I think you will find the eldest years set of themes are not very valuable for resale because they are usually just 1 carry pets, if you're looking are values for them being put up on the market. It is kinda hard to sell a 1 carry pet for much. Even one that is harder to get now. I really do hope you will in specifics, consider re-releasing the original Fall Fest set because they lack something every other set got.

Every other early set got to come back one year in the zone. The very first fall fest set did not come back in the zone at all, but rather, dropped rarely from Headless Horseman, instead. I would guess that had to skew their numbers down a fair bit versus zone catch-able. Again, I also think many of these ones are on dead accounts because of how long it's been, so how many exist isn't necessarily how many are in the pool for them.

I do want to also say i've been hearing many many reports of way too many branches from people like LM's note, and very little Snowmen Accessories. I wouldn't really offer my own data as i've mostly been too depressed to play here this fest and playing elsewhere, but it's been getting echoed by others a lot so it isn't just a statistical fluke that LM has such extremes I don't think.

Alright, thanks Krin :D

I took a look at all of the Snowman Supply drops from the Festival Zone from all sources.

I adjusted them to be more generous and more plentiful across the board and tweaked the way it was determining which supply to award a bit so that it would be more stable.

Hopefully it should help and be a noticeable change.

Once I get a chance, I will do a full site parse of everything and it'll be about a week in or so so I will have good numbers to evaluate. I will most likely adjust the Snowman Exchange prices accordingly and then just retro refund anyone who's bought items already with what they overpaid - as that is all tracked and would be easy to run a script for.

Thanks, Krin, for adjusting the drops and for all of your hard work over the Christmas period :)

Personally, I am really enjoying the festival. I love the fact that you get the level of frost essence that you pay for and also the fact that you can no longer get lesser ice waters from the diamond purchases. It is great not having to wait for the eggs too! I am really pleased to see the task log back again too - that is a great feature.

Unusually it is the non-fabled essences that I am struggling to get at the moment but it is early days yet and the snowmen have only just started, so with the adjusted drops I am sure I will get there in the end :)

Will Snow Wars drop items for building snowmen and/or ice sculptures - or do we have to wait and see?

@Lost,

I mean, the pay to win thing is always going to be a struggle for a free to play game. If we only offered "cosmetic" things to buy, we would make a fraction of what we make and Sylestia would not be able to function as it does as we would not make enough money to run in the way that we run. I wish the margin was larger so that we could be more flexible, but we usually dance around month to month.

This forces us to provide real rewards and incentives for purchasing Diamonds. We also wouldn't sell the Bundles if they weren't popular and I mean, I do think it's a win/win. I always try to just stuff a ton of things into them - such as 20 Completed Snowmen - because I feel like if someone is willing to spend that many Diamonds, I want them to be very satisfied with the results. Players who buy them get huge discounts and we get much needed support.

And, obviously, in order to make these items desirable, they have to be valuable. Time is the biggest limited resource in life so pretty much everything is based around time. So it's just naturally a balance of time vs everything else.

And, by no means, am I proclaiming to have perfected the art of balancing time required vs Diamond prices lol. It is a constant adjustment and honestly will never be perfected. Because if I did manage to do something perfect, it will be different a month later - or the next time around.

The best I can do is pick what I initially think is best and adjust as best as I can. Which is what I am trying to do in this instance.


I listed the Avatar Items and the Themed Pets because they are pretty much what a Festival offers. =P If you've found 6 Eggs plus the 9 Wild, that's 15 Themed from the Zone. Plus the 20+ Avatar Items. You're participating in the Contests (Round 1/3) so you'll get rewards from that. Stretch those out over 3 more weeks plus Forum Games, Pick a Doors, and the Advent Calendar... that's a pretty massive haul of stuff. And that obviously doesn't include the Task Log or Ice Sculpting rewards. So even with all of the delays and imbalances, I still wouldn't say that you have hardly anything to show for the time invested. It's just... you're excluding the things you want to exclude.

Maybe a better way for me to answer your direct concern would be - what are your expectations from this Festival? I answer in generalities because I am also writing to everyone else and can't read your mind on what is or isn't of value to you, personally. =P So I stick w/ what the Festival offers as a whole, which is 100 Avatar items, 16 new Zone Themed, 25 other new Themed, and new Pet Traits. Plus, just the various games and activities we offer you guys just for fun, entertainment, community, etc.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=55446&page=16#154 Author: Falkinsey Time Posted: 12/28/2017 at 7:55 PM Thanks, Krin, for adjusting the drops and for all of your hard work over the Christmas period :) Personally, I am really enjoying the festival. I love the fact that you get the level of frost essence that you pay for and also the fact that you can no longer get lesser ice waters from the diamond purchases. It is great not having to wait for the eggs too! I am really pleased to see the task log back again too - that is a great feature. Unusually it is the non-fabled essences that I am struggling to get at the moment but it is early days yet and the snowmen have only just started, so with the adjusted drops I am sure I will get there in the end :) Will Snow Wars drop items for building snowmen and/or ice sculptures - or do we have to wait and see?

I haven't picked out the drop items yet so I am not certain. But I would highly imagine that it will contain all of the useful rewards.

I am also thinking of making the Snowmen tradeable to make it easier to buy/sell them.

See, that stuff does make sense. I can understand that. As I said, i know the site needs to make money. I'm all for people buying the bundles. Thats their business, not mine. And yes, they very much seem worth it and are a great deal. My only issue, which ive been trying to get across, is that its getting to the point where that balance of time vs everything else is leaning more and more into the nonexistent range with each passing fest. And that in the past you havent really shown interest in making updates /within/ a fest period.

