Test Discussion Spring Seasonal Rewards

We've increased amount of Seed Pods dropped per day to 16. This should grant enough seeds for the ability to complete the feats associated with Spring 2020.

PTW FTW

For what it's worth, my main toon will be fine, but my newer alts will never catch up on these seasonal feats. Which is a shame because every year there are more and more feat points and it's becoming an area where skill points should have been able to be farmed like any other content in the game.

Question:

Is there some specific reason that the Bark Skin isn't reduced to half the price? It's still at 100 marks.

Considering you've guys are already excluding most of the base items from the half reduction cost, I'd figure it be fair to ask about the skin because this seems like an oversight.

I'm pretty sure it's not an oversight... They are trying to force people to buy the seed pods. Less days to complete the event means more opportunities for people to miss out farming all two weeks (not everyone can play everyday) and then have to buy seed pods from the store or use replay badges where possible.

The caveat being that you have to buy the cheaper base items multiple times over to accomplish this, essentially forcing anyone who wants the more expensive items to use replays and/or buy marks from the marketplace. The problem here isn't just the feats, it's multiple other consequences that have come up as a result of these changes.

First, because of the limited time and the scope of only getting enough marks to earn this years' feats, you're forcing the players into a situation where they have to pick between feat progression and buying desired decorations. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people out there who like to decorate their bases and league halls, and those people will be primarily impacted by this. Yes, players have alts, but there are many who like to earn feats on each toon without unlocking them.

Second, there's the time crunch and forced content. Before, when the event lasted a month, there was plenty of time to earn enough marks to earn what you wanted, and because there was so much time you could choose what you wanted to run; Do you like only the outdoor mission, or only the indoor event? You could do what you wanted and still earn enough for feats, extra items, what have you. Now, you have to run both to have just enough for this years feats and nothing else. Seasonals are supposed to be fun side events that add limited time value to the game, not a chore that has to be done every day to stay relevant.

And finally, there's the problem of the old seasonal items. Lowering the prices on the old styles was a decent start, but if you consider that we're only earning enough marks over two weeks to just barely cover earning the newest feats and not much else, how realistic would It be for a new player - or even a returning player whose taken a few years off, for that matter - to be able to earn even half of the older feats within the two week timeframe? I haven't tallied how much it would cost to buy all the items necessary for all of the old feats, but I really doubt even using two or three alts to earn seed pods every day would be enough to earn them all, especially since the base items haven't had a price reduction like the styles have.


So what solutions are there? A few, actually, any one of them would be acceptable;

Option 1) Keep the event at its current length of roughly one month. That would neatly solve every complaint, since it would let you earn enough seed pods for both the new feats and any missed ones, extra marks to buy whatever extravagant items the player likes, and the freedom to play the event at the rate and the way the player chooses.

Option 2) Lower the cost of everything, including this years' items. If we're only going to have two weeks to complete the feats, the amount we should have to spend to get them shouldn't take exactly that long to earn. There should be a relative grace period where players can earn extra marks to spend as they wish, either toward older feats or base items they may want.

Option 3) Give away some of the older feats and/or base items for free. Obviously this is the more extreme option, but it lets players get what they need while keeping the structure you wish to implement. Let players redeem the older seasonal base items for free, giving them the older feats for free in the process and letting them be focused on completing only this years' feats.

I've seen some guessing but still no solid reason from a dev, why shorten the seasonal. The only semi logical reason to shorten it and not give a reason would be to dig at players pocketbooks. Kinda a chump move in my opinion.

It's enough of a move to get me to stop playing seasonals entirely.

When I said the folllowing in another thread entirely:

Decisions like shortening the seasonal events to two weeks only is EXACTLY the type of "adding two things nobody asked for" description I talked about.

This type of decision making also falls into the category of "diminishing any desire to really want to play the game"


The feedback is here for you guys to see, but yall want to put this seasonal on live for only two weeks when everyone in this thread is telling yall it's bad idea across the board.

Extend this to one month at least. Seriously -- why not?

I'll look into it

--UPDATE--

I've gone ahead and updated it to cost 50 Seed Pods

Well it makes sense that the time span was reduced with climate change and all that. I expect to not have the spring event at all anymore in the years to come. We just directly jump to the summer event from april to september ^_^

God I hope not. The spring seasonal is the best way to get Earth/Nature themed items for my Nature Power Set base. Summer Seasonal is for Water Power Set base items. Winter Seasonal is for Ice Power Set base items.

Don't worry, they'll start dropping base item boxes for each powerset out of the next resurgence capsule or something equally heel-ish.