Find the Gobblers - Improvements

Deleted • 3 November 2019 at 4:06 AM

Here are some simple improvements I hope to see in the future for the Find the Gobblers event. Hoping that @Ian will give this little post a chance...

• Make the turkeys more visible. I get it, one is supposed to find them. But it is a game event, and it should be at least a bit fun - to me it feels more like something I have to do for the prize (as I can't afford CC), at the cost of straining my eyes. The turkeys should be less transparent, or at least to "appear" only in the white background part of the site, as the fall background image makes it impossible to spot them If they're on it.

• Remove the popups / overlays. They're annoying and make you lose time - differently that the ones in the halloween event (find the seeds), these can't be closed by clicking anywhere outside their box. You need to click a tiny "x" or move your cursor all the way to the bottom of the overlay. It would be amazing If you could just click on the turkey, the image disappears and ta-da, you got it. No annoying popups or refresh.

• Fix the tab bug alredy. It's a but that's been known for running free for years - basically, I feed using the tab method (open multiple tabs, then feeding closing tabs with CTRL+W). If, however, I do this during the event, and happen to find more than one gobbler in the tabs, only one will be found and recognized. That forces me to use the arrow method while feeding (click the feed button, then the arrow to the next creature), that doesn't work for feed lists and that is slower (especially with the popup thing going on). These days I wasn't able to meet my daily ECs gain while feeding because I'm forced to use the slower method, and coming from someone who needs to make ECs to trade, trust me, it's very annoying.

Hope this helps a bit in improving the event for everyone!
Have an advice / suggestion about it as well? Feel free to post it here! 😊

minnie298a • 3 November 2019 at 7:03 AM

@wererage
Personally to get around the tab thing, I open less tabs at once in November. During the rest of the year, I may open 30 or 40 (I discovered last month my computer totally freezes at about 150 at once), but in November it's only 4 to 8 in the XC, and 5 to 10 on profiles (one or two rows depending on the layout). Yes, I do still miss the odd one, but not that many. For me the slow down is in the quick scan. So by only opening a small number of tabs, once i find a gobbler, I don't feel guilty speeding through the remaining tabs. I have my computer zoomed out a little, but not enough to get the whole page, so still miss some that are at the bottom. Something that only having them on the white wouldn't totally fix for me, but I find scrolling to wearing on my arthritis. I haven't worked out yet if they are more transparent than last year, or if i need to go back to the optometrist for new glasses.

Also if you are Ctrl-W closing the tabs, you don't need to close the pop up.

Deleted • 3 November 2019 at 7:17 AM

@minnie298a
I suppose that makes sense, but the purpose of this topic is not to find workarounds to make the event easier, but to highlight the issues which makes the event tedious hoping the staff will eventually, in a near future, fix them without forcing their users to make workarounds. And yeah, I find scrolling very tedious too so I zoom out the page to the max my eyes can handle and this, of course is a strain for them too.
I'm not using the CTRL+W method, also, because I don't want to miss many - I'm using the arrow method, and using this method the popups need to be closed to go to the next creature. ^^

Thank you very much for your input on this... be sure to take care so you don't strain yourself too much, though. ;w;

minnie298a • 3 November 2019 at 7:34 AM

@wererage
The thing is that most of those issues are complained about every year, and never changed. I'm sure I read a couple of years ago that the issue with the tabs was how it was supposed to work. I say most, as I honestly can't remember how the pop ups worked in previous years.

So, I've been using my "work around" for years. I know that how I play needs to change for November, if I want to participate in the hunt, just like it does in April for the Easter Event. My method of only opening a few pages seems to make it go faster for me than if I used the arrow method. There is also less mouse movement as I only stray to open more tabs or to claim the gobbler. I haven't done any stats yet (I often do, purely for my own amusement), as my internet has been really slow for the last week, but I don't feel like I'm earning a significantly less amount of EC (as opposed to the end of October, not in relation to before my net starting bugging out). However I am still gaining enough gobblers to currently have myself in the top 30 of the leader board.

