Regular Refresh of the VEND [Limited Number of Species every 4 months]

sapphire12 • 15 March 2023 at 6:38 AM

I would like to propose a regular refresh of the VEND.

The timeline is up for discussion (maybe once every 3 months?)

Pros:
1. More incentive to quest regularly.
2. The time availability of creatures is known from the start. So it avoids having it be a shock when creatures retire and everybody scrambling to quest last minute.
3. Fresh, new stock is exciting.
4. It would help bring older cave creatures population to a healthy amount so there's no big disparity between prices. (Like the Cash Shop rereleases)

Cons and workarounds:
1. But this gives me a limited time to get my creatures? I don't like the restriction.
A. Fair, but the VEND creatures that have just retired had 0 claims for a long time. It's only when they were expiring that people started wanting them.
B. With regular refresh, the chances of the retired VEND creatures coming back into the VEND increases (because it's a regular refresh) i.e. you'll never have to wonder when anything is coming back ever again. Plus you can plan forward, if the system is similar to Cash Shop rereleases and old May caves return in May VEND then you have an idea of what to expect.

Thoughts and discussions?

@mastergemma
@nut
@newlife
@chaotictreat
@distorted
@sartre

---
Feedback Summary:

There's a general consensus on wanting to see more frequent refreshes with more suggestions on how to make questing more accessible.

VEND Refresh:
- 4 Month Preference for refreshing timeline : 3-4 months is a sensible timeframe to quest for creatures (with a countdown for when the species is to leave the VEND)
- Number of species limit for the refresh to manage quest burnout (to be discussed)
> Two types of burnout: too bored with the same creature types/too overwhelmed with number of species to claim over the time period.
> This may be solved by limiting the number of species to be refreshed? What's a sensible number?
> 5-8 species or 2-3 species have been suggested

Others:
VEND Improvement:
- Token transfer to be discussed (may make questing moot)
- More 1 Item Quests generally welcomed as the dailies increase the need to VEND; several options on how people may get this to work.
- Trinket travel or bean sack quests pro: welcomed if they're 1 item, con: more items to buy
- Less 100 token quests
- Transparency on number of creatures of a species left in the VEND?

Personal opinion: As far as I know, there is a limit on number of creatures of a species to be redeemed in the VEND and it is part of the VEND mechanics. So far, I don't think there's ever been a case of a user hoarding a VEND creature (partly because it's so challenging in the first place) so the difficulty helps manage that. A counter of how many that is left is the idea that is discussed. I don't think we need a limit on VEND creature per user.

Shops Improvement:
- Fairer and more item availability in user shops as with the dailies, maybe item RNG can be tamed by having items guarantee appear once every day?

- CC creatures in VEND might be a little farfetched, especially now we have dailies that give CC and other giveaways.

mindwhiper • 15 March 2023 at 7:12 AM

I'm in favor, it's already unbearable to look at the pool of current creatures in the VEND they are bored to the point of impossibility. A re-roll once every three months will dilute the usual daily routine quite well. In addition, people who love quests will have a new incentive to play.

nut • 15 March 2023 at 7:57 AM

seconding @ian_hives above, I think overall its a good idea, having way too many things in vend like right now is too overwhelming and leads to creatures never getting redeemed. @sapphire12 your one con is also a good point, personally I would get burned out questing all the time as there would likely be something to work towards all the time, with a time limit. but overall I say yes 👍🏼

dragrawr • 15 March 2023 at 12:11 PM

@sapphire12 I’m in!! . Knowing from the start would be extremely helpful and it’s sooo exciting when new creatures are being put out.

Another point is, it would be cool to be able to gift tokens to other users, since we can gift critters/items already. :]

ceraphi • 15 March 2023 at 12:43 PM

@dragrawr
Yeah I think would be pretty cool to gift tokens to others, maybe they could work like how cc does with vouchers, I’m not sure exactly if vouchers would work for tokens but it’s just a thought.
————
I also think that a refresh every 3-4months would be nice as well!

sartre • 15 March 2023 at 1:11 PM

I love this idea, if I know three months in advance it would help a lot, because I was way off of the creatures that I thought were going to be retired. And I also think it’s a good idea of a token exchange. And maybe the other quests ask for one item instead of two, like Miserable Meltdown does.

sapphire12 • 15 March 2023 at 1:50 PM

@ian_hives @nut @dragrawr @pastelrabbit @sartre

Thanks for the input everyone, to summarise:

VEND Refresh
- Timeline for refresh: 3-4 months is a sensible timeframe to quest for creatures
- Quest burnout needs to be managed. the limit of number of creature types. Would limiting the number of species to be refreshed help? What's a sensible number? i.e 10 species will refresh every 4 months so there's not an overwhelming amount of species to be claimed.

