Suggestion: Fewer tokens + some Summer Event Changes

Suggest new features or changes to Chicken Smoothie.

Would you like to see fewer tokens in Summer events?

Yes please!
155
72%
No thanks!
43
20%
I don't care, I just like voting!
16
7%
 
Total votes : 214

Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby Takora Drakan » Thu Jul 26, 2018 12:42 am

I am glad I am not the only one that has the feeling that the staff overdid it a bit with the tokens this year. I really appreciate the event to far and the art is as always wonderful and the work the staff has put in is amazing but it seems like it was a good intention that turned a bit sour for the users.

I also have always appreciated that CS is a site that is more casual and also caters to "older" people in a sense. I don't expect it from "kids" website, but keeping in mind that CS is now a bit over 10 years around, yeah those kids that joined when CS was still new and stuck around till now grew now up to adults and have also "adult stuff" to do while still enjoying the content the staff makes for the site.

Seeing the many tokens this year made my heart sink a bit, adults like me just don't have time to check CS every 20 minutes and I don't have to be a mathematician to see that the ratio you get certain tokens is lower, even if the system is set to give them at a equal chance.

If there are really 4 groups as said, they break up as follow:

    12 fruits
    5 seeds
    4 seedlings
    4 chips

You are statistically bound to get by chance more fruits since there are just more variants of those in the pot. On top of that the most "valuable" tokens, the chips are tied in with random chance games which often require a load more chips since their prize pools are that much larger (the duck race and the golf game, there are just a load of items to get from them).

While I generally can keep up with the events rather good the past years, it forces me now basically to buy more tokens with C$ which gives me a bad taste in my mouth. CS is a site for me that never really forced me to buy C$ and I really appreciated that but if I want to keep up and get at least one of everything (shocking yes, but CS is a collection site) it just makes me sad to a certain degree.

Extra art is always appreciated but as example the extra fruits and other art could have been handed out after the event as 1 per user grab bag to take home from their vacation.

tl:dr; just maybe reduce it next time to one token of each group? Taking this event as example for this years tokens: 1 chip, 1 seedling, 1 seed and 1 fruit would have been enough. 4 tokens which equal chances are easier to handle for the users.
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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby Celozon » Thu Jul 26, 2018 5:49 am

Edit; Moved here, this post will no longer be updated. Please view link for updated version.

I'm a little confused as to why its assumed that every individual token as an equal chance of coming from the banner. According to that logic, that means its a 16% chance each for chips and seedlings, 20% chance for seeds, and 48% chance for fruit.

This is a sample of 1396 banners. These are all gathered from users who hadn't done any trading or trade-ins (or they were counted out) so it is the pure token amount from the banners. Obviously not a big enough number to say what the exact token chances are, but I think its pretty clear that not each individual token has the same chance, its spread pretty evenly between the groups.

edit; continually adding data from more banners. Thank you to Aaron✦. obsceneSymphony, nickjr, Burrito Bunny, .Tyree., bluebudgie, lucky333123 and Ocelover567

83 Image
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total: 337

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total: 395

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56 Image
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total: 310

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total: 354
Last edited by Celozon on Fri Jul 27, 2018 4:39 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby Libelle » Thu Jul 26, 2018 5:54 am

Lacuna wrote:
    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).


If you would like to keep one of each token for your item collection, there are 25 individual tokens (+ 13 plushies + 16 totems). Right now, I am struggling to get everything and keep one of each token. I know I will manage in the end, because I have a lot of experience, some time on my hands, and offsite currency to offer. Moreover, I know from experience that there will likely be a few days either in the middle or at the end of the event to catch up. However, if I were a new player or busy with real life, I would give up. Long story short: I support this suggestion.

nickjr wrote:Last year (2017, lost city) was probably one of the worst. There were party decorations that were flippin' tokens. And food. Cry. 2016 (space) was only a little better. The token trading chain was also annoying but it's the lesser of two evils in my opinion because at least we could choose what tokens to get from the root water/dirt/something tokens.


