@
Jad
Wow, you really have a point there. The sunbeam ursa is currently selling for 17k treasure, while the illuminated sash is going for 50k and the sunguard chest is going for 70k. But, in my experience, retired familiars have much more of a demand than retired apparel. I've seen countless people looking for a light sprite - I haven't seen very many people looking for sunchaser jewelry.
And a lot of people didn't realize that the sprites were never coming back. I saw people making that same mistake up until last week. The really harmful part is that you had newbies telling other newbies that they were coming back, so the lie spread.
@
Jad
Wow, you really have a point there. The sunbeam ursa is currently selling for 17k treasure, while the illuminated sash is going for 50k and the sunguard chest is going for 70k. But, in my experience, retired familiars have much more of a demand than retired apparel. I've seen countless people looking for a light sprite - I haven't seen very many people looking for sunchaser jewelry.
And a lot of people didn't realize that the sprites were never coming back. I saw people making that same mistake up until last week. The really harmful part is that you had newbies telling other newbies that they were coming back, so the lie spread.
[quote name="March" date="2014-12-26 16:40:44"]I don't have much to contribute to the discussion, but, I really wish there was an event that didn't involve coli grinding u_u Every festival involves coli grinding, and, now the special December event. Coli grinding isn't fun. It's boring, repetitive, and legitimately physically painful due to my carpal tunnel.[/quote]
This. I like grinding in the coli, but not everybody does, and they shouldn't have to in order to enjoy the site. For a lot of players with slower internet or who have disabilities, the coliseum isn't even an option. They deserve to have fun too.
I honestly really like the concept behind this event. Instead of having chests that are hard to get but give great rewards, have hundreds of them with gag prizes.
The problem is that we have a gathering system that needs fixing, a coliseum prone to crashes, and a whole bunch of new players that it doesn't seem like the servers were ready to handle. If the site ran smoothly, the low rates of egg and scroll drops would probably be less of a problem.
March wrote on 2014-12-26 16:40:44:
I don't have much to contribute to the discussion, but, I really wish there was an event that didn't involve coli grinding u_u Every festival involves coli grinding, and, now the special December event. Coli grinding isn't fun. It's boring, repetitive, and legitimately physically painful due to my carpal tunnel.
This. I like grinding in the coli, but not everybody does, and they shouldn't have to in order to enjoy the site. For a lot of players with slower internet or who have disabilities, the coliseum isn't even an option. They deserve to have fun too.
I honestly really like the concept behind this event. Instead of having chests that are hard to get but give great rewards, have hundreds of them with gag prizes.
The problem is that we have a gathering system that needs fixing, a coliseum prone to crashes, and a whole bunch of new players that it doesn't seem like the servers were ready to handle. If the site ran smoothly, the low rates of egg and scroll drops would probably be less of a problem.
As the price for Nocturne hatchlings drops in the AH, I just went ahead and bought two just to have first-gens. The price will continue to drop throughout the event as people dispose of unattractive dragons and they WILL most likely be unattractive due to random chance. Even if you get an egg they won't be the most desirable combination of colors.
After those hatchlings have all been redistributed via the AH and people start breeding 2Gs, the price for those will drop further, and the price of first gens/eggs will go up again.
I'd buy the hatchlings now if I were you and just hold on to them. :3
As the price for Nocturne hatchlings drops in the AH, I just went ahead and bought two just to have first-gens. The price will continue to drop throughout the event as people dispose of unattractive dragons and they WILL most likely be unattractive due to random chance. Even if you get an egg they won't be the most desirable combination of colors.
After those hatchlings have all been redistributed via the AH and people start breeding 2Gs, the price for those will drop further, and the price of first gens/eggs will go up again.
I'd buy the hatchlings now if I were you and just hold on to them. :3
[quote name="VagabondSentinel" date="2014-12-26 18:23:11"]I've been reading this thread from the beginning, and there are a few objections to people taking issue with this event that are being brought up over and over again that really bother me.
