I love this thread! Great post summarising your thoughts on the events. You missed Showdown Tower, Count Lector’s Shadow Arena and Okkult’s Invitation (not sure if you’ve played these?). Anything else not on here except for SCB, PvP and Biweekly (which are separate things, not for this thread)?
Here’s my list of the events, as the original poster did. Tier 1 and 2 are brilliant events. Tier 3 and 4 are very good fun but would improve from some tweaks. Tier 5 are events that could work well in the game but aren’t right now. Tier 6 is an event which needs a complete redo.
Tier 1: Showdown tower
Tier 2: Game of hordes, Ultimate challenge
Tier 3: Survival of the fittest, Dungeon challenge
Tier 4: Whale’s treasure, Island challenge
Tier 5: Count lector’s shadow arena, Okkult’s invitation
Tier 6: Balancion’s trials
1. Showdown Tower
This to me is the perfect neo monsters event. Slow progression of difficulty with clear milestones to hit and shortcuts for stronger players to bypass some of the grind. The battles are made more interesting with some preset, and harder, trainer battles which we typically want to avoid. In the later floors we start seeing familiar faces from the story and the trainer battles are a huge challenge. However, the thing which really makes this event number 1 for me is the way the rewards are done. There’s a great range of rewards for getting through the floors, all the good stuff we want plus some gems, with some rare ingredients available for weaker players to push to. This satisfies all the newer players and mid-range players. Then, for the stronger players there are a huge number of gems available for actively hunting down the trainers in the later floors and beating them. This works like UC where top players can get lots of gems on top of the main rewards but beating the trainer teams is done by forming a great PvE team, diverse enough to take down each of the trainers, rather than creating specific strategies revolving around particular monsters.
Final note:
All-in-all great rewards for everyone, it gives a reason to become strong in the game (strong team = extra gems) and the event is interesting to play through, even giving us choices to make as we go along. I don’t believe it needs any changes.
2. Game of Hordes
The concept of this is simple, but brilliant. A very large number of strategies can be used to complete 90% of this which makes it accessible for everyone and having unbuffed enemies is very refreshing after playing the rest of the game. The event has a huge number of battles to get through but this is offset by the very low ticket cost and good length of the event, meaning we can choose when to spend our time doing it, as well as the auto-battle we can use for much of the earlier fights. The rewards are very good, like Showdown Tower, except many of them are restricted to beating the higher levels of each difficulty. Needing to beat 10 levels for your 3rd reward is quite a lot. I understand it’s the nature of the event but for players without a good GoH team trying to push to their limit could be a bit frustrating as each battle is long and they need to get through quite a few before getting a reward.
Final note:
All-in-all a brilliant event for most players. Good rewards and very fun combat. However, it is a bit of a grind for some players and feels unnecessary to have 16 layers for each difficulty to get up to 60 monsters. I feel like the event would be improved a bit by reducing the number of battles to 12 for each difficulty and rewards 1, 6, 10, 14, 16 changed to 1, 4, 7, 10, 12. The number of monsters would still be 60 for the final level. With that change I don’t think anyone could find a fault with it.
3. Ultimate Challenge
This is a fan favourite but not my number one choice. There are various strategies in the game which deal low damage, others which deal high damage and a few which deal ridiculously high damage. UC takes those high damage strategies and gives them a place to shine, then tears that away in the higher levels and says that damage doesn’t even matter so you need to find something else. There are things in the game to deal with high level UC and everyone is able to build a good team eventually but it’s incredibly restrictive. Where UC does well is it offers a good array of rewards and then a huge number of gems for those who are able to make brilliant UC teams. This encourages players to experiment and try to build a team that’s very different to all their other teams, it’s a unique challenge that gives some monsters a brilliant use. Most find this great fun and I have to say I do love UC. I especially give it credit for the gatekeepers and how you get a reward every 5 battles. However, other events have the potential to be better as I think both GoH and ST demonstrate.
Final note:
Great rewards and very unique battles making it a lot of fun for everyone. However, due to the design it is not something people can necessarily participate in fully so it falls short there. I don’t believe it needs any changes made to it.