I have to agree. Don't get me wrong: I loved last year's tokens, they were so pretty. But, because they were so pretty, I wanted to keep multiples of the tokens for my item collection. However, I found that if I kept the tokens I wouldn't have a sufficient amount of tokens to trade in for pets. It was heartbreaking.

Burrito Bunny wrote:
LissaJo wrote:I would be even happier if after token trade in ended, we could snag a free item pack with 1 of each event token in it

Actually getting a complete set after token trade ins have ended is a lovely idea. I like it.


What a great idea!
Last edited by Libelle on Thu Jul 26, 2018 6:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby troyards » Thu Jul 26, 2018 6:03 am

Takora Drakan wrote:
Seeing the many tokens this year made my heart sink a bit, adults like me just don't have time to check CS every 20 minutes and I don't have to be a mathematician to see that the ratio you get certain tokens is lower, even if the system is set to give them at a equal chance.

If there are really 4 groups as said, they break up as follow:

    12 fruits
    5 seeds
    4 seedlings
    4 chips

You are statistically bound to get by chance more fruits since there are just more variants of those in the pot. On top of that the most "valuable" tokens, the chips are tied in with random chance games which often require a load more chips since their prize pools are that much larger (the duck race and the golf game, there are just a load of items to get from them).

am stats person, if they are weighted by group (eg all the fruits together), you can get an equal chance at getting them because it ignores the specific variant of token. if we are going off of specific type, it's 4% per token so 56% fruit which is the current theory.

say you have a group of 100 tokens: 25 will be fruits, 25 will be seeds, 25 will be saplings, and the last 25 will be chips. since the specific types of tokens are just variants, you can have any number of any of the variants in that 25 count of tokens; so there will be doubles of all but one set of triples in the fruits, 5 each in the seeds, and 6 + a fraction each in the saplings and chips. the variants are just cosmetic since all of them work for their trade-ins, so why are they weighted individually? it would make it easier and actually be up to the rng rather than knowing that you're statistically more likely to get a token you need less of and statistically improbable that you're going to get enough of a token you need the most of.

i'm curious to see the complete probability for everything. is there any way those stats could be published after the event? (tbh it's illegal in a handful of countries to not have them published while the loot box event is running which is basically what this event is but that's just my onion). i'm suspecting the probability on the saplings and the resort chips has been upped or they've rebalanced it since i, personally, have been getting more these last couple of days but could just be a placebo/the rng is being nice to me.
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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby metonymy » Thu Jul 26, 2018 7:03 am

i rarely come out from the oekaki but this is distinctly rubbing me the wrong way.

in an absence of published official information, it's logical to assume that all options are equally weighted. this is especially true because chickensmoothie is primarily marketed and played by tweens and teens - people who have not had that much training in statistics. since there's no other official information to go off of, i think it's perfectly reasonable to say "i guess these are all weighted equally".

when you take all the banner items as weighted equally and occurring at the same frequency, the game then is distinctly on the cutthroat to exploitative side. it's a bit punishing.

this leaves interested consumers to make a couple of choices, to feel like they need to get everything or as much as possible (because chickensmoothie is, ultimately, about collecting and completionism)...

1. they can bot, an illegal action that will get their account banned.

2. they can trade other people for their tokens with c$.

3. they can grind out the banners.

i am worried because quite frankly, the second and third options can very easily become exploitative. i know chickensmoothie needs to make a buck, but this is very much on the slippery slope to really disgusting monetezation strategies that are getting lambasted in the games press every day, much less the regular press. we must remember that chickensmoothie is ultimately a game for kids, so when these practices get exploitative, a bunch of people will take interest in the exploitation of children.

-trading tokens for c$ means there is significant pressure for children and teens to spend money on microtransactions.

