So, I am sorry if I missed this somewhere in the thread, but I am a little sleep deprived and I tried to read and absorb everything and it's just no happening. I know I have not been very active here on the site, as I admittedly have a lot of issues with some of the mechanics, but I do come back every once in a while to check on things.

First... This max and wild stat thing. It sounds like you were originally saying I can take two pets, a max stat with their 100 base stats and a normal pet with their 45 base stats... and get both of them to 200 base stats through prestige grinding. If so, I understand the concerns of the max stat breeders. But, as you suggested, that's also a really easy fix - max the wild stats they can earn rather than capping the overall stats. *shrug* If they can only get 100 wild stats in each category, then my max stat is still going to be better than a normal pet if both max their wild stats.

Also, reminder to the players reading this comment, getting those stats is going to be a ridiculous grind fest, so I don't think the average player is really going to want to go through the effort of grinding to max stats from a non-max pet when they can just buy a max and slowly make that max better. This also means that the stat cap can be increased over time without making base max stat pets suddenly not max anymore, since the prestige stat cap can just be increased instead.

However, it would be really nice that if this were to happen that something be done about the perpetual grind fest that is level 60-70. >.> Part of the reason I keep poofing is progress after 60 - and a lot of other Lost Grove-related things - is so slow and 60 isn't end game. 70 is end game, so it feels really weird to have a grind fest for 10 levels. If you're going to add more end game content - which is what prestige is - then getting to end game shouldn't take weeks to reach.

Second... The autocomplete. If I am understanding correctly from what limited festival experience I have... You put a pet in, it progresses for a little while, then you have to fix it so it will continue growing. People are putting pets in last minute so they will be completed without having to use those materials, correct? I think, a better way to handle this rather than just poofing the autocomplete entirely would be to add continual progress timers, but have the pets take longer to grow if they are 'damaged.' Then you can just cut off the ability to add new Catalysts to the pots according to how long it would take a damaged pet to be completed. If it takes 72 hours for a damaged pet to complete itself, then just don't let people put new Catalysts in during the last maybe 74 hours of it being available. Then there's no last minute autocomplete and you don't have people risking not being able to finish a Catalyst just because they forgot to go poke it one last time before they went to bed.

Third... I would not recommend removing any sort of supply drop from the zones. Players who do not have the time to grind out tens of thousands of festival currency - which I don't understand how people do anyway despite the fact I have no life and could literally farm stuff all day if I wanted to - would not appreciate suddenly having to buy all of one supply they need because they can't get them from drops anymore. However, I might have some idea for incentive to spend?

- Store-bought 'loot box' items, such as Catalyst pouches, have a slightly higher chance to give you better items than a dropped one or also have a chance to give you an extra item.

- New store-only items that perhaps do special things and are a little more expensive. For example, an item that, when used to fix a damaged Catalyst, it fixes it for twice as long/essentially fixes the next damage event as well, reducing how many times you have to check on and repair your to-be Sylesti.

- Non-event items being purchasable with tokens. Small things, possibly account-bound to prevent them from effecting too much. This could be lesser consumables, such as Lesser Pet Dyes - which I personally would buy, like, thousands of - or perhaps even Lost Grove things, such as drops needed for zone progression and building/crafting and maybe even armor pieces. Idea coming from World of Warcraft, actually, as they have an 'heirloom' armor system. During their currency-based festivals, such as Midsummer and Hallow's End, you can purchase upgrades for your heirlooms (overpowered low level armor that also increases XP to reduce alt leveling times) with significant amounts of the festival currency. Heirlooms are also battle.net account bound and therefore do not have an effect on the economy.

The reason I present these suggestions is I feel that if people are hoarding the currency because it's worth more to them as gold than as purchased items, then forcing them to purchase the items they don't want to purchase probably isn't the best option. I have always been and will always be against suddenly restricting something that was a drop to something that can only be purchased. It frustrates me as a player, especially when I am unable to get enough to satisfy my festival needs, let alone my wants. RNGesus also hates me, so I usually end up having to buy something anyway. Bleh.

I am also not personally interested in making pets during festivals nor collecting pre-colored avatar items, so there's not a lot for me to spend the tokens I earn on. I still like to try and grind out the custom color avatar sets from the zone, so I do still get a few thousand tokens and I would like to be able to spend them on things... There just usually isn't much for me to spend them on. Unless I am in a particularly good mood and run out of items from helping people and need to buy more.

