Feedback Winter Event 2023

[All Free Now]

2023 events are done!!

This year, lot of events got redesigned and replaced.

Question which hits the minds is,

Are we happy about it?
a) yes b) no c) cannot determine

My Answer is option c) cannot determine.

 

[Pericles the Lion]

2023 events are done!!

This year, lot of events got redesigned and replaced.

Question which hits the minds is,

Are we happy about it?
a) yes b) no c) cannot determine

My Answer is option c) cannot determine.

I'm happy with the Events. My concern is that I was able to take my main city from 100/100 blue attack/defense to 2400/2800 in a matter of six months. Largely due to OP Event buildings. It makes me wonder where INNO can go from here.

 

[mcbluefire]

I'm happy with the Events. My concern is that I was able to take my main city from 100/100 blue attack/defense to 2400/2800 in a matter of six months. Largely due to OP Event buildings. It makes me wonder where INNO can go from here.

Did you spend zero diamonds while doing that?

 

[Pericles the Lion]

Did you spend zero diamonds while doing that?

Diamonds spent, yes. Diamonds purchased, no.

 

[drakenridder]

2023 events are done!!

This year, lot of events got redesigned and replaced.

Question which hits the minds is,

Are we happy about it?
a) yes b) no c) cannot determine

My Answer is option c) cannot determine.

I’m satisfied with the yield but concerned for the future. Some awesome event buildings where introduced. Anniversary stands out and fall event’s jumping pumpkins for strategical value. The spawners are a vastly more worthy reward for top1% compared to events of previous years.
However my concerns are mainly due to the nerfed winter event. The issue lays in the golden upgrade being locked behind soft paywalls. Rather than an advanced milestone. Imho special upgrades for old event buildings should’ve kept as an advanced milestone reward. To encourage and reward fanatic participation. I’ll give the devs for now the benefit of the doubt that this’ll be a unique case with the money cow that winter event traditionally is. However I’m quite sure it won’t.

Other than that. I feel this year’s events where overwhelming with their power leap. Strong side buildings from grand prizes and very decent grand prizes. Overall a successful year of events. Hopefully winter event will conclude with success too. As there’s still some potential and opportunity.

 

[CrashBoom]

Do we get a new version of the winter event tomorrow? Or is the announcement (in upper left corner) meant for the life servers?

we will get the Wildlife event tomorrow

and if we are lucky an announcement for it before the start

 

[Zio Dyhos]

2023 events are done!!

This year, lot of events got redesigned and replaced.

Question which hits the minds is,

Are we happy about it?
a) yes b) no c) cannot determine

My Answer is option c) cannot determine.

The winter event is undoubtedly the worst of all, due to its difficulty with the calendar as well as the prize, without a doubt for me the best is Halloween.

 

[Madelina de Melrose]

So that's what is in the locked box - the Wildlife event. Without a squeak (or bark, chirp, squeal, or growl) from Inno.

 

[ironsage]

You can get the equivalent of both the Level 1 and Level 2 Grape Stompin' Festivals, AND a bunch of Cartographers, except they're all for the same event building. Absolutely wild.

except the grape stompin give vineyard which needs 9 levels +2 and winter needs 10+2

 

[Thunderdome]

we will get the Wildlife event tomorrow

Actually, it's Candy Crush which I am probably sitting out of this one.

The winter event is undoubtedly the worst of all, due to its difficulty with the calendar as well as the prize, without a doubt for me the best is Halloween.

I didn't bother with the calendar which would cost me a lot of diamonds had I decide to get all the key parts made. I only had 4 keys from the event minigame itself, which it was a severe blow. However, I thought it was nice to just purchase the golden prizes to take in the spoils after the event was close to being over.

So that's what is in the locked box - the Wildlife event. Without a squeak (or bark, chirp, squeal, or growl) from Inno.

Another PITA event to which we will have to figure out on how to play because Inno's too busy (with vacations) to even provide us an announcement or even a guide.

 

[mcbluefire]

Diamonds spent, yes. Diamonds purchased, no.

I do both diamond farms and purchases. While I don't always agree with the direction the devs take things I believe in paying a nomimal fee for entertainment and I budget as such.

 

[LiMuBi]

what I don't understand about this event is why the Christmas buildings in this event have such brutal negative happiness, its even worse than what they did with Jumping pumpkins. So should we expect premium buildings next year to have a huge boost to happiness for a change?