[b]One: Comparing this game to major, "hardcore" games like Pokemon and World of Warcraft is invalid.[/b]
I have never been a shiny-hunter in Pokemon. I just don't care. That said, I do play WoW (For the Horde!), and I have ground and still do grind in that game on a pretty consistent basis. Allow me to momentarily call out all the reasons this analogy is invalid, most of which have been brought up patchily elsewhere, some of them several times, but just to consolidate.
1. Hardcore games are skinner boxes designed to appeal to hardcore gamers. Flight Rising is a browser game skinner box designed to appeal to casual gamers. The kinds of things you can expect out of a [i]hardcore[/i] audience does not compare to the kinds of things you can expect out of a [i]casual[/i] audience. Do people play Flight Rising hardcore? Yes. Is it a hardcore game? Not even a little bit. Games must be designed with their audience in mind, and that means that if you are making a game for casual gamers, you have to bear in mind that they are [i]casual[/i] gamers. Is there anything wrong with that? Absolutely not. As with any game, however, knowing what your target audience is and designing [i]for[/i] your audience is critical to good game design. If this is a mistake that the devs are making, then it is an egregious oversight that is unacceptable in professional game design.
2. I know for a fact this has been said before, but hardcore games [i]do not put a time limit[/i] on events like this. That super-rare shiny, that rare-drop mount, those can be acquired [i]at any time[/i]. I'm [i]still[/i] intermittently grinding for Ashes of Al'ar, and that is seven year old content. Now, Ashes of Al'ar is something I could easily have if I would grind more seriously, something I just don't care enough to do, but the point remains that it is seven year old content that I can still grind for. A two week time limit changes this dramatically.
3. As per the beautiful post several pages back regarding gating, there are only two gates on shinies (find it, catch it) and only two on rare drops in WoW (get the drop, win the need/greed roll). There are, what? Nearly a dozen, if I recall, listed in that post to the rare drops in this event? Again, the analogy falls through.
[b]Two: People complaining about not getting anything are [i]not[/i] entitled.[/b]
I'm sorry, no. It's not about entitlement. If random gifts were handed out to every player by the devs, with 2% of them containing something better than the others, and people who got the other 98% were complaining that they didn't get the "best" gift, that would be entitlement. This is not that. This is being told, "You can [b]maybe[/b] have this, if you work for it, work for it some more, work for it some [i]more[/i], and [b]get lucky[/b], and we're going to do it at a time of year that, regardless of your upbringing and religious views, you, if you are in the [i]majority[/i] of the first world, have been trained to view as a time of generosity and giving, which means that it is going to be perceived as a gift."
To say "that is a flaw in the views of the players" is intrinsically incorrect. See "target audience", above. Sorry, no. The devs chose a time of year where anything they do is going to be perceived as an attempt at a gift, and then they made it an event where, if you work really, really hard... you [i]might[/i] get something. The devs are wrong.
Furthermore, and this is something important to bear in mind: this game is a skinner box. A skinner box functions by getting a person to perform x action for y reward. If pushing a button fifty times will give me a treat, I'll push the button fifty times. If pushing the button one hundred times might give me one treat and might give me three treats, I'm going to push it one hundred times. If pushing a button three thousand times might, possibly, give me a treat, if I'm lucky... why would I push it? By making the event function this way, the devs have inherently undermined their own core game element: they broke the skinner box.
[b]Three: Statements to the effect of "It's like you've never seen bugs before" and similar such commentary are not only condescending and rude, but also thoroughly discount the purpose of having active devs.[/b]
You know what this isn't? 1990. Games released now, even console games, are regularly [i]updated[/i] with bug fixes. That is the purpose of having active devs working on them. Even terrible, horrifyingly buggy games are regularly updated to fix bugs.