Fourth... Do you know how friggin' hard it is to find ANY games that have staff that still communicate with their player base? Thank you, thank you, thank you, for being a decent human being and at least considering what your players think instead of writing us off as annoying pests and 'vocal minorities.' *sniffle*

That took way too long to write up and I have suddenly done nothing productive today. Oops.

Krin we love you too and PLEASE get some sleep. Sleep is good and fun. :)

Actually, I like the idea of lost grove stuff being in the festival! And how you are fixing the gold inflation!
And for the wild stat thing, I sounds like a wonderful idea! My pets have been capped for a while and I like that for the non max stat, they will be getting a boost as well. I still would love to use my starters as they are my favorites!
The maws of madness sounds like fun too! I love the idea of giving us two options for what leveled map we want to do instead of being placed in just levels 60-70. Not that it's bad to be automatically placed between those levels, but it gives us more options! ^w^
For the festival pet auto complete thing, I usually forget that I have pets that need to be completed, so if this does happen, I need to really remember that I got pets in the creator feature thing. But other than that, I really love these ideas! I feel like it will all work out and it won't be too hard for us to obtain anything. It's all about moving forward and doing what is best for everyone, not just a couple people.

On leftover/expired currency:
I'd say, have any stuff left over from the last few fests prior to this be viable so there's at least a little swapover, but maybe have that be the phaseout?


reducing drops:
Not sure how I feel about that one


Autocomplete:
One difficult thing is the differences between the fests- winter is instantaneous (AND people can much more easily get the catalysts they specifically want with the snowman exchange, rather than desperately trying to get one specific catalyst the entire fest and failing until time is nearly up (or just failing completely)), so there is no auto-complete issue
Spring and Fall, things gradually progress on their own, and are sped up and improved with bonuses by players being vigilant.
and Summer.
Summer where if you aren't vigilant your sculptures just... sit there. Doing nothing. Gaining nothing. So if you run out of supplies, and can't get other people to add any, you're stuck.

Honestly my thoughts on the differences between the fest activities probably belongs in a Suggestion Forum thread, so let's go with just:
At the least have Summer have a slow progression to lessen the issue there slightly (I'm pretty sure in real sand-sculpting you generally have like, a team of people working together on them? so that could be the explanation: faceless npcs work on them over time, but you help and keep them in good condition?)

I think, if you remove the Autocomplete, you'd probably want:
a) a timer somewhere on the page akin to the countdown-to-next-round timer that's on the PaD, that shows how long until the activity closes,
b) something on the page that clearly tells players that there is no autocomplete,
c) something on the page that tells them the base amount of time a brew/plant/whatever takes to complete (without legendary additive to remove cooldown time)


Pet Prestige:
Is it possible to add the Prestige like... a third stat? Like, "Active stat (base stat + wild stat + prestige)"?
I'd definitely say make Prestige uninheritable, but maybe...
Have +1000/100/100 be the cap for it, for all pets?
So a wild-caught pet with no wild stats and no prestige might have 11 str, and if it got All the Prestige, its base+prestige would be 111 str
But a Max stat pet (100 base) gaining all the Prestige (100), would have 200
(and if wild stat and prestige were separate, then a SuperMax could reach, like, 220, or 230 or whatever)

(also now curious about exactly how much exp it takes to get a prestige level, what prestige levels add stat-wise, and exactly how much exp the top 24 highest-exp pets have)


Exp philters:
Neat!


Maw of Madness:
I have no idea what I am reading because for some reason my brain is having a stupid amount of trouble parsing it, but it sure does sound interesting.

Haven't read the proposal yet, but wow I see the Star Wars reference. Will update comment with my thoughts.

Also:
7. MORE THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR STUFF! MORE STUFF TO DO WITH YOUR THINGS!

Wow, yes! I need more stuff and things! (and the Maws of Madness thing sounds interesting, I'd totally do it if it becomes a thing, even though *cough* school *cough*)

Is your Pet at the current Level Cap? Is it at like 1092% of Level 70?


I think my pet is a bit closer to 2300%... not sure how that works because of my lack of math skills, but it's a good 63,000,000 or so while the cap is closer to 2,600,000??

yiiiikes

My thoughts on the prestige cap being lower than max stats:

I dont' really agree with this, though I understand the reasoning behind it. However, as stated, if it takes a lot of effort to take a starter or randomly caught sylesti to max stat through prestige only, thus making breeding max stats still worthwhile to obtain, I don't see why a difference in cap is needed. Most players will still go the breeding max stat, either through buying or through breeding their own, route, instead of trying to take random pets to that level.