 

[drakenridder]

Winter event 2023 is best for its nutcracker guardhouses, as a daily special. It's quite possible to save up event currency and than spend it on 15 guardhouses or as many guardhouses are needed to get 15.
For diamonds it could be somewhat interesting to spend on the 3k offer. Granted it's either offering a golden upgrade for the chocolate factory or it's offering the winter23 grand building spawner. This is mostly relying on luck.
Finally the advent calendar has a few prizes of interest. Targeting those with master keys from DC could make this event offering a bit more decent rewards.
For the above, I would go as a f2p player. The main objective is getting those guardhouses to significantly cutting down on time. To getting those 15 guardhouses. Ironically secondary target would be this year's grand prize. It's a very decent unit supplier. With some okay buffs for today's golden lvl standard and somewhat decent resources.

For the whales, there's not that much to heavily invest in. If I had a massive surplus budget of money I could sink into the event, I would target the advent calendar. The 3x3 building is on its own quite strong. Offering great efficiency for buffs, production and very efficient fp production. Even outperforming the settlement's 1-time 4x4 fp building (30 fp/d at max lvl). Adding the 20% from the forgotten temple and you've gotten an exceptionally efficient fp producer (4,7+/tile). It's also serving as a weaker spawner for the winter piramide. Alongside that you're getting a golden chocolate factory upgrade, a golden selection kit for the winter piramide, FoE+ and a number of resources.
To me that appears as a solid deal. Although probably expensive due to the 50% spawn rate. It's probable that you'll end up in top1% depending on the server your playing on but even if your dropping down to silver, your still getting pretty much 2 golden chocolate factories and very solid rewards. The biggest risk however, might be a more efficient building showing up next year. Although this is a risk is limited. As competition of something even more efficient likely be something limited to 1 too. So, might be worth it to lay down a foundation for maximum fp efficiency.

 

[mcbluefire]

This event was apparently decent for Inno getting folks to spend diamonds, not only on the 1% (Gold league) but also for folks trying to load the Elf Blessing to "save" in the long run. In the end it was a huge spend event with very little gain.

I got the calendar covered in live so I'll pickup that nice Santa's Spectacualr Showtime...but really, compared to earlier events this year that building will have a short stay in my city until it is replaced with a Jester's Stage or Feta farm. This focus ran me about 12K diamonds...not really worth it frankly.

As things stand I'd have to use another 21K diamonds to have a chance at barely entering gold league....and that's not worth it for the overall timeframe I'll likely keep the reward building so I'll just save up diamonds for now. Still a feta farm wins here..

The Ted's Blissful Choco or Ketebo Candy Delights are only needed long enough to get 5-20 Joyful nutcrackers and then they'll end up being replaced with something that provides pop, happiness, or better boosts/square - again Feta Farms. Heck, even the Winter Pyramid is much better in efficiency.

The continuing trend to have huge population demands for small buildings is a smart move to make folks use strategy, but a bad idea to make folks decide against using diamonds or cash to obtain those buildings because they don't have the population support in SAT to place them. Kind of a double edged sword there and it helped me save diamonds this event.

Ending the year on a good note:
The snow affect on the city was greatly improved this year. Completely appreciate the effort the art and effects teams put in to making it seem like the entire city got snowfall that sticks.

 

[drakenridder]

I got the calendar covered in live so I'll pickup that nice Santa's Spectacualr Showtime...but really, compared to earlier events this year that building will have a short stay in my city until it is replaced with a Jester's Stage or Feta farm. This focus ran me about 12K diamonds...not really worth it frankly.

The showtime offers both %, % and a significantly higher/ efficiency compared to feta farms. To top it off it produces & not terrible useful though but still. Feta farms only produce at a higher efficiency and offers . Both can be easily compensated for by the exceptionally high fp efficiency. Alongside the significantly greater % efficiency. So, just wondering how feta farms are better.

 

[mcbluefire]

Obviously we each have our own motivating factors. For me goods production per square is highest priority.

I rate FETA as #2 only to Tower of Champions L2 when viewing goods/sqr. 8.33 goods/sqr is absolutely awesome! Spectacular Showtime is at 5.44.

