Update Dec 8th - "Christmas Preparations Event" & Village Happiness - Discussion

artful (US1)

@Kamilcom (GB1)  Just as we suspected.  No "go" button  No "accept" button.  No "opt out" button.  Just farm, and BAM! you're in.  

Damaria3 (US1)

That was my ahha moment dont think that there is a way to avoid being in the event  but if no one wants to participate should not be a problem artful you just wont progress and you all can ignore.

artistree (US1)

Was the question of fish answered?  Will fish be a part of collecting/donating?

Data King (US1)

artistree (US1) said:

Was the question of fish answered?  Will fish be a part of collecting/donating?

We are not sure yet 

artful (US1)

Damaria3 (US1) said:

That was my ahha moment dont think that there is a way to avoid being in the event  but if no one wants to participate should not be a problem artful you just wont progress and you all can ignore.

Let's hope.

Southern (US1)

Data King (US1) said:

artistree (US1) said:

Was the question of fish answered?  Will fish be a part of collecting/donating?

We are not sure yet 

Bring it, GGS. I'm ready.

KarenKay (US1)

Perhaps I'm interpreting this different than others, but I understand this as having a big difference than what was anticipated.  Obviously Southern has done what many of us have and stockpiled all the items in inventory.  But, that doesn't help in the least for completing Phase 1, "harvesting."  I interpret this to mean that each item on your individual list will have to be created during the harvesting phase.  So you will have to produce however many Fruit Cakes, Honey Cream, and Breaded Catfish, etc., from scratch or catch 1500 pickerel.  So all those dandy "final" stockpiled items are out of play and sitting in your inventory.  

The redemption for all that preplanning is that they will be useful in the Guardian Period, Phase 2, where you can donate them to help another member and in the Bonus Period, Phase 3, where the whole coop works together donating items and completing tasks. So planning and preparing ahead will have its rewards, just not from the get go.

WascallyWabbit (FormerMod)

Michiru (GB1) said:

Blue snowflakes have to be collected by all coop members at the same time and will increase the VHP of the 5th (last) decoration.

Exciting times! A few questions:
Can you elaborate on "at the same time"? As in only when all are currently online..? I dont quite understand the difference in collection between the blue and cyan flakes. What about time difference between individual farmers within the coop? What if some are not logged on certain hours of the day?

"all farm products" - so will those snowflakes fall just on main farm or all farms?

May we have a sneak peak on the very final decoration too..?

Jiesta (NL1) said:

THX @Michiru (GB1) and above Those were exactly my questions too ...

- what does "at the same time" means. What if many members only farm a few hours a day? And do they drop everywhere or only at MF?
- If a member decides not to participate that week because of other duties; so only farms a few hours, what happens when he/she harvests exactly those goods that are mentioned in the order? Is there indeed no "start button"?

I guess the sneak peak will come on a later moment in the event, like last year, they showed us the final Frosty Palace (or what was it's name?) 2 weeks before the end.

@Michiru (GB1)  & @Jiesta (NL1)  It just means that each deco  has 2 happiness values, one for Village happiness and the other for normal farm happiness. When you collect blue snowflakes they are counted along with the blue snowflakes from other members towards the village happiness level. Whereas when you collect the cyan snowflakes, they count towards the farm happiness on your deco. So all members should have the same village happiness, but the farm happiness could vary from player to player.  There is a train carriage for each of the 4 chapters & the final Locomotive is only accessible to those coops that have won all 4 carriages.

We are still awaiting clarification regarding the non-participation question

Jiesta (NL1)

THANKS for clarifying things Wabbit! 

Kamilcom (GB1)

Damaria3 (US1) said:

That was my ahha moment dont think that there is a way to avoid being in the event  but if no one wants to participate should not be a problem artful you just wont progress and you all can ignore.

That's correct. If everybody agrees on ignoring it, cooperative will have no problems.

On the other hand it could be fun even without effort to finsh, for just collecting activity rewards. We will see what they are, if they make any difference. On top of that if somebody in co-op happens to finish their order, donating to others should be OK as donations get payed for, so not loosing much this way, just OM bonus or opportunity costs etc. That means even without moving beyond chapter 1 it could be on fun side, which mostly depends on balancers work and details of how the activity rewards are triggered.

Also, for co-ops which want to participate, the deco size is 4x2, which will be attraction at least for some.

As always with BF, cautiously expectant with funny tinkling feeling.