Which, in a previous post, you have mentioned you will be looking back int he coming days of the fest. Between that and having the drop rates for the snowmen stuff to drop to begin with, thats a major improvement upon /exactly/ what i've been trying to say lol.

(which, part of that may be due to me thinking i originally quoted your initial post in response to Elimini's lol. Because ive honestly been trying to talk about how the snowman being one of the, if not the most, obvious source of frost essences and highly favoring the pay to win players, this entire time lol)

I'm all for players having a massive thing to spend money on if they so wish. The site needs income. Its just that syl has always drawn people in because things like that have never been game breaking. Theres always been a way to obtain the items for free to play players, it just usually requires more work onsite. Its why i love this site so much. I don't always have a super stable income, so its nice being able to pick and choose when i can afford to pay for certain things without worrying about missing out when i cannot afford it. Just lately its been feeling like there is more and more work required to reach these goals, and not enough reward for that work. In this case, it was pretty much impossible to reach those goals even with hard work. And again, going by past experiences, you havent always proven to be super willing adjust things midfest. But it sounds like you are, so thats ok. :P I'm not trying to ask you to be perfect every time lol. Thatd be super unreasonable, and sorry if i do come off that way :P Willingness to adjust is the closest to perfect anyone can get imo lol. (just...dont want o be waiting until /next winter/ to have that adjustment. Most people dont know where they will be in a year and theres no telling if here will be that place. Personally, i know i will be moving back home from uni and looking for a job back at home @-@ so even if next year was an exact replica with improvements, idk how much time i'll even have to spend lol)

Snowman anatomy 101: Sylestia ver.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=55446&page=16#157 Author: Lostwords13 Time Posted: 12/28/2017 at 8:40 PM See, that stuff does make sense. I can understand that. As I said, i know the site needs to make money. I'm all for people buying the bundles. Thats their business, not mine. And yes, they very much seem worth it and are a great deal. My only issue, which ive been trying to get across, is that its getting to the point where that balance of time vs everything else is leaning more and more into the nonexistent range with each passing fest. And that in the past you havent really shown interest in making updates /within/ a fest period. Which, in a previous post, you have mentioned you will be looking back int he coming days of the fest. Between that and having the drop rates for the snowmen stuff to drop to begin with, thats a major improvement upon /exactly/ what i've been trying to say lol. (which, part of that may be due to me thinking i originally quoted your initial post in response to Elimini's lol. Because ive honestly been trying to talk about how the snowman being one of the, if not the most, obvious source of frost essences and highly favoring the pay to win players, this entire time lol) I'm all for players having a massive thing to spend money on if they so wish. The site needs income. Its just that syl has always drawn people in because things like that have never been game breaking. Theres always been a way to obtain the items for free to play players, it just usually requires more work onsite. Its why i love this site so much. I don't always have a super stable income, so its nice being able to pick and choose when i can afford to pay for certain things without worrying about missing out when i cannot afford it. Just lately its been feeling like there is more and more work required to reach these goals, and not enough reward for that work. In this case, it was pretty much impossible to reach those goals even with hard work. And again, going by past experiences, you havent always proven to be super willing adjust things midfest. But it sounds like you are, so thats ok. :P I'm not trying to ask you to be perfect every time lol. Thatd be super unreasonable, and sorry if i do come off that way :P Willingness to adjust is the closest to perfect anyone can get imo lol. (just...dont want o be waiting until /next winter/ to have that adjustment. Most people dont know where they will be in a year and theres no telling if here will be that place. Personally, i know i will be moving back home from uni and looking for a job back at home @-@ so even if next year was an exact replica with improvements, idk how much time i'll even have to spend lol)

I am usually always messing with the numbers throughout events. I mess with them way more than I leave them alone lol.

I just typically don't announce changes I make unless they are significant or in a direct response to something.

Now, non number tweaks, yea, I can easily say it's too late for changes like that. But typically, I have no issue or hesitation with adjusting the actual #'s behind the scenes.

Here's basically how I assumed the typical average active player would play for this Festival.

-Collect a good chunk of the new Avatar Items from Named
-Collect a noticeable amount of freebie stuff from Advent, Pick a Door, and Forum Games
-Use Frost Tokens to pick up a couple Avatar Items from the Shop, some Frost Essences, and maybe some other misc stuff. I also expect the average active player to have a decent spending allowance to buy additional Frost Tokens or items directly from other players with Gold, especially with the lack of Gold sinks for this Festival (no "containers" and no "growth" items required)
-Earn a handful of additional Frost Essences from random drops, the Task Log, and Contests.
-Earn enough Completed Snowmen to purchase a couple prestigious Essences, or fill out like breeding pairs for all Regular Essences, etc.

All in all, I'd expect the average active player to be able to get about ~66% of all available new things in some fashion - which includes all methods and not just literally Completed Snowmen and the Snowman Exchange.

And then I'd expect the advanced active player to get about 80-90% of all available new things through various methods. And of course, some of you extremely dedicated players will find a way to collect it all.


As an aside, I have been trying to also squeeze a solid two years out of all of the new Festival content added in this past year. So that is why the goals are less than 100% - because it's intended for players to work with each other (trading) to reach that 100% goal and/or to be able to collect it all over more than one iteration of the event. We spend a lot more resources on content for Festivals now than we did before, so getting just 2-3 weeks worth from them just doesn't really cut it anymore. Trying to get ~8 weeks worth from them is a lot more realistic for the investment.

And... as it's been beaten to death here - it's all a balance game. Goals are great, but only matter if they are reached. So if the goal is missed, tell me (which you have been), and I will be more focused on the issue(s) and work to resolve them so the goals are reached.