FEEDBACK ONLY - No New Data
@Vaeri @Kersepitje @Amy Steele : I may be wrong here (?) - but if it's true that refreshing a Quest can result in the same Quest reappearing, presumably an infinite number of times (is there a limit on this?) - then how can anyone be sure that they can even complete any given Season? And if one can't even be sure of being able to complete any given Season - no matter with how much dedication and/or strategic manipulation of one's gameplay choices and/or Resources - is it realistic (or fair!) to expect players to spend Premium Currency on Seasons, let alone real cash?
What is the point of playing through an entire Season, only to reach the last day with fewer Petals than are required,
only because some of the Quests
cannot be completed? It seems that we can't predict in advance which Daily and/or Weekly Quests each of us will be given - which is not the case in many other games, several of which [of my experience] provide a full list of all upcoming Quests at Season start, which are the same for everyone, so players can plan how to complete all of them - while in Elvenar, Season Quests appear instead to be randomly allocated, and some of them, it seems, aren't even feasible, depending upon the player's City/Chapter advancement level, gameplay style (frequency of logins, Combat vs Catering builds etc.), and/or spending Resources which are, in some cases (e.g. Pet Food, and more)
also randomly allocated...?
Most games which use the Seasons system (a) have less demanding tasks, many of which can be completed immediately if the player chooses do play more often and/or intensively (Quests don't ask for rare and/or randomly awarded Resources like Pet Food, and they also don't ask for too much of anything which isn't commonplace and/or generated at will, e.g. Units), and (b) don't [randomly]
replace discarded Quests with the same Quest. Many of them have more free Quest resets available, too, and/or also allow infinite refreshes using small amounts of Premium Currency.
Why does InnoGames have to make everything they copy from other games be more limited, more expensive, more heavily based upon RNG, more inconvenient, and essentially less player-friendly than these concepts/systems are in other comparable games (or even their own games - I'm thinking of how the Spire in Elvenar is more expensive, more difficult, and less versatile than FoE's Guild Expeditions, for example)...?
I'm not expecting any official answer, of course, but still, I am getting tired of seeing recent new and expensively developed additions to the game which I've
at first found welcome at least in concept (the Caudron and Seasons alike, so far) actually turning out to be far more laborious, less rewarding, more expensive, and overall less FUN than these concepts are in many other games in which I've experienced similar systems.
I am speaking here as the type of Live player who broadly welcomes additional options/complexity in any game, and who would be looking forward to these systems going Live, if they really were affordable (NB: I will spend both Resources and Premium Currency
where there's a good enough return IMO) fun, strategic, engaging
and rewarding (even if only trivially so) additions to the game. Specifically, I'm a slow and patient player who is online very often, who likes to strategically plan to 'do or spend X in order to earn Y', and who knows, as I'm sure many of us do, that the usual way to succeed in any long-term 'Freemium' game is to create, acquire, and carefully ration just about everything, where possible, and then use both acquired Resources (inc. Premium Currency) and in-game functionality/recurring tasks alike in order to meet other in-game functionality/demands and to suit ongoing background frameworks of some kind (e.g. 'managing' FA Badge collections or completing Crafting Recipes in order to meet the demands of Season Quests, or timing building productions so that they occur while Cauldron potions are active).
It certainly seems to me that both the Cauldron and Seasons are attempts to instil/encourage/reward exactly this kind of attitude & gameplay style in Elvenar's userbase - although I also suspect that both of these new additions have
also been constructed in the hope that at least
some brand-new players, and perhaps others, too, will see these systems as being more significant than they really are, especially when it comes to the nature and useability of their Rewards particularly at lower Chapter levels, when most of the Rewards offered are largely trivial or even less useful than the cost of obtaining them (all things considered), and that these players will therefore rashly spend Premium Currency or even real cash on these systems to no useful avail, and then depart in favour of new incoming players, having exhausted their Cities and enjoyment of the game alike - but naturally while leaving their already-spent money behind.
I know that InnoGames has published real data in the past showing that the large majority of player spending occurs during the first six months of playing, and that they regard players of more than two years' duration only as 'residual' revenue sources; I am not speculating blindly, here.
Inno hardly invented the in-game concept of 'manage X to fulfil Y', so I can't understand why they make it so much more difficult in Elvenar than it is in many other games... although I see more and more credibility in my long-term suspicion (and in some cases, knowledge) that it's because the developers don't [much, or keenly] play the game themselves, so they don't realise what it involves, especially in the long term... :/
Long story short : Seasons, and the Cauldron,
could be so much FUN - but as they stand, I find them largely disappointing and unappealing.