Egg Cave Quests Beta: Suggestions & Feedback

chihiro_sang • 22 September 2018 at 3:30 PM

I agree with most people here that if the about 200 players that have access to the beta are causing such a run on the shops that restock and possibly buying times may need to change, but I'm not sure how long a pause would be beneficial as opposed to making both questing and getting items more of a nuisance.

megadash • 22 September 2018 at 3:45 PM

@Ian, these quests were a MAJOR mistake. Now, it's like Neopets where NOTHING is in the shops. Now, whether you're trying to stay on the leaderboards, trying to make 🪙 by using shops, doing quests, wanting to use them on your creatures, or whatever, SCREW THAT! You can't do anything.

If this keeps up, I may have leave Egg Cave, just like I did Neopets (and for the same reason). There's no point in feeding creatures for hours every day if I can't do anything else. I may just have more time to hang out with my Minecraft buddies more and only come here to get someone to do a trade evolution in Pokémon. At least I can actually do more than "acquire resources" there.

I like, and REALLY appreciate what you were trying to do, especially things like getting older creatures back into circulation, but I can't take seeing nothing but, "We're out of stock!" in the stores and having to quit the majority of my quests.

If you want to keep quests, we need to cut back on what you can do. Here are some suggestions:
1.) Limit how many quests you can do in any given day. I suggest one to three per day from ONE random character. This will allow you to bring down the number of tokens needed for any given prize as well.
2.) Make the tokens actual items that can be traded or sold. This will take some of the pressure off of people to complete them and allow them to be collected by people who want to use other currencies ( 🪙, 💵, creatures, and items) but can't get the quests completed themselves. This should also help reduce the hoarding. Prize prices could be adjusted as needed.
3.) Program the quests so that the items can only appear (randomly, at the right shop of course) for the person seeking the item, while on an active quest. This one would HAVE to be paired with #1, to limit over use. Then you could choose to keep the item and fail the quest or finish it.
4.) A change to the above, you could make the item appear in any shop but not be an actual, normal item (it wouldn't be something that you could keep, as it's not an actual item). It could be a special "item" set at a random price set within a range. You'd buy it and it would, automatically, be sent to the character, completing the quest. Like #3, it would HAVE to be paired with #1, to limit over use.

If you'd like any clarifications on these ideas, feel free to let me know.

magicaltomato3 • 22 September 2018 at 4:40 PM

I agree with all these complaints-
I just went to the shops for fun and when I got to the library it said "last restocked 32 seconds ago! "
and it was completely out of stock ☹️
however, I do think the questing is a good idea, and congrats to everyone who got something!

icymuffin • 22 September 2018 at 4:45 PM

@megadash
I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly, but it seems to me your main issue is that you're relying on the main shops to find quest items? I'm quite sure that it was mentioned earlier that requested items are based on what are currently being sold in user shops too, not just npc shops (possibly TC & Auctions as well?).

As for not being able to find items in shops, I agree that users hoarding items from the Toy & Library stores has made it a problem for those two stores. I'm guilty of it too, though I leave ones I already have, it's significantly cheaper than what some people are selling them for in user shops. But I think this can partly be attributed to how often/much items are restocked in shops hasn't been significantly updated since quests released. If that is updated, and given some time after the full release, I think it will help.

I think the problem is also about how few items are stocking in the shops than it is just about hoarding. At the moment, it's common to only see only a few items come into stock at once, with 1 ~ 4ish of each. But there's well over 200 users on quests right now, a Hallowolf for grabs, and the fact you can potentially complete another one every 5 or so minutes?


Personally, I think the quests are easy enough as it is. I'd say the majority of the time, if I can't find the item in npc stores, I can still find the quest items in user shops. Usually it's more a matter if I'm willing to spend the EC to buy the item or not (some items being ridiculously overpriced in user shops). Buying special items or making the items suddenly available in the shops just because you're on a quest really defeats the purpose of why item quests were created in the first place.

netherling • 22 September 2018 at 5:45 PM

I just think something needs to be done to stop the hoarding (it never even occurred to me to do so because it’s selfish, we have enough of that here. Get what you need if you see it and leave it at that. Like really. Stop. It’s already hard enough with 200 people looking for items without y’all hoarding things and wiping the shops out. Honestly.), the people knowing they can make hecka bank off questers by putting normally 1k ec items in their shops for 100k and over (that’s so crappy), and the shops probably need to restock more things each time they do, even if it’s still at the intervals they restock at currently. Because you can go a whole 12 hours and not see an item you need while simultaneously not being able to find it in the user shops right now.

