

The auto completion has always been really generous though, and having to get the sculptures to a minimum completion is very fair and reasonable, so I can't argue with the change. I'm also very glad that it's a bit lower for majestics

I don't disagree necessarily, but like everyone else the late announcement is the only frustrating part. Plus the fact that I already used most of my sculpting agents on other peoples' boxes... this just makes me feel like I should have hoarded them all and selfishly used them on my own sculptures instead. Sad, because I love going and adding my agents to random peoples' boxes!

Edit/PS: What about when the prizes for contests are released? Usually they contain fabled catalysts etc. that have no choice but to be planted at the end of festivals...

I feel that 16% is a generous threshold for autocomplete, though personally with majestics I would have preferred them autocompleted even if they didn't have visibles (since majestic catas were hard to obtain and by the time someone did, they might not have had a pearl to use except mundanes). I know that some of the themes I like with or without visibles, so I would want a maj pet even without a visible.


For the token hoarding, with those numbers I can see it is a problem. I always assumed they just either were used the next festival or just went away. I never knew until almost the end of this festival that they turned into extra gold.

I also think that it would be better to turn them into whatever they are going to turn into when everything about the festival closes. When I kept seeing spring festival supplies mixed in with summer festival supplies, I was always afraid that someone would buy something from the wrong festival, especially if you didn't realize that they weren't the same, have a bad memory for names like me, or just thought they would still be good next festival.

In fact, I saw on the forums, someone did just that, saw something that looked like a good deal, and bought it, only to realize it was for the spring festival.