Talk:Darkest Night/@comment-104.157.139.4-20181004174139

Event postmortem.

Now that the first event has concluded, what are your thoughts about it? What worked well? What didn't? What changes would you like to see implemented for the next event?

I guess I'll start the ball rolling with my thoughts.

1. Tasks

Achieving the ultimate goal of the 'bonus' Mythic card should really be the final task. Placing it anywhere before the end trivializes the energy reward for the final tasks, especially for the great many people who only (finally) snagged the Reaper on the final day of the event.

2. Coffers & Duplicates

I think the duplicates were not handled smartly. In spite of opening over 5 Infernal Coffers, 20 Darkest Cofffers and about a dozen Cursed Coffers I only received enough duplicates to max out ONE of the event cards (Fallen Angel). I also only got enough duplicates to get the Reaper and Soul Catcher (by a hair) to 3-stars.

At the same time, I earned well over 100 Legendary and at least twice as many Epic duplicates. My best guess is that this shaved almost a year's worth of Box and Chest reward requirements off of the schedule towards maxing all cards. That kind of inflation or power-creep always comes at a significant cost. I fully expect that we'll see a hard to stomach 'correction' when version 3 is rolled out — with a new story area and perhaps new power caps above 5-stars and L25.

Significantly, I chose 'exclusive' cards whenever possible since I knew it was now or never, and I still fell WAY short of my duplicates goal, while at the same time exceeding my wildest dreams in terms of core card duplicates. If people chose differently then they would have experienced even more lopsided results. To prevent these two undesirable outcomes from happening in future events I'd like to see 3 changes:


 * Higher amounts of Event card duplicates at all coffer levels.


 * Fewer Core card duplicates at all coffer levels.


 * A chance to receive duplicates of higher-tier Event cards in lesser coffers.  This could be limited to duplicates of cards that are already in your stable.  In other words, when people open ten, twenty, or even more Darkest (Tier-2) Coffers after the final Event Tournament closes they have at least some chance of earning a few more duplicates of the Epic and Legendary cards they already unlocked in Infernal (Tier-3) Coffers.  This would align coffers with Store boxes in terms of functionality.

3. Spread the elemental love

The next Event should explore one of the other elements. Ideally, all the elements will get hit before we return to Dark. Light is the best candidate for Event #2 as Dark and Light are arguably the weakest elements since they don't have an advantage over any other element (they oppose each other equally).

4. The 24-hour clock. This idea works for all tournaments, not just events.

Instead of a 24-hour clock for Tournaments try a 23- or 25-hour clock. This way Tournaments won't always close at the same time every day. Having the Tournaments end at the same time all the time disadvantages people in certain time zones and/or people who work odd-shifts. It is very difficult to succeed in Tournaments if you are always asleep or hard at work when the Tournaments are winding down. There are always 'snipers' active in the final minutes and success often requires responding to these challenges. Letting the Tournament end drift around the clock spreads the joy and pain evenly.

Another MAJOR advantage of this dynamic is that it distributes the stress on the servers more evenly. I can't speak for everyone but I definitely experienced server problems in the last 10-minutes of, and the first 10-minutes after each deadline. There isn't much that is more frustrating than being locked out of the game due to traffic when you're trying to protect your rank in a Tournament. Prehaps more importantly to Hooligapps, lock-out/time-out doesn't differentiate between paid and free players. It doesn't matter how much you are willing to spend, or have already spent, on the game, you can't succeed if you can't access the server. Staggering the clock(s) by server should reduce the strain on the servers and could potentially eliminate the time-out / lock-out frustrations of the players.

5. Uncoupling the main Tournament and the Event Tournament

In part, this is a watered-down version of breaking the 24-hour clock. Setting the Event Tournament clock to expire at a different time as the core Tournament clock will also reduce server strain. It is also likely to change people's strategies somewhat.

As a person focused on the end-goal, I didn't want the Event to distract or detract from my ultimate goal of seducing and leveling the Mythic and Unique Legendary cards to the max. Since both Tournaments ended at the same time, I decided that I'd try to 'win' the Tournament on the days that I tried to 'win' the Event Tournament. This seemed logical since so many of the Tasks involved earning large amounts of Mojo. As a result of patience and planning, I was able to get decent results in both, even though I entered the Event 'stuck' at Forest 6. I got 1 Gold, 1 Bronze and 3 Silver prizes in the Event, good for 5 Infernal Coffers. At the same time I managed 2 Gold, 1 Silver and 3 Bronze prizes in the main Tournament.

If the Tournaments were NOT synchronized there is very little chance that I could have managed that level of success. With the tournaments in synch my actions defending against snipers in one helped defend against snipers in the other. Had they been out of synch, the actions I took to defend my rank in the closing tournament would have left lots of time for competition to counter in the other tournament. I either would have had to accept a lower rank or expend more resources to defend my rank a second time. Another alternative would have been to not TRY to win both and get caught in that spending chase. The down side of this is that you don't maximize the return on your expended resources while the upside is that you don't throw good 'money' after bad. (Yes, if you're an old-hand at the game you likely had enough resources stockpiled that these economies didn't matter, and they still won't matter if the tournaments are uncoupled.)

I think it is to Hooligapps' advantage to break this synergy. Ultimately, they want to make 'free' success as difficult as possible. One way to do that is to make our actions have less impact. It will require more thought, planning and time for free players to succeed once this is implemented, but it will still be doable.

While some of these ideas ultimately work against my own interests, I think they would improve the game overall.

Please contribute to this thread with your ideas on how to improve future Events.