You see, even with a dedicated QA team of 250+ employees at one location and three total locations doing QA, I watched a game go through production at a major AAA developer with bugs that had to be fixed after release. Do games get released with bugs? Yes, 100%. Is it right at all for anyone to expect a game not to have bugs? Absolutely not. It isn't coherent or sane.
That said, the title I'm thinking of had a day one patch to fix a bug that was found post-shipment. Almost everyone sees patches like that on games. When a bug is found, it is fixed with some relative speed. While completely game-breaking bugs are fixed on Flight Rising, as has been brought up several times already, the devs have a habit of choosing to deny that their bugs are bugs. The gathering bug is something that I have been seeing threads about for ages, some of them extremely well thought out and well presented. The response is always the same: "working as intended". If that is true, the intent is broken.
The purpose of actively developing a game is to fix those bugs. No, it is not possible to release something completely bug free, even with a AAA budget, which this game did not have. Yes, it [i]is[/i] possible to move forward and repair them as you go on. If the staff is not currently up to doing so, then a problem exists with the staffing.
If you can't do it with the people you have, get more people.
[b]Four: The Coliseum is not a core game element, or, if it is, then the devs have failed abysmally.[/b]
Several people have said that the Coliseum is a core game element, and that those who say they don't participate in it are ignoring a major aspect of the game. This line of thinking is intrinsically wrong.
First off, core game elements are things that either cannot be avoided or are largely detrimental to avoid. Gathering is a core game element. Breeding is arguably a core game element. Pretty much everything else is not. If you can play this game and get a lot out of it for a year without touching the Coliseum, it is not a core game element. If it is intended to be, then that is a critical design flaw on the part of the devs.
Secondly, if the Coliseum is a core game element, then there is a very, very serious problem, because [i]the Coliseum is and has been broken[/i]. There are a half-dozen or better [i]known issues[/i] with the coliseum that significantly detrimentally impact a player's ability to perform. While that by no means makes it impossible (I regularly grind in the Coli, myself, with a very high success rate), it is not acceptable for a core game element in a game to be broken and remain unrepaired for this long. If it's a core game element, something is wrong, and if it's not ... something is still wrong, because it is made critical to the completion of this event.
[b]Five: Stating that you can just 'save and buy it' is not a solution.[/b]
I'm not going to spend much time on this one. I don't need to. The long and short of this is that, if the solution to the broken elements of this event boil down to, "pawn the problem off on someone else and just buy the stuff you want", then the problems are too significant to function. This is not solving the problem. This is throwing a rug over it and hoping nobody notices. This was released as an event, not a purchasable in the marketplace. As such, it needs to be considered and analyzed [i]as[/i] an event - not turned into a purchasable on the auction house and called 'good enough'. That doesn't fix anything.
[b]In conclusion:[/b]
The big issues with this event stand: the RNG is abysmally low, the lack of a guarantee of anything is detrimental to the type of game this is, the objections to people not enjoying the event are flawed, and the problems with this have become so glaring that a not-inconsiderable sum of people feel the need to voice their objections and, in many cases, give up on participating in the event, because it is disheartening.
This event needs to be a lesson to the dev team. It's not realistic to salvage it now, though there are ways to salve the figurative wound, but it [i]needs[/i] to be an object lesson. Mistakes have been made. To object to people calling them out is detrimental to the advancement of the game and a hindrance to everyone, not a help.[/quote]
^ THIS. All of this.
VagabondSentinel wrote on 2014-12-26 18:23:11:
I've been reading this thread from the beginning, and there are a few objections to people taking issue with this event that are being brought up over and over again that really bother me.
One: Comparing this game to major, "hardcore" games like Pokemon and World of Warcraft is invalid.
I have never been a shiny-hunter in Pokemon. I just don't care. That said, I do play WoW (For the Horde!), and I have ground and still do grind in that game on a pretty consistent basis. Allow me to momentarily call out all the reasons this analogy is invalid, most of which have been brought up patchily elsewhere, some of them several times, but just to consolidate.