Once this goes sitewide, people who want travels, foods, books, etc, for their creatures will be out of luck because everyone will be buying stuff for quests whether they currently need it or not.

So I think questing should be slightly different, maybe with some of the items we need for tokens not being actual shop items, but kinda like... make it a map quest. So we don’t keep wiping out the shops. Maybe we could follow riddles or something to different NPCs to be given an item, then coming back and giving it to the NPC that asked for it. Kinda like that.

prairie • 22 September 2018 at 6:56 PM

I agree with everyones take on the shops being sold out by hoarders.
I mean, I get it! 😱 You wanna make a hecka ton of EC, but this causes issues for those who want to work on creature item collections and need items for quests.
I'm fairly sure this out of stock issue would change as the prize pools do. As of now, the Toy Shop and Book Store are sold out because every tester is scrambling to find items so they can get a Hallowolf.

Because people will continue to hoard items from specific stores as the prize pool creatures change, I'm not 100% sure if there is a true way to 'fix' it.
If you change the restocking wait -- you'll get users who camp at shops. 😋
One suggestion to this might be to have more items at once when a shop restocks, and more than just 1 (unless its r99) of each item. But I'm sure people will still hoard.

User shops are currently my only bet on really getting items that arn't in my strongroom at this point. But as a user who doesn't really get around to feeding alot of coves, I'm usually at under 1mill EC at a time. And since user shop items are mostly expensive right now (and I'm VERY sure as items for a specific token are needed for more demanded pets, their values will increase higher), I find it challenging and horribly taxing on my EC amount to get 50 tokens in 2 quest selections. Granted, that means I need to work harder and actually feed things, and work harder for a 25-50% chance at whatever pet I'm looking for.

sunfire103 • 22 September 2018 at 7:39 PM

I'm not sure what's going on, but remember this is a new system. Anyone that took advantage of hoarding items for the last 6-12 months since hints of quests were even a thing, good for them they took the time to collect things. This doesn't mean they are out hoarding items from the shops right now, just so no one has a chance at getting things.

Guess my first question is - has the shops increased how much the restock in the day to make up for questing? If not then there is a huge demand and only little amounts getting restocked. Then people that are picking up items either from completing the quests or whatever are really limited to what they can put back into their user shops. Second can we please raise the initial user shops size, (I know for my personally I wouldn't hoard as many things if I can put them all in my shop without paying a fortune to increase my shop size.)

Please Please Do Not compare this to neopets. Neopets quests were never the issue on the millions of problems the site had. It just was TOO big for its own good (meaning billions of users verses thousands it was intended for) and no one ever really knew how to keep up with any of the code, so nothing got updated just threw out more and more items.

I think quests are a great idea to keep people doing something other than feeding on here. I was finding it harder and harder to spend more than 10 minutes a day on here. Yes can there be adjustments made - like how many quests per day are allowed etc - but this is why its in BETA testing. It is gonna take time to get user demand - and actually supply of items to be sorted out. Everything is new, so lots of people are trying to do as many quests as possible. This will even out in time.

newlife • 22 September 2018 at 10:26 PM

I'm also wondering if we could have a forum topic dedicated to people finding items? I see so many topics being created asking for new items everytime, that a master topic would be more helpful.

mairbear • 22 September 2018 at 11:51 PM

I'll chime in and say I agree with the issues with shops being out of stock. Although I think I'm also fairly lucky in that I've always been an item hoarder, mostly travels though so I often find what I need in my own strongroom BUT if I don't have the item, and it's not available for sale in user shops (reasonably priced anyway, up to ~15k surcharge), then I'm pretty much out of luck since the shops restock so infrequently and they are sold out more often than not.

I'm not sure what the fix for this is though. It might just require more time for items to be brought into circulation? I'm sure people have started questing in earnest with the latest update (new prizes hello!) and the demand for items skyrocketed but eventually that would even itself ... so I feel like any measures taken to increase supply should be fairly temporary?

Although part of me still thinks that the quests happen too frequently and either the time in between quests should be increased or a limit be set like @megadash suggested. I think that would even out the playing field a little for all players.