VEND Improvement
- Token transfer would be welcome
- More 1 Item Quests

Pinging some more people (hopefully goes through):
@ekmmke
@cageheart
@raccoon
@sparklefox
@lunacharm1037

Looking for both positive and negative inputs ; I'd like to know why it's a bad idea if you think it will be 😊

cageheart • 15 March 2023 at 1:58 PM

I 100% agree with all of this! Especially the More 1 Item quests and the time availability.

lunacharm1037 • 15 March 2023 at 2:01 PM

@sapphire12
I think 4 months is a good timeline but not less than that. People have lives and can't be always on here clicking. For me it's becoming a bore/chore As for trading tokens, I'm not a fan. I think it takes away from the need to visit the Vend if you can purchase tokens from someone else. Just my opinion though:/

raccoon • 15 March 2023 at 2:46 PM

@sapphire12

Full support for the more frequent refreshes. We've had a lot of the current species selection available for a good while now and i'm definitely feeling quest burnout. I've gotten pretty much all I wanted from the current selection and don't have much of a drive towards grinding more tokens until we get new options.

Maybe a monthly thing like the CSP rereleases? A handful of species available in unlimited quantities for a month before it's swapped for another species type of thing.

Not supporting a set limit to how many can be redeemed per species. I can see this being a problem with big questers who hoard their tokens redeeming desirable pets immediately to claim all or a good portion of the stock. Which is all fine and good because they worked hard for those tokens but I'm not keen on someone nabbing everything purely for profit so that the little guy doesn't have an opportunity to obtain these creatures via VEND. Foos for example would be sold out incredibly quickly since they're a rarer, older species that is very popular.

Partial support to the change in the number of items needed per quest. Maybe it can be configured in a way where it's a random mix of one and two item quests? Items with high rarity are put into one item quests and more common items being in the two item quests? A problem I run into a lot is a quest requesting a common item and then a rare item that nobody has in their user shop, an item that there's one of in users shops but it's priced at like... 10mil ec, or it's not in the npc shops within a handful of restocks.

(Looking directly at you, Butterflies in a Rainbow!!! Haven't needed one for a quest but restocking them for personal use has been horrible!)

Token transfers also get my full support.

romanjr370 • 15 March 2023 at 3:02 PM

Hello @sapphire12 🤗.
I honestly love your idea ❤️!

I think 4 months sounds reasonable for questing time.
I also would like more 1 items quest.
And maybe more item availability in the shops 🤔? I've noticed some items take a very long time to reapper in the shops (some appear once every 3 days or so with very little stock).

I think maybe changing 5-8 creatures at the time might be good number?
Could adding a countdown help?

mars • 15 March 2023 at 3:12 PM

Will reply to other comments soon but: @raccoon I will clarify - I meant by the "limit on creatures added/taken away" as the limit of number of creature types available when it refreshes - i.e 10 species will refresh every 4 months so there's not an overwhelming amount of species to be claimed.

In terms of the actual limit on number of creatures to be claimed per species, I think that's already in effect (like how fast the Foo was claimed and taken out of the VEND in the last refresh)

Also sorry didn't realise i was on my side lmao this is sapphire12

Edited the wording on the original comment to clarify

raccoon • 15 March 2023 at 3:16 PM

@mars

That makes much more sense. I misunderstood.

If the current VEND setup DOES have hard limits to how many can be adopted I'd honestly prefer if staff could just come out and say it and let us see how many are left. Seriously hoping this isn't the case.

sapphire12 • 15 March 2023 at 3:54 PM

@cageheart @lunacharm1037 @raccoon @romanjr370

Thanks so much for the input everyone, to summarise again:

VEND Refresh:
- 4 Month Preference for refreshing timeline: 3-4 months is a sensible timeframe to quest for creatures (with a countdown for when the species is to leave the VEND)
- 5-8 Species Limit for the refresh to manage quest burnout:
> Two types of burnout: too bored with the same creature types/too overwhelmed with number of species to claim over the time period.
> This may be solved by limiting the number of species to be refreshed? What's a sensible number? i.e 5-8 species will refresh every 4 months so there's not an overwhelming amount of species to be claimed.

