Hi, I'm late to the party.


3. Pets will no longer auto grow after a Festival completely ends. What you complete is what you get. Now, if a player completed a pet but didn't claim it, I will process those for players. But if the pet is not at 100% growth by the end of the Festival, it will be lost.

This will help boost the demand of consuming growing agents and the use of tokens on said agents.

and

5. The 'spend your stuff' period will increase from 1 Week to 2 Weeks after the Festival Zone closes. This will increase the amount of time for players utilizing any Forum Game prizes and allow for a lot more time to plan and finish growing their remaining pets and whatever else they were wanting to do before everything is removed.


I can't agree with this. And I have one major anecdotal reason for it.

This pet.


So badly through the entire festival she came from (I think it was spring something or other a few years ago - I've been here a while) I wanted an Emperor's Dragon Zolnixi. Never had any luck - and that was back when I actually put a lot of effort in the festivals.

Last round of contests came and went- I got knocked down from getting a themed pet to getting a reward pouch; I was fine with that since I wasn't actually fighting to be on the contest boards anyway - I just wanted loot. Rewards were handed out super late to where there were maybe 2 days of festival zone remaining. And out of my contest pouch? Low-ranking catalyst pouch (think it was regular?) Out of that pouch? Emperor's Dragon Nixi.

I was ECSTATIC.

Now through the entire festival I wasn't planning on making any themed pets. I had sold EVERYTHING or given it to friends. The themed pets I encountered, the pet-building supplies I came across, my festival tokens, all thrown on the broker or given to friends. The only thing I was inclined to keep were the avatar items. I had NOTHING but an insane stroke of luck getting that catalyst. And maybe two days to grab whatever I could.

Now back then, that was fine. I had to hurriedly scrounge up some materials to get the visibles, sure, but I didn't have to worry about magically getting a boatload of additives to successfully finish the pet.


Now take this situation into the future, with this plan.

There is no way in hell that I would have been able to finish that Nixi with so little time to 1) get supplies, and 2) apply them. I would have tried, sure, I probably would have spent every last bit of gold I had. And chances are, because it takes SO MUCH for majestics, and it has that ridiculous "you get to use one item and then it's like an hour cooldown :D" ... it would have amounted to NOTHING, because I would have run out of time. All that I invested? Would have been lost. Consumed by a gorgeous, majestic Nixi that would be thrown into the void before I could ever even see it.

In that kind of situation, being screwed over that badly, having that Nixi in my hand in the most insane stroke of luck I have ever experienced, only for it to be yoinked away over a petty ruling that made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to finish in time...

I would have quit.

I would have been so furious that I would have thrown away everything I have put into this site. My friends, my projects, everything.



I highly recommend you reconsider this, Krin. "The 'spend your stuff' period" as you put it won't amount to jack diddly squat for those who HAVE NOTHING LEFTTO SPEND, and NO WAY TO GAIN STUFF TO SPEND. And then for those late prizes that are handed out last-minute, people will just be boned. "Oh you got a cool catalyst? Hope you had a boatload of supplies already sitting around your inventory! You didn't? WELL TOO BAD! >:( "

I get it, the system as it stands is broken. But an "all or nothing" approach is just too brutal. So here's a couple of counter-proposals that can balance things out and preemptively stop some of the losses.

1) Careful timing.
ONE WEEK before the festival zone closes, ensure that all prizes are guaranteed to be handed out - contests, forum games, all of it so no one ends up in the kind of situation I experienced with like 2 days to go from 0 supplies to getting everything . 3 days after the festival zone closes, no additional sandboxes (or whatever the individual situation is) can be purchased. Items can be used and added, but no new pets can be started; this will mean players will have to prioritize finishing what they have rather than trying to slam in as many pets as they can. Then give us the "spend your stuff" period for the next 11 days. 2 weeks after festival zone closes, time's up.

2) Evil, evil cooldowns...
And please for the love of us all... at the "spend your stuff" period just remove the additive cooldown. That is the WORST part of that final bit, because you can be like "hey, awesome friends of mine, can you help me add supplies to this 2V majestic pet of gloriousness?" And 5 people can be like "sure, I'll get right on it!" but guess what... only ONE gets to add anything until the cooldown drops, in which time the rest of those wonderful volunteers will potentially use their supplies helping other people, or they'll just have to move on from the site for the day and not be present to add anything later when the cooldown buzzes off.

*faceplants desk* Seriously, that's... that's just cruel. The call for help may have stood a chance of working to finish off that pet, all supplies would have been applied and tadah, pet done. But cooldown. Evil, stupid, by that time totally pointless cooldown gets in the way! (especially going with proposal 1's point of no additional sandboxes being acquired 3 days after festival closing, which makes the speed of finishing the pet completely moot!)