-grinding out the banners i would argue is actually somewhat worse. not only is that pressure now on to grind banners for your own tokens, but also to grind banners for c$.

this is creating an environment where children are being encouraged into unhealthy habits, like staying on the computer literally all day looking for banners, interrupting whatever they are doing every 15 minutes to look for banners (thus breaking concentration on whatever they need to be paying attention to, setting up their minds to expect an interruption every 15 minutes - i'm not saying CS is gonna give you ADHD, but incentivising this behavior is going to create habits, and habits are easy to get into and hard to break), waking up to look for banners, feeling pressured to spend their spending money right now on c$...

i realize the servers need money to stay on and the owners need to eat. however, if it starts to feel exploitative, it probably is. there are a lot of bad business practices, especially with regards to games meant for children, becoming industry standard. and governments all around the world are going "ENOUGH!" and getting ready to legislate harshly.

i don't want cs to be cannon fodder for this, but if people are feeling exploited, if people are feeling like a system is unfair - cs is going to be lumped in with the obviously really really really bad ones out there chasing Timmy The Whale Who Just Stole His Mommy's Credit Card For The Fifth Time, and is going to get just as much blowback.

this is compounded by the fact that in the moment, chickensmoothie has absolutely no reason to care about these exploitative practices; in fact, it's probably pretty good business right now. after all, there is probably a great demand for c$, which is pure profit in microtransactions (due to the pressure for people wanting them to trade for tokens). and the banner system is probably designed in part to be a major draw to the site and to get people refreshing it, looking for those banners, with more pageviews which means more ad revenue money. i also don't think it's a coincidence that these events usually run in the summer, where most of the player base is on vacation from school - it is to give players a compelling reason to come back to the site, and often, when they have a lot of free time (and when player involvement, through buying c$, or simply pageviews for the ads, means money).

i hasten to add, i don't know if cs is actually exploitative. i think that's largely immaterial right now. however, that's what it's coming across as, and that's what people are reacting to. ultimately such business practices are "some profit right now for not so much profit later". this leads the system to become more and more unbalanced on down the line, as they make up for the people who have left. and this leads into a vicious spiral. "hunting the whales" is not a sustainable business model for most games. right now large parts of the video game industry think it is. unfortunately, this also includes games marketed to children. if cs adopts exploitative tactics, or tactics that SEEM or FEEL exploitative, ultimately consumers will treat them as if they are exploitative, and it will damage future growth of the website significantly. (this goes double since cs is, at heart, a game for children and teens - non-adults who largely rely on things like allowances or spending money from adults. a parent is only going to hear a little bit of the whole story, and will be quick to chuck cs in the same pile as the really vile business practices out there.)

it doesn't matter if things are actually fairer than it feels and seems like, because consumers will act on the information they are given - what it feels and seems.

this is a pretty valuable feedback thread of people going - "hey. this smells rotten." and i hope the chickensmoothie admins listen to it. ultimately it's chickensmoothie inadvertently getting into a really hot-button issue at the moment, even in part. there are two choices, really - a, they address the issue officially by doing something like publishing the probabilities of what you can get in banners/fiddling those probabilities so that it reads as more fair and balanced, or b, they say it's just whining and dismiss concerns. dismissing concerns here will lead people to expect dismissal of future concerns. in other words, it is a declaration of "we know we're coming across as toxic, and we're going to just lean into it. we set out as we mean to go on - just like EA and other exploitative game developers".

that's not going to be good for community and business.

honestly, as dire as this sounds, the actual truth of "is this fair?" is largely immaterial here. there's a significant part of the player base going "this feels a lot more unfair than past years because of the number of tokens in variety and number you need to buy stuff". most consumers operate on feeling: humans are not perfectly rational consumers. and feeling like a company is out mostly for your wallet - especially when it's a company designing a game for children and young teens - is something that other people are really alarmed about right now (and rightly so). i don't want chickensmoothie to go down that dark path.

i know i may sound a bit cassandra speaking dire prophecy here, but i think this is a real "check yaself before you wreck yaself" moment. it's bigger than simple probabilities of tokens - it's a moment for chickensmoothie to reaffirm or define their corporate ethics and their relationship with consumers, and stakes for that are pretty high.