And finally, I just took a look at the trading forum (which I haven't looked at recently cause all of my eggcave time has gone to questing) and yikes, I agree I think a mastertopic would be useful to contain all the item trades?

And I've just had a wild thought about a new trade system where you could specify an item you wanted to buy and set a price and people could auto-sell it to you based on your offer... like a reverse shop .... o-O? No idea whether that would be possible to set up...

icymuffin • 23 September 2018 at 12:01 AM

@mairbear
I think you just invented user quests. Congratulations c:

(It could lead to a cycle of even more hoarding though, now that I think about it)

mairbear • 23 September 2018 at 12:11 AM

@icymuffin

You're right I think it would cause bigger hoarding issues, we'll pretend I never brought it up xD I realized that I was thinking about Runescape which I dabbled in recently and they had like a blind marketplace system which is why it worked there, but it wouldn't work with the way shops are set up on Eggcave 😋



Edit: Did they change the shop restock time to 10 mins? o_O


Edit #2: The links to the archives on the VEND Machine page are all broken.
Example = https://eggcave.com/archives/abetshow
All the links are missing a / between the species name and the word "show"

newlife • 23 September 2018 at 12:47 AM

@mairbear

Hmm.. should I just set up a quest ... request (funny.) topic? I feel like either they'll make a whole new section or just use one topic (section seems likelier..)

Edit: I'm at around 12 minutes on watching shops restock, and nothing.. maybe the lowest time now is 10, and highest is 15? For restocking times.. which doesn't fix the issue.

fainne_24 • 23 September 2018 at 6:22 AM

Hi everyone,

I am not a beta tester but I couldn't help to read all the opinions here and I must add what I think: I think these quests are brilliant. I had a time that I was starting to think of quitting eggcave because everything was so quiet and old creatures were too impossible to find. I'm truly happy that you considered having this in this way because now there's a new reason to stay and there's hope to find my dream creatures.

I think at least in the beggining, if so many people are complaining about the shops (I personally can't complain, I'm always working on my item collection and I'm always able to buy the stuff I need or trade for it with my EC or CC) then you can make the restock times a bit shorter.

Or maybe you can set a limit of items someone can buy in a period of time. Like for example - a player can only buy 5 items in 1 minute. Then it has to wait for example 5 minutes until it's able to buy more stuff. Like it happens with the coments on the profile walls that we have to wait a certain amount of time before being able to post again a comment.

That's just a suggestion.

Have a nice sunday!

sprite • 23 September 2018 at 2:01 PM

This system is new before jumping to quitting. Practice the wait and see approach...give it time.While it's frustrating have to keep in mind for many years, even with item collection, people did not really want to waste their ec on items.

I'm a hoarder and always have been but I don't sit in shops for hours either. Also hitting all the shops tho. I'm not selling any thing atm either cause using the items I have and get are for quests. Is it wrong for people to charge insane amounts..maybe..but it's also up to you to pay them or not.

I play on Subeta and you can quest there and it is a daily limit of 10 quests per day unless your are a gold account which you pay monthly for perks and it's 15 quests a day. There are vending machines you can get items they are limited too. There is no limit or time restrictions at the shops. You don't even have to key in amount for purchase. They do at least once a year mass donations of items. Even with all that you can still have to quit a quest due to items being too high or none can be found. You are not meant to complete every quest.

On here I find just don't want to part with some items so end quests. Have also had to quit cause don't have the item. Also, don't have a real need for the pool ( still love it) but saving up for future ones. I'm doing about 5 completed quests with at least canceling 2-4.

As a long time player on here I am very very happy with quests being implemented. Also that the site is taking feedback and have done improvements. Which is another reason to wait and see 😉

mairbear • 23 September 2018 at 4:25 PM

@newlife

I'm not sure on the whole forum topic / section for item seeking anymore tbh ^^; Looking at the ones that currently exist... it doesn't seem like the best way to communicate about quests since the back and forth doesn't seem to finish before that 12 hour window...

And really, I think the topics stem from the item shortage, which is something that will ultimately regulate itself with time. But I guess having a central topic wouldn't hurt? Sorry I'm kinda on the fence on this xD

prairie • 23 September 2018 at 4:34 PM

*sweats* at 20k EC, but still have another 60 tokens to go. XD

newlife • 23 September 2018 at 5:19 PM

@mairbear

Yeah, I agree that most of it seems to come from people not being able to find anything either in the shop or user shops. This may be an issue that stays intact even if shop time restock is lowered.

