Event Admit it, the maple tree event is terrible... [solved]

I don't get it, can someone explain me how, on every single year, the maple tree ends up being the lowest point of the event?

In the past, people participated a lot, but the chance to get a good reward was trash, and interest quickly dropped.
So the design solution was, what? instead of a 200 sunshine entry, which was a small price to pay, you increased it to doing an ENTIRE EVENT PQ which doesn't even have a system to get people together, so getting a pq going requires a lot of effort. Or, spending 50 candles, the currency that is used to get the actually good items of the event? Not only that, by removing the entry fee, no one is forced to pay the tree, so people can get in for free and not drive the tree to trigger.
I honestly don't understand what were you guys thinking.

If you ask me, the design of this event, in its core, is terrible. You as an individual, need to hope others enter that map when its not in a high %, and donate, so that you could join when a wave of people join in, or else, you'd need to do that yourself, and just realize you wasted all your sunshines cause nobody will come just from your single donation, for all you know, the maple tree might only pop 3 or 4 hours from now. Every individual is naturally selfish, so there's litearlly no reason for any of them to take the first step and donate the sunshine unless they see a trend, which would never come cause no one is willing to donate to the void.

There are only 2 possible solutions for this problem:

1. Bring back the entry payment, and drastically lower the requirment for a tree to explode, but give it a longer cooldown (30~60mins?) that you can track by checking on the NPC or by a command. Even better, when the cooldown is about to run out, lets say, 2 minute, make a blue text that announces it, and then another blue text for when its ready. This will naturally bring people together to enter (for those who remember GoldenLeaf, who did god's work with his smegas), cause it doesn't take much to cause it to explode, so getting it while it resets is the best time to get in. The issue with this, is if the tree didn't explode after this reset, there's a chance it will be left to rot, the solution to that would be maybe adding a system where the tree "absorbs sunlight passively", so that it would natually gain sunlight even without donations. for example, it can reach to 100% from 0% in 6 hours.

2. Or the much better apporach, drop this whole thing about needing to rely on the timing of others to enjoy the event. Make sunshines untradeable, all you'd need to do is go to the maple tree and trade in sunshines for a reward, and limit the amount of times a person (not a character/account) can claim a reward to idk, 3-5 times?
And if you really want to insist on keeping the system of the tree growing, have it so it will give a server wide buff to all the players, like that one event that gave echo to everyone when enough people did the quest.
This way, the control of getting the rewards is in the player's hands, and you still keep the thematic of the "gameplay" of the event, of giving sunshine to the tree.


I know that the event is over now, and there's a year before anniversery 9 comes, but I want to post this feedback/rant out before its no longer fresh in people's minds. Hopefully the devs will consider looking again at the design of this event, and write down in their notes what they can do to make this event better in the next year

Edit: I forgot to mention, throw that daily entry ticket to the trash

/rant

 

I was going to nitpick your rant like the fool I am as I disagree with some of the sentiment. However, I would very much like to see this next year. Great ideas!

 

I think the entry ticket lasting only 24 hours was depressing. Expected it to be permanent, so players at least TRY out the pq. And also the 200 sunshine fees would’ve gave it some value considering the drop rate.

edit: dont get me wrong, overall the event was great. Cake was good. Gold mush was amazing. PQ did encompass alot of great teamwork essence. Exp drop boost can never be bad. 8th anniv chair earring scarf cape pyrope store, tradable candles all were very pleasant.

 

Yup, when people asked me what's the use of sunshine, I can't figure out any actual use other than dry your clothes.

You can just free-ride any maple tree for rewards easily. Unlike in the past, everyone need to contribute sunshine per entry. Will GM think of removing -200 unmelting snow requirements in the future? Lmao, pls don't haha

 

Agree with your suggestion.
It's my first year joining this event and not knowing the maple tree mechanic as you've described was quite disappointing to me when it exploded because i didn't enter the map beforehand. Hence, all my contributions before it exploded were for naught >.<

 

So its been a year and maple tree still sucks?... That's depressing

 

Honestly works perfectly for me. If you struggle to find people for the pq (which I totally understand, given also the slight 'complexity' of the pq) 50 coins to pay for a 1 day entrance ticket are a very, very little price to pay. You can probably do 1 papulatus or grind for 20 minutes ok maybe 30 minutes at basically any map to get that. Wouldn't that take about the same time to gather the 200 sunshines that were required the previous years? Not to mention that if you do mini bosses like Shao or Ephenia you'll get plenty of coins.
So far I've gotten pretty shitty rewards tbh, but I've done that event only a few times so nothing's wrong with it, can't expect billions of rewards after only a few tries I guess.

That being said I very much like some of your suggestions, but how this systems work rn looks good to me. Of course everything can be improved.

 

Won't speak on other points for now, but having multiple instances of Cake boss per channel really split up the playerbase. Lots of 10 man cake bosses taking 20 minutes, longer than zak.

 

Yeah the cakes feel a bit random if you miss the very first (I would say 2) runs. Another thing that drove me mad about that THIC cake is that everytime I enter a map that has a cake with half HP and I hit it continuosly for the remaning time (even for 5 minutes) I often don't get my sweet slice. I feel like the hits u gotta land on it are too many, especially as a mage with a stupid slow wand. Maybe I should just put a faster weapon lol

Edit:
This problem tho makes people less likely to join Cakes that are almost dead (like 40-30% hp remaining), because you will most likely miss the slice.
I think this could be prevented by adjusting the number of hits required to the % of the health of the Cake, making people more prompted to join these runs.

 

Yeah after Christmas I learned to go into these with a fruit knife.

 

I think the Maple Tree is fine where it is right now given all the other small changes/improvements made. Sunshine is abundant and tickets make it easy to go in and out of Maple Hill (and they are easy to obtain.) Could it be improved or significantly altered? Certainly. But I wouldn't go so far as to say it sucks.

As for those mentioning the cake boss, we plan to adjust in an upcoming server check. Currently there are 3 maps per channel, which is excessive. This will be reduced (most likely to 1 map per channel.)

 

if there were actual attempts at fixing maple tree this year, then i retract that statement, ill need to log in for a long enough time to make the judgement if the changes are enough to make the tree explode in a more consistent manner even after the first week hype.
(and matt, from experience of many anniversaries, we both know that at the start of the event, there are a lot of tree explosions regardless. the catch is if the tree event dies after two weeks or not)
but i still stand by my 1 year old statement that the tree event is inherently a "feels bad" event, and that any fixes to the original design is mere patchwork. As long as it relies on selfless donations for faster growth, and for being "at the right place in the right time", it will continue to frustrate people and continue to lose hype gradually throughout the event.

 

I do not know the actual sunshine required for the tree to explode after the rate increase as mentioned by Matt, but I kinda feel that there is averagely 1 explosion every 60-90 minutes depending on how active everyone is in game.

Today's experience:

• Self leeching for about 90 minutes: joined 1 explosion
• Random slacking and bossing after cake for 1.5-2 hours: missed out 2 explosions

Probably need more stats.

 

I actually love this event the most, the concept of gathering passively then coming together to watch the 'fruit of your labour' fall from the tree(s), literally

Beautiful symbolism.

 

After playing with this event enough, yea, maple tree is pretty much fixed compared to how it was in the past. It takes less to explode the tree, costs nothing to enter, but the game floods you with sunshines so you feel almost obligated to dump it all when you join the tree.
feel free to close this thread @nut , I'm definitly satisfied with the changes, its still not exactly what I had in mind, but it works well enough