Just gonna post a last update with some final decisions we've made on the matter. I unfortunately am not able to reply to each and every post, but I have definitely read through them all over the last few days! Just gonna write out kind of a global post addressing the main repeating concerns that I've seen.

In regards to the reimbursement of Tokens/Supplies, we are just going to go ahead and honor those at the 400 Gold per Token value (20% reduction) for the upcoming Winter, Spring, and Summer Festivals. Again, for this Fall Festival, if you had well over that cap and did not receive what you felt was due, please send me a PM so that I can take a look and attempt to reimburse you for it. I unfortunately cannot re-run the scripts b/c that data was removed and I can't get it back without a database restoration, which takes quite a bit of effort. I'm fairly certain is was probably 10 or less Players who had significantly more pending reimbursement than they received. So I'd much rather just go through those 10 Players and fix things manually.

I have received one or two PMs regarding this so far, but haven't responded yet. For those who have sent me a PM, I most definitely have it. I just am waiting to see if I receive anymore so that I can go through all the stuff all at once.

Moving forward, starting with the upcoming Fall Festival, all Festival Tokens and Festival Supplies will be removed at the end of each Festival if they were not consumed. There will not be any reimbursement. We want players to use these items and supplies for the Festival that they received them from. This is a core game mechanic that we feel is the best overall for the longterm health of the game.

Moving forward, starting with the upcoming Fall Festival, there will be no artificial auto completion of unfinished growing pets. Any unfinished pets at the end of a Festival will be removed. Again, this is a core game mechanic decision that we feel is the best overall for the longterm health of the game.

Regarding those 2 changes, I have seen a ton of misconceptions in posts over the last few days. So I will try to reiterate some very important things regarding them that I think are not being absorbed by a lot of players. Firstly, these growing pets WILL GROW with the passing of every hour even without any assistance. That is how they work. The one exception is Summer, and as stated a few times before in this thread, we will look at adjusting that next year when the time comes.

Additionally, we are going to expand the amount of FREE containers every player gets by default from 2 to 3 as well as increasing the total cap of pets being grown at once from 30 to 50.

Additionally, we are increasing the amount of extra time after the Festival Zone closes from 1 Week to 2 Weeks to allow for more time to utilize Forum Game prizes and/or any last minute catalysts the player received. Remember, the Festival Shop remains open during this time. There are always plenty of Tokens and Supplies floating around in the market for players to get those last minute pets grown. And, again, they will still grow without any assistance! Assistance just makes it faster and adds bonuses.

Additionally, for Forum Game prizes, we will make sure that players receive enough supplies to get those rewards grown before everything closes assuming they opt to begin the process before 11:59 PM the night it closes.

In regards to Festival Zone drops, yes, those will be changing as well. There are a few ideas we are going to push through that I think will address a lot of the concerns. I am still working out the details, so I can't quite say exactly how they will work at this point. But please have a little bit of faith lol.

Everything added up, I have seen a very common argument: "Growing pets will be worthless because if nothing drops from the zone, then how am I going to grow anything?" Coupled with, "Tokens will be worthless if they do not have a 500 Gold sale value." Those two points are literally completely exclusive to each other. If the demand for growing items increases, then automatically the demand for Tokens increases because people will be wanting to buy Tokens (which now have no value other than buying things from the Festival Shop) and so there will still be a very active market for Tokens and Supplies.

Additionally, with all of the above changes, I will 100% be adjusting many other things regarding the acquisition of Tokens, Supplies, and the pricing of the Festival Shop; as well as requirements for using said supplies in the growing features. By removing the artificial market influencers, I can see where the actual results lie so that I can then adjust what needs to be adjusted.

Are Catalysts too rare? Okay, figure out how to get more of them into the system.
Are Tokens too rare? Okay, figure out how to get players to acquire more tokens.
Do Pets take too long to grow? Okay, reduce growth times, or increase Agent acquisition, or reduce Agent cost.
Etc, etc, etc.

I absolutely, most definitely, 100%, will be making adjustments based on the results to make sure that everything flows as smoothly as I can possibly can make it.

Thanks for all your hard work, Krin~!

Thanks Krin,

I think the long-term health of Sylestia is important! I have seen inflation spiral out of control in some other games to the point that the game is no longer enjoyable for old players and absolutely frustrating for new players. Sylestia definitely hasn't gotten there yet! But it does need adjusting!

