I have played every CD since the game came out and this was my least favorite by far. The TTD’s brought out so much random family traces that I finally finished the tasks an hour before the end of the event because getting 30 of the executioner was difficult. I thought I wouldn’t complete it because of the 10 swooping evils required which I used up all my potents and half my strongs to get those 10 and I am a level 47 magizoo. Prior to this event I had only seen 3 swoopers in the wild and love the little guy but after today - not so much!!
I tagged @hpwulola in the middle of the day to find out why they were so rare and so difficult to capture. Hopefully she saw the feedback and can give it to the developers. I appreciate the events as always as I do really enjoy them but this one was flawed.
Also, I know this has been brought up in many different threads but I feel like I should mention my Knight Bus experience today. I had over 200 Dark Arts runestones and I wanted to burn through about 50 or so low level runestones so I could send out gifts to my amazing and generous friends. I played mainly in the ruins and lower level chambers and can’t tell you how many people would join the game and would only hex or heal people but not take on a single foe meaning they were getting the free spell energy from the battle but not expending one single SE. The battles I did would always be full and there was always at a minimum one person not doing a thing except hexing or sharing stamina. So there wasn’t any kind of bug or server error. Please @HPWUTeam do you have a plan on how to deal with this growing situation? The KB has been around long enough and it appears you guys have done an amazing job working out the bugs so there has to be a way to hold these people accountable. Now I do get that life happens and people go into the chamber to play them they get an important phone call, their kid falls off the table, their dogs get in a fight, the doorbell rings, the fire alarm goes off, and I could keep going on as I have had a few of the above listed items happen. Some people on here have had some great ideas on how to keep track of the players activity in fortress battles like scorecards, etc. I would just like to hear from y’all on what are y’all discussing doing. Or if you aren’t discussing anything then let us know that so we can drop it. But you see how this can be very discouraging for the players. IMO this mainly is occurring in the ruins and chamber levels. I rarely see it in the fortress and Dark levels.
I guess I just anticipated lowered spawn rates and lack of tonic ingredients @Magpie31. I had spent the whole week plus prior to that collecting ingredients and brewing tonics and strong exstimulos.
Without those, yes it would have been an absolute bust. And it shouldn’t have to be that way. But yes, thanks to those things, I was able to have success. Was it the best CD? Far from it.
I agree with @Magpie31, I was able to finish the tasks, but it took me many, many hours as well as the use of many, many Trace Detection Tonics. Had I not had the day off AND had I not been brewing potions for days, there is no way I would have been able to finish.
I feel like there is no point in extending CD for a longer period of time if players have to play so many hours to be able to finish the tasks - most people have other responsibilities. I hope the people working on creating game events keep all of this in mind.
I'm usually a pretty responsible bus player, but if I go into Ruins II expecting to do a zero-energy solo and find myself with teammates who jump on every foe I DetHex, I might not end up doing any attacks. Energy is **precious**.
I finished Community Day with 4 spell energy, and that included starting the day at 20 over max from the previous day's daily reward and opening 20 spell gifts. I had the sign shiny, and did everything to prepare except not stockpiling nearly enough Potent Exstimulo and Dawdle Draught potions.
It's really hard to balance a game when some players are going to parks and downtown areas and other players are keeping to constrained areas. Yeah it would probably be safe for me to go to the park -- most people are wearing masks, after all. But I choose not to, and not to do the unnecessary travel to drive to hotspots, and to stay off the streets when all the kids are outside playing, and I'm in awe that the HPWU team has made the game playable for me at all.
This Community Day was *exhausting*; I started it at midnight with 4 hours walking back and forth in what passes for a fertile area around here. But I'm on Silver on the page, starting from nothing, and all I need to do is grind through another 8 Diagon Alley signs (half from portkeys) to reach gold. I'm jealous of the people who finished gold, and sad for the people who got the short end of the RNG stick and played for hours without getting their 10 Swooping Evils.
This was a hard event. Maybe the previous ones were too easy, but I suspect a lot of people are upset because it was so hard, *and* so dependent on RNG.
If the announcement had said "this will be a very difficult event, stock up on potions to have a good chance of completing it" then maybe expectations would have matched reality better.
explains the chances of spell casts/effectiveness of spell casts.
Thanks for the great info.
I believe this is intentional considering the end motive of this game is to complete all gold pages. So, if it can be
calculated or predicted, there is no challenge.
I do agree that it is frustrating when we get a foundable after a failed masterful cast but a successful great cast.
