⭐️💰 Monthly Challenge & Dailies Feedback Megathread

autumnal • 25 May 2023 at 10:08 AM

There have been so many 12 quest days this month ☹️ and it's especially difficult because so many players put items in their shops for crazy amounts of ec, so I have to fail them.

mindwhiper • 25 May 2023 at 10:12 AM

@autumnal same thing! The green coloured item dropping it almost always means that the item will be found in someone's collection.

pewpewkachu • 25 May 2023 at 12:36 PM

I get that you guys want an EC sink, but 12 quests and 15 restocks in the same day is too much. I don't click enough to keep up with these demands. You can't just punish users across the board just because some have too much EC.

Assuming you do 300 clicks/feeds a day, that's only 30k, and quests eat through that reeeeeeeal quick and then some since most people price at an average of 3-6k per item. That's 72k on 12 quests assuming you get mostly 3k or lower items, which usually doesn't happen.

hikanu • 25 May 2023 at 4:42 PM

3 days ago I said: "It looks more and more likely that I'll be taking a full week off from dailies."

I get a full week off with another 12 quest day.

Did I jinx it or call it? Who knows, but I was right. XD

saturna • 25 May 2023 at 10:14 PM

Wow, the RNG gods are absolutely merciless as of late-
Are they angry? Can anything be done to to appease them? '-';

I'm not struggling myself but I know there are others who could really use a lucky break

minnie298a • 26 May 2023 at 4:50 AM

The RNG Gods definitely need some sort of sacrifice in regards to the whole Quest thing. The power seems to have gone to their heads. Yes, it's just a run of bad luck, I understand that. And that run had got to end soon. Statistically, it has got to change soon.

Now before anything is said about that sounding like complaining, let me throw some numbers at you. As I've mentioned several times before on this thread, I've been taking notes. I finally got around to collating them in to some sort of format that is easier for me to read and extract information from.

So, with that in mind............
Yesterday, the 25th May 2023, was the 113th day of the Monthly Challenge.
That is 565 individual tasks.
It was also the first day to claim the 4th CC prize.

I've been taking notes from the 3rd Feb, or day 3, so that's 111 days of notes, covering 555 tasks.
In that time we have been asked to perform the following not so randomly selected tasks:
300 Feeds - 29 times
300 Clicks - 10 times
15 Restock - 10 times
3 Forum posts - 57 times = total 171 posts

Quests in general has appeared 36 times (totaling 342 quests)
12 quests has appeared 18 times (equaling 216 quests)
15 quests appeared 1 time before that was changed (which means 231 high tier quests over 19 days)

So if my math is correct (and lets face it I learnt this stuff last millennium, meaning it's buried deep and a bit rusty, so feel free to correct it if it's wrong) -
Quests in general is 32% of days or 6% of total tasks
12 quests is 50% of the quests task days. 16% of total days, and 3% of total tasks.

Top tier Feeds has appeared on 26% of the days. 5% of total tasks. There is a Feed task every day.
The top tier Restock and Clicks are at 9% days each. 1.8% total tasks.

Since the 3rd Feb, I have also been personally been awarded:
400CC
160 Items (for the 89 days from the 20th Feb or 36% of tasks gave me something)
4 monthlies
620,393 ec ( or why I started taking notes)
Of which
48,327ec was awarded before the change on the 20th Feb (Av - 568.5 ec/task)
572,156 ec was awarded after the 20th Feb (Av - 1285.7 ec/task)

Personally, I'm fine with the current system. I have the resources (time, items and ec) to be able to complete the tasks each day. I understand others aren't that privileged. Had this come about back in my early days, I would have done what I could for the ec and items, and abandoned the idea of getting the CC for a while.

Adding some different things like SARC donations (when the next creature comes around), or introducing blog posts back (but limiting it to one post not three, and on days when an announcement is made would help reduce the spamminess worries) are two with current features. Tasks tied into events would also be nice if possible, eg visit Dragolds Den 3 times, Visit the Asteroid 3 times during Ark Day celebrations, ask the Doovoo a question during the Halloween fair.

sapphire12 • 26 May 2023 at 5:25 AM

@minnie298a So reading this, what seems to be highlightable is.

1) Top Tier Quests is 3% of total tasks while Top Tier Clicks and Restocks 1.8% of total tasks - so top tier of quests appear more often than clicks and restocks combined

2) Top Tier Quests appear 50% of the quest days - so there is a 50:50 chance 12 quests appears on a quest day instead of a 33:33:33, and this is after putting in the fact that top tier cant appear two days in a row

Do these observations match the data? Thank you for collating btw 😊

heatherm19 • 26 May 2023 at 5:39 AM

@minnie298a Thank you one again for posting stats from your notes! It really is helpful to see it all that way, kind of helps see the bigger picture.

