Flight Rising Discussion

Why am I dissatisfied? Because I [i]physically cannot grind in the bloody Coliseum for endless stretches of time[/i]. I have [i]tendonitis[/i] - do you know how [i]agonizingly painful[/i] that is when it flares up? When your nerves feel like they're [i]on fire[/i] from your shoulder blade to your fingertips? In this [i]entire two-week period[/i], I was able to get [i]maybe[/i] 500 chests. [i]Maybe[/i] that many. And getting even [i]that[/i] pittance [i]cost me the use of my right hand for two and a half days[/i] and I am [i]still[/i] in near-crippling pain and can only rarely take ibuprofen for the pain and swelling because taking too much might cause my [i]kidneys to shut down[/i]. Woo! Yay! Excuse me for ~whining~ about effectively being locked out of this event due to physical disability. Guess I just want everything [i]handed to me[/i]. Or maybe I just want a [i]fair fragging shot[/i] and the same odds as everyone else. I'll admit, I got a [i]little[/i] lucky. I got [i]one single solitary egg[/i] out of this whole venture. ONE EGG. Out of 600-odd chests. While [i]other[/i] people were getting two or three eggs out of every couple hundred chests [i]and[/i] finding them while Scavenging (I haven't found more than [i]five chests[/i] while Gathering for... 11 out of the past 14 days, and not a single [i]egg[/i] while Scavenging, [i]obviously[/i].) Meanwhile, [i]still other people[/i] were opening [i]thousands of chests[/i] and getting [i]no eggs[/i] and [i]no scrolls[/i], just ever-increasing piles of useless [i]garbage[/i] and joke food items that weren't even worth the effort it took to acquire them. This event was [i]entirely[/i] "luck-based," and the "luck" was determined by a grossly broken RNG to boot. [i]And[/i] it was [i]also[/i] entirely geared towards people who [i]don't[/i] suffer from some kind of mobility-limiting physical disability, which is... kind of disrespectful, if I might be blunt. [quote name="rich" date="2015-01-03 21:02:01"]Maybe it's because I have very low expectations, but how can an event be made fun? In all my years on pet sites, I can't ever remember actually having fun during a plot or event. (For those of you who were on neopets please remember the Altador Plot and for those of you on Subeta please remember the most recent snowball war)[/quote] Yeah, I attempted to participate in Subeta's snowball fight. that's a good example of something that could've been pulled off much, much more effectively, as well. [i]However[/i], I have [i]massive[/i] amounts of fun at Masquerade. [i]That[/i], if you ask me, is grinding done [i]right[/i] - everyone who chooses to participate has more or less the same odds of getting what they want as [i]everyone else[/i] who participates. You're not [i]guaranteed[/i] to get everything you want from the event shop, but you'll get at [i]least[/i] a few fun things (and maybe make a few friends, too.) Getting 100+ tokens in an evening didn't require thousands of clicks, either - just a few hours and a little patience while you waited to be able to dance again (heck, during last year's Masquerade I was [i]homeless[/i] and had only a couple of hours each afternoon to play, and I [i]still[/i] managed to get at least half of the event items that were on my Wishlist.) You don't just grind and grind and grind and grind and grind for [i]an entire night[/i] only to get [i]nothing worthwhile[/i] in return - [i]maybe[/i] 200 chests*, [i]maybe[/i] a handful of familiars, [i]maybe[/i] a single egg and the rest is garbage - while [i]other[/i] people grind for two hours max and get 250 chests, 50 familiars, 5 eggs, and [i]at least[/i] one scroll. I don't know how anyone could make NOtN any better (except to [i]fix the broken bloody RNG[/i]) but not [i]every[/i] grinding event out there is horrible. *Fun fact: I sat through 100 Coli battles the other night and did a tally. It took [i]two and a half hours[/i], only 36 of those 100 battles involved Mimics, and those 36 battles only scored me [i]62 chests[/i]. I got [i]two[/i] familiars from those 62 chests, and [i]nothing else worthwhile[/i].

[quote name="nika" date="2015-01-03 23:11:09"]I don't HATE the event, it has a lot of fun elements, but here are the issues I have with it: [LIST] [*]It's a Coliseum-grinding event, AGAIN. [/LIST][/quote] This right here. [b]Coliseum is BORING[/b]. I wish it wasn't, but truly it is dull. It is repetitive, and once your first few hours of amusement in being able to use your custom dragons are drained, all you want to do while grinding is watch movies, play a different game, or read a book while you grind. But you can't really do that because it depends on cursor navigation which means you have to keep watching the screen, and the enemies keep dodging. It's the game that FR wants us to play that most of us don't want to play, but also need to play if we want access to limited items (festival currency and Strange Chests which I don't get many of from Digging). *flail* Sure, maybe some people truly enjoy Coliseum and get serious kicks out of it, but really it's that chore that everyone does in order to get something that is only truly obtainable by sacrificing hours to mindless... dry gaming.

