Suggestion: Fewer tokens + some Summer Event Changes

[BuddyMaltese]

Hello! So before I get into the suggestion (which I will clearly label further down in case you wanna skip this bit) I would like to emphasize the fact that I am extremely grateful that CS staff takes time out of their busy lives to put on these events for us. I have no doubt that planning them, coming up with the storyline, and drawing the backgrounds, maps, items, and pets is absolutely no easy task. I sit here and think about how much energy goes into that all for the sake of allowing us as the CS community to come together and have fun while providing the staff with no tangible/monetary benefit is truly a generous thing to do, and I look forward to CS events each year because it is a great opportunity to connect with fellow players and have fun! Thus, my suggestion is not in any way an attack, it is merely a manifestation of frustrations I have seen shared by many, many users. That being said...

My suggestion is to have fewer tokens for these Summer events. For those of us who cannot devote a lot of free time to CS, whether it be because we're going on vacation or taking extra classes to get in more credits (both of which are true in my case), having so many possible tokens to get means that it becomes extremely difficult to get enough of them to trade in for anything. We often get a lot of different tokens that can only be traded in at different places (so they don't stack up enough for us to trade in at even one place), and many of these trade-ins have different outcomes so you need to spend even more tokens trying to get them, and that's not even mentioning the fact that it is very common to get the same outcome from multiple trade-ins. I really hope this all makes sense! Essentially, the sheer amount of tokens is turning this event, which is intended to be fun, into something very stressful for people who like to collect at least one of everything.

Thank you all very much for reading!

Edit: This thread has evolved into a brainstorming idea for ways to help improve Summer events and make them a bit more manageable!
Here's some ideas that people have posed on the thread as well as very brief summaries of arguments in favor of and against them:


1. Fewer tokens

In favor: Would be less overwhelming
Would be a higher chance to get individual tokens
Against: Would be less of a variety
Although currently there are a lot of individual tokens, there are only a few groups of tokens and since you can choose any tokens from a specific group for a trade-in there is no need to have fewer of them

2. Minigames that give you tokens

In favor: Would allow users more opportunities to get tokens, especially people who can only get on for a bit and would like to get more tokens in the limited amount of time that they can spend on CS
Against: May potentially widen the gap between users "rich" in tokens and users not so rich in tokens

3. Increase time between banners to 30 minutes but have the banner give two tokens at a time

In favor: More opportunities for tokens
Against: May potentially widen the gap between users "rich" in tokens and users not so rich in tokens

4. An item pack at the end of the event that gives you one of every token

In favor: Allows items collectors and other users to spend their tokens without stressing over the fact that they will not have a complete collection if they do so
Against:

5. An ability to trade two tokens for one different token

In favor: Allows users who have a lot of one type of token to use that to their advantage in order to get another type
Against: Essentially trades in 40 minutes of work (the time it takes to get 2 tokens) for 20 minutes of work

6. Getting tokens through utilizing other features of the site

In favor: More opportunities for tokens
Against: Drawbacks vary depending on what type of site feature would be utilized. One example is getting tokens through posting on the forums, but this may lead to spam if appropriator precautions are not taken,

[The Last Raven]

I support this. As someone who works 42 hours a week I can’t be on CS much during events. I too adore events and the art and appreciate all that the staff does, but this event has so many different tokens that can be collected from banners that it is incredibly hard to get what I need. There is a huge spectrum of tokens that I could randomly get and I am finding it difficult to get the right ones. I know it is completely random but with the high volume of token options I have less of a chance to get enough to turn in for prizes.

[ElementalInsanity]

Support, while I personally don’t have a problem with collecting I can see where and why others do, and it can be a bit overwhelming to have 2o+ tokens to try to achieve for a simple kids site event..??

I get if they want to have a variety in items, since the tokens can be used as those and are cute, but that can be solved with just releasing a cute pack of items instead of so many tokens.

For reflection, this event has 25 tokens to collect currently.
Last summer event I believe had 31.
The year before had 23.

While I love all the variety in our summer event tokens as I said, they could be released in an item pack and we could have fewer tokens to worry about.