When I weigh in buildings on their mixture of boosts including goods (heaviest) + atk and defense boosts/sqr + FP/sqr over 1.0 and factor in population provision/cost then Feta ends up at #12 with the following in front of it:
1 Tower of Champions L2
2 Sweet Gingerbread Cottage [gold reward]
3 Santa's Spectacular Showtime [Calendar reward]
4 Tower of Champions L1
5 Flowering Bougainvillea Tree
6 >>Tapir Trails (daily special wildlife)
7 >>Giant Kapok (daily special wildlife)
8 >>Blood Lilies (daily special wildlife)
9 >> Garden of Eternal Dreams [Flamingo Habitat] (gold league)
10 Wisteria Gentiana Windmill
11 Grape Stompin L2
12 Feta Farm

Feta Farm is super easy to generate and a city in SAT filled with them and a few other essential buildings would make a very formidable all around city.

Bottom line, I wouldn't get rid of my Spectacular Showtime right away... however eventually I'll want more goods/sqr and with the boosts I'll have at that point I won't miss the per square boosts of 4.89 atk-off, 6.67 atk-def, 6.33 def-off, and 4.0fp that one building provides. I appreciate you calling it out, though as it isn't something lightly converted to a feta farm!

 

[drakenridder]

@mcbluefire that makes sense. When you’re prioritising goods, showtime isn’t that good. Personally I would target a chain with goods, using BG + finish specials.

If in the upcoming years more special upgrades getting introduced, it'll be interesting to see how the number of needed guardhouses drop. A table for reference:

N. Guardhouses	Upgrade factory
10 (3 )	Gold (2023/2024)
8 (4 )	Platinum (2024/2025)
6 (5 )	Diamond (2025/2026)
5. 6 )	Crystal (2026/2027)

I don't think it's too far fetched to think this levels of efficiency can be on the horizon. It's however hard to say if it's possible for f2p players to obtain the best versions. For anyone wondering on the special upgrade names, I've based them off PvP arena's leagues. As it seems the trend of the special upgrades.
Assuming my above table turns out to be correct. Imo it's not the most exciting expectation for the upcoming 3yrs but definitely useful. Although it might be a stretch for the game to survive another 3-ish years.

 

[planetofthehumans2]

@mcbluefire that makes sense. When you’re prioritising goods, showtime isn’t that good. Personally I would target a chain with goods, using BG + finish specials.

If in the upcoming years more special upgrades getting introduced, it'll be interesting to see how the number of needed guardhouses drop. A table for reference:

N. Guardhouses	Upgrade factory
10 (3 )	Gold (2023/2024)
8 (4 )	Platinum (2024/2025)
6 (5 )	Diamond (2025/2026)
5. 6 )	Crystal (2026/2027)

I don't think it's too far fetched to think this levels of efficiency can be on the horizon. It's however hard to say if it's possible for f2p players to obtain the best versions. For anyone wondering on the special upgrade names, I've based them off PvP arena's leagues. As it seems the trend of the special upgrades.
Assuming my above table turns out to be correct. Imo it's not the most exciting expectation for the upcoming 3yrs but definitely useful. Although it might be a stretch for the game to survive another 3-ish years.

The games been around 10+ years, why would there be any reason it'll get shelved before 3 years? They probably made a ton of money after this event.

 

[D-Best]

The Ketebo Candy and Ted's Choc golden upgrade icons are switched..

 

[drakenridder]

The games been around 10+ years, why would there be any reason it'll get shelved before 3 years? They probably made a ton of money after this event.

Judging from recent developments making me doubtful. The monetisation has become more extreme over time. This is a common symptom of compensating a decline of either spending players or a decline in overall player base. W/O hard numbers to back this suspension up, it’s impossible to make this conclusion.
Judging from recent development, with the unfair requirements of the rival (pop X of Y colours instead of pop at least X of Y, or win X fights no matter the age you’re in), newbies’ will become more frustrated during their 1st event and more likely to leave. Where veterans enjoy a massive advantage. Basically this will also massively harm the lure for in game purchases. After all would you spend $/€20/50 on a game, while you couldn’t complete a mandatory bonus series of quests just because you’ve just started? Tbh probably most would get frustrated and rather leave than invest years to be able to complete events.

Because of the above, I think the game may not be able to remain profitable for the upcoming 3yrs. Unless the devs listen and make rival quests optional, fair additional challenges. Where it’s also clear for newbies that the rival is optional for event’s succes. I simple doubt this developments won’t go further and worsening