I think the reason Sylestia runs into this type of complaint from time to time is because of how we set features up. Most other games, especially most other similar genre'd games, are very, very restrictive with what players can do. Whether you have "energy" points that only allow you to do so much and then literally have to wait to for them to regenerate (or buy more), or just a bunch of features that are literally, "do this one thing once a day and then you are done with it" (unless you buy a bonus ticket) and then you get a prize and move on and come back tomorrow.

I hate all of that. Fai hates all of that. And we strive to pretty much never ever put in features like that. Our 'motto' is almost always geared towards allowing players to play as much as they possibly want. And we do our best to cater to that mindset and to keep things balanced for that.

So rather than just have some area where you can enter once every x period of time and get into a freebie battle against a Maniacal Pyro, we instead incorporate it into the exploration zones themselves and have it on an open ended encounter rate where you can basically find and battle as many as you are willing/able to. Over the years, we've made a lot of adjustments to this idea and that's why there are the counter bonuses and all that now. Basically "guaranteeing" you an encounter after so much effort rather than having to purely rely on RNG alone.

But because it's open ended like that, we can't have it be super common to encounter and stuff. Because otherwise the items would be flooded and value-less. Things are valuable because they are hard to get, of limiting quantity, etc. If everyone who logged in was able to get all of the avatar items and the pets (which basically everyone has as their goal, for the most part) with just an hour or two of playing a day, they wouldn't be very valuable.

So it's a massive balancing act to balance frequency, with rarity of drops, with difficulty, and time availability. Coupled with also putting these things in two separate locations with two separate spawn mechanics and slightly different drop tables. It's just a lot to balance and there really is no "perfect" balance. As I have found throughout the years, I almost have never seen a "This is perfect Krinadon!" lol. It's literally always "This is way too hard/rare" or "This is worthless and way too common, who wants this junk?" I'd much prefer the former to the latter because it gives us a lot more options, so that's the side I err on when trying to balance everything.

These mini events are just small little bonuses. I don't really expect an average player to literally walk into this with nothing and walk out with 31 unique avatar items and 22 unique themed pets. It's going to require a lot of effort to attain that much from a single event all on your own. If the average player could walk away with that, the high-playtime players would walk away with 10-20x that and then dump it into the economy rendering everything value-less and there'd also be a considerably less incentive for players to buy things with diamonds - which is vital for Sylestia's continual operation. Our balancing almost always assumes the average player is going to be trading/buying for things they really want with other players.

So it's all just a balance. And I know things are never perfect, but I do try my best to make it balanced with all sides taken into consideration and I do my best to make the game as generous as I feel comfortable making it without doing more harm than good.

I will take a look at the Lost Grove pyro and see about making it a tad easier. But its difficulty was mostly intended as this is the type of things intended to be incentives for advancing through the Lost Grove and getting your pets stronger and getting the Barracks upgraded.

Sounds good to me. I was one who felt the LG pyro was a tad on the tricky side, but actually knowing to do damage when he's casted his spell allowed me to beat him fairly easily after that, so I eat my words :)

Well said, Krin. This is just my experience, but I like the rarity factor. Every time, I go in, and just as I'm about to give up on what I'm trying to find, that's when whatever I'm trying to get (in this case a Pyro) spawns. The feeling you get from that is amazing, and that feeling wouldn't be there if a Pyro spawned from a 1/10 chance instead of what I'm assuming is probably around 1/1000, and increases the chance with each successful battle. The hard work is what makes getting the items (and occasional themed pet) seem worth it.

I agree with Latte, which dosen't happen often ^^ and You did really well Explaining the mechanics of the game and I really Love that ^^ Though In the past I have found mini fests to be a bit more Balanced than the LG, but I think I have an Idea why it Appears to be harder.

As many of us know (and if you dont No worries) the LG is a Buffer for us to have content to work with as you set up the New site and Drag us out of Beta. Which is super exciting ^^. But it also means you built the grove to "slow us down"/ " keep us busy" hence why everything is so tanky and an epic Ice pet can wipe out my whole max stat team while I just cry and watch. The Higher HP slows down our KpM (Kills per Minute). I tried it out with AT last night and I agree that making the counter too low would remove a lot of value, and here were my findings...


AT I was running 1 pyro every 30-40 minutes 10-15 battles per minute
( That's Blasting it with Lvl 70 Max pets so for lvl 60 maybe an hour or a bit over if that)
LG I Starter with whatever the new Rollover bonus is and I have been looking in total about 3 hours total but I'm only averaging about 5 battles per minute if they are sprites and no battle brigades .

I know thats not a lot to go on, but its simple to see why its harder in the LG.... It just takes longer. Which changing the HP of the zone will not help XD that's counter productive overall. And tweaking the counter is a lot of work as well, and I'm not sure how that works . Though I cant tell a diffrence in the grove today I am glad Krin's looking into it and that him and Fai have made such a wonderful site ^^ I have tried to go elsewhere and I just cant and for that reason I simply want to help in any way I can.

I would like to make it clear to everyone... I do not have a problem with hard ( heck raided majorly in WoW for a long time, talk about beating your head against a wall for nothing more then to say hey we did it). My problem is I went from being able to beat the one pyro I found in LG to hitting the 6th stage and to getting my rear handed to me. That was a shock and shows some imbalance within things. I appreciate the work that goes into sites like this otherwise I would not be here,

Hey ^^ I think I have a "answer" to your issues with the grove. As it first came out we all stood where you stand feeling the wave of shock from the dramatic increase. But the grove was not built for fests it was actually built to slow us down and keep us busy while Krin pulls the site out of beta ^^

Above I typed out a general statement that may be more explanatory. If your after just pyros in general and not the new avi items and the rikki eggs switching to AT may be really helpful! but getting a egg or the new items is going to be a long haul in the grove for me as well.

