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This may be a bit of a crazy idea, but why not have the Bears be gem purchases during their respective holiday instead of clogging up one chest over clogging up another chest? Many people like the economy of the AC, but many like myself also think retiring flat-out is a terrible idea towards newer players. Why can't there be a grace period? Have them wait a few years and then come back later either through Joxar or through the gem marketplace. The really old apparel and familiars can be expensive gem purchases during their matching holidays and the kickstarter familiars and apparel can be expensive gem purchases during the Night of Nocturne.

It's one thing to have a healthy economy, but is the AC really a healthy economy when the older stuff can cost thousands of gems? Not even throwing real world money is going to be enough to buy the kickstarter stuff. That's not healthy. That's feeding the lucky and the rich. The AC does fine already as a place to sell the rare, but still obtainable stuff. Making the older holiday items gem purchases would also keep their values high in the AC, just not impossibly high.

@DragonArbock
Except... it's not an overwhelming advantage at all? It's perfectly fair?? Keep in mind that new players won't stay new forever, and as they play this game they will constantly have access to new retired/exclusive content by participating in future events. Therefore all players will get event stuff that will be retired as well and have the chance to make a pretty good amount of income from these, should they sell them away.

@PrinceRaven
I don't get this logic of handing everything to the player at all. Items that aren't meant to be "special" as you said will keep being restocked in the market and therefore will be perfectly accessible no matter what. Event rewards on the other hand are content you can only get in a limited time, unlike regular content you have access to on a daily basis via the market... so yeah, whether you like it or not, those are supposed to be very special items, and it IS fun to have them as goals and work hard to get them.

Retiring content is necessary for a healthy in-game economy as well as the very community environment because it creates a sense of challenge and objective gameplay. So, you want that really cool item you missed out on? Then work on it! You can participate in future events, get doubles of more exclusive items and sell them, because with these items being retired they hold actual value and demand in the market and make it easier to earn decent amounts of treasure. Save treasure with time to get what you want, make it a goal, play the game! That's the point, otherwise... what else will you log in daily for besides feeding your dragons and making them look pretty?

On the other hand, with retirement being removed, newbies will have a harder time than ever to earn treasure and create interest in the game when there's no sense of objective whatsoever. After all, what's the point of working super hard on an event to get a bunch of cool items if they will just come back next year and are pretty cheap in the market already? If everything is handed to you like that, then the game becomes absolutely tedious.

And you don't need to worry about retired content becoming as absurdly priced as the sprites because those were released back when this site was a completely different environment. It was almost unplayable due to constant crashing, lagging and everybody from back then might as well have PTSD flashbacks from the mere idea of bonding with familiars when each new page took a solid minute or two to load completely(*flinches*). Therefore very few people had access to them, specially after FR closed the registration windows. Now this site runs WAY more smoothly and both veterans and newbies are able to participate in events properly with equal access to their content. It would take ages for anything to go as insanely inaccessible as the sprites.

@VixinMcCloud
The kickstarter items were meant to be exclusive to backers as rewards for helping funding the site. If they became available to the public it would be extremely unfair to those who made the effort to back FR with real money back in the day. They were exclusive for a reason and should stay that way.

@Lilian Then why have the ability to sell kickstarter items on AC and why have the familiars in the Bestiary? All that does is taunt other players who were too new or weren't aware to support the kickstarters themselves. I get it being unfair at the beginning, but it's been four years now. They've had exclusive familiars and apparel for four years. Don't you think that's enough time? Making them gem purchases would still make them obtainable by real money anyway. Otherwise the kickstarter stuff may as well not exist at this stage.

I voted earlier, but I just want to say real quick that I do agree on retiring the bears. I forgot to include that in my vote, but they have become quite common and, despite me actually liking the bears to an extent, they either need to be retired or have their drop rate lowered, whether they be placed in the NoTN chests or Joxar's Spare Inventory. I'm mainly on the retiring side though.

@DreadDelRio
I believe the poll was edited; iirc before it simply said they'd be moved to the Spare Inventory boxes and didn't mention anything whether the Bears would a bonus item. Which is good, but still not the solution. They need to be removed from the RNG pools altogether and added to some other method of acquirement so that anyone who wants them can get them and those who don't won't have to worry about them popping up.

@DragonArbock
Retiring things give them value. Value makes a game economy healthy. There are plenty of things that I would like to have but I don't have the funds for; that doesn't mean the people who do have them have any sort of 'overwhelming advantage' over me in the slightest. Sure they might have something of exceptional value and if they sell it they'll have a LOT more money than me, but even then that's not giving them an advantage because there's no competition in this game aside from trying to sell dragons, heh. Well, that and when people do PvP in the Coli, which I don't think is much of a thing.

Also, a lot of games offer you the option of taking the fast way out and buying things with real money if you really want something but lack the ability to get it over time, whether it be from not being patient enough, not having the time or in-game money to dedicate, etc. This boosts the game's overall income though, and as long as it's not a blatant cash grab, there's nothing wrong with it. It supports the game and its development.

@PrinceRaven
If the items aren't meant to be special then why are they only available during one month out of the year? Why are the other items mostly retired except as a *very small* drop in Joxar's boxes? If they weren't meant to be special then they'd be available all the time, either as Coli drops, in the MP, etc.