I, too, personally have no problems completing the tasks (on quest days I even challenge myself to get them done as fast as possible) (though admittedly I do get a little annoyed at the quests). All of my concerns and suggestions posted here are mostly me trying to look at everything from a larger userbase perspective: All the users that have work/school/kids/etc and simply can't dedicate so much time to tasks so often. Users who have medical issues that result in negative physical effects when having to click/feed 300 creatures in one day, or all the clicking/steps it takes to do so many quests in one day.

Reasons like those are why I think it would be more helpful and inclusive for the userbase as a whole if some more tweaks were made. (The idea of being able to 'swap' a task if you simply can't do a specific task on that day, and adding more/new types of tasks to give some more variety and spread things out a bit more, I think could really help a lot.)

minnie298a • 26 May 2023 at 5:57 AM

@sapphire12
There are other tasks that would be considered top tier that I didn't add up and break down (15 Cave Approaches and 10 donations for example).

But the frequency of the 12 Quests stood out to me, particularly in relation to quest numbers in general. I think the other 18 days averaged out to 7 quests per day, and that includes the rogue 15 day. I really worked the others out to show that. But yes, by my math there has been almost as many top tier quest days as top tier Clicks and Restocks combined.

For anyone interested in working out the other averages my stats can be found on
February
March
April
May

February is a bit wild, due to the early changes in tiers and rules (there were 5 tiers in February for quests, and at least one 20 Cave approaches).
May is still a work in progress for obvious reasons, and won't be updated daily.

@heatherm19
I've been trying to paint the bigger picture all along. But I know it's something not everyone can see (like not finding the forest because of the trees). The little bits all add up and seem more significant when presented as a large sum of actual data (rather than speculation) broken down. Those quests equal 342 tokens. One player may not be interested in the current batch of VEND creatures, which is all they concentrate on, but the current ones are not permanent. And besides, others can't get the creatures currently available and will buy them.



I haven't been bothered yet to work out how many of my won items are actually quest things and how many are trinket and bean items. That may never be done, but I have the raw data in my notebook (again, I'm old and like to practice my handwriting a little each day). For me, the items not required for quests are still task usable items though (trinkets for use and coffee for donate).

snowywinter • 27 May 2023 at 7:10 PM

I'm wondering... (not so much for myself, but i see a lot of players with scheduling /time-zone issues, and I know this won't help everyone, but...) Just for Dailies could an option be implemented where players could select their 24 hours cycle? They'd select it at the beginning of the month.
"What time would you like to begin Quests?" or something like that.

(Or would something like that create some instability in the code / take up too many resources?)

minnie298a • 27 May 2023 at 10:07 PM

@snowywinter
In a way, I'm one of the people with an interesting time zone. I've adjusted my playing routine to compensate. This is not the first site I've had to do so with.

At the moment (with relevant daylight savings in play) midnight Egg Cave time, is 2 pm my time (half the year it's 3pm). As in 12.05 am Monday ECT, is 2.05pm Monday my time. I ended up changing when I do the Alkub Racing and Sandrodon dailies, from as the notifications come in to when I first get on after change of day. This was to ensure that I could do all the tasks as soon as possible, and not have to stress about getting on in the morning (one of them resets at like 8am my time) to do the dailies.

The way I've always seen it is everyone gets 24 hours. Just because it's not midnight to midnight in your local time, doesn't change that.

suzanab • 28 May 2023 at 12:05 PM

I have 19 dailies done. IF I do today, will be 20. I don't think I can do 5 more in 3 days. So I lost the main prize because of stupid 12 quests a day. Thanks.

mindwhiper • 28 May 2023 at 12:39 PM

Today I was looking through old posts in the topic and noticed one interesting detail. Users offered quite a lot of useful things to facilitate the execution of dailies, such as

- "claim all" button
- redirecting to the matching games\pages when clicking on tasks in the menu
- "do something" with time zones (asked from the very beginning, it's almost June)
- add logs in user shops that were sold out (and don't say that no one needs it)
- fix the generator
- make an exchange/reroll of tasks (for EC, mind you!)
- exchange tokens for other tokens
- FIX THE GENERATOR
- counting NOT daily tasks, but tasks for a MONTH

and a lot of other things. Of all the above and other suggestions (for which this thread was actually created), all that was done was to put the generator on crutches, which is why now everyone suffers, depends of our own "privileges" degree and lack of time. No my deal with that. But.

