Do away with adding 200EC to Cove expansion

heatherm19 • 9 September 2022 at 3:52 PM

I can't believe how quickly this was implemented!! My goodness, @Ian you run a wonderful site here!

snowywinter • 9 September 2022 at 6:08 PM

@Ian This was absolutely WONDERFUL! I'm so relieved/happy about it I'm almost crying. < 3 I know other players were quite frustrated by it. Some people will still complain, but it IS an immense help. Much better to do something now than wait for figuring out what will work going forward and have nothing.
(Honestly, in and of itself the additional cove spaces is all I had imagined any time I wished for change... not that something might be put in place that would be self-sustaining. So anything else will be a bonus. ^^ )

- - - -
@heatherm19
I K R ?!
When I started, I swore I'd only ever spend money on the site once or twice a year for pixels.
Now, it's more like I don't mind supporting the people who work hard not-always-so-behind-the-scenes, and getting a cute little pixel thing as a bonus. lol.
This site is the standard of what used to be expected in customer service, online and in-person. It's a shame that this is now a rare unicorn.
I may not always agree with the decisions made or not made around the site, But the fact is that they DO *listen* and interact with the players. : )
(If they are just AI... that would be really trippy. - I caught on to the deep fake technology before it was even common public knowledge ...and if these are bots, it's far and advanced technology than other companies have created. LOL >.< I kid i kid/ jk
side note: Have you ever interacted with those video customer service bots? It's really creepy! They look and sound like a real human. - just something is a bit... off.)
Can cont in PM if you want since that went off topic. lol

calenlass • 31 October 2022 at 3:49 AM

@Ian It's great that our voices are heard...eventually (a huge thank you!) but I have a question: It's great that the cove spaces have been raised to 500 but what about those players who've PAID to expand their space to OVER the 500 before this was implemented? Don't we get the extra 200 cove spaces given to us, seeing that we've been paying an extra 200EC for every cove space from our initial 300 free cove spaces?

heatherm19 • 11 September 2023 at 2:45 AM

*bump*

I think this is a good time to revisit this issue, as it's now been a full year since the cove-space upgrades to 500 free spaces. @Ian mentioned earlier in this thread the idea of yearly increases:
"Finally, on a yearly basis, I think the default Cove spaces should be expanded since we add, at minimum, 48 new creatures per year (more with events)."

I'm definitely curious if that's been actually decided as something to be implemented (yearly increases) or if it was just a random idea tossed out there in the moment.

*However*, even with yearly increases the cove-expansion costs are still pretty ridiculous, especially when you really start getting up there. In theory I totally get why, say, cove space #750 should be more expensive than cove space #550. And I totally understand why extra cove spaces should cost ec, and the cost should increase. But a 200ec increase *every* *single* *space* really does just become too much at some point.

I have the ability to be here every day, earning a good amount of ec every day (recently it's dropped off a bit, but I can still normally get 100k+ per day). A *lot* of users don't have the ability to be here so much, spend so much time feeding creatures to earn ec. For the average user on this site, I'm guessing expanding beyond about 1k cove spaces is a long-term effort for even one more space. In a *collecting* game with new creatures released every month, and having official side-accounts specifically for 'storage', making it so difficult to expand past a certain limit doesn't really make sense and puts more restriction and stress on users than needed.

Maybe doing away with the 200ec increase isn't feasible, but there must be *some* way to ease the burden a bit. Discounts for 'bulk-buying' spaces, only increasing the cost every 5 or 10 spaces, 'earning' cove spaces through the click exchange, there are so many ideas in this thread alone and I know there have been other threads on the topic too.

(I just spent over 4 MILLION ec to gain 18 spaces on my 'Floofies' side, and yes that is what prompted me to come back to this thread.)

(Please excuse any typos, keyboard dying...)

ida92 • 11 September 2023 at 4:47 AM

@heatherm19 I still higly support doing something about the increasing price of cove expansions.

Even after a year, it still feels unfair to me that we never got back the EC we spent on expansions... I had almost 500 spaces on my side (@veema), which I spent a lot of EC on and after the site update (500 spaces), the EC never returned to me or anyone who expaned their cove...