But the above image should clarify why this happens!!!
Also -> depending on your level, the same "great cast" means a lot more!
I wasn't unhappy about the results of casting spells. I know about RNGs, because I was a professional programmer. There is no history in a true RNG, so missing a Masterfull, but getting it on a Fair is just the way the RNG worked. (Not that I don't think the game would be more enjoyable if there were some kind of boost as each spell is used.) I am unhappy with Niantic because there was just no way to get enough spell points to complete the day while sheltering at home because of the WuFlu.
I played hard all day. I even walked around the block several times, violating the shelter, but I just couldn't get enough spell points. I got a fair tally, 11 of 30 Executioners, 19 of 20 LeStranges, 12 of 15 Thestrals, and 7 of 10 Swoops, and completed 4 Fortresses netting 3 Knockturn signs. I burned up a lot of potions on the swoops and the fortresses, and got everything else mostly without potions. (I'm 42nd level and I'm not too bad - I generally get Good or Great casts.) I don't object to needing 3 casts to get a Foundable. I object to not getting enough spell points to complete the challenge.
Niantic ought to be able to do the math. To get 75 foundables plus 5 fortresses required an absolute minimum of 75 spell points. (And that assume you are a real slimeball, who goes into a fortress with a team but doesn't actually attack any of the opponents.) If the game does not give the player a chance to pick up those 75 spell points, then it's stacked against the player who has no chance at all to complete .
But this is a GAME. The point at which it becomes a chore, the point at which your life has to be scheduled around the game instead of the other way around, the point where challenges which are impossible to complete because Niantic doesn'tgive you a chance at the needed resources, is the point that I need to find something more fun. Both ProgressQuest and Godville make fun of gr1nding, but Niantic seems to think you can't make a game without gr1nding. There is a frustration limit, and Niantic has NEVER realized this. That's what drove me away from Ingress. It may drive me away from HPWU.
" Niantic ought to be able to do the math. To get 75 foundables [...] required an absolute minimum of 75 spell points. If the game does not give the player a chance to pick up those 75 spell points, then it's stacked against the player who has no chance at all to complete ."
Let's do the math.
There was a freebie gift in the store with 50 energy.
You get 20 energy a day in the dailies.
Players in constrained circumstances should have been hoarding energy since the end of the Brilliant event.
Players in constrained circumstances should have been hoarding spell energy Gifts for a while, and begging online for more; you can open 20 a day.
This was an insanely hard event for at-home players, but let's complain with correct math...
P.S. to @BIONICMANSTER : perhaps consider Professor as a second profession so you can solo Ruins chambers with zero energy. 1 chance in 6 to get the fragment with zero energy spent.
Contrary to others, it seems, I had fun last Saturday.
Yes I have to work. From 7 in the morning till half past 4 in the afternoon, actually. After that there were some social obligations until 20.00 and I ended my day on the couch at home.
I opened HPWU several times during the day, starting directly after midnight (late night on Friday) and continuously during the day. My main focus was swooping evil so whenever I saw one, I used potent extimulo to get it. When there was time, I also returned other DA foundables. When sitting on the couch I used 1 TTD, did not find it rewarding and went back to just checking the game every 15-30 minutes.
I ended my day having returned 15 swooping evils, my page prestiged from base to silver. I did not finish the assignments (missing 4 executioners, 1 portrait and 1 thestral) but that's ok, rewards were not that great.
For me, it was a good day! I made good progress during the day but no pressure, I didn't care about finishing the assignments. For me the trick is not to play for hours at a time, but to check in on the game as often as I can, return any foundables that show up and then go back to doing what I was doing. When walk
One other thing I wanted to point out for CD pre-Covid days was those three hours I counted on getting at a minimum of 100k WXP. As you level up past level 30-35 the amount of XP you need drastically increases in order to level up. For instance last week I leveled up to 47 and need 550k to get to level 48 so I counted on CD to get a decent portion of WXP in order to level up that month. Since the CD’s have been 24 hours and home based which I am so grateful for I am lucky if I get 50k WXP in the 24 hour period. Normally I get between 35-50k points. Just wanted to point this out to the team @hpwulola as it is impacting ability to level up. Now it is taking me like 6 weeks or so to level up. I hope I don’t sound ungrateful and whiney but those WXP are so important and just wanted to point this out. Thank you so much for reading it and hopefully the team will consider this for future events.
