2017-12-25 - Happy Holidays

[Bugzilla]

Thanks for this event!

 

It required a bit more thinking than the previous years, but this was a welcome addition.

 

Three minor annoyances:

• When voting for "ice" or "fire", too many players still had the previous game in mind: "disease/cure" in which voting for one camp destroyed the votes of the other camp (and also, the event badge could change according to your votes). As a result, they were afraid of switching camps in case this would slow down the progress bar, and it took some coordinated forum efforts to convince players to vote for "fire" for a while. IMHO, it was not stated clearly enough that the strategy and consequences were different for this game.
• Instead of a fixed cooldown of 15 minutes, I would have preferred something that lets me play up to 4 games per hour or maybe 10-20 games per day, using some kind of energy/power/credit bar that refills over time.
• The lack of epilogue for the last chapter is frustrating.  The required amount of votes could have been lowered a bit after the 2nd of January, taking into account that the holidays would be over for several players.

[Amazon_warrior]

No epilogue?  *sadface* I was out all Thursday and it was my mum's birthday yesterday, so I had very little time both those days to submit fire puzzles.  Sad to see that we collectively failed to get enough points - I do think that perhaps the wait time could have been shorter or the points values of the puzzles could have been a bit higher - this was hardly the first day where the epilogue wasn't unlocked the same day the chapter was released.

[Bigbite]

4 hours ago, quinney said:

All those days of doing hours of puzzles and we don't get to see the end?  I know the theme was the 12 days of Christmas but come on, we deserved to see the outcome before closure.

Totally agree.

[Shokomon]

This is from the Team Fire thread:

 

8 hours ago, Shokomon said:

70% filled with a 1% difference. We got this guys! We can do it!

 

I posted this during the 11th hour, so the final bar had to be at least 70% filled.

 

It was favoring ice, so technically Team Ice won.

 

Not enough to fill the bar though, so no one wins in the end.

(Click the image or this link for sad trombone noise.)

 

No ending for us. We will never know.

[Pinch of StarDust]

What... no final epilogue? That stinks. I played that game every day, loving to read each part with its epilogue.  I played hard yesterday and was looking forward to the last epilogue which I had expected to be able to read this morning when I awoke only to find the entire thing GONE!  I would have rather had coal in my stocking on day 1 than a story with no ending.

[VixenDra]

To be honest I had a feeling it will not be worth any effort just like the contagion event, there were still too many similarities to ignore.

[Jaskk]

Apologies if I helped towards the epilogue not unlocking.

I honestly didn't care about the story, just enjoyed playing the game and didn't realise you where meant to be voting a certain way as before it's always been one against the other and it's not mattered which team you chose.

[purplehaze]

I am disappointed at not getting to see the last epilogue. And having the whole story go poof at midnight was really cruel. There are many who would have been asleep at that hour, even if the bar had unlocked and the epilogue appeared.

 

Still, thanks to TJ and all the team for bringing us the game and the story. I know a lot of work went into it.

 

It has been, on the whole, a very satisfying holiday season this year.

 

I am now the proud owner of two CB Holly dragons, which I would never have thought possible (even though one of them was nearly killed by view bombing and caused me a lot of anxiety!)

 

And we have a lovely, graceful new dragon (with a real name!) to add to our holiday collection. Thanks again to @Fiona and @Odeen!

 

And thanks to everyone on team FIRE who tried so hard to keep that bar red!

[Sazandora]

To be perfectly honest the story wasn't... anything spectacular. It was very, very predictable and downright cliche'd. The whole tetris minigame itself was alright, it was fun at first but later on it just kinda lost its spark. With mana alchemy (no, I will never shut up about that until we get to play it again anytime we want), that game remained insanely fun throughout the whole event. I could play it dozens upon dozens of times each day, and never get tired of it because it was just so much fun. But tetris... meh. Got bored on day 2.

 

So I'm not really bummed about the story having no ending.

Edited January 6, 2018 by Sazandora

[Ruby Eyes]

I mostly dislike stories without a proper end. Quite miffed that the whole thing just disappeared.

