Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105539&page=1#9 Author: Krinadon Time Posted: 3/20/2023 at 10:55 PM [quote=2698645] At the time of writing this, only 12 people have hit the 5-limit cap for today. Just stating for reference of how many are potentially affected by this change. The main reasoning for this change was that I felt Nurturing left a pretty big gap in where some players could use it to farm an exorbitant amount of ticket pieces as it had a very high ceiling before a player would run out of pets to Nurture and you could generally find them faster, and with less effort, compared to battling. At the end of the day, Sylestia has to generate a certain amount of revenue. As time goes on, we keep expanding more and more ways to participate in Festivals/Events. Since the Lucky Pot was first added, we now have Lucky Draw, Secret Maps, and now Login Rewards and a new feature still coming. Yet, the intrinsic drop rate for ticket pieces hasn't really changed much over the years. After reviewing data from last year, I made some changes to balance things out some more to try and keep the rarity of ticket pieces at an acceptable level. The Lucky Pot is the big revenue generator for the Fortune Event and I have to keep up with changes as things evolve to make sure revenue is still coming into the game at a sufficient level. The change (now max limit of 5 with a boosted drop chance for first 3) affects an extremely small percentage of our player base, but can go a long way of filling in a potential gap where hundreds of excess tickets hit the economy over the duration of the event. Additionally, in my opinion, I think the current change is actually an overall positive as it makes it easier for the average player to collect 3 (+1 from task) tickets per day from Nurturing when they otherwise probably would not have even bothered. I am seeing a lot of players hitting that 3/4 mark of tickets found per day, which is exactly what I was striving for. In total, 66 players collected 3 or 4 tickets from Nurturing today, compared to only 12 players who hit the cap of 5. That is precisely the data point I was striving for.

Okay, I'm going to try breaking this down to see if I understand what has been laid out, and give my take on it.

First, only 12 people have hit the 5 limit cap for today. I would ask how many people have completed their 800 nurtures for today, and how many people continued past the 800 mark to get to the limit today. I did my 800, got either 2 or 3 ticket pieces (honestly can't remember), and then stopped because the time I could put into nurturing for the last 2 or 3 pieces, was not worth it to me as someone who both has access to the Lost Grove, and would prefer battling over nurturing just about any day of the week. I can have a much higher chance of getting ticket pieces while clear-cutting the grove, even *with* the temple open, than I can getting the pieces from nurturing in the same time. Therefore, nurturing is not a good time/reward balance for me.

The possible issue involving someone being able to farm an exorbitant amount of ticket pieces from nurturing seems to be at direct odds with the fact that only 12 people have hit the cap today. I can almost guarantee that exponentially more ticket pieces have been farmed up from battling in the LG, which is limitless, depending on how much time you want to put into it, whereas nurturing is naturally capped at the number of eggs and hatchlings there are to be nurtured. RNG can be kind (as it was to me yesterday when I got all 5 ticket pieces in the 800 nurtures), or terribly unkind (I have seen people reporting 1 ticket piece after nearly 2k nurtures, and that's *with* the 40% boost). There are currently (as of the count I just did with AS) 5,044 egglings and 9,116 hatchlings in the game. So, we can round up and say there are 15k pets able to be nurtured right now (which include eggs waiting to be hatched, and hatchlings about to age up). If RNG is generally kind, I might walk away with 25-30 ticket pieces for nurturing the entire site (not sure how many people beyond a small handful actually have the stamina to do that). If RNG is terribly unkind, I might walk away with 8 for the whole site. So, on average, maybe 20 for the whole site (would probably get a better idea from Savynn, if she has her numbers from last year saved somewhere)?

Yesterday, I did all the daily quests and got the 5 ticket pieces from nurturing. I ended up with more than 30 ticket pieces throughout the day (I distinctly remember redeeming a ticket when I was at 29 pieces, then a second after playing that game, then later playing a third game). So, let's call it 30 to be conservative. Minus 5 for nurturing, and minus 5 for the dailies. I got at least 20 ticket pieces, yesterday, from battling in the lost grove. And I did not beat temple bosses. And I am a fairly casual LG player. If I were playing anywhere *near* as much as some people, I'd probably be done playing the Lucky Pot for free 10 times and more by now. As it is, I'm already at 7 free plays and have 6 ticket pieces waiting in my inventory. That's an average of approx 25 tickets per day for me. Without hitting the cap on nurturing every time. So yeah, from battling, I'm averaging 15 tickets every day from being a pretty casual battler. For those without access to the LG, or just not inclined to play there because of the massive jump in difficulty (and rather sharp drop of fun for those who do not enjoy grinding), it seems rather unfair that they are capped at 5 when I can grind out 15 much easier than literally nurturing the entire site-worth of babies/eggs.