ultimately chickensmoothie is a game, and the people behind it are game devs. they're not immune to trends in the rest of gaming right now - including what trends people are tired of tolerating, and what trends will get you some harsh (and i think deserved) pushback. i don't want to see it get ugly, but i feel like dismissing concerns on this point will just make people expect future real ugliness and turn away players.

edit: i hasten to add, to reiterate: i don't think either monetizaion strategy is on its face exploitative. i think that it can pass into becoming exploitative based on how the rest of the game is designed. i understand game devs gotta eat. however, once consumers start feeling like it's exploitative - see this thread - that means they're giving valuable feedback. if this feedback is officially addressed and the game rebalanced so that the strategies are nerfed a bit, as it were, it's often a source of major consumer goodwill that actually leads to a game's increased success. (i think the warframe developers, for instance, have done very well at this.) but if the company line is that it's fine, *even if they change it later and 'repent',* it can become too late after losing consumer confidence. (if you want to see this going very badly: please see EA's star wars battlefront 2 kerfuffle. "The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes" is still a quote that lives in infamy, and many consumers have been turned off *all* EA games.) chickensmoothie is at a crossroads here in terms of their relationship to their consumers.

before anyone says that i just hate chickensmoothie and want them to fail: ....if i was actually interested in that outcome, i'd just keep quiet and enjoy the distant explosions LOL. i'm putting this two cents in because i don't think the devs and admins have perhaps realized how they've stumbled on to a larger conversation here.

right now it's pretty easy for a parent to hear their child lament about how they need to check for tokens, because it's more unfair than last year; for a parent to see how their child's tasks are disrupted by this; for a parent to then see an alarmist segment on the news about "gambling for kiddies! exploitative games coming for YOUR CHILDREN!"... and make the connection. will there always be some curmudgeons out there? of course. however cs has accidentally stumbled into a real hotbutton issue here, and i think to keep consumer confidence, the problem of "tokens seem very unfair this year" needs to be officially addressed (not just by mods - but by the admin team/devs).
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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby nickjr » Thu Jul 26, 2018 8:03 am

I think another part of the issue might be what someone mentioned earlier about how users are now expecting most token pets to be rare.

Does this mean that the token calculations are made with that in mind?

Because that doesn't seem to mesh with what seems to be a common desire to always be "caught up" with the event, to be able to get all or almost all of the new pets and items soon after release. Kinda like fear of missing out or something? I don't know about the non-active posters, but from what I can see in the posts in the discussion threads, it kinda seems to be the "norm" to "keep up" with the event.

If the token calculations were done so that the token pets will likely end up rare after the event, then of course users who want to keep up with the event will be struggling to do so.

I don't think we can change the mindsets of a mass of users, so... I was gonna suggest that maybe starting next year, token calculations should be done with the expectation that token pets would be uncommon instead of rare, but I feel like that's going to lead to backlash even if you stick a giant announcement on every single event location. I think there's a lose-lose situation here. We can't all be happier about "keeping up" with the event AND have the event pets turn out rare. The easier it is to keep up with an event, the less rare its pets are. Which is the lesser of the two devils?
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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby Burrito Bunny » Thu Jul 26, 2018 8:08 am

Events are constructed and planned by majority volunteer workers. Varying levels of the team have come here to comment their own opinions and discuss with the community. The staff of this game are players too - nothing is given for free. Your "dev team" is one person practically. I don't think it is at all fair to compare it to EA or such other corporations, as CS is not that big and mighty.

I find this event much easier than lost city. We have been discussing the possibility of releasing a complete set of tokens after the event for collectors on this very thread. As long as that happens I don't see much of a problem, because from my understanding the groups are weighted equally. As the event progresses the trade ins will become more balanced too I'm sure.

That's my opinion as a player. Again, nothing is granted to the team. I am in CS's target demographic. I love the variety of tokens because first and foremost they are items, and I want fun items. When I was younger I loved the complexity of things like the space Event because it gave me stuff to do, stuff to plan. It's not CS's fault if parents can't control their child's internet time, or if they give children free range over their finances. If they have a parent that's going to let them spend the whole day hunting tokens, then without the event that child would probably just be watching YouTube instead.