I think I'll go ahead and make a topic, hopefully it'll help reduce the craziness of topics being created left and right

scorch_cloud222 • 23 September 2018 at 10:32 PM

The price gauging is making this impossible. People are marking things up by 500% or more, and we have to buy two items for each one quest. 100 quests for *one* creature? Who on earth can afford something like that?

Ian • 24 September 2018 at 2:23 PM

Hello everyone,

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all of your thoughts and feedback on the latest changes. Your feedback on item prices, restocking, and questing difficulty is so valuable. We realize that there are some new pain points (i.e. hoarding, price gauging) but please know that these are 100% fixable problems.

It may sound weird but many of these problems that you’re reporting have been expected and anticipated by site staff. Before you rage quit on this beta (lol), remember that our main mission in creating the questing system was to (1) give items more value by requiring them for more site features and (2) give users a fun way to obtain older creatures that they would otherwise never be able to trade up for because of impossibly high values. The beta is for working out the pain points before it hits the public. Remember that Egg Cave is a game about creatures: what the heck kind of game is fun when half of the creatures are unobtainable? Quests is our way of presenting a permanent solution to the community.

On Users with Stockpiles

Prior to the questing system, items other than Travels (creature backgrounds) had little effect on your gameplay experience. There was really no advantage to having items. Questing, especially when the hottest creatures are available in reward pools, is going to place more demand on items of certain types. People with the largest Strongrooms and banks right now, yes, are going to start out with an obvious advantage. Their advantage will eventually expire as these items are consumed and spent to obtain Quest Tokens.

This was expected and anticipated by site staff. It'll work itself out over time.

What We’re Going To Do Next

The good news with the pain points of hoarding, sweeping a main shop clean, price gauging, and item availability is that we have several "levers" that we can adjust to smooth things out moving forward. The "levers" that we can pull are:

- Frequency of main shops restocking
- Put caps on the # of items you can restock from main shops within a certain period (I kind of seriously dislike this though, because what happens if you happen across a r99 in a window when you’ve hit your cap?)
- Reinstating a CAPTCHA-like code when restocking items from the main shops to intentionally add difficulty to restocking items (this can make restocking more competitive)

Price gauging is a secondary problem to item circulation, so we’re going to try and address main shops and item circulation first. What are your guy’s initial thoughts on some of these solutions above? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

immortalraven • 24 September 2018 at 2:58 PM

@Ian
I don't like the second option for the 'levers'
I'm ok with the first and third options though x3

Ian • 24 September 2018 at 3:03 PM

@immortalraven we also agree that caps would pretty much be the worst. 😊 Thanks for your thoughts. Looking forward to hearing others'.

sunfire103 • 24 September 2018 at 3:20 PM

Oh this is fun.... with help from guild friends I get my first VEND 😊

You have received a Skrulline egg from The VEND Machine!

@Ian
Guess I can give opinion as well on "levers". I think 1 will be good for awhile - and adjust as necessary, will still want to make it somewhat challenging. 3 this depends on what captcha you use. Some are really hard to read and just become quite frustrating.

Can the Gourmand ask for 2 items? (I know this might annoy people) but he's asking for 1 then rewarding one out - this might make too many food items around.

Unfortunately making the harder ones go for the special creatures as well, made those quests even that much more difficult. I think 20 for the book/toy quests for the CRWs should be adjusted.

I don't think finding items for 10k and under is horrible - there are lots of links in the click exchange if people need more points - plus this will help out those poor creatures that want to eat and evolve as well 😉 Even if you are unlucky and all are 10k - you'd be paying 2 Mil to get a creature that was going for more than 1 Billion EC (if doing my math correct).

Also love the VEND icon. Great way to try and not mess with old ones values.

icymuffin • 24 September 2018 at 3:36 PM

@Ian
I agree that putting a cap on items per period of time could be problematic, regardless of its rarity, especially if you're on a quest. Though, the chances of actually finding the requested items in shops are slim anyways. (But I guess in a way that would make you feel even worse if you reached your cap? Haha~)
If you made a reasonable cap, I think it could be doable.

Personally, while not too big a deal, I think putting the CAPTCHA back in would be a bit annoying. Stores already require that you input a price. Having a to input a second and even more precise number would be a bit much. But if you insisted on putting the CAPTCHA in, I would suggest that you remove haggling in exchange.