Others:
VEND Improvement:
- Token transfer majority welcomed. Con: Would it reduce the need for questing if people could simply buy tokens?
- More 1 Item Quests A further idea for the number of items needed for a quest to be based on rarity. (see @/raccoon's post to read more)
- Transparency on number of creatures of a species left in the VEND?

Shops Improvement:
- Fairer and more item availability in user shops as with the dailies, maybe item RNG can be tamed by having items guarantee appear once every day?

Pinging some others for input:
@amysnow
@captaincookies
@murfijs
@funyarinpa
@valorieviolet

Looking for both positive and negative inputs ; I'd like to know why it's a bad idea if you think it will be 😊

valorieviolet • 15 March 2023 at 4:16 PM

Refreshing the VEND stock once every 3 or 4 months sounds like a reasonable time to me. That should give users more than enough time to quest and get a couple creatures (thanks to the daily challenge forcing us do do quests). I think the amount of time between refreshes also depends on how many creatures are getting swapped in/out. If more creatures are getting put in, then of course I'm going to want/need more time to get the required quests tokens for each new creature that I want.

I also strongly agree with having more '1 item' quests! I'm pretty sure no one except Ian knows why only the MM quests require 1 item, but it would certainly make questing a lot easier on our EC wallets. It doesn't even have to be a 50:50 chance for me, just as long as there's *some* probability for 1 required item would be enough to make me happy.

Other thoughts...
- NOT having 100 token creatures, but rather a mix of tokens instead 😊
- No limit on how many of each species can be bought from the VEND (in case one user buys them all up and sells them for a ridiculous price)
- Quests with items from the Bean Sack! Spreading out the tokens would hopefully help reduce the number of tokens being too high in one specific category. This wouldn't increase the number of token a creature costs, just make them cost less in each category.

I kinda skimmed other peoples' posts, so sorry if I repeated something that was already mentioned ^^

kenkazaki2 • 15 March 2023 at 6:02 PM

@valorieviolet Please no bean sack, my poor wallet doesn't need more shops to buy from. The amount of shops I need to buy from and keep track of is already overwhelming with 6 shops already.
Plus that'd mean more tokens to keep track of and earn and I'd really not want to deal with that.
That goes for Trinket Travels too.
We don't need more items we need to buy for each quest because adding more shops means adding another large pool of items.
I like everything else in the suggestions but not...adding more to your plate for questing.

EDIT: Actually, a nice way to fix the whole wallet issue is maybe to make it so any item in the shop whose default sell price is over 15k ec maybe should not be in the pool of quest items so at least more shops we have to buy from doesn't mean we have to get the most expensive items in the shops (looking at you Cup of Magic Tea and that one travel that's 44k ec-)
Not sure if they can even do that but at least it would make questing a little less intensive on your wallet.
If they did that, I think adding more shops and token quests would be okay, I just don't want to pay above 20k for one item in a shop in a quest, especially since a user's shop would have it much more expensive.
(Though, while I do acknowledge that would be that's why you cancel a quest, lol, I think it's fair to want a quest item to be less than 15k ec each if you were lucky enough to have found in the shop right when you took the quest.)

amysnow • 15 March 2023 at 11:52 PM

I still try to do quests to get Vend creatures, it's not easy tho, eventhough I think we can add 2,3 new creatures in 3,4 months, and let's 2,3 go. 5-8 is a little too much for me.

More outdate creatures for new people to collect, it would be fun. Sometimes a cash creature? Cash creature is hard to get for most of people so it will be a fun chalenge to do for normal player and get them play

dragrawr • 15 March 2023 at 11:55 PM

@amysnow I wonder how hard a CC critter would be to get~

amysnow • 15 March 2023 at 11:56 PM

@dragrawr I really hope it not 100 each token... I will give up..

dragrawr • 16 March 2023 at 12:06 AM

@amysnow Let's see, if the current month's creatures are worth 5mil ec in CC:EC conversion and it takes on average 10,000 ec per quest, that would be 500 quests. I think this would be interesting, maybe having the cash critters in the VEND machine (but are harder to get in a limited time, so maybe not... )

Or! Here's an idea. 500 "neutral" tokens (another new quest type where it can request any 1-2 items from any of the other quests-) can be used in December to purchase a creature at the end of the year sale where the cash shops all release again. Maybe the max is 2 cash shop critters? So 1,000 Neutral tokens. It would be interesting to receive these tokens from the dailies as well, like 20 after each successful month, which for 11 months would be 220 tokens for successfully completing daily months. we would still have to get the remaining up to 500 tokens for one cash shop critter in December.