4. Survival of the Fittest (3.0)
This event offers great rewards… a lot of gems, potions and rare ingredients. However, to get to these good rewards you need to go through about 50 battles first, all of which cost you loads of tickets. This isn’t good at all for newer players and generally puts many people off this event I think. Additionally, the battles aren’t particularly interesting… it’s just lots and lots of battles that slowly get harder. However, with 3.0 we’ve now got special bonuses like exp from the fights or reduced ticket entry which makes the grind much more appealing. There are gatekeepers spaced out which make more interesting fights even if they’re actually easier than the normal fights in battles 100+ because the enemies aren’t buffed. I think this has done a great job re-vamping the event so now it’s more interesting, the grind is still a grind but it’s less draining and the rewards have been improved so it’s among the best for that. The recent SoTF event had a 2 legend limit which made the good rewards more accessible for a larger number of players but without this extra accessibility the event may stay a bad one for many.
Final note:
Huge improvements (now up to 3.0) have made this event one of the best for overall rewards, the battles more interesting and made the general grind more appealing. I think a place where this event shines above others is it doesn’t require any specific kind of team, which makes it easier for most people to participate in to an extent. However, the focus of the good rewards is too much towards the later stages of this event. I think it could be improved even further if the gems were spread out over the levels a bit more. This would make it a great event for newer players to get gems and worthwhile spending their tickets while older players will push to the end for rare gems and legendary potions.
5. Dungeon Challenge
The dungeon crawling is wonderful and I love the torch and shortcut battles as a way for players to make the huge 100 floors grind a bit less taxing. The rewards are good and spaced out nicely. Unlike in SoTF, it doesn’t matter that there aren’t great rewards for a while because it doesn’t cost many tickets to go through the dungeon and the people who stop on the early floors will probably have lots of fun doing the event. DC teams are fun to make and play with. Every fight you’re gritting your teeth as you try not to lose a single monster or even sustain a hit! You can pull off lots of interesting strategies to get through the floors. My complaint comes when you get to the final floors, specifically the final 10 floors. The difficulty here is so extreme because of death revenge monsters, poison monsters and others which will completely destroy the strategy you’re trying to do. No matter what team you make, there’s some combination of enemy monsters you can come up against who will break it. Therefore, the last 10 floors often comes down to luck and you need to replay them over and over until you don’t come up against too many nasty teams. So not only do you need to have the right monsters and make a good team but you also need to get lucky… that’s too much in my opinion and is why I rate it 5th here. Additionally, it can be a bit frustrating for players as they approach their limit and try over and over only to have their team slowly killed off each time, with the feeling that it’s partially down to luck about what you come up against.
Final note:
Nice rewards and brilliant fun to play with suitable shortcuts. This is one of the most fun events, but is also very challenging. I have personally found the final 10 floors to be far too challenging so it’s a case of luck even after having the right monsters and a good team. Therefore, I think the event could be improved a bit by reducing the appearance of particular “problem” monsters on the final floors that kill people off. If the number of people who complete DC is high then ignore me but I would guess that it’s lower than other events. P.S. Yes I have Shivadragon.
6. Whale’s Treasure
This is my kind of an event… a huge grind across a range of unique situations and with a choice of rewards to pick what suits you best. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the reward concept is excellent, but the prices of the options as well as the total you get of the currency means that actually if you pick anything other than gems you’re going to be missing out on a lot of gems. If you can do the whole event then it’s possible to pick a legendary potion and/or rare gem to go along with your gems or maybe a rare ingredient if you’re desperate for one of those. Ultimately I think this reward system doesn’t get the right rewards to the right people, all it does is give gems to newer players and a small selection of viable options for older player since they don’t want most of the rewards. Gems are great but this reward system could be so much better with some tweaks. The event itself features interesting battles forcing us to make unique teams that we’ll most likely improve upon each time the event comes out again. The addition of using friends’ monsters makes this event very special and much more accessible for the most part, with the trainer battles acting as the true challenge people need to beat in order to get all the Finns. However, the grind is seriously long and the shortcuts did not have appropriate ticket costs so this is something that will put many people off the event.