I am leading to the fact that none of the suggested ideas has been done or even reviewed. And it is unlikely that anything will be done. It seems to me that one should not even hope for some adequate answer except "that's not bug, this is BAD LUCK!" or "sorry about this!)))" or "sorry abot that!!1))"

Disappointed.

ahgirltc • 28 May 2023 at 2:14 PM

yes please make an option for a reroll at the cost of EC. i have no time for 15 approaches sigh

snowywinter • 28 May 2023 at 5:07 PM

@mindwhiper With so much left that could be improved/implemented it may be easy to forget, but a lot of ideas were actually acted upon. Number of certain tasks reduced (like when the max number of eggs in cave was 20 instead of 15.) and Blog post requirements was eliminated. (I know there's more, but our feedback is being taken into consideration. Not all of it will be approved.)

i am grateful for the things that were changed and hold out hope that with enough feedback that some of the other things still could be.
(Great job compiling the list by the way!)
The top ones I hope for are
- Links/redirects from the Dailies/Congratulation pages
- either Reduced number of Quests from 12 to 10 and/OR Fixed Dailies with calendar (with a few less days of Max Quests.)
(While being able to exchange tokens would be AWESOME... that belongs in a separate thread.)

saturna • 29 May 2023 at 2:38 PM

I understand why people are frustrated, but in my opinion one month is too small a sample size to judge the "fairness" of the RNG for the system. Yes, this month had a disproportionate amount of 12-quest missions, but there's recency bias to take into account (As far as I remember I don't think there was as much of a quest issue last month once the rotation change was implemented, and there weren't many posts talking about it here either). There's nothing so far to indicate that having this many high-tier quest missions will be the norm for every month going forward

That being said, I'm not against tampering with the rotation occasionally to provide manufactured relief if the RNG has been incredibly punishing for a while

minnie298a • 29 May 2023 at 8:58 PM

I agree with the bias thing. We've had 18 days of 12 quests since this thing started. 7 have been this month, but also 8 days in March. That leaves 3 (plus the one off 15 in Feb) for the other 2 months. It balances out overall.

And yes, some changes have been made. Along with the 2 lots of 20 cave approaches, the top tier for quests was originally 15 and I think the low tier was 7 instead of 5. There was also the change of the top tier of one thing not appearing back to back.


But it is still classed as a challenge, so shouldn't be lessened much to remain so. I can normally knock all the tasks off in an hour. 2 hrs if we have to do 10 use/consume as I seem to get sucked in to rabbit holes trying to find the perfect travel for my creatures.

magenta • 30 May 2023 at 1:01 AM

Hi! Have been doing dailies consistently for the past 2 months to collect the reward and have been reading the forum posts in this topic for a while too, just wanted to input my opinions and suggestions as well! Personally, I do enjoy the dailies because it gives me something to do on the site when previously I would only have stayed on for like 10 minutes to just check the forums or something. The rewards are also pretty alright for me, but dailies can get tiring when we get many EC-draining quests in one day (12 quests + 10 restock in shop) as I have to click/feed many creatures to make-up for the loss of EC (about 1000 creatures or more). So overall, I do enjoy the dailies and appreciate the changes made to the dailies like for example the 20 cave tries reduced to 15 but more can be done to reduce some days' EC strain.
I'm in a spot where I am privileged enough to be able to complete the dailies even with 12 quests but I do understand there are people that aren't. The problems I would highlight on my end would be:
- String of Bad Luck (a.k.a 12 quests for many days in one month but not many days in other months)
- Lack of transparency regarding the miserable meltdown quest (sorry to beat a dead horse but I was quite taken aback by there being a lack of a blog post to explain the situation and just leaving us to deal with it)

Solutions I would consider would be:
For String of Bad Luck, as mentioned by other players, I believe lowering it from 12 > 10 would be good. If not, other forms of RNG buffers to prevent a string of bad luck could be implemented, like the no quests 2 days in a row, except maybe limit 12 quests to twice a week sort of thing to prevent bad RNG which is what most people seem to be complaining about.
+
A blog post next time a significant change is made.

Overall, I am still pretty happy with dailies as I do get a reward for playing and I do appreciate the EC team's efforts. However, some improvements can still be made and I hope eventually we all do reach a compromise 😊 Lastly, I don't see the need to keep bombarding this topic with negativity and rude/hateful comments directed towards the EC team. First, no one likes to be talked to like that, and second, change takes time. Wishing everyone a good day!