Okay, I'm finally caught up with everyone, thanks for your patience guys.

@Lostcure @lightning and @taimat Thankyou for linking me to that thread, I wouldn’t have thought it to contain any honest analysis just looking at the opening post. I’ll have a look at it when I have the chance. The post you quoted has a lot of good points, especially the part about looking at it from a casual perspective, so thanks for posting it up.

@Cynictis I’m sorry, but your points really baffled me. You say you want to earn your prizes and not buy them, and yet you complain when your prize is too elusive? If they weren’t hard to find, there wouldn’t be any satisfaction in earning them, so what do you want precisely? Do you want them to be easier to earn? Because if that’s the case then you seriously undermine any satisfaction derived from earning them. It’s satisfying to earn prizes because they’re hard to find, make them easier to find, and will it really be satisfying to earn them? I understand getting frustrated by the RNG, but your argument is circular and I don’t understand what it is that bothers you.

@Malis Wow, you’ve had a hard time of it haven’t you? I like the idea of a tokens system, though I feel that that has the potential to undermine the rarity of the scrolls. Perhaps instead, having different tiers of strange chests would be the go, like the rusted/iron/gilded chests, with different teirs having different odds of dropping high level items, and the different tiers being droped from different levels of mimic monsters. It still relies on the RGN but it could make things a bit more balanced, just a thought for next year I suppose.

@Chesse20 if you want me to take you seriously, you have failed. Using swear words and calling names on a site aimed an young adolescents is no way to get your point across, and even then, your point makes no sense and it seems as if you haven’t bothered to read the content you are responding to. Please take a while to calm down and articulate yourself more clearly when you post here next.

@AnnieFelis @VagabondSentinel I’ve never played WOW so I have next to no idea what you are talking about, but thanks for lending your expertise all the same, it’s appreciated.

@Metallokinetic Wow, I’m sorry to hear that about your wrists, that must be tough to work around for this sort of thing, and I’m sorry that it affects your day to day life so much. I do feel however, that you may be taking this a bit too personally. You have every right to be frustrated and you raise a valid point, don’t get me wrong, but nobody has gone out of their way to inconvenience you or make things hard for you, the devs have their livelihoods riding on the websites success after all, they aren’t make the game hard to use on purpose, making it personal won’t make it any better.

If it has been so hard, why do you go through with it? I don’t mean to be insulting, but It’s a website about breeding pretty dragons, its just not worth putting yourself through all that stress and pain!

As for your friends, yeah, I see their perspective too. I’ve only found about 30 chests through gathering since the event started, but honestly, I’m not sure what else can be done about it except for raising the drop rate, or making them obtainable through festive favors, which would still require coligrinding in order to acquire tokens. Do you have any ideas?

@dragondrop I’ve been doing much the same thing. I managed to scrounge up enough to irishimunder up my first nocturne, and I’m hoping I can make enough for my second nocturne before the fifth, it’ll be cutting it close though.

@miirshroom Thanks for your thought out post, you’ve articulated a lot of the things that I was thinking about reading through all of the arguments for and against this event, especially with the statistics about the wildclaws and noctunes, which are quite interesting. I agree with most of your points too, a lot of people seem to expect things to be resolved mid event. I can understand that to a degree, given that it’ll be a full 12 months before we next get the chance to try again, but that would likely just make things worse and more confusing for all involved.

@Umberink Thanks for leaving a message! I’m glad you had fun with this event. A lot of people haven’t been, and it would be a shame if no one came away happy.

@Squidmagician That makes sense, I can understand that well enough. A lot of people seem to say that isn’t the case though. Some posters are complaining about the rarity, the gathering, the drop chance, the rarity, the amount of items in the chest, the timing, ect, ect. I do think you’ve found the root of the problem though. Personally I wasn’t too bothered by coligrinding, it wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world, but I didn’t dislike it. I certainly understand some folks getting bored though. How else do you think the chests could be distributed next year?

@OreoMilkshake True, but I think it’s important to remember that Flight Rising is aimed mostly at young adolescents, 10 and up, or at least that’s what I think given the tone of the website and the gameplay. FR’s mission statement may state otherwise, but at the end of the day, a lot of users will have more free time now than for any other part of the year, myself included. At least, by holding this event now, students and younger users will have time to play.

@Weyrbound Yeah, a lot of people seem to feel that way. Still, I honestly don’t know what else can be done about it. How else can currency be distributed? Pleople hate the coli, the gathering system and the fairgrounds, what else is left? I don’t mean to be disparaging, I’m just not sure how else event currency or strange chests could be distributed.

