Thanks for all the feedback so far. It is regularly passed on.
Out of interest from your comments (and these are purely my questions before anyone reads anything into it
) I'd like to get some further feedback on the points below:
1. The Shuffle function- if it was separate, what would be the cost to shuffle? Diamonds? Stars? Should there be a limit to the number of shuffles allowed daily? How would you envisage a separate shuffle function?
2. The Reindeer - Some of you have suggested there should be the opportunity to shuffle out a Reindeer. Would you envisage this to be random? Whilst many of you have expressed unhappiness for this feature would it be of interest if the cost was on a sliding scale, or is there a price point where it would become more agreeable?
1. I would remove it from the gift array and have manual options to shuffle it for either 200 diamonds or 20 stars (you're selling diamonds for stars at a best-package rate of 10.5 diamonds/star, so slight discount for people willing to pay diamonds).
2. You're offering 9 prizes for 2995 diamonds (332 diamonds/prize), so instead make it a one-at-a-time offer of a prize for 400-500 diamonds (slight markup in exchange for doing them one at a time). Instead of the reindeer filling the prize array, they allow the player to cycle in a new random prize. If you run out of reindeer you can do it instead for 50-100 diamonds. Also dump the filler prizes. Make the rotating prizes just be the three Train Cars, maybe Winter Village Selection Kit, Sleigh Builder, etc. to keep the Winter theme. But people aren't going to give you money for nonsense. Give them an opportunity to get a whole bunch of Cars and watch people burn diamonds like crazy trying to build the longest train possible.
Especially if...
...THE CARS GET FIXED!!
THIS is the biggest problem of the Event! The Freight and Dining Cars are out of alignment with other options in terms of the benefit provided against the space they take up, taking into account the need to be coupled to the train and the lack of road requirement, the latter two of which largely cancel each other out.
You can't expect people to spend money for the privilege of turning gold into silver (metaphorically speaking)! This is Inno's giant blind spot IMO, not just in this but overall (this is just the latest example of it). They don't play their own game, so they don't understand that now that expansions have almost completely stopped, anything new that goes in has to replace something that's already there, so the thing going in has to be
at the very least equal to the thing coming out. The Sleeping Car is very fair, but they screwed up the Freight and Dining Cars and haven't fixed them. Whether people spend diamonds or not when it goes live is largely going to depend on whether or not they make them worth buying.
No one is going to replace Sleigh Builders with Freight Cars, and no one's going to replace Checkmate Squares/Botanical Rotundas with Dining Cars.
These have to be corrected if you want people to buy them!
Event Buildings:
SA:M Royal Marble Gateway: 7% atk/6 squares (1.17% atk/sq)
SA:M Altar of Artemis: 7% atk/6 squares (1.17% atk/sq)
SA:M Checkmate Square: 10% atk/9 squares (1.11 atk/sq)
SA:M Botanical Rotunda: 10% atk/9 squares (1.11 atk/sq)
SA:M Appleton Cottage: 13% atk/12 squares (1.083 atk/sq)
SA:M Abandoned Asylum: 24% atk/25 squares (.96% atk/sq)
SA:M Colossus: 15% atk/16 squares (.9375% atk/sq)
SA:M Carousel: 8% atk/9 squares (.88% atk/sq)
SA:M Dining Car: 4% atk/6 squares (.67 atk/sq)
In sets:
SA:M Sakura Rock Lv.2: 10%/6 squares (1.67 atk/sq)
SA:M Piazza Clock Tower Lv.2: 9%/6 squares (1.5 atk/sq)
SA:M Piazza Clock Tower Lv.1: 7%/6 squares (1.17 atk/sq)
SA:M Sakura Rock Lv.1: 5%/6 squares (.83 atk/sq)
SA:M Dining Car: 4% atk/6 squares (.67 atk/sq)
See the problem?
If you want to sell them, make the Dining Cars the same 7%/6 squares as the Royal Marble Gateway or Altar of Artemis (1.17). At least bring it up to 6%/6 (1.00). The Appleton Cottage was in line with its contemporaries, and I spent a decent chunk of change on that event.