EDIT: As pointed out by alraune3, I do not mean negativity as in negative feedback which is constructive feedback regardless. I meant comments which do not add constructively to the discussion at all and only serve to criticise, hope this clears it up!

alraune3 • 30 May 2023 at 5:14 AM

@magenta
I agree with you on almost all points. However, no one here has posted rude or even hateful things. If objective criticism is already called "hateful", then everyone here could only sing hymns of praise. But it's a feedback thread and feedback is not always just enthusiastic.

And a little more feedback (from the EC team) on the feedback would be nice 😉

magenta • 30 May 2023 at 5:33 AM

@alraune3 Hi there! Thanks for taking the time to read through my post 😊 I think it was mentioned a couple of pages ago that posts that are negative in the sense that they are taking away from the discussion would be removed hence why you don't see any on this topic right now. Personally, I did see a few myself browsing this topic before they were removed and it wasn't a pretty sight. I do understand the grievances many have towards dailies being time-consuming but those comments that were deleted really did not add to the discussion constructively at all ☹️ I do agree with criticism not being pretty at times and I did not intend to say otherwise, sorry if it read that way! I'll edit my post to reflect that, would be great to get more feedback on here (positive or negative, barring rude comments) and I'm looking forward to updates from the EC team 😊

alraune3 • 30 May 2023 at 6:34 AM

@magenta
Thank you for the clarification.😊 I didn't realize that some post were removed. Probably that's the reason why I didn't see them at all.

As to the time consume of dailies: In addition to the sometimes hard requirements, there is also the difficulty of playing the game on a cell phone, as I do most of the time. Anyone who has ever tried to do 300 click exchanges or 12 quests on the tiny display knows what I'm talking about. (This is not meant to be a complaint, just a comment 😉)

snowywinter • 1 June 2023 at 3:57 PM

I just want to thank Ian and the team for making tasks accomplished before verification retroactive! ❤️
(I had a lot going on today and just got around to verification, so it was nice coming and seeing I had most done already AND didn't have to scramble or miss out on completion completely.)

I know it's already been covered, but I wanted to let you know it's a change that is really appreciated and has made a huge difference! (The appreciation is ongoing.)

saturna • 3 June 2023 at 10:29 PM

Strangely enough, I actually find the click exchange missions easier on mobile. It feels quicker and easier to close the tab and move on to the next one for me

pewpewkachu • 9 June 2023 at 11:46 AM

@saturna

Same. I can just hit the back button to go back to the exchange on my Kindle instead of having to manually close every new tab that opens. So much quicker. That's why I prefer to wait and do those tasks later when I go on my device instead of on my PC.

icecream • 9 June 2023 at 6:59 PM

Can we please add a claim all button? Instead of having to click 6 different claim buttons. I think it would help make it less tedious.

hikanu • 9 June 2023 at 7:05 PM

I am a little miffed with myself for forgetting to check the cave ONE last time the other day. I fell asleep before I got that far. XD

Lucky for me it seems like the 12 quest days are going to take the month off from bothering us, so I'll probably have room for silly mistakes this month lol.

It made me think though... When was the last 12 quest day? Did we have any at all for the last week of May? I didn't keep track.

minnie298a • 9 June 2023 at 8:00 PM

First, while I wouldn't use a claim all button, I would appreciate it if the page auto scrolled after claiming a prize. Like the cave does when approaching your second, third and so on egg.

@hikanu
We had a 7 quest day on the 31st, a 5 day on the 29th, and a 12 on the 20th, 22nd and 25th. From memory, we seem to have a heavy quest month followed by low month.

Finally had the motivation to finish off May's notes on Bursad. Now I just to to start June's.

hikanu • 9 June 2023 at 8:23 PM

@minnie298a Thanks!

So we haven't seen one for 16 days. Huh, then we'll probably have another week-ish off before they come back to haunt us. Last break we got about 3 weeks off. XD

minnie298a • 9 June 2023 at 10:35 PM

@hikanu
Currently only have 4 and a bit months of data but:
Feb - 64 quests over 7 days including 1x12 plus 1x15
Mar - 122 quests over 12 days including 8x12
Apr - 67 quests over 9 days including 2x12
May - 101 quests over 10 days including 7x12
Jun - 10 quests over 2 days so far (5th and 8th)

So it does seem to fluctuate. The biggest break was the 3 weeks in April. However it followed 5 in 9 days in March (21st, 24th, 26th, 28 and 30th plus a 5 and two 7days for I think a total of 79 quests). Then the next 12 was 21st April, after 6 smaller days.

hikanu • 10 June 2023 at 6:17 AM

@minnie298a
It's actually kind of fascinating in its predictability so far.

I think I will predict a maximum of three 12 quest days this month and we're going to see the first day either Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

I am writing this hoping for the RNG to prove me wrong. XD