Comments
I have played every CD since the game came out and this was my least favorite by far. The TTD’s brought out so much random family traces that I finally finished the tasks an hour before the end of the event because getting 30 of the executioner was difficult. I thought I wouldn’t complete it because of the 10 swooping evils required which I used up all my potents and half my strongs to get those 10 and I am a level 47 magizoo. Prior to this event I had only seen 3 swoopers in the wild and love the little guy but after today - not so much!!
I tagged @hpwulola in the middle of the day to find out why they were so rare and so difficult to capture. Hopefully she saw the feedback and can give it to the developers. I appreciate the events as always as I do really enjoy them but this one was flawed.
Also, I know this has been brought up in many different threads but I feel like I should mention my Knight Bus experience today. I had over 200 Dark Arts runestones and I wanted to burn through about 50 or so low level runestones so I could send out gifts to my amazing and generous friends. I played mainly in the ruins and lower level chambers and can’t tell you how many people would join the game and would only hex or heal people but not take on a single foe meaning they were getting the free spell energy from the battle but not expending one single SE. The battles I did would always be full and there was always at a minimum one person not doing a thing except hexing or sharing stamina. So there wasn’t any kind of bug or server error. Please @HPWUTeam do you have a plan on how to deal with this growing situation? The KB has been around long enough and it appears you guys have done an amazing job working out the bugs so there has to be a way to hold these people accountable. Now I do get that life happens and people go into the chamber to play them they get an important phone call, their kid falls off the table, their dogs get in a fight, the doorbell rings, the fire alarm goes off, and I could keep going on as I have had a few of the above listed items happen. Some people on here have had some great ideas on how to keep track of the players activity in fortress battles like scorecards, etc. I would just like to hear from y’all on what are y’all discussing doing. Or if you aren’t discussing anything then let us know that so we can drop it. But you see how this can be very discouraging for the players. IMO this mainly is occurring in the ruins and chamber levels. I rarely see it in the fortress and Dark levels.
Thank you for reading and your consideration!
I guess I just anticipated lowered spawn rates and lack of tonic ingredients @Magpie31. I had spent the whole week plus prior to that collecting ingredients and brewing tonics and strong exstimulos.
Without those, yes it would have been an absolute bust. And it shouldn’t have to be that way. But yes, thanks to those things, I was able to have success. Was it the best CD? Far from it.
I agree with @Magpie31, I was able to finish the tasks, but it took me many, many hours as well as the use of many, many Trace Detection Tonics. Had I not had the day off AND had I not been brewing potions for days, there is no way I would have been able to finish.
I feel like there is no point in extending CD for a longer period of time if players have to play so many hours to be able to finish the tasks - most people have other responsibilities. I hope the people working on creating game events keep all of this in mind.
I agree with you there @MariLuvgood. It was definitely a time-consuming struggle.
I'm usually a pretty responsible bus player, but if I go into Ruins II expecting to do a zero-energy solo and find myself with teammates who jump on every foe I DetHex, I might not end up doing any attacks. Energy is **precious**.
I finished Community Day with 4 spell energy, and that included starting the day at 20 over max from the previous day's daily reward and opening 20 spell gifts. I had the sign shiny, and did everything to prepare except not stockpiling nearly enough Potent Exstimulo and Dawdle Draught potions.
It's really hard to balance a game when some players are going to parks and downtown areas and other players are keeping to constrained areas. Yeah it would probably be safe for me to go to the park -- most people are wearing masks, after all. But I choose not to, and not to do the unnecessary travel to drive to hotspots, and to stay off the streets when all the kids are outside playing, and I'm in awe that the HPWU team has made the game playable for me at all.
This Community Day was *exhausting*; I started it at midnight with 4 hours walking back and forth in what passes for a fertile area around here. But I'm on Silver on the page, starting from nothing, and all I need to do is grind through another 8 Diagon Alley signs (half from portkeys) to reach gold. I'm jealous of the people who finished gold, and sad for the people who got the short end of the RNG stick and played for hours without getting their 10 Swooping Evils.
This was a hard event. Maybe the previous ones were too easy, but I suspect a lot of people are upset because it was so hard, *and* so dependent on RNG.
If the announcement had said "this will be a very difficult event, stock up on potions to have a good chance of completing it" then maybe expectations would have matched reality better.
@Dragons1111
https://us.v-cdn.net/6031576/uploads/022/EUASS7UBG8L3.png
explains the chances of spell casts/effectiveness of spell casts.
Thanks for the great info.
I believe this is intentional considering the end motive of this game is to complete all gold pages. So, if it can be
calculated or predicted, there is no challenge.