I see these possible forms of inflation in Sylestia:

Diamond inflation (actually, doesn't seem to happen here--congrats on that Krin, you're doing an amazing job there!)

Gold inflation
Pet inflation (Themed/traits/etc)
Stat inflation
Supply inflation (AP, drops, tokens, etc-- for the most part, this seems to be micromanaged quite well, with some amusing exceptions--gnarly vines or swirling snow anyone?) ;-)

Anyway, I know that making adjustments is a painful and thankless process. So I wanted to say how much I appreciate you talking with us about things before making big decisions. Very few admins do, which makes your stance so admirable.

I don't know if this is strictly relevant, and if it isn't helpful to the discussion I apologize in advance.

I developed a bit of a pattern the last time I participated in a festival. I would wait until I had enough materials to make TWO of any given themed pet, make one male and one female, and give them two visible and two hidden traits each before starting the growth of ANY pet. I also tended to ONLY use materials that actually dropped in the festival zone - I didn't use the store for materials until the zone closed and the festival entered the final week (I tended to use the store to buy random "essences" or whatever the festival specific stuff is called during the actual festival). As for the stuff that increased a growing pet's stats, I used those when I had them but didn't make them a requirement for growing the pet. Anything I didn't use that I did redeem from my inventory I didn't worry about, but I tried to trade whenever someone else needed something I wasn't going to be able to use myself - and if there was a material I wasn't using AT ALL I'd broker it (or trade it directly if asked).

Last festival I didn't participate in the festival because I was busy elsewhere and didn't have the time to put into it, so I just brokered all the tokens I did get from nurturing pets.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

I will try to have that bit of faith you're asking...but

"In regards to Festival Zone drops, yes, those will be changing as well."

This is what made fests FUN for me, as leaderboards were going.. I really would rather not fall asleep trying to look for things whilst grinding that wont be there anymore. I LOVE DROPS!

Timewise, during leaderboards, not a lot of people can do both nurturing and grinding.as some others can...leaderboards only have so many hours/days. But at the same time as all that is going on, we have to work on growing our pets.

Please, I ask you not to add in yet another thing, that might take time away even more from leaderboards.


I am one of probably very few, that actually enjoys the grind.

Otherwise, I do look forward to new things, I just..this one I'm not wholly thrilled about, lol.

This all sounds good to me. I definitely took advantage of tokens and auto-complete, but I don't really feel upset that it's going away. I can spend my tokens to sculpt more pets so that I'm not pushed up against the deadline, so that's good! Fests in general are goldmines, even for those who don't have the time to no-life grind, so I have faith that people will still be able to fund whatever spending habits they have.

The only thing I'm concerned about is diamond shop purchases. I hope fest items in the diamond shop will disappear earlier than the fest end date (I don't remember when they usually are removed from the shop x.x) so that people don't end up losing things they likely paid irl money for.

Thank you so much Krin for letting us know the final decision. You've been so great to us: telling us what the plans were for changes and then telling us when they would happen. I hope you're not working too hard in getting these changes implemented, and you're doing well. ^-^

Thank you for addressing this.

My main concern was autocomplete, because I am the type of person who tries to use all her supplies or sell them before the festival ends, but I had a very hard time getting my sculptures completed during the summer fest. However, if that is the only fest that has no gradual completion, then it shouldn't be bad for the rest of the festivals to not have that autocomplete. I will miss it, but I can live without it.

I actually 100% relate to this. Drops IS what makes the fests fun for me, I don't mind the grind IF there is a chance to even get something as a reward. I don't do the leaderborads because I have school and other stuff to focus on, but I agree with all the points made.

Reduced payout this time and future removal of rewards: Alrighty. Alleviates your concern of too much gold dumping into the system; gives us time to adjust and know how to proceed in the future. Sounds good.

Free containers and higher cap: Awesome! The lup garden must expand!!

Willingness to adjust as things arise: Great. There are a lot of things that I think we'll just have to wait and see how they go. This already addresses a few of the bigger concerns people had raised in this thread, which shows you are definitely willing to listen and work with us ^.^

Admittedly I'm a bit concerned about zone drop rates too, but I'm willing to wait and see how it goes and then give more feedback at that time. Without a whole lot of information, it's hard to know exactly what will happen.

But these changes/compromises/whatever you want to call them will, I think, go towards helping the problems you're concerned about without so much frustration on the players' end.