@Jallycyn I don’t mean to be mean here, but can you maybe take a deep breath and calm down a little? You raise valid point but getting angry and calling people names won’t make anything any better here. I’ve been on the tumblr, I know how you feel, and,yeah, unfortunately there are some people who are throwing tantrums and generally being childish about all this, but a lot of other people like Metallokinect and Malis are having real problems through no fault of their own, so lets try not to lump them all in together.

@Rich I dunno, I remember my time at neopets quite fondly, the stoylines especially! Remember that one where the staff members where trapped on a tropical island and we got to vote on who got murdered next, that was awesome! There were others too that were quite good, like the one with the constellations, and the pirates and maraqua ones. I guess there must have been some duds I don’t remember though. I feel you about the chests though. A simple ‘open all’ command could’ve saved people a lot of time and frustration. I hope one is implemented for next year.

@Nicolas Oh dear, I’m so sorry you and your girlfriend had such a rough time. Are you both doing better now? I’m sorry this was such a negative experience for you both.

@Bombswan Hey! Nice to see someone else who played neopets, I used to back in the day, but that was a long, long time ago now. A lot of people seem to hate the RNG, so you aren’t alone there. Personally, I see it as a necessary evil in these sorts of games, but hopefully the devs can find a way to make the best of this, and make it better for next year. Glad you liked the famliars, I like them too, I love DnD and the mimics are such a cool reference on here.

@Ikthyrion Glad you had a good time! I was lucky enough to find an unhatched water egg, first egg I’ve found since November! I’m not a gen1 collector so I’m toying with the idea of a raffle with the next window, it’ll be a good way to put all the food stacks and familiar doubles to use, and eggs are always a good grand prize. I’m glad there are still people who had a good time here, it would be a tremendous shame if nobody was enjoying themselves

@LockedBox

Yeah, you are right.

It's just for the past few weeks I've come into FR Discussion forum and until the past few days there was nothing but threads full of people complaining and complaining and complaining about the event.

I held my tongue and avoided the forums for the duration of that time because I didn't find those discussions fun, interesting or productive, but, well, I finally decided to have my $0.02.

I hope I didn't slight anyone who respectfully stated their views during this time.

@Nika I see what you mean. An open all button should definitely be implemented next event. Coli grinding events do seem to rely on the arena a lot, though the waterway and scorched forest are also good spots, so I guess it depends on which you like best? I’m honestly not sure about the timing though, this is a good time for students and the younger users to get some play time in, and I feel that they are more the target audience than we older players. Honestly, there’s not much to be done about it I think, I didn’t mind in much because It gave me something to do in the lull between Christmas and new years that wasn’t just cleaning.

Consumer interaction has definitely been a problem though. Communication with the customer/client is essential in any business, and there simply hasn’t been any. Thankfully I haven’t had many issues yet, so I’m alright, but I do hope that this gets addressed.
@Dysnomia Look, please, calm yourself down. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to you, but getting angry solves nothing. I’m really sorry that your disability causes you so much pain, truely I am, but why do you put yourself through so much pain and suffering for this website? Does it really mean so much to you?

I don’t mean to be dismissive, but as an autistic person, I just don’t see the point in putting yourself through all that pain and suffering for the sake of a virtual bat-dragon. Why do you do it? I’ve been in a lot of bad situations in the past, thanks to my austism mostly, and the only thing that made anything any better was to remove myself from the situation all together. Why do you keep on trying to use this website when it causes you pain? What do you gain from it?

@Lilihierax Yeah I know how you feel. I usually coli grind whilst doing other things. Usually while I watch some of the softer television shows with my folks, like antiques roadshow, or the Agatha Christy boxset that we’re slowly working our way through. If I’m alone I’ll usually listen to a letsplay, or an audio book if I find one I like. Audio books are pretty much my go to for anything. Bus trip? Audio book! Painting? Audio book! Vacuuming? Audio book! Audio books are such an underated form of media IMHO! I’m not trying to excuse how boring the coli can be, because it is quite dull, but that’s how I deal with it. The system does have potential though, I’m hoping that if adventure mode ever comes to fruition, it will be something similar to AdventureQuest, because that game really perfected the grindfest, and I think capturing some of that in the coli could make all the difference here.

@WeyrBound Yeah, it was a bit. Everyone has been so thoughtful with their replies though, and I know how it feels to get ignored, so I didn’t want to just brush everyone off. I’m not sure if I can keep this up for seventy pages on content though!

@Jalicyn No worries, I know how you feel after reading that dreck. Some people just ruin things for the rest of us, it’s not fair but it is what it is. Just have your rant and try to move on yeah? It’s not worth getting upset about.

@LockedBox Yeah, you're right, it probably wasn't the most productive thing but at least I've got it off my chest now.

Honestly once all's said and done I'm kind of glad the event is over so I can go back to my regular grinding and exalting for profit. lol.