Also, I appreciate your guys efforts to making old creatures available to newer users in a balanced way.

And for a valuable creature like the Hallowolf, you can afford to raise the bar a bit. The opposite for the 2018 CRW creatures. Users could find it easier & cheaper to trade for the particular creature they want given the odds are still 1/7 even after getting enough coins.

ethereality • 24 September 2018 at 6:11 PM

CAPTCHA's after a cap would be a nice alternative to the second and third levers. I feel like CAPTCHAs were annoying but eventually restockers would have to go through CAPTCHAs if they bought too much items from the main shops.

degong • 24 September 2018 at 6:39 PM

I, for one, am for the first lever. I've camped at the library, and the majority of the time all of the books are gone within 30 - 60 seconds, depending on the amount. This is either one very fast user or multiple people competing. Having a higher frequency of shops restocking would probably allow more people to buy items, therefore increasing the amount of items on the market and eventually lowering all of the prices down because of supply/demand type things (I'm not an economist, obviously 😋).

I think CAPTCHAs should only be implemented if they are of the older kind, the kind where a garbled mess of digits would be presented, instead of the more modern "pick all the squares with a street sign". Those CAPTCHAs (I believe its called "reCAPTCHA") may or may not show the whole "pick the squares with a street sign" type thing. If someone is using a bot to buy out all of the items in the shops (which would be able to get through the older CAPTCHAs), then I think we might have a different problem.

Anyway, that's what I think! 😊 I think quests are a nice pastime I'd do when I have the time. Right now, I'm not too stressed out about it since there isn't a creature I'd be clamming for, but that's in due time. 😉

sunfire103 • 24 September 2018 at 7:03 PM

I agree with @ ethereality - perhaps instead of getting locked out as in Opt 2 - you could implement Opt 3 after so many buys per alotted time.

I agree with @ degong - please no reCAPTCHA or whatever they are called. They are ridiculous and can make you repeat the process 3 different times.

I'm not sure how much coding would go into it, but perhaps the more frequent the shops restocks is based on how many people are online at a time. When I get online early in the morning it is fairly easy for me to find things in the shops, whereas times of the day like now (7PM ECT) its cleared all 98% of the time.

sprite • 24 September 2018 at 7:44 PM

I like the first lever with keeping and eye on the economy. As noted certain times during the day/evening are worse. Can get some idea with upcoming holidays just how much more strained the shops will be.

2nd lever feels like a punishment for all so feel just a bit too much. Plus before quests always loved trying to get the new items,especially travels, and still plan to do so.

Hate all CAPTCHAs as they can be glitchy.

ETA: I'm also all for helping the creature economy via re-releasing this way. Yes, it should be fun with some work and this is what the quests do.

Ian • 24 September 2018 at 7:56 PM

Thanks for everyone else's input so far. We're pretty much 100% against placing buy caps for main shops and reCAPTCHAs, as they are really annoying, stupid, and interrupt the flow.

We may explore alternative, simpler CAPTCHAs (i.e. enter the 4 digit code instead of both letters and numbers) or do CAPTCHA enforcement for high-volume buyers only.

mairbear • 24 September 2018 at 11:21 PM

I like the idea of CAPTCHA after a certain number of purchases ^^

Simultaneously I think increasing the restock frequency (at least temporarily) would also be a good idea.

minnie298a • 25 September 2018 at 1:37 AM

I've been toying with this since I was selected in the second round. I'm yet to find any bugs.

I gave it 10 or so quests at the start and then stopped. I know I don't have the time at the moment to really push myself (real life is being mean), and I know that I will probably drop off on questing once the fair starts. As a result I stopped as, like many, I didn't want the creatures on offer and as, at the time, we would lose any left over tokens, it just wasn't worth the effort for me.

Since the extra prize pools were added and it's been announced we can keep tokens, I've gone back to trying, sporadically, because real life is still being mean. My only issue is the one you are aware of - not being able to find items, particularly the popular books and toys.

I only just got:
"Last restocked 48 seconds ago

Currently in stock...
We're out of stock!"

Of all the suggestions I've read I do like the high number CAPTCHA idea. Be it either site wide or store specific eg 20 purchases in all NPC shops or 5 purchases in each of the shops.