1. Hardcore games are skinner boxes designed to appeal to hardcore gamers. Flight Rising is a browser game skinner box designed to appeal to casual gamers. The kinds of things you can expect out of a hardcore audience does not compare to the kinds of things you can expect out of a casual audience. Do people play Flight Rising hardcore? Yes. Is it a hardcore game? Not even a little bit. Games must be designed with their audience in mind, and that means that if you are making a game for casual gamers, you have to bear in mind that they are casual gamers. Is there anything wrong with that? Absolutely not. As with any game, however, knowing what your target audience is and designing for your audience is critical to good game design. If this is a mistake that the devs are making, then it is an egregious oversight that is unacceptable in professional game design.
2. I know for a fact this has been said before, but hardcore games do not put a time limit on events like this. That super-rare shiny, that rare-drop mount, those can be acquired at any time. I'm still intermittently grinding for Ashes of Al'ar, and that is seven year old content. Now, Ashes of Al'ar is something I could easily have if I would grind more seriously, something I just don't care enough to do, but the point remains that it is seven year old content that I can still grind for. A two week time limit changes this dramatically.
3. As per the beautiful post several pages back regarding gating, there are only two gates on shinies (find it, catch it) and only two on rare drops in WoW (get the drop, win the need/greed roll). There are, what? Nearly a dozen, if I recall, listed in that post to the rare drops in this event? Again, the analogy falls through.
Two: People complaining about not getting anything are not entitled.
I'm sorry, no. It's not about entitlement. If random gifts were handed out to every player by the devs, with 2% of them containing something better than the others, and people who got the other 98% were complaining that they didn't get the "best" gift, that would be entitlement. This is not that. This is being told, "You can maybe have this, if you work for it, work for it some more, work for it some more, and get lucky, and we're going to do it at a time of year that, regardless of your upbringing and religious views, you, if you are in the majority of the first world, have been trained to view as a time of generosity and giving, which means that it is going to be perceived as a gift."
To say "that is a flaw in the views of the players" is intrinsically incorrect. See "target audience", above. Sorry, no. The devs chose a time of year where anything they do is going to be perceived as an attempt at a gift, and then they made it an event where, if you work really, really hard... you might get something. The devs are wrong.
Furthermore, and this is something important to bear in mind: this game is a skinner box. A skinner box functions by getting a person to perform x action for y reward. If pushing a button fifty times will give me a treat, I'll push the button fifty times. If pushing the button one hundred times might give me one treat and might give me three treats, I'm going to push it one hundred times. If pushing a button three thousand times might, possibly, give me a treat, if I'm lucky... why would I push it? By making the event function this way, the devs have inherently undermined their own core game element: they broke the skinner box.
Three: Statements to the effect of "It's like you've never seen bugs before" and similar such commentary are not only condescending and rude, but also thoroughly discount the purpose of having active devs.
You know what this isn't? 1990. Games released now, even console games, are regularly updated with bug fixes. That is the purpose of having active devs working on them. Even terrible, horrifyingly buggy games are regularly updated to fix bugs.
You see, even with a dedicated QA team of 250+ employees at one location and three total locations doing QA, I watched a game go through production at a major AAA developer with bugs that had to be fixed after release. Do games get released with bugs? Yes, 100%. Is it right at all for anyone to expect a game not to have bugs? Absolutely not. It isn't coherent or sane.
That said, the title I'm thinking of had a day one patch to fix a bug that was found post-shipment. Almost everyone sees patches like that on games. When a bug is found, it is fixed with some relative speed. While completely game-breaking bugs are fixed on Flight Rising, as has been brought up several times already, the devs have a habit of choosing to deny that their bugs are bugs. The gathering bug is something that I have been seeing threads about for ages, some of them extremely well thought out and well presented. The response is always the same: "working as intended". If that is true, the intent is broken.
