I'm probably going to come off as whiny and I hate that but this is how I feel.
1.) If I'm not on all day every day I won't be able to win one of the leaderboards. Even if I was on the whole time I wouldn't have a chance at getting a 3 vis and maybe not even a two vis. The first three slots were in the thousands before 6 hours had past for battling, and I don't have time to nurture if I'm grinding for seeking gear, tokens, and avi items. I was on these last few days battling for hours and still fell off of fourth place. It is stressful and not fun at all.
2.) I do not like the feeling that if I don't buy diamonds to get the majestic tools or a maze ticket I won't get a legendary pet or the maze boss items. I realize the fest isn't even near finished, but the best things I've found from the seeking are 7 total diamonds, 3 fish so far (only one that I wanted), and water and clay. I have more often than not been insulted by the small amount of gold that it gives off of an iron tool. Getting 18 gold off of an iron tool that costs 50 sun tokens or an hour of grinding is not fun.
3.) I understand that the fabled pets should be more rare than the common ones, but it's becoming an elitist thing. The people who clamor to keep them rare already have them, and make a lot of gold or diamonds off the the offspring from people who couldn't buy the diamonds for the chance to get them. During the spring fest I was only able to get Aeridinis from the 2014 fest because they were wild, and the lighira I caught this fest was also an old theme, but what about the themed fabled that don't show up at that time of year? I would have loved some of the other fabled too, but how was I to get them? More to the point, how am I supposed to get last years summer fables this year?
4.) I wouldn't mind a few more fest things to do, other than grind for seeking gear, avi items, and tokens. Maybe you could have an NPC that plays tag? Have him spawn in corners of the map that never have anything or just really random "why is it THERE?" places, and if you find it like 10 times or something, you get a summer pouch, or one of the avi items? That way dashing all over the map would become fun, and we'd have a good reason to scour the entire map, not just the boss/chest locations. Maybe have different sized coloring contests? This fests picture is really big and kind of daunting.
5.) Maybe have someone else run the Sea Wars when you're offline or otherwise busy? With it being so sporadic and spaced out, I can't see how everyone will get a fair chance at getting a turn. I only got to play plant wars last fest because someone dropped out, and I happened to be the quickest user to respond to Fai asking what our favorite restaurant was. There were a lot of people not happy that I got it because they hadn't had a turn to play either, and it made me feel bad for their sake.

Other than those points, I love the fest so far. I'm not too worried about the lack of normal themed showing up yet because the fest still has time left, but it might become a worry later. I think that the market being "flooded" isn't really an issue like people say it is, because the items get bought by new players eventually and I don't think it's a bad thing for the items to not be expensive. It gives players who can't grind for the items the chance to buy them without spending all of their gold. I love the contest pouches. They are a wonderful idea even if they don't give us fish. I love that there IS a chance to find diamonds and tickets even if it is only a small one. You guys are overall amazing, and are truly appreciated. <3
P.S. An anonymous way to give feedback would be wonderful if at all feasible. ^-^;

Oh wow. Okay there's 7 pages of feedback already, so I may end up sounding like a broken record here, but i'm going to give my feedback points on this.

Things I liked from the fest:
I do like the idea of having the recolorable items drop from the bosses, but still be gainable from the fest shop if you just can't manage to get it to work. I think they're a bit skyhigh on token price, but I do like that it's an option.

The concept behind the Seeking was fun. I'm not sure how I feel about so much of getting a special pet all depending on that, since we cannot buy much of anything from the token shop, or even for diamonds. But I do like the basic concept of it.

Things I would love to see be added:
An event, of some kind, or the boss timers shortened. This fest is feeling a bit slow with the long timers, and no zone event, egg maze, etc to do in between the bosses.

The ability to trade clay and water items. I know it was basically hinted in a feedback post already that this likely won't happen.. but the fest really could have used that.

Since Krin mentioned in this thread that themes will be rotating out, and we'll get new zone themes in the next fest, I wanted to add here that I think it would be great if zone bosses could potentially still drop the older, retired themes. Much like the Fall Fest 2014's zone event boss would drop old themes, and Halloween themes. This would give retired themes the rare chance to gain new genes and mutations into the stock over time.

Things I did not like:
The way the Nurture Leaderboards now work, is that you need to breed, nurture, and immediately release eggs if you want to stay on top, because that's what the people in the lead on many boards are doing. It honestly felt icky to me when I tried it, so I cease to be able to competitively compete on that board, if I don't want to do something that feels.. well. Icky. Unsportsmanlike. I've heard others say they have to avoid the Nurture board now for the same reason, so I feel it's valid to bring up, since without doing it, you will simply run out of anything else of the species to nurture if your opponents are.

The balance this fest feels really off. The attempt to help the economy, by making themes more scarce, is honestly starting to cut into the fun factor of a fest for me. As my odds of finding even a zone theme, let alone an exclusive shrink, I find myself finding it hard to stay motivated and continue to enjoy the festivals. This combined with the 2 hour timer, and no zone event kind of all lumped together to make me feel kind of bored this fest. I kill my bosses, open chests, and then I wander aimlessly with no real expectations of finding anything neat, until my timers reset. I end up finding myself tabbing out to do other things way more than I normally would during a fest because of this.

I really do miss themes that had a bit less of a strict theme to them. I don't mind the concept of a theme to a fest here and there, but I do miss the variety that often came from more creative freedom. Sometimes it can be really difficult to come up with something that's pretty for a crab, or a fish that might be beautiful in real life just isn't really turning out so hot when I try to find a way to turn it into a pet theme, and then the end results that are picked may end up not being quite as pretty as they could have been when a specific pet ends up with something that doesn't turn out to translate very easily from real life.