[Nimrodel]

Oh no, I am so bummed to not get the end! When I went to bed, I thought it'd be unlocked over night and I'd get to read it today, but apparently not

[Guillotine]

I'm not surprised that we didn't unlock the epilogue (honestly, the amount needed to unlock the final one should have at least been reduced, with how long even the early ones took to fill up it should have been obvious that something like that was needed), but I am surprised that the story didn't stay up.
 

[Moiken]

I can hardly complain about not unlocking the epiloge since I was really bad at the Tetris and constantly forgot to make more than two per day. It just sliped my mind while have to wait for 15 minutes. Doesn't seem long, but was long enough to get back to university work and forget about playing entierly. Well.. Maybe that wasn't so bad a solution at all, eles I would be in trouble now.

But: It was quiet a shock not to be able to read the last chapter on the side today (A cheer for Dragcave Wiki!). Personaly I like the ending as it is now. Everyone is happy, so what should follow now? A love confession from Avery? Haha. Sorry, but constantly got the empression he wantet to say something but didn't dare while reading the chapters.

 

So: Thanks to all who put so much time into the game so all of us who were lazy or just couldn't figure it out had the chance to read the story. And, of course, a big thanks to all involved so this event was possible in the first way. I'm really looking forward to the next event.

[walkinslow]

To be quite honest, this wasn't my favourite holiday event ever, despite the Nulhora story and the fun minigame. I appreciate the effort that went into the story and the game design, but I would have preferred an RPG version. And it's quite disappointing that we didn't get to read the epilogue to the last chapter (maybe later? please?).

But the new dragons are lovely and on the whole I enjoyed the event, so thanks again to everyone involved!

[Guillotine]

And I would have hated an RPG, because as cute as they are I wouldn't have been able to enjoy it if the severe lag in the last one was anything to judge by (plus, even a simple RPG like we've had in the past requires a lot of work).
 

[Imzadi]

Due to being out of town with only sporadic internet  (and sick for 4 days to boot)  I wasn't able to do as much on the game as usual, but I did enjoy it.   I really do hope we get to see the Epilogue at some point.   

Most of all, thanks to TJ, to Fiona and Odeen for the gorgeous dragons with a name, and to all the artists who helped with the event.  I now have CBs of everything (except all those prizes)   so I am very very content.

[VixenDra]

To me the story itself is too long, I have serious vision problems as of late, if I read a bit too much I partially loose central vision as if light-blinded and the effect can stay for hours, so I have to avoid reading anything longer than a few sentences:( and a story read in a few senteces at a time looses that continuity you have when you read all or at least a chapter in one go. But well, nobody wants to summarise the story for me (not blaming anyone!) so I can't care less about that event^^; And the tetris puzzle itself wasn't my thing, especially as I had the Contagion event in the back of my head, and now I see this HotVScold one got the same no ending.., so well, I just solved a few (like 5 total? sth about that) and just didn't feel any need to continue^^;

 

I like the new Dragon though, I'm so glad and pleased it fits the Snow so well (as for a different breed and subtype) <3 Something fitting the calm Aegis next year plz^^

 

And cool to see the past CBs back. Just for my needs the total limit of 2 made the re-release useless to me personally as I need 5.

Edited January 6, 2018 by VixenDra

[Tigerkralle]

Thanks for the event!

 

The new Holiday ladies are lovely and i will miss the tetris puzzles.

[The Dragon Alchemist]

I liked it. I liked the story because of how well it was written and even though I am no whiz at puzzles I still liked the Tetris kind.

Yeah, it would have been nice to see a wrap-up or something, I kinda thought there would be a special egg or something but I didn't see anything.

 

Nonetheless it was fun.

 

P.S: I have to admit that I didn't read the stories in their entirety and I should have. A lot of work was put into this just like all the other events and I appreciate them even if I don't read thoroughly. I would have participated in the puzzles more but I had the flu so I was just not able to play puzzles as much as I would have liked.