3) Additive types...
Additionally for the "spend your stuff" part... RNG is cruel. I've literally had 12 waters, 2 suns, and 0 of... I forgot the third component. 12 waters. 12. And EVERYTHING (like, 7 pets) in my field needed the one I had 0 of. And I kept getting MORE WATER! >___< *shakes fist*

Removing the RNG component of "I need X but all you have is Y :P" would be great. Being able to use any additive means a player can go "I have these 5 pets but I really want #2 the most" and then dump all their additives to ENSURE they get the pet they want the most, rather than "I want #2 but I don't have the right supply for it :'( " and just be screwed over having to waste supplies on pets I didn't really want as much, but THOSE are the ones that want the supplies I need.



I... I still don't like the "you have to get the pet to 100%" thing, to be honest. But at least with these proposals, 1) it's less likely to get something amazing last minute and be screwed over because the player isn't given a reasonable amount of time to get what they need before they're cut off from supplies; they get a full week of grinding to get their festival prizes prepared, to get any trading done, etc. 2) We get a more fair chance of finishing our pets during the "spend your stuff" because guess what? No cooldown means we CAN actually spend our stuff without having to wait on stupid timers. And 3) at the very end players can prioritize what pets they WANT rather than having to hope that RNG plays nice. News flash. RNG is rarely ever nice. In fact most of the time it's outright mean. Additive=additive=additive, no specific RNG-based requirement. If we HAVE to get it 100% done, then at least give us a fair opportunity to do it rather than letting RNG get in the way and stop us from doing so.



Edit: As for the rest... Mm. I was already on edge when it comes to maxed stats now that I have to spend a boat-load of real money fixing the mana or leave like 95% of my stats projects devalued because they're no longer considered maxed... I've been dreading the "wild stats made easy" and was hoping I could at least address the mana issue *before* this change came in and further nerfed the value all of my hard work and investment. I don't know if stats projects will be worth their investment once these changes have been implemented and the effects have had time to take hold.

This, more than anything, worries me for the future of the site's economy; if there's an easy "no investment needed" way of getting something equal to maxed stats, then what's the point of breeders spending millions of gold and/or thousands of diamonds and years of time to get to max? Why would people even bother to buy stats offspring when they can just grind up something equivalent? How will breeders make back their investment if people don't actually NEED to buy them? If maxed pets go from the most valuable pets to being worth nothing, how will the entire economy of pet value be effected? As a breeder I can't operate at a loss. If I can't fund my future projects then what reason will I have to be here? I hope there will eventually be a solo-thread for these issues. I have questions.

Okay. So I've read through the responses so far. I wanted to clarify on a few more things and add some more thoughts.

The easier stuff:

In regards to auto completion, because I've seen a lot of concerns about this, remember that the Fall and Spring Growing Features do indeed grow automatically with every hour. Using the agents and such just speed it up and grant the special bonuses. With an additional extra week at the end of the Festival, that should allow for enough time to get things finished up.

Additionally, I can increase the amount of free growing containers from 2 to 3 and increase the max at any time from 30 to 50.

Furthermore, things will most definitely be balanced around the changes. If I am seeing that it is taking too long or it's too hard to do x/y/z, then I'll make adjustments to counter it. Basically, the changes I outlined are an attempt to shift Festivals to be more isolated within themselves. I want players to get playing the Festival economy. I don't want players playing Festivals to hoard 500,000 to a 1,000,000 extra Tokens to cash out 12 months later - and that's essentially what they've now turned into. What was created as a generous, very small affecting, mechanic has now turned into essentially a global mass enterprise and it's incredibly anti productive for the game as a whole for a multitude of reasons.

So I think the solution has to be, number one, to stop that practice cold turkey and kick it to the curb. Then, number two, attempt to adjust how everything within a Festival is earned and spent so that people are more inclined to actually want these Festival Tokens and actually use them and give them a real value outside of a completely arbitrary made up value of 500 Gold that then everything revolves around. I want to work to create an actual supply and demand for Festivals - not a completely artificial one.

Is it going to be perfect right from the get go? Nope. But we need to start somewhere and then go from there making it better and better as quickly as we can.

In regards to Festival Zone grinding, this is a very tough one to figure out on paper. There are just too many variables in play to really guess exactly how it all will unfold. Therefore, I would rather start clean and work from the ground up. Basically, see how things go and add more and more until we reach optimal levels. Rather than... start at an arbitrary mid level starting point and realizing it was too much because now I can't take it away. You can always add more - you can't really take things away.

