Hi, I'm here to subject you to my opinion again. Before you run away screaming, it's about nurturing this time.


1:
Since the whole "can't release eggs" thing is about not breeding and releasing for contests, I have an Idea(tm): If a pet was released during a contest, make it nurtureable during that contest, but un-nurtureable after it ends. Just a lil status thing that poofs with the end of the contest. Everyone can release as normal while still eliminating breeding for a leg up in the contests. Also means more stuff to nurture for people wanting pouches.


2:
Boost fest tokens from nurturing and add in other fest supplies. Nurturing gives so little in terms of fest stuff it's almost funny. This screenshot was from last winter. To my knowledge, drop rates haven't been changed since then.

This was from nurturing the entire site 2 days in a row.

No avi items, no fest supplies, no themes, just a tiny handful of tokens for hours upon hours of nurturing.

You cannot tell me that this is a good rate for frost tokens. You cannot tell me that dropping no other fest supplies is good either. You can't battle and nurture at the same time. Those hours must be dedicated to nurturing and nothing else. You can't get any of the items you'd get from battling, and it won't give you any themes. Outside of contests, you get practically nothing in terms of fest stuff for your efforts compared to battling.


3:
Add a way to buy essences with scales. RNG sucks, as shown by the 2 essences in the above screenshot. Additionally, I present this older screenshot:

(Again, rates stayed the same)

Having a "safety net" so you don't feel you've come away empty-handed feels nice, plus it's not like you're just giving essences out like candy since people would need to exchange scales for them.


(edited for clarity)

i kinda like this idea, it'd be nice to nurture things during an event for a reason other than doing nurture boards or daily tasks. it did feel a little bit worse resource-wise than just doing battle boards, especially with how competitive nurture boards can get.

another solution for releasing things during boards is to just turn off releasing of eggs and hatchlings for the few days of the boards, then people who want to release eggs can do that again when there isn't a contest currently going. i'm not sure how difficult it would be as opposed to having a system that would allow nurturing pets that have already been released, but i'd assume it would be easier. i know quite a few people who have projects going where they don't want to waste resources or time and miss releasing eggs.

restricting releasing during boards could also make it so you have to plan more during release boards and could make them more competitive. not as many people partake in them as the other two boards, even by accident. release boards don't have multiple rounds, its usually just the one round that runs the course of the festival, so its not as though restricting a handful of days will do anything to people who already participate.

as for buying essences with scales, i'm not sure how i feel about it because it would have to be balanced with their cost in the diamond store and on the broker. the more common essences can be sold for as low as 5,000 gold on the broker but cost 250 diamonds in the diamond store--maybe it could help with regulating the prices of regular/fabled essences? i could get behind that.

edit: changed adolescents in my post to hatchlings

Nurture person here chiming in! I agree with the problems Cat pointed out. A lot of people use hatch and release as a strategy during nurture boards, and it really turns the contest into a paranoia game. You have to have 72/72 egglings open in separate tabs all day, checking fastidiously to see if they've been hatched so you can catch them. Kind of defeats the point - it's supposed to be a contest based on who nurtures the most, not who can nurture and release hatchlings as quickly as possible. I don't like the idea of making hatchlings un-releasable during contests because it'll be a pain for anyone doing projects, but I think SOMETHING could be done to balance between that and preventing hatch and release.

I like Cat's suggestion of the nurture-able released pets, but I have another potential solution for it as well. During contests, there could be a way to flag hatchlings for release, but not actually release them immediately. Once boards ended, the pets flagged would auto release. This allows project people to basically operate as normal, while preventing people from exploiting the release feature to earn extra points.

As far as rewards, hard agree that something should be adjusted. Even aside from essences, the drop rate for fest tokens from nurturing is abysmal compared to battling. Either the token rate should be upped, or allow other drops from nurturing (catalysts, brewing/growing supplies, waters/bloods/ferts).

For essences, I think adding them to the scale shop is a great idea. The essence market already kind of sucks - they sell for faaaaaar below their dia shop prices, especially regulars. Adding them to the scale shop would be a good higher priced item to get with scales.

Another nurturing person here, agreeing with you that the rates for literally everything seem quite low compared to how much time you have to dedicate to nurturing during the fests.
During boards you at least get the pouches but if there's no boards going you're going out somewhat empty handed.

I've collected a few screenshots of times where I was literally about to eat my keyboard because there was little to no essences. I usually split my nurturing and do it on my phone, tablet or PC, so the numbers aren't that high.







For me the only one of them kind of "worth" it was the one with the 2 Ryori essences since that's a species I actually love but otherwise you just end up with an essence you don't want anyway - not even speaking about that you don't get the avatar items as you've mentioned.
Scale Shop Essences? Perfect idea, yes.
I can finally work for my Faelora Essences and don't have to buy them over and over because I never get any ;A;

I also thought about all of this multiple times and another option that came up in my head was to just make it so Egglings *and* Hatchlings can't be released since it's only those that can be nurtured anyways.
As a project guy myself this does add up a few more days you have to deal with Chaos in the hatchery but I'd rather like to take that than to have to get annoyed about refreshing a bazillion of tabs over and over again to get the few points that could make the difference.

