Event is too many days long, takes too much time to play along with Rival mini games and the coming new Guild raids. GE L5 and GBG both take quite a chuck of time. On top of this, my main city is in the middle of the wildlife event which also has Rival on the SAME day as beta. I already skip settlements and pvp because there is not enough hours in the day to do all these things. I'm retired and have lots of time but it is still not enough. In the future I plan to skip events just for personnel time savings. The excessive time required seems counterproductive to game monetization. I can't image how people can have more than 2 cities. There are many days I spend 8 to 10 hours on FOE.
I agree, the game is becoming way too time consuming. Since this is Beta, it would be a good place to bring this aspect up for consideration. This is not a griping or complaining post, simply pointing out the painfully obvious.
For me, instead of being more engaging, the game is distancing me from playing. I have 3 cities. Retired one, dramatically slowed playing on the other two and deciding which of those to shut down. I used to spend Diamonds about equal on all 3, depending on the event rewards and what each city required. With so much going on in each city, I find I am just avoiding participating in any of them. It gets too confusing for this retired old man when going from one city to another as each city has different tasks to be performed each day.
We already basically have an event constantly going on. There is a very short break between month long events now. So besides the other activities of a city: GE, raising buildings, GbG, event tasks, Challenges. Quests, Tasks… We now have Rival questlines which seem to override other aspects of the game as they are very time sensitive.
We not only have to perform these new quests/tasks, but spend time to figure out HOW to accomplish them and if they are even worth doing. While I am trying to figure out Rival, I am neglecting the other activities in a city. It is to the point running each city is like having a separate job. A full time job to keep each one running and perform all the required activities. And a job that needs to be tracked as many activities are time sensitive. I need to set reminders to be in the game at certain times for activities, it cannot be random. So like a job, I need to plan my day around the game.
Soon, there will be more tasks added to each city with QI, Updated GE and whatever else was in the pipeline. This is going to take up even more time and further separate me from visiting each city. It is frustrating, not fun, to enter a city and have a list of activities that need to be accomplished each day, or several times a day And yes, I can pick and choose what to do and what not to do. Then it gets to the point of why even have that city if all I am doing is log in to collect, then close it. Which is still a time sensitive job as collections open up at a specific time each day. :-})
One Solution: Slow down adding more activities and concentrate on making the existing activities more fulfilling. There will still be enough face time in the game for users to find things to spend diamonds on. But make it quality time, not just time spent. Give users more of a reason for logging in each day, several times a day.
Another solution: Give users a way to schedule activities to their schedule. As we can start the Daily Challenge and time our city collection to our schedules, make other activities schedulable.
Example: Rival. Give users a window to be able to start it in. 48 hours perhaps, so it is more flexible. The start does not hinge on anything outside of the user, no one else depends on the timing of it, not like GbG start.
already indicated they're "arbitrarily" in GOLD because they're playing strongly and productively in QI.