I think this would make the dailies more enjoyable and the ec economy more flourishing, as completeing quests requires ec!

(also heres me day dreaming about an Aerlo NPC for these "neutral" quests who collects trinkets and everything he can with all the arms he has ;c; his name could be Norri ❤️ ❤️ )
tell me what you think about this idea
@daisycat
@wonder404exe
@sapphire12

daisycat • 16 March 2023 at 12:14 AM

@dragrawr
Those are neat ideas! Thank you for the ping. 😊

I can't see the staff adding CC creatures to VEND. However, if they would consider it, I think the most simplistic route the staff can take is just having them be available for a much larger quantity of tokens. Any CC pets would need to be noticeably harder to quest for, since they are normally obtained with real money.

Overall, I'd love a regular restock of the VEND. It's something I had kept wondering about since I joined last November... when will more creatures be added... It would help retain the motivation to quest!

dragrawr • 16 March 2023 at 12:25 AM

@daisycat true, as i cant see it happening either. But if it’s for an absurd amount of toxins it would 16 quests a day for a 30 day month to possibly have a chance of getting the creature. They would likely make it 500 tokens which would be around 5 mil ec to do. In a month that’s just not possible for nearly every user, sadly

heatherm19 • 16 March 2023 at 12:27 AM

I'll admit to not reading every post here but my brain just can't do that right now, but I did want to express my thoughts before I forget to.

My first question is, do we actually know how the VEND stock is currently handled? I've only been here for a little less than a year so I admittedly don't have the knowledge some of you do, but since I've been here it doesn't really seem like VEND stock is stagnate. The huge VEND change happened in September, which included adding 17 species. Then there was the big purge of 21 species just the other day, with staff confirming there would be new ones coming soon. So.... Again I don't know how it was before April 2022 when I joined, but is this actually a huge issue at the moment?

Second, how do we know the newly-retired VEND creatures had no claims for a long time? I don't want to sound rude, that's not my intention, but it feels like these suggestions are assuming a lot. Just because they've only now been retired doesn't mean thy had '0 claims' for a long time, maybe it just means the claims were more spread out, or the people wanting them were people with limited time for questing. (If there *is* a way for us users to see exactly how many are being claimed, let me know, that would make more sense!)

That said! I'm not necessarily against a more scheduled VEND refresh, and every 4 months with a limit on how many can be removed/replaced at once sounds pretty reasonable.

YES please to the suggestion of more 1-item quests, I wonder if it could be randomized so that each quest-type can ask for either 1 or 2 items (instead of it being limited to specific types like Miserable Meltdown)?

I'm not sure about transferring/buying/et tokens, that feels like it would change the whole way the VEND is run.

I've already posted in multiple places about the frustration with the shops not restocking items, you can go days without seeing a specific item which can definitely hurt with quests, so I'm all for any tweaks to that!

Also 100% support changing the super-high 1-token-type costs to being split between the types. I actually don't mind needing to earn 100 tokens for 1 creature, the number isn't the issue, it's being confined to one specific quest type (which means you can't have multiple going at once that would earn you tokens for that creature) (and if it happens to be 100 tokens on *the* hardest shop for you personally.... *glares at Speed Reading*)

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

daisycat • 16 March 2023 at 12:48 AM

@heatherm19
Your question about zero claims is good, since there was no context. 😊

Simply put: A mod in the Discord said there were no claims. Then I was private messaging with a friend and she mentioned that she saw a VEND creature for one that supposedly had no claims (was stolen before the VEND blog post). So, I believe it just means that the creatures removed had little to no claims, but not zero for all of them.

heatherm19 • 16 March 2023 at 12:56 AM

@daisycat Yeah, that would've been good information to have before I typed all that out, lol. (It sucks to feel out of the loop just because I'm not on some off-site chat.)

mars • 16 March 2023 at 1:16 AM

@heatherm19

Question 1 was also very fair and I never thought about seeing it in the perspective of a new person coming in and seeing all these changes happen quickly 😊

The September refresh was a change in how questing works. Before, there used to be a random pool of creatures. Because we now can quest for individual creatures, everything from before that's ever been released in the VEND has been rereleased. That pool in September that you saw was everything that's ever been in the VEND ~ 100 creatures out of all the cave monthlies and event pets eligible for the VEND which in the bigger scheme of things is not a lot.