Aelings idea to flag a hatchling/eggling to be released after boards also sounds good to me as well as just being able to nurture released pets too.
It's just a little something to make sure it's about how accurate you nurture and not about how good you are at timing hatches & releases.

Gonna throw in, though I'm not a board nurturer, this seems to be a 1:100 token:nurture ratio and it seems. Really low, honestly You can get multiple tokens from a single battle, along with all the other drops, but nurturing is 1:100 token and what, 1:10000 for essences?

I don't really have any opinion on the essences thing since I don't use them, but the fest currency drop rate I think definitely needs to be boosted, especially looking at these screenshots, and adding other fest supplies could also help entice people to it? (maybe 1:10 currency 1:50 additive, 1:200 catalyst box or something? I don't know how it'd work in practice, I'm just trying to work out battle:nurture ratio equivelances when battle drops aren't something I pay attention to most of the time)


(I've now done one fest where I was actually trying on nurture boards and ugh. Falling behind in points despite nurturing every single pet in the list that's there correctly and ending up with the most likely conclusion as 'someone released things before you got to them' is big oof)

I'd love being able le to nurture and get fest stuff too, as a primarily mobile user who only uses the computer sides for battling but is usually on a mobile device this would be so helpful but still balancd- I'd love to be able to keep up with fear while away from home! I remember one summer I barely did fest at all just because I couldn't really get enough from nurturing to make it worth it and battling was way too slow to really make me want to fight 6 bosses every day.

I feel like nurturing contests is a hard thing to tackle without redoing the whole idea. With battle boards, you've got an element of randomness from number of enemies, speed from abilities/equipment, and then just time dedicated to fighting. If you have internet, you can keep fighting until the switchover. With nurturing, the moment it goes live, there's an automatic limit. There are only so many eggs/hatchlings of whatever species at any given moment. If everyone never messed up, started nurturing immediately until all of the target species is nurtured, keeps refreshing for new eggs, and then immediately do it again when switchover happens before some inevitably age up, everyone would always be tied. There are few ways to get the advantage and the breed/nurture/release is the only way off the top of my head (maybe doing it right before switchover but not releasing, also?).

I would like to see a way to make it more like the battle boards where there isn't a limit you can hit per day. But maybe that's the point of the nurture boards-- having a completely different type of battle for the top.

I've always wanted a system of some sort where a person can release an egg or hatchling but that it could still be nurtured. That said, despite putting I think more time into it than most, I honestly feel that there's far more to gain from the nurture boards than the battle boards just because you get so much back in pouches alone. I guess though that depends on how far one really delves into the nurture boards. It is quite the time commitment to nurture everything. If someone's not nurturing enough to end up on all the boards then I can see how it's going to feel like a huge wasted time sink. You have to dedicate a huge portion of your day to only nurturing to compete on the boards. And there's even more time spent if you're really fighting for a board and watching for releasing, too.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105278&page=1#7 Author: Voidborn Time Posted: 2/2/2023 at 4:39 PM I feel like nurturing contests is a hard thing to tackle without redoing the whole idea. With battle boards, you've got an element of randomness from number of enemies, speed from abilities/equipment, and then just time dedicated to fighting. If you have internet, you can keep fighting until the switchover. With nurturing, the moment it goes live, there's an automatic limit. There are only so many eggs/hatchlings of whatever species at any given moment. If everyone never messed up, started nurturing immediately until all of the target species is nurtured, keeps refreshing for new eggs, and then immediately do it again when switchover happens before some inevitably age up, everyone would always be tied. There are few ways to get the advantage and the breed/nurture/release is the only way off the top of my head (maybe doing it right before switchover but not releasing, also?). I would like to see a way to make it more like the battle boards where there isn't a limit you can hit per day. But maybe that's the point of the nurture boards-- having a completely different type of battle for the top.

I think if it just went on forever you'd end up either sending me to the grave early from lack of sleep or getting me divorced. I'm only like half joking.

Ties do happen occasionally but usually someone's going to slip up somewhere. Despite plenty of practice at this point, I certainly screw up at least a few times to sometimes even a lot. While ties are frustrating, I'd rather deal with a tie than have my competitiveness destroy my health and the health of others.

It's great to reach the end despite how you've done and realize you've got some free time to do something else. Or just have the knowledge that with your pacing that you can take a break here and there. I know I'm not the only one who gets pain like tendonitis from nurturing so much and it's useful to be able to take breaks to help prevent it from getting too bad. For it to go endless, I know I would play in an unhealthy manner and I would think I'd not be the only one. So I have to say I don't support this one for my own sanity and physical health at the very least.

Also, I've never released during a nurtureboard but I very often come in first. And I don't think I've ever dipped below top five since I started mass nurturing for the boards.