However, this would give players like me, who tend to not want to constantly switch pets, or tend to want to use specific pets, the opportunity to take the pets we love, and make them a viable alternative to max stats. If it took much longer, again, than breeding max stats, then it simply wouldn't be a viable method to create max stats, especially if they don't pass those stats on.

Also, think about super stat pets. Since these prestige pets would be capped out at a certain point, they would never be able to become super stat pets, while a max stat breeding project would. I couldn't take my starter pet, at max stats, and breed him to a wild lost grove pet to gain super stats, because his base stats are not max. His children might have that wild stat boosting their base stats, but they still wouldn't be at base max stats.

For the festival stuff, I am willing to wait and see how it all goes. One reason I am so nervous about sweeping changes like this is because on many other sites, the developers tend to be very reluctant to change things unless it is a HUGE problem, and then it is usually simply nerfing things, instead of true balancing. However, that doesn't seem to be the case on this site, as you are willing to work with the players and adjust things as needed. I think I just need time to get used to that.

Thank you for creating and maintaining this site. One thing I have noticed, about myself especially, but about other people, is that if something is bad, people tend to focus on saying what is good about it. However, when something is good, but has a few flaws, players tend to focus on those flaws, because they love the rest of it, and want the flaws corrected. So, it can often seem like players only focus on the bad stuff and you wonder exactly why they stay, when in reality they love the site, but want the few wrinkles ironed out.

I'd be okay with getting something other than gold for the hoarded stuff. If it's something useful that seems worth the effort put into what we have, then sure, why not? I dunno what it would look like, of course, but I'm certainly open to the possibility.

You might also be able to reduce the amount of gold per token for what we already have...? like only 200 or 300 gold per. Then we'd still get something but not affect the economy nearly as much? *shrug*

Prestige not being passed along via breeding seems like it could be helpful. Or, as others have suggested, having it be separate from wild stats, or with a cap. So like I could have a pet with 100(base)+30?(wild stats)+100(prestige), and someone could have a starter pet with 11(base)+100(prestige). The second pet would still have 111 in that stat, plus equipment and proficiency point gains, making it very useful in battle. But the super-stat pet would have 230, making that max base still have value. Capping it as its own individual thing, rather than being something you can build up infinitely until you hit the same level as max/super stat pets, definitely seems like it would help protect the stat breeding market.

Sounds good Krin, but I am not overly fond of the auto release after the Fest closes.
People spend a lot of gold and diamonds in order to receive those pets.
I do agree with what you did with the Summer Fest where you had to have a certain percentage in order to receive them.

The auto complete was nice, but I do see how it could be abused...it's just a shame it has to be completely removed.

The thing that worries me most it supplies not dropping in Grove. Granted, I've only experienced Spring and Summer Festivals but I wasn't able to do everything 'daily' and got nowhere near task completion. I can't use Pay Pal, so I have to rely on Gold for purchases of Diamonds which tempers my choices and purchases and affects my pricing and playing. I also noticed differences in help given in pet completion between the two; Spring seemed faster/easier with less help from others despite less 'special fertilizer' and Summer seemed to take longer despite more help and offered a better chance at the 'special pearls' (though the RNG drop rate seemed to dislike me for both). I had more leftover growth stuff for Summer- almost double...and simply sent it to someone who expressed concern over lacking enough to get theirs done in time.

I appreciate all the hard work the devs put in, the game, and the Community...I want to Support Sylestia, I wish I could do/help more. I really wish I had easy answers to the issues at hand....I'll just keep playing and thinking as rl allows and offer thoughts/suggestions as (if) they occur. Thanks for the time and effort in your work and conveying information Krinidon!

Not a fan of the no auto-complete, especially when it also seems the growing items will be that much harder to obtain? I'm suddenly going from maybe 7 pets completed with moderate effort to 1-2 pets completed with herculean effort.

I'd be fine if the auto-complete thing was bumped up to say, 85%. That would force people to do MOST of the growing, but would still help catch those who couldn't be there for the entire festival or who are afraid of wasting precious growing materials in case they can't afford making the entire pet in time.

Maw of Madness I have a couple questions on--would these scale with your level? The issue with lost Grove is taking a second group of pets through is very painful, as all the monsters are permanently scaled to 70. Also, is this a festival-only thing? It seems like it should be baseline, albeit tied to a special currency or unlocking quest to keep it from being abused too much.

The other things I'd have to think about some more, but I'm tentatively okay with them. I'm very glad I have a way to get a high-stat pet with my beloved firsties that does not mean breeding!!