I got to thinking about how the Summer Rose set only has an outfit and a held and wanted to suggest a background or two. Possibly a giant rose background, or a rose trellis like this one? Or maybe if the giant rose was small enough it could be a wing item to combine with the trellis.

Cliche I know, but better than nothing right?

All in all it's really fun. I like the idea of bring back the old items.

Down side is that all the time I've played over the 2 full days on the weekend and every afternoon I haven't seen hide nor hair of any themes. I mean I know they're rare but I was playing for a long time and other players were getting them. I guess it's supposed to happen but yeah.

I'm.... seriously having no fun this Fest, and its because of the frustration in the Zone.

I've got 13,000 pts on the leaderboard.... And I've managed to capture only a handful of Themed. I'm running at 1 in 1,000 battles showing up.. and half of those running.

For those who have many of the Themed from last year, that might be ok. But I'm a newer user (I joined during Spring), and I'm feeling seriously penalized. Its almost a week into the Fest, and.... I have very few Themed and most of them are from only a couple of species.

I like the Seeking, but really wish the items were tradeable.

I like the Pick A Door, but wish there were a few more held during the fest.

I like the Maze. :)

But yea, the inability to get even a few of the Themed I want, even after that many battles, is really frustrating and is destroying my enjoyment of the Fest.

Cheers!
C4.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=28181&page=6#60 Author: Teremko Time Posted: 8/25/2015 at 7:25 PM i REALLY LOVE festivals! However I am not a fan of the leader boards. its a GOOD IDEA however i dont think its fair that you can top the charts for more than 1 pet. I understand that players can spend TONS of time to get to teh top of the chats but WINNING more than 1 3vis special pet is unfair. there are only 21 species and over 7,000 players. I had FUN in the last festival but lost out on winning a pet and the winners had topped the charts in other areas. It might be better that once a person topped the chart in one pet first that is the pet they are stuck with unless someone else beats them. if they top in more than one then the first they achieved is what they get and they get 'skipped' for the other pets. This way they still get a festival pet (HARD TO ACHIEVE) and others get a more fair opportunity to get one.

While I think that this may be unfair on some levels, it does give others a chance, the same way that Eggling Auctions allow only one person per egg for bidding.

I feel biased, so I don't really want to make comments. >//< Right now, the contests are rather...inconvenient, because it's my first week of school (sorry for griping ;__;) and I'm taking quite a bit of time to stay on some of the boards for participation prizes. (I'm at the moment going for low numbers that I can manage on the battle board.)

As for the Seeking, I haven't really struck good things at the moment. I DO like that Regular Clams are around 25k-35k each though! 64 clams, which guarantees a minimum of 64 silver pearls, which guarantees a 3vis seeking pet, roughly costs 2mil if at about 31k each.
2mil for a 3vis is reasonable. (Whereas....getting the rest of the "ingredients" is tough and more luck based, plus untradable).

At first, I've seen people want to be able to trade clay, water, and/or the fish/crabs/shells, etc. I think it's a nifty idea, if feasible.


Also, bringing back a Seashell Hunt would be cool, to give players more things to do when roaming the map. ^^

On a positive note, we can now trade the pieces for the fish, including the fish themselves! Yay! Haven't gotten any fish either way, but it's really nice to be able to trade what we have in excess for what we need. I really wish the fish dropped more readily. It's beginning to feel like even the ones that should be common are going to be so rare they will all be out of reach...

I also just realized, the bosses no longer drop the level 60 orange armors, and for me at least, rarely drop the purple ones either. This is a real shame, as the festival bosses were the primary way to get there. I think they might drop in the one dungeon from the bosses there too, but the fest named are so much more fun, I usually got them there. I miss that, quite a bit. As it stands, all the blue and green armor you get is just junk and gets recycled. Yet another way this fest kinda feels nerfed compared to earlier festivals. I can use a bunch of these for all my mission pets, too... such a shame they aren't dropping any more.

New little feedback from me: I really, really, really hate the fact leaderboards are now anonymous. What's the point? I know I am always curious where my friends are, who is at the top... I understand eggling auctions being anonymous, but not this. It just really bothers me and takes part of the enjoyment from it :/

definitely agree with Kea =( I haven't really had time to be on, so one of the things I've been enjoying s seeing where y friends stand with the pets they are after on the leaderboards =(


EDIT: Also, you can't even see where YOU are on the boards anymore =( What if two people have the same score?

I like that players are anonymous on the boards now.
They serve the same purpose for why eggling auctions are anon -- if you can't see your competition in eggling auctions, you shouldn't see your "friends" either. Nondiscriminate anon-ing lol.

(I mean, it wouldn't be far from the truth that people would pick on each other if players saw each other participating in anything, either these boards OR eggling auctions. They're kinda the same to me.)

I don't like that you can't see yourself on the boards if you are on them.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=28022&page=15#150 Author: Lavelle Time Posted: 8/31/2015 at 12:05 AM Hello! I appreciate what you've done with making the summer contests Anonymous but I wonder if it'd be possible for it to be set like the egg auctions - so we can see our own names on the boards and see how we're doing at a glance? :) EDIT: Also because right now if someone has the exact same count as us we have no way of knowing if we're above or below them on the boards and that is very stressful considering how sought after the pets are!

Pretty much this!!