All in all, try and keep in mind that we are not at all limited to doing things exactly how they've always been done. We can very well do entirely new things that have never been done before depending on where the shortfalls are and what the issues are, etc. Maybe... Catalysts become super hard to get so... I add better ways of getting them that have never been seen before. Maybe... Catalysts are too abundant and people need more supplies... so I add a way to turn Catalysts directly back into Tokens or something. Maybe I just simply add entirely new mechanics and features. There is no limit or restriction, really.

This is like a festering infection that keeps bleeding. We can keep changing the bandages and getting bigger and bigger bandaids and hope the bleeding stops... or we can rip the bandaids off and treat the infection at the source and then worry about recovery once the infection is taken care of. I am opting for the recovery path. I want to stop all the issues directly at the source, right now, and then see where the chips fall and make adjustments based on that to bring things to a balance.

In regards to expired token reimbursement, I still don't know. It is a very tough thing to figure out. It's basically like you guys sorta found an exploit that went under my radar for too long and since everything in regards to them is on a 12 month delay, I didn't begin to fully realize how bad this was until we were well beyond the point of it being bad. Obviously, this isn't an actual exploit - but it is very similar as it was absolutely never even remotely intended for someone to have 33 million Gold waiting for them in 12 months lol. And absolutely, I do not fault you guys for this. You simply were doing what was before it. Essentially, just "clever use of game mechanics", as developers will often say. But at this point, there is such an enormous pile of manufactured Gold sitting in the database that it's borderline gamebreaking. So from that standpoint, yea, it's a no brainer to take that away.

But then obviously, a lot of you invested a lot of your time working towards that enormous pile of Gold and so... it's a no brainer, I can't take that away. So I don't know which to do. >< That is why I was proposing some sort of middle ground where players can still obtain millions of that Gold, but trying to just limit it so it's not such an absolutely egregious amount.

Would players who are waiting for more than a 7.2 million payday be open to an alternative reward for pending Gold beyond that 7.2 million mark? Or are you strictly only wanting the Gold returned?

In regards to Wild Stats and Prestige Stats, this is also a really tough one and I don't really quite know what the best route is either. On one hand, a lot of you are very excited for such a feature because you will now be able to level up some of your favorite pets (such as your Starter pet) and use it competitively. And I think that is fantastic. As a player, I would absolutely love such a feature.

At the same time, it directly clashes with max stat breeding. And as we all know, that is incredibly vital and important to Sylestia. It is literally the main reason why a lot of veteran players have remained throughout the years. I honestly don't know how to implement one without ruining the other.

Perhaps... Prestiged Stats just simply are not passed along during breeding at all? Additionally, perhaps they are capped at 1000/100/100s? Significant enough to make pets such as Starter pets very viable for competitive play, but max stat Breeding projects still reign superior?

"Would players who are waiting for more than a 7.2 million payday be open to an alternative reward for pending Gold beyond that 7.2 million mark?"

I know I am not the player with the most to lose here, but as far as speaking for myself, yes.
My concern with this cap was that my huge investment of time would be written off as worthless, and if the eventual payout of that investment is still possible, even if in a form other then gold, then I think I'd be okay. I can't speak for the people who invested huge amounts of gold into this, but hopefully we can still come up with a middle ground that works for everyone.

@Xavion,

A lot can be done to both include the changes and also address your concerns - some of which kind of already has taken place.

For example, the extra time after the zone closes provides more time to use the rewards that get processed 'late' (like from forum games). You should most definitely end up with more than a week to process those rewards - which is more than the time you've currently had at any point in the past.

Secondly, almost anytime we award a catalyst as a forum game reward, it's accompanied with a slew of supplies and agents. With the proposed changes, we can just simply add onto this to include a quick growth item and sufficient agents to grow it to full. That way the player is guaranteed to have that catalyst completely grown assuming they don't wait until 11:59 PM the final night to start it.

And we don't have to stop there with further changes. We absolutely most definitely can adjust other things as needed to accompany the changes. In my opinion, keeping auto complete in or adding special fast grow periods at the end of Festivals, etc - they are just more artificial bandaids.

I honestly saw prestige as being a new cap, with max stats and superstats being closer to that cap. They would be worth more as they would need less time for grinding to get to that new cap. For those, myself included, who would love to make my starter more useful, I find prestige as a great thing. Some won't want to take the time grinding to get a regular pet to that new cap as it would take an extremely long time to do so. So I see max and superstat pets as being safe from losing value. I can also see the themes coming from the fest zone as being more valueable now as they can already be level 70 when caught. So less time to start with giving them prestige.