The purpose of actively developing a game is to fix those bugs. No, it is not possible to release something completely bug free, even with a AAA budget, which this game did not have. Yes, it is possible to move forward and repair them as you go on. If the staff is not currently up to doing so, then a problem exists with the staffing.
If you can't do it with the people you have, get more people.
Four: The Coliseum is not a core game element, or, if it is, then the devs have failed abysmally.
Several people have said that the Coliseum is a core game element, and that those who say they don't participate in it are ignoring a major aspect of the game. This line of thinking is intrinsically wrong.
First off, core game elements are things that either cannot be avoided or are largely detrimental to avoid. Gathering is a core game element. Breeding is arguably a core game element. Pretty much everything else is not. If you can play this game and get a lot out of it for a year without touching the Coliseum, it is not a core game element. If it is intended to be, then that is a critical design flaw on the part of the devs.
Secondly, if the Coliseum is a core game element, then there is a very, very serious problem, because the Coliseum is and has been broken. There are a half-dozen or better known issues with the coliseum that significantly detrimentally impact a player's ability to perform. While that by no means makes it impossible (I regularly grind in the Coli, myself, with a very high success rate), it is not acceptable for a core game element in a game to be broken and remain unrepaired for this long. If it's a core game element, something is wrong, and if it's not ... something is still wrong, because it is made critical to the completion of this event.
Five: Stating that you can just 'save and buy it' is not a solution.
I'm not going to spend much time on this one. I don't need to. The long and short of this is that, if the solution to the broken elements of this event boil down to, "pawn the problem off on someone else and just buy the stuff you want", then the problems are too significant to function. This is not solving the problem. This is throwing a rug over it and hoping nobody notices. This was released as an event, not a purchasable in the marketplace. As such, it needs to be considered and analyzed as an event - not turned into a purchasable on the auction house and called 'good enough'. That doesn't fix anything.
In conclusion:
The big issues with this event stand: the RNG is abysmally low, the lack of a guarantee of anything is detrimental to the type of game this is, the objections to people not enjoying the event are flawed, and the problems with this have become so glaring that a not-inconsiderable sum of people feel the need to voice their objections and, in many cases, give up on participating in the event, because it is disheartening.
This event needs to be a lesson to the dev team. It's not realistic to salvage it now, though there are ways to salve the figurative wound, but it needs to be an object lesson. Mistakes have been made. To object to people calling them out is detrimental to the advancement of the game and a hindrance to everyone, not a help.
^ THIS. All of this.
I just don't care (anymore).
I'm a newbie, a dec sign up, and I've decided that this "event" is such a non-event that I'm not participating. That is not a good sign for a company that wants to grow and make a profit.
Here I am, a recent convert, one who should be the most excited (and less jaded) and I really don't care anymore. I'll spend all my gathering for food and occasional stuff to sell in the AH or autosell.
I just don't care (anymore).
I'm a newbie, a dec sign up, and I've decided that this "event" is such a non-event that I'm not participating. That is not a good sign for a company that wants to grow and make a profit.
Here I am, a recent convert, one who should be the most excited (and less jaded) and I really don't care anymore. I'll spend all my gathering for food and occasional stuff to sell in the AH or autosell.
You know
I get you are all really upset
And I know it's hard when your life revolves around this video game and you live in your moms basement
But there is something I need to tell you all.
*leans in real close and whispers in your ear*
Butt cheeks
You know
I get you are all really upset
And I know it's hard when your life revolves around this video game and you live in your moms basement
But there is something I need to tell you all.
*leans in real close and whispers in your ear*
Butt cheeks
@
BananaDog
I honestly am not very upset by the event (though I am with gathering being broken) but your comment was not only uncalled for but offensive and rude. You are saying very presumptive things against people with legitimate complaints who have issues with the event, such as the fact that it is heavily based around Coli which some people can't access because of disabilities or some other reason out of their control. You are insulting people who love this game and just want it to be good. You are also insulting people by assuming they don't do anything but play games and can't be independent.