I left the game for I think...eh roughly two years? Did I come back and start commenting about 'woe is me all these new things I missed that I'd like to have but don't want to spend the money on' or start begging for things? No. I buckled down, burnt through a fair chunk of my savings to buy a copy of each Festival Familiar I'd missed since going inactive because I love collecting Familiars I don't have, and felt satisfied after I'd bought them. When I got my Sprites that were released before the Water one, I felt a sense of satisfaction, even the ones I won in raffles or otherwise didn't have to pay for. There will always be people who don't want to put the effort into getting something, or who may legitimately may not have the time or resources. But there are other ways of getting things in this game aside from shelling out Gems or Treasure. There are payment plans, offering services or other items as compensation, offering real money, things like that.

As for the Bears, I went back and double-checked the wording on both options. The first one blatantly says no changes will be made to the Chests and that the 22 Bears will remain in the Strange Chest's pool along with the other items. Now even if they don't each have their own separate chance to drop and there is instead, say, a 'Non-Bear' pool and then a 'Bear Pool', then by sheer virture of that 'Bear Pool' being there...yes, the Bears *ARE* still taking up slots, even if it's only one chance instead of 22. And if Bears don't have their separate pool, that means they're still competing directly with other items.

As for putting them in Joxar's boxes, as I already mentioned I'm fairly certain the poll's wording was edited to clarify the Bears would be moved to the bonus pool, but even there they are still competing with items of higher value that you could otherwise have the chance of getting. As I've said, if we're going to be stuck with them, they need to be moved to an option where people only get them if they WANT them, since they've already been in circulation for so long.

@VixinMcCloud
Because it's the backer's decision whether they want to sell them or not, and because those are existing familiars in the site regardless. And not at all, actually. Four years isn't enough because that was exclusive content only reserved for the people who backed the project and nobody else, as rewards for their donations. Heck that's the very concept of kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms! It allows people to have their own projects backed by donations from the public, and as a way to encourage their donations they give them items nobody else will be able have. It's a huge privilege because it's meant to be, after all it's a reward for actually making the effort of donating real money to the development of a whole game, when you could simply have turned around and not spent a coin.

Put yourself in their place and imagine yourself investing real money on this big game project aiming for a tier with some really cool, exclusive rewards. Then years later all those things you donated money for are released to the public anyway and literally anybody can get it without anywhere as much effort... wouldn't you feel cheated?

Also gems can be earned in the site without buying them for real money. I've bought several scrolls with my gems and I never had to spend a single coin on FR. It's in not even close to being a fair comparison.

@Lilian

I don't support handing things out. That's not what I'm talking about. I do support things being available for years to come. Even if items aren't going to reach multiple millions of gems, prices will certainly rise for retired items, and having years and years worth of them will result in them becoming harder and harder to obtain all of them. There are plenty of other items that have value: buying and selling gems is a way to earn a profit, flipping items is a way to earn a profit, you can earn a profit based on selling fodder or by exalting dragons, you can earn a profit from coli boss drops, or from brewing expensive items such as genes. I have never obtained a retired item, and thereby have never been able to sell one, and I'm still quite capable of saving up money to buy things, but even having pretty decent pockets for things, once you get years and years and years of retired items, it becomes more and more and more difficult to obtain them, especially since - as you said - newer items will never reach the cost equivalent of the older ones. Saving extra retired items is not a reasonable finance plan, because the more people who do it, the less those items will cost. It takes multiple years for items to reach anywhere close to that level, and even then it doesn't come nearly close enough to reasonably say that selling retired items to poor newbies who couldn't get them is a good way to save for the years and years and years worth of items that would be retired if retirement was still a thing.

@Elai

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. When you can get the items is still limited, so by your logic they are still "special", and clearly the bears aren't retiring, so it's kind of a moot point. leaving the game for 2 years after you already obtained some items that are very valuable and were able to make money and come back to having things is nowhere near the same as coming into the game 5+ years late. I left the game for almost a year, and I too buckled down and bought the items I'd missed, because that was the situation. But that doesn't mean I want someone else to have to do it for no reason other than so I can sell an item I bought just using gathering turns for ridiculous prices. If you disagree, that's fine. You aren't convincing me, and I'm not convincing you, so this argument is pointless.

@PrinceRaven
That's the point, though. I'm not talking only about having retired items as a way to earn profit, I'm talking about having retired items as goals too. Profit is a factor, but not the main one. There are many items I'm interested on because they were limited and I'd like one or more of them, specially when it comes familiars, so I make those one of my goals in this site and constantly save money to get them.

You said it yourself that there are many alternatives to earn decent profit, and that it will take many, many years for retired items to reach such a high price... so what's wrong with the retirement in the first place? If you can earn profit easily AND the price climb for the retired content is rather slow, where's the harm? As I said before, items like the sprites had very specific factors that made them insanely overpriced, but the chances of something like that happening again with FR running smoothly nowadays and having a wide userbase are extremely low. That's mainly what makes your arguments confusing for me.

@Lilian

Because, if retirement of every festival item (except the emblems) happens, that is 3 retired items every month of every year (barring december), in addition to KS, Downtime, and Beta items.

In 5 years time, that is 165 retired items - at least, not counting items that aren't festival items. And it grows by 33 items every single year. Even if the items aren't super expensive, it is a massive number, and even if they're only, say, 200 gems each (imo, pretty affordable)? that's 33 thousand gems. We're already on our fourth year, and those gems are in addition to the millions of gems it takes to get the sprites. Things stack up fast, and it gets worse and worse and worse for each new group of users, even if the prices don't skyrocket, because every 100 gems is another 100 they have to add to the total.