[Data_Girl_3]

Overall, this year's event was great.  I love the new Garland dragon, and hope this means the past Holiday dragons will eventually get their own unique descriptions.  I like how we could get CB versions of the other Holiday Dragons.  (Shame this couldn't happen a few years ago, before I got my bred Holly, but oh well.)  And it was nice to see the further adventures of the people of Nulhora.

 

The only things that could have been done better was to 1) make it clearer, especially to the non-forum players, that the Ice vs. Fire dynamic was different from the Virus vs. Vaccine dynamic, and that voting fire wouldn't cause the meter to go down and 2) adjust the rate that the meter filled up, especially after New Years Day, to compensate for the fact that a large percentage of the DC players were going back to work or school, and didn't have as much time to log in and play the Tetris games.

 

Hopefully, TJ and the rest of the staff will eventually release the epilogue that we never got to see.

[Confused Cat]

13 minutes ago, VixenDra said:

But well, nobody wants to summarise the story for me (not blaming anyone!) so I can't care less about that event^^;

 

Maybe someone will write a good summary at some point, but let me try this just for fun:

 

The mayor makes you decorate the town for the holiday. Oh no, so much work!

You meet lots of dragons and people that have appeared in previous years' stories. Yay!

Suddenly, the weather gets warm when it should actually be cold at this time of year. Weird!

A stranger with fire on his head appears and says he's here to investigate your interesting weather. Totally not suspicious!

You and some of your friends find out the stranger actually caused the warm weather by controlling an Avatar of Destruction. Oh no!

An AoD scale you happen to have in your pocket stops the stranger's influence on the AoD. Congrats, you're an accidental hero!

The weather goes back to normal, and the holiday celebrations begin.

 

 

[HeatherMarie]

I personally really liked the story, although I admit I skimmed it in a few spots. I like reading about the dragons especially, and the Aegis and Avatar of Destruction were awesome additions. While I really would have liked to see the epilogue, holiday events *always* shut down at midnight on the day indicated in the post, so this was really no different then any other year except for the fact that the userbase itself didn't unlock everything in time. I do think that things should have been tweaked when it became obvious that we weren't filling the bar on time each day, because this 'no epilogue' outcome was totally predicable given the bar's status for the last half of the event and I'm sure something *could've* been tweaked to make each puzzle submission count for more or something.

[Kelkelen]

1 minute ago, Confused Cat said:

 

Maybe someone will write a good summary at some point, but let me try this just for fun:

 

The mayor makes you decorate the town for the holiday. Oh no, so much work!

You meet lots of dragons and people that have appeared in previous years' stories. Yay!

Suddenly, the weather gets warm when it should actually be cold at this time of year. Weird!

A stranger with fire on his head appears and says he's here to investigate your interesting weather. Totally not suspicious!

You and some of your friends find out the stranger actually caused the warm weather by controlling an Avatar of Destruction. Oh no!

An AoD scale you happen to have in your pocket stops the stranger's influence on the AoD. Congrats, you're an accidental hero!

The weather goes back to normal, and the holiday celebrations begin.

 

LOL adorable!

 

[HeatherMarie]

1 minute ago, Confused Cat said:

 

Maybe someone will write a good summary at some point, but let me try this just for fun:

 

The mayor makes you decorate the town for the holiday. Oh no, so much work!

You meet lots of dragons and people that have appeared in previous years' stories. Yay!

Suddenly, the weather gets warm when it should actually be cold at this time of year. Weird!

A stranger with fire on his head appears and says he's here to investigate your interesting weather. Totally not suspicious!

You and some of your friends find out the stranger actually caused the warm weather by controlling an Avatar of Destruction. Oh no!

An AoD scale you happen to have in your pocket stops the stranger's influence on the AoD. Congrats, you're an accidental hero!

The weather goes back to normal, and the holiday celebrations begin.

 

 

 

LOL awesome summary!!

[Tigerkralle]

For me the 15 mintues limit was, what killed it. 15 minutes was too long, 10 minutes would have been better. Personally i am good at those puzzles and i think also many users don't figured it out that the tiles are not drag and drop but instead they would stick to your cursor...