The updates before September were also not very often:

Dec 2019
https://eggcave.com/blog/coldworld-denizens-questing-prize-pool?page=1

Jun 2020
https://eggcave.com/blog/new-questing-prize-pools?page=1

Feb 2021
https://eggcave.com/blog/new-vend-machine-quest-reward-pools?page=1

Feel free to go through archives if I've missed anything. But as far as I remember, questing has been rough. Not saying that the VEND hasn't been updated, but it has a history of being updated very rarely.

This suggestion is just trying to make it more regular so people know what to expect (if you read the first post)

The pro though: if the trend is that the VEND is getting more attention recently then maybe we wouldn't need this suggestion and this isn't such a huge issue as you say 😊

lunacharm1037 • 16 March 2023 at 10:40 AM

Oh I hope not 100 tokens for a pet will pop me right out of the game ☹️

romanjr370 • 16 March 2023 at 10:53 AM

After reading some comments 🤔 (sorry if I'm repeating).

I agree that adding the Trinket travels and Bean sack to the quest section might be too much 😱.

Having CC creatures would definitely be amazing and definitely pricey. Potential issue: there's the possibility that those who payed real money for CC could protest against it.

Suggestion for 100 token creature issue:
Could we have 2 options have 100 tokens from one specific quest and option of mixing tokens, would that work better?

On the quest items that are very EC pricey, in case they couldn't/wouldn't take them out of questing could maybe getting two or three tokens in that specific quest make it more worthwhile?

Also I think being able to see the amount of creatures remaining to be claimed could help, so we know how many remain.

And maybe limiting the amount of each Vend creature per user could help with the hoarding problem, maybe 2 vend creature per refresh for each user 🤔?

sapphire12 • 16 March 2023 at 11:37 AM

@valorieviolet @kenkazaki2 @amysnow @dragrawr @daisycat @heatherm19 @lunacharm1037 @romanjr370

Lots of people lol. Thanks again for the input - I'll try to summarise but it looks like there's a general consensus on wanting to see more frequent refreshes with more suggestions on how to make questing more accessible.

Thanks so much for the input everyone, to summarise again:

VEND Refresh:
- 4 Month Preference for refreshing timeline : 3-4 months is a sensible timeframe to quest for creatures (with a countdown for when the species is to leave the VEND)
- Number of species limit for the refresh to manage quest burnout (to be discussed)
> Two types of burnout: too bored with the same creature types/too overwhelmed with number of species to claim over the time period.
> This may be solved by limiting the number of species to be refreshed? What's a sensible number?
> 5-8 species or 2-3 species have been suggested

Others:
VEND Improvement:
- Token transfer to be discussed (may make questing moot)
- More 1 Item Quests generally welcomed as the dailies increase the need to VEND; several options on how people may get this to work.
- Trinket travel or bean sack quests pro: welcomed if they're 1 item, con: more items to buy
- Less 100 token quests
- Transparency on number of creatures of a species left in the VEND?

Personal opinion: As far as I know, there is a limit on number of creatures of a species to be redeemed in the VEND and it is part of the VEND mechanics. So far, I don't think there's ever been a case of a user hoarding a VEND creature (partly because it's so challenging in the first place) so the difficulty helps manage that. A counter of how many that is left is the idea that is discussed. I don't think we need a limit on VEND creature per user.

Shops Improvement:
- Fairer and more item availability in user shops as with the dailies, maybe item RNG can be tamed by having items guarantee appear once every day?

- CC creatures in VEND might be a little farfetched, especially now we have dailies that give CC and other giveaways.

I won't ping any more people except @Ian because this might be a good point to do that. Additional notes are still welcome and will summarise after every couple of posts 😊