If YOU want to make a point against the arguments going on here you can word it politely and you would get much farther than your post was, which really was just a waste of your energy used to try and shame people for not being happy with a semi-broken event.
@
BananaDog
I honestly am not very upset by the event (though I am with gathering being broken) but your comment was not only uncalled for but offensive and rude. You are saying very presumptive things against people with legitimate complaints who have issues with the event, such as the fact that it is heavily based around Coli which some people can't access because of disabilities or some other reason out of their control. You are insulting people who love this game and just want it to be good. You are also insulting people by assuming they don't do anything but play games and can't be independent.
If YOU want to make a point against the arguments going on here you can word it politely and you would get much farther than your post was, which really was just a waste of your energy used to try and shame people for not being happy with a semi-broken event.
@
Highgarden lol calm your butt cheeks
I missed the first day of the event because the site was getting boring (even though its been extended).
Its gotten kind of exciting, but that will only last for these next couple weeks before it gets boring again.
I missed the first day of the event because the site was getting boring (even though its been extended).
Its gotten kind of exciting, but that will only last for these next couple weeks before it gets boring again.
Space Daddy is Love, Space Daddy is Life.
Fan of Cosmic Things. And Pastels.
Current Cosmic Obsession:
Descender by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nyugen
Triple Tyranny Club Triple X
I've opened 4,000+ chests and no breed change scroll and I have done this via Coli grinding so even with access to the Coli and time and the mindset to grind out that many chests... I'm pretty busted up about this event.
I was still feeling positive around chest 2,000 and now have pounded out 2,000+ more chests and I'm baffled.
I am not having fun at this point. I can't even say I'm angry because I'm really just confused at the number I've opened without one breed change scroll coming out of it.
I don't think the drop rate for the breed change scrolls is fair or fitting of the overall ease in which almost everything else happens on this website, so it sets one up for being frustrated and disappointed. I've grinded now enough hours that it reminds me of my old mmorpg days (when I actually did live in my mother's basement since everyone likes to use that jab)...
If I can't get a scroll with 4,000+ chests and many, many, (shamefully many) hours of Coli-grinding I don't believe any of the casual players (I say that lightly, as I don't believe this game has any 'hardcore' elements to it at all) have any chance at all of getting a breed change scroll unless they have insane crazy good luck.
It could be said I have hilariously bad luck but it still stands I have opened that many chests without a scroll and I don't think that's fun or fitting of FR's play-environment.
I do feel something here is legitimately... off or disappointing.
The "very rare" scroll should be changed to the "exceedingly rare" scroll.
I've opened 4,000+ chests and no breed change scroll and I have done this via Coli grinding so even with access to the Coli and time and the mindset to grind out that many chests... I'm pretty busted up about this event.
I was still feeling positive around chest 2,000 and now have pounded out 2,000+ more chests and I'm baffled.
I am not having fun at this point. I can't even say I'm angry because I'm really just confused at the number I've opened without one breed change scroll coming out of it.
I don't think the drop rate for the breed change scrolls is fair or fitting of the overall ease in which almost everything else happens on this website, so it sets one up for being frustrated and disappointed. I've grinded now enough hours that it reminds me of my old mmorpg days (when I actually did live in my mother's basement since everyone likes to use that jab)...
If I can't get a scroll with 4,000+ chests and many, many, (shamefully many) hours of Coli-grinding I don't believe any of the casual players (I say that lightly, as I don't believe this game has any 'hardcore' elements to it at all) have any chance at all of getting a breed change scroll unless they have insane crazy good luck.
It could be said I have hilariously bad luck but it still stands I have opened that many chests without a scroll and I don't think that's fun or fitting of FR's play-environment.
I do feel something here is legitimately... off or disappointing.
The "very rare" scroll should be changed to the "exceedingly rare" scroll.