Hope that helped ^^!

Yes thank you that does help considerably :)

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=63183&page=7#61 Author: Krinadon Time Posted: 7/3/2018 at 3:47 PM I think the reason Sylestia runs into this type of complaint from time to time is because of how we set features up. Most other games, especially most other similar genre'd games, are very, very restrictive with what players can do. Whether you have "energy" points that only allow you to do so much and then literally have to wait to for them to regenerate (or buy more), or just a bunch of features that are literally, "do this one thing once a day and then you are done with it" (unless you buy a bonus ticket) and then you get a prize and move on and come back tomorrow. I hate all of that. Fai hates all of that. And we strive to pretty much never ever put in features like that. Our 'motto' is almost always geared towards allowing players to play as much as they possibly want. And we do our best to cater to that mindset and to keep things balanced for that. So rather than just have some area where you can enter once every x period of time and get into a freebie battle against a Maniacal Pyro, we instead incorporate it into the exploration zones themselves and have it on an open ended encounter rate where you can basically find and battle as many as you are willing/able to. Over the years, we've made a lot of adjustments to this idea and that's why there are the counter bonuses and all that now. Basically "guaranteeing" you an encounter after so much effort rather than having to purely rely on RNG alone. But because it's open ended like that, we can't have it be super common to encounter and stuff. Because otherwise the items would be flooded and value-less. Things are valuable because they are hard to get, of limiting quantity, etc. If everyone who logged in was able to get all of the avatar items and the pets (which basically everyone has as their goal, for the most part) with just an hour or two of playing a day, they wouldn't be very valuable. So it's a massive balancing act to balance frequency, with rarity of drops, with difficulty, and time availability. Coupled with also putting these things in two separate locations with two separate spawn mechanics and slightly different drop tables. It's just a lot to balance and there really is no "perfect" balance. As I have found throughout the years, I almost have never seen a "This is perfect Krinadon!" lol. It's literally always "This is way too hard/rare" or "This is worthless and way too common, who wants this junk?" I'd much prefer the former to the latter because it gives us a lot more options, so that's the side I err on when trying to balance everything. These mini events are just small little bonuses. I don't really expect an average player to literally walk into this with nothing and walk out with 31 unique avatar items and 22 unique themed pets. It's going to require a lot of effort to attain that much from a single event all on your own. If the average player could walk away with that, the high-playtime players would walk away with 10-20x that and then dump it into the economy rendering everything value-less and there'd also be a considerably less incentive for players to buy things with diamonds - which is vital for Sylestia's continual operation. Our balancing almost always assumes the average player is going to be trading/buying for things they really want with other players. So it's all just a balance. And I know things are never perfect, but I do try my best to make it balanced with all sides taken into consideration and I do my best to make the game as generous as I feel comfortable making it without doing more harm than good. I will take a look at the Lost Grove pyro and see about making it a tad easier. But its difficulty was mostly intended as this is the type of things intended to be incentives for advancing through the Lost Grove and getting your pets stronger and getting the Barracks upgraded.

Well said. You officially hold all my respect.

Just want to say thanks so much for always paying attention to your players' opinion and care to give your opinion about the current festivals, Krin. I think not many devs care about their players' opinions, let alone giving their own opinions about how they see things and why they decide to do something. And to think you have been doing that over 6 years is very impressive to me. I think most players here know you always work hard to give us the best. That's probably why I don't really see many complaints here compared to other sites. Thank you for always being awesome, Krin. Also for Faiona who always support us.

Its not the balancing, rng, items, pets im worried about. For the sake of Sylestia, its the complaining, the whining, the belittling, the badgering, the asking for free stuff without putting in much efforts (even passively asking) towards Krinadon and his efforts to please his devilish little minions. I see it every fest and i see it a lot in region chat, from several players. EVERY FEST. Albeit it comes and goes...its getting old, and it frustrates me to see. Just having the one coder, vs 20+ uncaring, ungrateful folks...not directing this to anyone. Speaking in general. Ive seen you personally brush it off when someone spoke directly to you. Its kind of sad...idk, call me a simpleton but i dont like seeing devs/owners even mods in some games disrespected.

Theres constructive criticism and there is just being mean. Ive seen both, ive actually done both but it takes a lot to get me to snap. Ive only done so twice publicly since ive been here. And it takes effort to not do it!

The old saying comes to mind. If you cant say anything nice, dont say anything at all. Or at the very least word it carefully and constructively.

Whats concerning about all this...is eventually itll tear down the community, and there goes the game. There have been a lot of new folks joining in chats in the last 6 months, and there have been folks saying there is just too much whining. Do you miss seeing a certain someone in chat during fests but afent seeing them much now? They're likely lurking now. Or just not playing anymore.

All in all, the zones are fine, fests are fine, its free stuff after all, the effort is fun, although i will say im impatient with the LG stages but i know youve got enough on your plate right now as it is xD

So, i dont know...i do worry about the future because this is one hella great community, and I really do not want to see it go to hell because of the whining. And it could easily go that route especially if folks keep getting what they want (ie more freebies, easy drops, etc) And those who do see it as well dont want to speak up because they either dont know what to say, or dont want to get involved.