Since anouncement was done with high level of clarity, all we need to do now is wait and see.

artistree (US1)

The problem is, most people have their barns full so first phase will be a lot of manipulating or sell piece meal to collect in the first phase.  Throws another curve to the game.   Unless a person empties their barn then not prepared for other phases.  HHmmmm

Possible should not have used the word "problem".  Maybe awkward or more challenging or more time consuming sell small amounts each time a field is harvested to keep barn full for "donate" phase.  I don't like the harvest, sell. plant process.  I like the harvest plant process....but this is for only one day or phase so I will live.
Thx for answering "fish" question  @data king

Kamilcom (GB1)

artistree (US1) said:

The problem is, most people have their barns full so first phase will be a lot of manipulating or sell piece meal to collect in the first phase.  Throws another curve to the game.   Unless a person empties their barn then not prepared for other phases.  HHmmmm


Thx for answering "fish" question  @data king

This should not be any problem as it's not substantially different from what we normally do. We harvest and store (and sell) for warious purposes and then sell what we can't store. Can't see any issues here.

Jiesta (NL1)

artistree (US1) said:

The problem is, most people have their barns full so first phase will be a lot of manipulating or sell piece meal to collect in the first phase.  Throws another curve to the game.   Unless a person empties their barn then not prepared for other phases.  HHmmmm


Thx for answering "fish" question  @data king

Not really a big problem IMHO, @artistree (US1) .... It comes down to almost the same as we normally do. Since the Official Announcement was launched our coop members didn't touch some of our Biological Market contracts anymore, so that if we need to empty our barns we can at least give the goods to the contracts, to anticipate a little.
But even if we wouldn't do that ... it wouldn't be that big of a problem.

And with these new features in the game it's always the same: we are not supposed to be able to anticipate too much, or to finish chapters too quickly... 

aaabbb1 (INT1)

I have a question:

Do the ones, who stay inactive get the deco award as everybody else, or not?

Piggy Joan (ES1)

Hi.

I have a question. In my cooperative, there are some members who won't be able to be conected during all the event. What happens if they don't participate? Is it better to throw them out of the cooperative during this event?

Thanks.

tsitsi (INT1)

wooow @southern no one told me I have to stockpile for a Christmas event my coffers are empty had been busy filling up contracts I hope I won't  have to pass, which would be a shame since it is my first xmas event

tsitsi (INT1)

Question - quantities will be adjusted to player level, are they also be adjusted to coop level 

Tigrain (BG1)

Another question that comes to mind.
We wont be able to help co-op members during harvesting phase ,right?
If the harvesting phase asks lets say almonds for example,or peaches, but  you dont have any almonds/peaches orchards? Cuz i know lots of players that have only ducks in their gourmet farms...what then? Does the whole co-op loses the chances for the final chapter reward ?
Shall we build at least one of each orchards/buildings etc?Or just not participate this chapter at all?

Kamilcom (GB1)

@Tigrain (BG1) One point that will help you understand how it works:

Harvest and Guardian donate phases are individual. You finish your harvest order, then individually enter guardian donate phase so you can help those still harvesting. Third phase is entered globaly (co-op wide) when all orders are finished either by harvest or donation.

If you finish your own task, you can immediately start helping your friends by donating products (required goods may vary and will scale according to donors' player levels)!

Will list you all the possible outcomes/solutions when I get back late tonight if above is not enough or if nobody else fills you in by that time.

buddy194 (US1)

Last year proved that the problem here is simply that GGS can't communicate worth a crap.  Last year's event was very fun and very fair and didn't require anyone to be thrown out of their co-op or any of that kind of stuff.  It was just explained so poorly that nobody was able to figure that out in advance.

I'm sure this year's apparent problems are no different - they probably don't exist.  I'm quite certain that the harvest phase will NOT mean you can't even farm your farm - rather it just states that, in order to pass goods on to your own Santa's Wishlist, you must actually harvest those products and not simply buy them or take them from previously built up storage.  Whereas when you "donate" to other co-op members' wishlists you are not required to have actually harvested the products during the week.

I'm sure this will work very much like last year's event and there will be no need to kick out co-op members, nor to refuse to participate, nor to worry about "accidentally participating" and making a commitment you're unable to fulfill.  The one warning you will need to make clear to your co-op is that, at the beginning of each wishlist, they must either pass NONE of their harvests onto that wishlist during the week, or they must commit to fulfill EVERY task on their wishlist.