Additionally, it's not really fair to compare CS to gambling games due to the ease in which you can trade. Players are willing to swap outcomes from trade ins, and all prizes for the mini games are well sought after. You know roughly what you will get in any given transaction, and you can swap if you don't get the one you wanted.

There is also no need to buy C$ yourself. CS is probably the easiest to get premium currency in out of any game I've ever played. C$ shops are very successful. Off site trading for other games free currency, like a Flight Rising treasure, is also very successful. There's no reason that you have to pay to unlock anything. There are plenty of other ways to get C$ or even tokens directly, as proven by the number of players in CS's target demographic who are unable to (be it through financial, parental, or governmental limitations) who have greater wealth than I, who as only spent about $40 in the corse of my time here, and gifted a good portion of that away.

Calculating the amount of tokens you need the MOMENT stuff comes out also isn't particularly fair, as the banners run for several days after the releases have stoped, and the trade ins stay up even longer. It may seem overwhelming at first, but by the end there is plenty of time to catch up. In my opinion it would be very disappointing to wait for the event to start only to find that there's one trade in up and you don't even like the pets that come out. I support variety so that more casual players can set up goals immediately instead of being disengaged because their lack of options are disinteresting. When token hunting you also don't have to sit there for hours on end. You can spend under 30 seconds refreshing for a banner and then leave and go about your day as normal.




Long story short I don't think making this out to be a way to exploit children is fair at all, nor helpful. Looking at solutions for the issue, I still support releasing a token set after trade ins have closed, and keeping the ratio even by group. This always happens. Easter, people always say "I can't get a blue token, this banner is rigged!" It's not the number of tokens, it is just a misconception of random within a small sample size.

This is not meant to dismis concerns. This is merely my opinion as a player. Myself and other team members have been discussing ways in which we can improve things on this thread already, and I know I myself would like to stick to positive solutions rather than having fellow players start viewing us as "the corporate enemy." c:
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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby nickjr » Thu Jul 26, 2018 8:13 am

(^ that being said, I'm not too sure how many parents would actually think stuff like "if they aren't on CS, they would be on YT instead"; maybe it's just the environment and peers I grew up with, but my impression is that it would be WAY more likely to think if they aren't on CS, they could be doing extra academic work" and they may revoke the free time that they previously gave the child

Like, I was legit confused when you gave the "could be on YT if not on CS" because it almost seemed like a foreign language to me lol but maybe that's just me)
Spread the word to end the word, because discrimination based on perceived or actual IQ/"intelligence" is no better than discrimination based on race, gender, etc.

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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby Burrito Bunny » Thu Jul 26, 2018 8:17 am

nickjr wrote:(^ that being said, I'm not too sure how many parents would actually think stuff like "if they aren't on CS, they would be on YT instead"; maybe it's just the environment and peers I grew up with, but my impression is that it would be WAY more likely to think if they aren't on CS, they could be doing extra academic work" and they may revoke the free time that they previously gave the child

Like, I was legit confused when you gave the "could be on YT if not on CS" because it almost seemed like a foreign language to me lol but maybe that's just me)

Oh haha, I guess I've grown up with adults who don't care what the child is doing at all whatsoever online so of course the child dives into the deep nothingness of the internet lol.
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Re: Suggestion: Fewer tokens for summer events

Postby nickjr » Thu Jul 26, 2018 8:23 am

deep nothingness of the internet... accurate LOL

At this point I'm kinda reminded a little of the Rares List issue, because this is starting to sound like a case of "the intentions don't matter anymore; we have the results and we gotta deal with those"
(For those who aren't aware: the Rares List was always intended to be used as a guide, but... those intentions don't matter anymore, because people keep using it as a law)
Spread the word to end the word, because discrimination based on perceived or actual IQ/"intelligence" is no better than discrimination based on race, gender, etc.

Context, consistency, and clear antecedents are golden.
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