I understand that Sylestia needs to make money. I also understand that the Lucky Pot probably makes a good amount of revenue. However, I do not believe that those who would grind out 15-20 pieces through nurturing (which is tedious, let's be honest) over the entire day, likely not participating in any of the other ticket piece-making activities, are the target demographic for diamond purchases. If they are willing to put hours into clicking the correct button out of four over and over and over again to get ticket pieces, they're not likely the ones that are interested in the quick way of getting more scratches that paying with diamonds is.

You said it: this affects a very small percentage of the player base. But that small percentage is your alienated new players, who come in from mid-January through Spring Fest, and see that all fun, cool events are gated away from them somewhere they can't hope to properly access and take advantage of. Nurturing is something that anyone, from level 0 and only having their starter to level 75 with tens of thousands of pets and playing at end game can access. So why is this incredibly accessible part of the game, which is most of what newbies can access for the events, being squashed? It is not fun to come on and find that the new game you started playing is having this cool event, and people are all excited about it... and it will take you two days, if RNG is kind, for you to make one ticket, to play one scratch card, and that's it for the super fun event that the majority of the playerbase is off grinding out 2, 3, 4, or more tickets for every day. At least with no cap, there would be a *chance* for newbies to collect enough pieces for a ticket per day and kind of enjoy the event with everyone else (not to mention, again, those that do not enjoy engaging with the LG). And, quite honestly, if a game isn't fun, and just punishes me for playing the way I prefer (aka nurturing over battling, or vice versa), I am not very likely to throw money at it, except out of frustration (and then I just resent the game). I have the benefit of being a veteran player that has been here for over 9 years and have all the advantages of pets, levels, stats, equipment, gold, and the fact that my hands don't start to hurt after battling or nurturing for an hour. I can grind out all the tickets I want if I want to put in the time. And not spend a dime doing it. Your new players do not have that, and if they resent the game, they're not going to stay.

I love Sylestia. I truly do. There isn't another pet breeding site like it out there. But it's hard to love changes that reduce the fun parts of the game, especially at the expense of new players.

Echoing what Fox and Mika have said.

Any cap on rewards discourages nurturing, and nurturing should not be discouraged because pets are worse off with fewer nurtures.

I understand that if someone could get >10 ticket pieces per day from nurturing for a month straight, then there would be some ramifications on the value of items, themes, etc.

However,

Nobody forced you to make the event last a month. I don't think people want a minifest to last a month. It would feel a lot better if there was a short event, maybe a couple weeks, with actually decent rewards for your efforts. Forcibly diluting the rewards just to drag things out longer doesn't make for a fun event.

And on top of that, you cannot nurture and battle at the same time. If someone takes the time to nurture and do nothing else for hours on end, they should be rewarded for it.

Plus, you need newbies to like the site. Your playerbase is tiny. Shutting newbies out of being able to participate in events is demoralizing, not motivating. You've taken out any ability to get tickets before reaching Ethernia. There is one non-nurturing task not exclusive to the Grove. Their options are nurturing or the Grove, and you cannot expect newbies to just jump into the Grove and get any decent amount of tickets. The Lost Grove was made specifically to take a ridiculous amount of time to complete. To lock participation behind the later stages of a time sink is absurd.

Nurturing, as grindy and potentially click-intensive as it is, is the only reasonable way for a newbie to participate, and you've capped their ability to do even that.

I'm going to reiterate, minifests should be short while giving decent drops for players' effort. Total numbers can stay reasonable while allowing people to feel like they're actually getting something out of the game.

Agreement with Mika, Fox, and Cat. I'll be honest Krin, I've read your response at least 3 times now and it makes no sense to me.

I'm someone who doesn't hate nurturing, and I used to grind it a bit for tickets. I definitely don't remember getting a huge amount - the rng always kind of sucked compared to the effort you had to put in. Only 12 people have hit the cap? Doesn't that show that people *won't* farm nurturing? It's a pretty unpopular feature compared to battling, and I'm not sure those 12 people really give the reliable data you're suggesting. I know at least one person who had really good RNG and got all 5 pieces within the daily 800 nurtures - that's not someone farming nurturing, that's just someone completing the task.

Also agree with Cat that this is discouraging people from nurturing - again, an already unpopular feature (for the most part). And as Cat said, you can't nurture and battle at the same time. If someone sinks hours into clicking pets to nurture, why shouldn't they be rewarded?

This event is already feeling pretty unrewarding, between the nerfed drop rate outside the temple/lack of fest boss within the temple and the nurturing cap. I'm fine with having to grind for stuff, but it's starting to feel like an endless grind with very little reward.