I'd rather have a fixed price for expanding, than a price that keeps increasing with every expansion.

heatherm19 • 11 September 2023 at 5:45 AM

@ida92 I wasn't going to mention that, but yeah it really was kind of a shock that we basically threw tons of ec away on upgrades that were completely erased when the free spaces were increased. I would think we'd at least get to keep those bonus spots we paid for (so if we'd bought 100 spaces before the increase to 500, we would have the 500 free spots *plus* the 100 that we already paid for).

Something else I just thought of, and maybe this is why this whole cove expansion thing seems so unbalanced imo: In a lot of games, when you buy an 'expansion', it's more like a group of things or new places or something. Basically, it doesn't feel right that we have to spend so much ec for *one* single space... A cove 'expansion' should be a handful of spaces at least. I guess it ties in with some of the other ideas, but I think it would be awesome if we could buy 'expansion packs' of 5/10/20/whatever spaces at a time.

minnie298a • 11 September 2023 at 5:45 AM

@ida92
I had well over 500 when the free 200 where given out. While there where no refunds, new places where charged at the lower, new amount. So, the fee was reduced eg slot 501 cost what 301 used to. Personally, I didn't care then about the "lost" ec (and I'd bought like 10 or 20 slots in the fortnight leading up to the giveaway), and I still don't.



While I may grumble about the price of expansions (my next one will be over 120k, which according to my post here last year, is less then I was paying then due to free slots price reduction), I'm surprising fine with the cost. In my early days it helped me keep things at a level I could handle. After gaining my LoV, it still helped keep my cove reasonably controlled.

For me, financing the expansions was part of the challenge of collecting. It was something for me to aim towards, a goal to achieve.

Also while I may only have one account, you are allowed to have up to 4. That is 2000 free slots. Nearly double the currently available creatures.

In saying that:
Would I complain about some extra free slots? No.
Would I moan about a way to earn them (eg buying with XC credits)? Double No.
I wouldn't even complain if the price was reset to only 100 extra per slot, with no refunds.

snowywinter • 13 September 2023 at 3:03 PM

Still would like to see X number of free cove spaces per year added. (not just an Advent prize.)
(Not some huge addition like the boost we got a year ago, but five to 1/4 the # of new species the year had.)

and/or as a log-in bonus (maximum 1 per month.)
(was going to say heck, this could even be bundled in with completing the Monthly tasks; but NO, I want it to be available for ALL the players.)

I really don't see either of those options as asking for too much. (I'd DEFINITELY still have to pay for expansions, but it would be a nice offset and feel like user appreciation.)


@ida92 (oops, pinged the wrong person, that should have been @heatherm19.)
I would love to be able to buy cove expansion bundles in the Cash Shop if it would give a (small) discount and I wouldn't have to sit there and click the Expand button repeatedly. (Because I do them in batches. I've tried doing them as needed, but it drives me nuts having an uneven number and knowing I'll just need to buy more in a day or two.)
(And I'm to the point of already spending CC equiv anyhow, it would save me the hassle of having to later buy CC vouchers to trade off for EC after doing my expansions.)

heatherm19 • 13 September 2023 at 3:57 PM

@snowywinter I've gotten to the point of trading cc for ec specifically to fund expansion as well, and being able to buy a cove-expansion bundle/pack from the Cash Shop would be so helpful. Obviously I wouldn't want that to be the *only* thing done about the issue, since cc isn't readily available to all players, but it definitely would help.

Deleted • 10 November 2023 at 9:42 AM

@Ian I've been suggesting something similar for YEARS. I have a huge tasma army and had to hiatus and stop play because after 1000+ tasma, it would cost 1mil+ EC just to buy ONE single slot. I don't understand why it has to be this way. Please, PLEASE, just lock the price of one slot at 1000ECs and let us buy as many slots as we can at a reasonable prices, just like name changes... why one slot has to inflate this way every time? You're purchasing still the same single digit, one slot...


Current Cove Spaces: 1502
Total Spent In Upgrades: 100,500,600 EC

The new system made things more bearable (it now costs 200k instead of 2mil to expand), but once you reach x creatures it will still be impossible to expand further. I'd love one day to have just one account with just all my tasma, and to keep expanding it 'till I can, and it's impossible to think a similar scenario right now because no matter what discount you make, once you get x creatures, it'll become too expensive to keep purchasing slots.