Tigrain (BG1)

I think i got it now @Kamilcom (GB1) thank you 

But to be able to help someone ,he needs to harvest at least 1 piece of whatever he needs, to "start"  the order.If an order asks for almonds but that person dont have any almond orchards ,he cant start, therefore we are not able to help him .He is counted as inactive and the deco we get is not on full potential.This is how i understand it,corect me if i wrong   

tsitsi (INT1)

And if your coop has people who do not even respond to messages how then do you know they will not spoil everything by entering then not fail to finish the first chapter. Should we boot the out just to be safe since we do not even know if they even know the rules of this event

Kamilcom (GB1)

Tigrain (BG1) said:

I think i got it now @Kamilcom (GB1) thank you 

But to be able to help someone ,he needs to harvest at least 1 piece of whatever he needs, to "start"  the order.If an order asks for almonds but that person dont have any almond orchards ,he cant start, therefore we are not able to help him .He is counted as inactive and the deco we get is not on full potential.This is how i understand it,corect me if i wrong   

My schedule was postponed just when I was leaving the office, so I'm still here for a bit.

Another point to help: An order consists of several items. You only get one order per chapter.
So if you get for example to harvest almonds, peach, milk, apples etc. all that together is just one order.

I'm deriving this from last year event: Order consisted of 7 or 8 items I think. If these things remained substantially the same (nothing in anouncement indicating it has changed), you now start order by harvesting any of the items on the order. (You get one order consisting of several items for every chapter of the event where you fill in all individual parts until the whole order is complete.) Meaning others can donate even complete amount of one or more items on their mate's order (for example mentioned almonds) without that player necessarily harvesting a single almond orchard. OK, so as long as any one item on the order had been harvested by a player (at least 1 piece of it), that means the whole order has been started and others who finished theirs can now donate towards any item on that order regardless if that specific item has zero harvested or is nearly finished. (Note that based on donnors' player level they may be asked to donate completely different items then almonds, so it's not always a big advantage to donate and may come out more "expensive" then harvesting original item.)

Errrrrm ..... too much text. Hope it's still clear enough and helpfull. I'll polish it later if you find it a bit confusing.

buddy194 (US1)

@Kamilcom  I'm sure you're right.  Assuming this year is like last year, what you've described is the way this will work.  Also last year, the way donating to other co-op members' lists worked was that you donated whatever was the 2nd item on your list to fill whatever was the 2nd item on their list, your third item for their third item, etc.  So if you had corn as your 2nd item and they had almonds as their 2nd item, then when you donated corn to their list, it would be applied to their almond requirement.  This was fun because it allowed lower level players to be as helpful to other members as high level players could be.

Ladyoz (US1)

WascallyWabbit 

A amendment to last announcement:
Also there will be a "start" button for the Christmas event task.

---

So does this solve the issue of members and co-ops who don't want to participate? We just don't click the Start button and we can avoid the whole event?

Jurona (US1)

The event sounds fun  

SophiaLorraine (US1)

ok........MY question:  Once we win the decos, we have to build them, of course, to acquire the happiness, but then are we stuck with Christmas trains on our farm or farms in order to KEEP, in particular, the Village happiness?  They're bright and pretty, but  I don't want them on my farms forever.....I typically store "holiday oriented" decos and put them out at the appropriate time of year.........Can anyone answer this one?  I didn't see this question come up in the discussion as I read through it......... ??  

Damaria3 (US1)

Oh Sophia a lady after my own heart I too put out my holiday theme decos for the current holiday it is fun isn't it and am guessing to keep that village happiness we will be stuck with those decos on our farms year round  UGH  now I REALLY like the size and THANK YOU GGS for listening to us about size of decos  and this was the selling point to get me to participate in this years event. Hopefully sophia we can hide it in a corner and bring to the forefront during the holiday.  Merry Christmas

crazier (US1)

I guess that means everyone will be automatically joined to this event. They don't have to look for where to join?

Kimmiecat (NL1)

Data King (US1) said:

Hey Big Beck (US1) you asked "some of us are concerned about accidentally joining the event unintentionally during the harvest phase.  How will you avoid participating  and still harvest your farm?"
I would think just avoid harvesting the items on your list, but this will end up hurting your co op.

And hurting yourself. Imagine Santa wants chickenfeed and you run out....take a mandatory holiday to prevent accidental harvesting? No cash for GGS