I also agree that this fest is suddenly very weirdly long - Fortune Fest last year was about 3 weeks, same as the year before. Why is it suddenly the same length as a seasonal fest? I'd much rather have shorter events where items are fewer but easier to get.

TLDR: As all the others said - and I fully agree - if people decide to go for a 8h shift of nurturing the whole site - which would also benefit *all* pets that get a poke - let them get rewards for that.

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As someone who does not full on hate nurturing I also think that 800 for a *daily task* is a very big chunk.
Non mini-events have a nurture task for the *whole* event that's 10k iirc, so after doing one and a half week of Fortune Fest you're already at the amount that's needed for a whole month (or more) otherwise.

While I do love grinding, I've already had no motivation to go past 800 nurtures when rng didn't even give me more than one or two tickets because nurturing is *NOT* rewarding enough, even with the 40% increase for the first 3 tickets.

I think on the second day I stopped at around 1,5k because I still didn't get all tickets and it's just too time consuming to do nurturing *IF* you're able to battle otherwise.
If not, nurturing is really your only option to get *anything* during this fest, except if you buy diamonds and / or spend a lot of Gold on the Trade Broker.

While I do understand that the site has to make a revenue so you can make a living, actively trying to force people to spend diamonds doesn't make it look very ... player friendly.

Not even speaking about people who didn't reach the LG yet.
Those who DID get punished if they reached the temple because the droprates are lowered and there's no boss for the temple itself.
People CAN destroy the enemies before they killed the worm - I did destroy them easily before I tried the worm because I simply was afraid of him / I am not really a good tactician and struggle with complex mechanics or those that require you to remember the past moves of the boss or what will happen next.

Yeah, okay. What? Only twelve people hit the 5 ticket and somehow that... supports the cap? How does that many any sense? If anything it just makes it more pointless, because it shows how few people are going to put in the effort that would be necessary to flood the market. I'm one of those twelve people who hit all give yesterday, and it took me 4.4k nurtures to do it. And yes, I would have continued further without the cap. But that's because it's the only way to get tickets as someone who is, under no circumstances, going to bother with the LG. I would have liked to continue at least until ten, so that I could play the pot just once a day.

And yes, I get the site needs money. But as someone who does buy diamonds and has always wanted to support this site, this whole locking the event to the LG and further punishing not liking the LG by capping tickets on nurtures, it's making me very much not want to spend money on the site moving forward.

This whole one chance at the pot every other day without access/desire to engage with the LG is, like everyone else has already said, doing nothing but alienating the userbase and decreasing chances of those players supporting the site monetarily in the future. At the moment I'm quite tempted to ditch the site as a whole again and check back another couple years from now in hopes that by then the LG will finally be gone, and all of this nonsense gone with it. Right now this certainly doesn't seem anything like the site I was obsessed with and played endlessly from 2014-19.

Edit because I figured out another way to put to words why this is so bothersome: the whole thing feels entirely like being told 'You're either new or don't want to engage with the LG, so you only deserve to win a max of seven tickets per day'. And the cap itself bothers me so much because on a day like yesterday, I had all day to sit and nurture. But I work twelve to fourteen hour shifts, so on days that I work, I do not have time to sit there and nurture for hours on end, possibly even just to hit that cap of five tickets. So it is extra frustrating that I can't even make up that distance on my days off that I lost on the days I have to work. So I'm further limited beyond even that estimate of one scratch every two days.

And judging by what everyone else has provided here, it would make infinitely more sense, if limiting the amount of tickets on the market is really the issue here, to add a daily ticket cap across the board. Once you've hit x amount of tickets through any method, congrats, they're done dropping for you for the day.

As Mika mentioned, "If I were playing anywhere *near* as much as some people, I'd probably be done playing the Lucky Pot for free 10 times and more by now," as someone who HAS been primarily earning ticket pieces through battling in the LG and the temple I completed my 10 free spins task today and have extra tickets to spare. While I do the daily nurturing task, I've only been going to the daily task requirement and have only gotten 2-4 tickets from nurturing which INCLUDES the daily task reward piece. Even without nurturing, I would still be able to complete my 10 spin task today (had I finished my temple run and found my first Maeve encounter) and would STILL have the rest of the event to flood the market with 'exorbitant amounts of ticket pieces' regardless of whatever nurturing cap you added on.

Most players aren't nurturing even close to the entire site like Mika stated and the only thing the nurturing cap adds on is a punishment to new players and players not participating in the LG. If the issue were truly about keeping the income of ticket pieces limited from getting out of hand, why would battling not be limited as well? There is no reason to further limit events to new/casual players and it certainly doesn't encourage players to play in the LG when they're forced into it