[Shian]

Agreed. I’be been collecting since the event started and I don’t have a single turn it yet. I can’t imagine how bad this would be for those people that can only play for a few days and end up with no turn in.

In the early days of the summer event, it was one token per npc. Now there’s 17 different ones and you need at least 3 for one, and 4 different tokens for another. Isn’t this a little excessive? And we are only on the first day.
In addition to the number of tokens and items getting to ridiculously larger amounts, the number of pets have been increasing every year.

More pets, more items and we still have the same two weeks to collect as we did during the medieval Faire when there was only 39 pets and 60 items. The last event had 82 pets and over 260 items. If we continue to have the excessively ridiculous number of items and pets, maybe we can have the event extended to a full four weeks so it’s not as stressful and people have a better chance of enjoying the event by being able to participate.

[ElementalInsanity]

@Shian: love seeing you come out with those numbers because it really puts that in perspective of how we still have two weeks and compared now we have more than double the pets and and triple the items.

Definitely would rather see the tokens go down but also the idea of extending the time instead of just two weeks is a good idea as well. Or maybe both?

[Erythro]

Support. Cant write a long detailed message because of mobile but the number of tokens in recent events is insane. I dont mind 3-4 tokens that trade for other tokens for other trade ins but this many off the bat is a lot to handle.

[Lacuna]

While it may seem like there are a lot of tokens, there are really only 3 at this time (4 if the seeds turn out to be separated in some trade-ins). This is the same or less than what we get from Easter and Halloween, and there aren't even any banner pets or animal eggs to distract token collection. The items do have different appearances, and this may affect some users who are committed to gaining a full item set, but there is also the option to trade for tokens for your collection after the event is over and they are worth a lot less and in less demand.

As for the amount of pets and items in general, I think it's important to recognize just how much of the content from last year's event was free. Avian and Totoro were giving out 7-8 free items a day, along with 2-5 daily from the boutique, 4 from the storeroom daily starting on day 4, and quite large scenery packs for free as well. There were also a multitude of free pets, I count 35 outcomes if I'm correct, and plenty of those were "cool," edited pets. So, if someone was participating in last year's event, they could have had a pretty good time without even collecting a single token. In contrast, the dream/slumber party event doesn't appear to have offered a single free pet, so when you contrast the number of pets you needed to trade in for between those two events, it's actually very similar.

Overall, I think that the quality of experience in the event has definitely gone up with the amount of free things, and it is actually more playable for users who don't have time to collect tokens than in the past.

[The Last Raven]

I understand that there are only 3 possibly 4 groups of tokens but there are still so many different individuals for the fruits and seeds alone that it makes it hard to find ones from smaller groups such as the chips.

[Shian]

Easter and Halloween have only ever had four tokens. Good for pet and item collectors alike. Not 60 different tokens like during the lost city event. Easily rivals the total number of pets both free and turn in.

This is exactly what we are taking about. If I click 5 banners during Easter, I will most certainly have enough eggs to get a bunny. Now? Now I have one button to get me a race pet but not the other thing, 3 saplings and two seeds.

It was an utter nightmare to get all the fish tokens last year. It’ll be the same this year trying to get one of every seed.

Again, 80 something pets and over 260 items just makes the game stressful because you feel like you’re missing out on something. I’d also like to bring up the issue of popular tokens for dress ups. I was physically sweating dying the Egypt event. Do I turn in the brick tokens or keep them for dress ups? People don’t ever have to stress over that kind of decision during Easter because it’s easy to get a few tokens to keep.

[Lacuna]

Looking at my own tokens collected, I'm definitely seeing a pretty even number of each type (if we count seeds as a different one). It probably seems so unbalanced at the moment because we have two trade-ins for resort chips, none for seedlings, and the fruits and seeds are only shown together at the moment, but I'm sure everything will balance out.

It's important to remember that trade-ins are available the whole event, so even if it seems you played for a while now without being able to trade in, once we get some seedling trade-ins, the tradeoff is that you'll be able to trade in immediately. It's not feasible to get everything on the day it's released.

I did address the point of item collectors. Personally, I was able to trade for dozens of bricks cheaply after the Egypt event.