As for the prestige not being breedable, I would be perfectly ok with that. It would mean that max and superstat pets would definitely not lose any value, at least from what I can see. They would still be wanted for being close to the new cap that you can get from prestige and so being less of a hassle for players to level.

For me, I feel that using the prestige as a new cap would be better. So a pet can have max 3k health, 300 mana, and 200 for the other stats.

Prestiged Stats just simply are not passed along during breeding at all? Additionally, perhaps they are capped at 1000/100/100s? Significant enough to make pets such as Starter pets very viable for competitive play, but max stat Breeding projects still reign superior?

This makes sense to me. if a pet is born with the traits, in the wild or by breeding, then the stats are part of their genetics and should be passed on. But if they were trained to it after then there's no reason to expect that to be passed on. I like this solution.

"Would players who are waiting for more than a 7.2 million payday be open to an alternative reward for pending Gold beyond that 7.2 million mark? Or are you strictly only wanting the Gold returned?"

In regards to this, I can only think of one fest I might have even close to that amount I wanted to come back to me--which would have been the last summer fest we just had. Yes, I would like the gold from that.
Mainly because, a lot of other things gold can be used for. (ie, broker diamond shop stuff...prismas, perfumes, disruptors are expensive before, during, AND after fests)

The Lost Grove Gold Sink...right there, in the blacksmith, is where a good chunk of gold COULD go to. Just making ingots alone, could be very very expensive. That was my MAIN reason why I was starting to hoard festival tokens. I /cannot/ expect my pets to sell for reasonable prices, WHEN I want them to sell.
Max stat pets, people buy what they want, and then the sales get stale, and I just end up releasing extras that don't to conserve stable space. Because there are gold sinks, people will want their gold. Lol.

I would be curious to see what an alternative offer might look like, but...I don't usually complete fests with 10k tokens left over...usually, that I can recall.

Prestige stats...I would prefer if they would pass over during breeding. But I can see why people would be against it. What I don't get is why those against it, wouldn't want their projects done somewhat faster, so they could work on other projects. I am against the wild stats dropping with every breeding, but, with the prestige being able to be passed over, because of work spent "extra leveling" I can see it evening out. I like this idea.

that was a lot to take in. Im one of the many that hates changes, but I can understand why most of them have to happen. But I fear for my next festival when I won't be able to find any growing supplies in the festival zone. Most of the time I wasn't able to get the right supplies for my sculptures last festival,which was why so many were far from finished. If that gets even more difficult and it will, not only with lesser supplies, but also with lesser time I don't think I will be able to finish even one in fall.

how are players even able to get that many excess festival currency? I'm always out of money and currency at the end of each event.

I think the prestige stats are realy a good idea but adding it as a third stat would make the max stats and super stats a bit too op, dont get me wrong they would lose alot of value otherwise witch isn't somthing i am looking forward at all but steamrolling through evry battle with raw strengh dosn't give as mutch chalenge.

Making the prestige stats unbreedable would make sens since they are earned by the pet from training and in this case it could be a stat on it's own.

Another idea could be to add somthing else like a special finisher could be added for any max stats that reach the level 70 or when their stats are maxed out, it would keep the stats fair and viable for those who want to keep their team around but would add a bonus for those who went through the trouble of making/buying and training a max stat instead.

"2. Moving forward, meaning for the 2019 Fall Festival, 2019 Winter Festival, 2020 Spring Festival, so on and so forth - Festival Tokens and Festival Items will cease being reimbursed. They will not have a Gold value. They will not turn into Expired Tokens. They will just be removed at the end of a Festival if not consumed."

As someone who always spends or sells my leftover coins at the end of a festival, I say...good. I never saw why they had to be reimbursed or turned into gold in the first place, and I never understood how we ended up in a place where everyone was expecting you to make their hoarding profitable. If players want to collect way more than they can use in one festival, that's hardly your problem. It should be up to those hoarders to find buyers for their hoard to make it profitable. Why should anyone wait for you to give them 400-500 gold per unused token when they literally sell for that amount at the broker during the fest?

"3. Pets will no longer auto grow after a Festival completely ends."

Again, I'm not sure how we got to a place where everyone expected you to do the work of growing their sylesties for them. I admit, I've taken advantage of the unintentional feature myself, but never with the expectation that I was somehow ENTITLED to it...and always understanding that you could at any point simply decide not to. I understood it as a risk, not a guarantee. But I tend to wait until the end of the festivals to start growing because that's when the materials are finally cheap enough to afford.

"4. Festival growing items will mostly cease dropping from the Festival Zone."

Hard to say what effect this will have until it's implemented, but I'm curious to see how it affects fest-grown pets... But I worry that scarcity will drive prices much higher than expected.