I've got the building to level 5 and ..... For 2 days in a row I've gotten 1, yes one, knowledge point! Please tell me how that equates to the goods I potentially can receive? And it won't get better until the building is fully evolved. [...]
What ??? A very good building !!! [...]
The above two viewpoints, especially because they appear in sequence, seem precisely to illustrate the problem with this Event's Evolving Building - namely, the fact that it provides not fixed but RANDOM Rewards
* (see footnote). This aspect of the Building - and therefore the Building itself - will almost certainly be welcomed, to some extent, largely by players who fall into one or more of the broad categories below:
- Those who are generally lucky and/or for whom some/all of the Rewards are [or appear to be] generally useful (i.e. many early players);
- Those in a Chapter where some/all of the Rewards are particularly useful, either in general terms or within the player's individual strategy;
- Those who don't prioritise or even much consider strategy, but rather prefer other game aspects and/or who play casually for fun alone, and who therefore don't really worry at all about which Reward will randomly appear (and why not - even in a strategy-based game);
- Very new players who are very likely to think that ALL Event Prizes must be highly desirable (as is the case in many mobile games); or
- Those who enjoy the 'thrill' of risk-taking via what amounts to gambling (Note : investing anything at all, be it real money, 'pixel money' or other non-real digital items, time, effort, or anything else, in return for a RANDOM CHANCE of winning something in return, can - with honesty - be described as nothing else).
These players will generally be pleased with the Evolving Building - and thus the whole Event - and may well try to win it and then evolve it to a higher level, whether during the Event or afterwards via additional methods such as Spire-sourced and/or Crafted Artifacts, if such are offered.
Conversely, and without typing out a list of the 'reverse versions' of the above player types, it follows that those players who are NOT in any of the above categories will probably NOT welcome the Event's Evolving Building, and will probably therefore
also dislike the entire Event to a greater or lesser extent - unless of course it offers either a lot of fun (which, again, is some players' priority) and/or some truly excellent alternative rewards in the form of Daily Prizes, although these appear, at present, not to be particularly good in the estimation of the majority here.
(I would also like to state here that I often think that Evolving Buildings, with their typically 4 x 4 footprint, almost always - with a few well-known exceptions - represent a VERY poor choice for MOST new/early-game Cities (which are built by non-experts) due to their comparatively very high demand upon smaller Cities' extremely limited space AND their usually mediocre Rewards at low Chapter and/or Evolution Levels. If such a Building's Rewards are, in addition, not only rather pedestrian (as in this Event's case) but ALSO randomised - meaning that even if awarded, they may well appear AT THE WRONG TIME - which matters greatly in early Cities - then the Building becomes even more unattractive, whether or not the genuinely novice player is aware this is true. In fact, it becomes almost an actively undesirable item, rather than any kind of worthy 'prize'.)
As a long-term player who has heard the views of many others, from novices to experts, I cannot think why Inno would decide (if indeed they have? Inno's motives are often obscure...) to assume something as uncertain and even risky as the fact that most - or even very many - of its players will reliably fall into one or more of the listed categories above, and will therefore not only welcome the Grand Prize Building (and therefore, in most cases, the entire Event), but will like it SO much that they may be willing to spend money on it - since, after all, Events aren't really put into the game
solely to entertain players, or indeed for any reason other than to increase revenue in some way or another.
In short : Creating and promoting an Evolving Building with
random Rewards seems to be a very strange decision for any revenue-focused company to make - unless, of course, their stats are telling them something very different about their players from what I've outlined above!
* Even if the Rewards were altered to include highly desirable items such as Sips of Clarity, Spectral Stones, Blueprints, etc., rather than the rather ordinary Rewards it currently offers (whether or not in good quantities, their nature is quite commonplace), anyone who is risk-averse - as many strategy game players tend to be, by the very nature of the genre - is unlikely to welcome it, even if they might, without much joy, feel near-obliged to place it in their City only because the chance of winning ANY such comparatively valuable Rewards would be difficult to refuse. And which gaming company wants its players to feel obliged to do anything in a joyless manner... shouldn't Events be about enjoyment, and a sense of free choice...?!