I do agree that it is frustrating when we get a foundable after a failed masterful cast but a successful great cast.
But the above image should clarify why this happens!!!
Also -> depending on your level, the same "great cast" means a lot more!
I wasn't unhappy about the results of casting spells. I know about RNGs, because I was a professional programmer. There is no history in a true RNG, so missing a Masterfull, but getting it on a Fair is just the way the RNG worked. (Not that I don't think the game would be more enjoyable if there were some kind of boost as each spell is used.) I am unhappy with Niantic because there was just no way to get enough spell points to complete the day while sheltering at home because of the WuFlu.
I played hard all day. I even walked around the block several times, violating the shelter, but I just couldn't get enough spell points. I got a fair tally, 11 of 30 Executioners, 19 of 20 LeStranges, 12 of 15 Thestrals, and 7 of 10 Swoops, and completed 4 Fortresses netting 3 Knockturn signs. I burned up a lot of potions on the swoops and the fortresses, and got everything else mostly without potions. (I'm 42nd level and I'm not too bad - I generally get Good or Great casts.) I don't object to needing 3 casts to get a Foundable. I object to not getting enough spell points to complete the challenge.
Niantic ought to be able to do the math. To get 75 foundables plus 5 fortresses required an absolute minimum of 75 spell points. (And that assume you are a real slimeball, who goes into a fortress with a team but doesn't actually attack any of the opponents.) If the game does not give the player a chance to pick up those 75 spell points, then it's stacked against the player who has no chance at all to complete .
But this is a GAME. The point at which it becomes a chore, the point at which your life has to be scheduled around the game instead of the other way around, the point where challenges which are impossible to complete because Niantic doesn'tgive you a chance at the needed resources, is the point that I need to find something more fun. Both ProgressQuest and Godville make fun of gr1nding, but Niantic seems to think you can't make a game without gr1nding. There is a frustration limit, and Niantic has NEVER realized this. That's what drove me away from Ingress. It may drive me away from HPWU.
" Niantic ought to be able to do the math. To get 75 foundables [...] required an absolute minimum of 75 spell points. If the game does not give the player a chance to pick up those 75 spell points, then it's stacked against the player who has no chance at all to complete ."
Let's do the math.
There was a freebie gift in the store with 50 energy.
You get 20 energy a day in the dailies.
Players in constrained circumstances should have been hoarding energy since the end of the Brilliant event.
Players in constrained circumstances should have been hoarding spell energy Gifts for a while, and begging online for more; you can open 20 a day.
This was an insanely hard event for at-home players, but let's complain with correct math...
P.S. to @BIONICMANSTER : perhaps consider Professor as a second profession so you can solo Ruins chambers with zero energy. 1 chance in 6 to get the fragment with zero energy spent.
Contrary to others, it seems, I had fun last Saturday.
Yes I have to work. From 7 in the morning till half past 4 in the afternoon, actually. After that there were some social obligations until 20.00 and I ended my day on the couch at home.
I opened HPWU several times during the day, starting directly after midnight (late night on Friday) and continuously during the day. My main focus was swooping evil so whenever I saw one, I used potent extimulo to get it. When there was time, I also returned other DA foundables. When sitting on the couch I used 1 TTD, did not find it rewarding and went back to just checking the game every 15-30 minutes.
I ended my day having returned 15 swooping evils, my page prestiged from base to silver. I did not finish the assignments (missing 4 executioners, 1 portrait and 1 thestral) but that's ok, rewards were not that great.
For me, it was a good day! I made good progress during the day but no pressure, I didn't care about finishing the assignments. For me the trick is not to play for hours at a time, but to check in on the game as often as I can, return any foundables that show up and then go back to doing what I was doing. When walk
So sorry to hear that others were less fortunate.
One other thing I wanted to point out for CD pre-Covid days was those three hours I counted on getting at a minimum of 100k WXP. As you level up past level 30-35 the amount of XP you need drastically increases in order to level up. For instance last week I leveled up to 47 and need 550k to get to level 48 so I counted on CD to get a decent portion of WXP in order to level up that month. Since the CD’s have been 24 hours and home based which I am so grateful for I am lucky if I get 50k WXP in the 24 hour period. Normally I get between 35-50k points. Just wanted to point this out to the team @hpwulola as it is impacting ability to level up. Now it is taking me like 6 weeks or so to level up. I hope I don’t sound ungrateful and whiney but those WXP are so important and just wanted to point this out. Thank you so much for reading it and hopefully the team will consider this for future events.