Deleted • 3 November 2019 at 4:10 PM

@minnie298a
That's... quite sad to hear, actually. If these "issues" are complained about every years, I wonder why they're not addressed and solved, or at least improved properly. Must be a code problem or something... An event should be hard work, sure, but it should also be fun and it should ensure people won't strain too much their eyes or muscles. :/

I suppose we'll really need to be adaptive If we want to partecipate in the hunt, true... but well, I still hope someday these issues will be looked at, at least. 😊

jello • 3 November 2019 at 4:34 PM

@wererage Considering that, being among the top of the pack, Wereage, you could flat out not collect any more gobblers for the rest of the month and still get the prize. I'm glad to see these issues are common and not just on my end. However, this means that, in order to function in accordance with the event for November, someone altering their playstyle for a month shouldn't happen. Although, extraordinary job on the gobblers so far.

Deleted • 3 November 2019 at 4:44 PM

@jello
I admit putting a bit of effort the first day in a panic because I knew I had to be off for two days and I feared getting kicked out the leaderboard. It was totally frustrating because I focused on EC so much I couldn't get anything else done IRL. xD And yep, I just wanted to point out the major issues concering everyone. I think feeding a bit less isn't bad, but... well, it's just... the october event is fun because you actually have to feed to get seeds, right? So you're doing something that keeps you entertained (= feeding) and getting ECs while at it... it keeps you motivated! With gobblers feeding becomes slow and tedious and the best method is to... spam F5 and refresh a single page? No matter how you see it, refreshing a page can't get you motivated nor will entertain you... it's just... repetitive and boring. x)

beta • 3 November 2019 at 6:02 PM

@wererage the title is misspelled I believe. Just a heads up

Deleted • 3 November 2019 at 6:04 PM

@stevepat2002
Oh whoops, thank you very much for letting me know. I definitely need to sleep. xD

minnie298a • 3 November 2019 at 10:00 PM

I slightly modify my playing style for most events. With the Halloween Fair, Dragolds, CRW and the Ark Anniversary thing, I have to be mindful of timers and cool downs.

For the Gobbler and Egg hunts, I need to slow down, pay attention and scan the pages. Others hang around and refresh only a couple of pages for these events. You do what works best for you.

For normal play, I just open a bunch of creatures and mindlessly feed away while watching or reading something in another window. In doing so I feed at a fairly fast rate. I can't go at quite the rate I normally do in November and April. I don't change how my screen is set up (I still have two windows), or change my zoom level. All I do is quickly scan over the parts of the page I can see as I feed, and close the window if a gobbler doesn't jump out. Personally, I've found that by keeping up a reasonable pace with my feeding, the gobblers jump out at me more as I notice the difference in the page easier than when I slowly scan each page. Yes, I miss some because they are out of my page range (my zoom is to a level I can see 4 rows of creatures in the XC). Yes, I miss the occasional one as it's a duplicate (and I've noticed the pop up telling you that "you've already found this gobbler" is missing this year). Yes, I occasionally have to Ctrl+Shift+T to reopen a tab I just closed as I spotted the gobbler as I hit Ctrl+W. However this is the best way for me.

I also adjust my playing style on other games on other sites in order to fulfill the requirements of events and challenges. For example in a match 3 type game, I currently need to collect pieces of a specific colour, so I'm concentrating on matching those yellow symbols over getting a high score and advancing in the game. The event prize is worth it to me to slow down and rethink my game play.

As I said above though, I'm sure I've seen it mentioned in previous years that these issues are not bugs, and they are not flaws. Nothing has changed as nothing was wrong. It is meant to be hard and challenging. I think it's only this and the monthly leader boards that matter for something other than bragging rights. Yes, you are free to complain about it. However, it is specifically how the code was written and designed and therefore how it is meant to be.

Deleted • 4 November 2019 at 3:05 AM

@minnie298a
I do see your point, trust me. What I'm trying to point out is that the event could be more fun and less straining for the eyes, that's all. There's nothing wrong about something being hard and challenging, as long it doesn't force you to strain yourself too much. I've seen lots of people struggling with the event, and I just think a couple little adjustment to it would make things better and avoid the flood of topics of people complaining every years about it or pointing out these "issues" (even If they're not, they're still percieved as issues by lots of people). 😊 I mean, I'm just trying to point out that the event can be improved and made more fun - as I said before, this isn't topic about founding a workaround or suggesting strategies, we have another open for that If you search for it. ^^