Final note:
The rewards system needs serious tweaking. Various ideas for this have been proposed like for example where completing sections of the event give you rewards and you then use the Finns just to focus a bit more on the particular kind of rewards you want. The grind needs addressing with shortcuts that have better ticket costs (I’m talking about level 1 here) but thanks for the auto-battle. Otherwise, the event is very fun to play and should be improved even further as time goes on and we get more link monsters. No changes need to be made to the event itself, it’s solid.
7. Island Challenge
This is a great event which got re-vamped a while ago by giving earlier access to stronger monsters. The rewards are good and since everyone is on equal standing there is very little to complain about. I personally found this brilliant in my early stages of the game where I didn’t have monsters to complete many of the other events but all this one required was good knowledge of the enemy AI, and utilising strategies which work against heavily buffed opponents. This is where the game really shows that being good is not about having strong monsters… instead it’s about learning monster movesets, how to use them, how to play against the enemy AI and how to build a team which works together well. However, there are a few flaws with this event in my eyes. The first is that you often hit a wall as the enemies become too buffed and you don’t have monsters which can kill them, made worse if you get unlucky with your draws. This was helped out by giving us more strong monsters in the earlier draws but I still find I hit a wall at ~120 for a short time in every IC. This doesn’t stop me from getting to level 300 so it’s a relatively minor issue, just one I felt I should note… the weaker monsters simply don’t have strategies built into their movesets which let you beat heavily buffed opponents. Another issue is that you need to regularly log into the event to collect all your draws. This is not 100% clear, can be easily forgotten about and otherwise may be awkward for some people to keep on top of. The last issue is a major one… to get through this event is a HUGE grind since you have to keep on top of the entry tickets which refresh regularly as well as the odds being stacked so much against you that you will often face loss after loss after loss. The event as a whole is very demoralising and takes so much time that it often pulls you away from other content only to waste your time and make you pray you get something good in the next draw. Every IC event I’ve managed to build a good team that’s got me to at least 220 (since the re-vamp I now always get to 300) but sometimes it takes longer than others and along the way can be frustrating or waste your time.
Final note:
All-in-all a fun event everyone can participate in. The rewards are good and the battles are very interesting as you use new monsters and make unique teams revolving around the strong ones you get. However, it is probably the most demoralising event often giving you a huge number of losses as you push the limit of your team. It’s the event I’ve really felt like the grind was stressful and annoying at times, it’s very time intensive without the gradual progression most over events guarantee. I’d definitely recommend to anyone that they get used to quickly working out if they stand no chance against the opponent’s team so they can retreat in advance. This can drastically reduce the time you waste on losses and generally make the event more pleasant to play. For my full feedback on the issues with the event you’ve got to read the paragraph above but as a suggestion to improve it I would say reduce the number of battles and slow the rate entry tickets come back (+10 levels, half speed tickets, half max ticket). I believe that by reducing the total number of battles it would make this event less frustrating to play and you’d really feel like you were getting somewhere with each win. However, it’s a tricky one to improve and make as good as some of the other events.
8. Count Lector’s Shadow Arena
We haven’t seen this event in a very long time and I guess it’s basically been taken over by the biweekly missions. I always felt like CLSA must have taken a long time to design for not much gameplay on our part, so a change to biweekly missions was a good plan. However, if Count Lector occasionally took over some biweekly missions for special rewards from biweekly that time I definitely wouldn’t complain. Maybe if he took over the 5 at the bottom which we normally use our own team for and he did that every 2-3 months. The rewards could get buffed for that biweekly so we got a rare gem for completion and two extra gems along the way. Count Lector’s challenges were unique, making us properly utilise particular monsters rather than utilising a whole team the way we do in biweekly missions and I think they could still have a place in the game if it’s not too much hassle to design.
9. Okkult’s Invitation
I’m not sure if these were simply a temporary thing for the Devs to test particular things on a larger scale than was possible to do with a small group of testers. The special situations were incredibly buggy, often buffing your own monsters with the things that enemy monsters were meant to be buffed with. If all the bugs are fixed then it would be a lot better, but it’s a long way behind the other events because of that. The rewards are nice for the smaller event it is and it’s cool having a unique final reward each time. However, the battles are typically very very hard and not for newer players. I think it works well as a small event to challenge the strongest players and would like to see it coming alongside some of the bigger and more time consuming events or in small gaps between events when we don’t have four running. That’s just a small request… I think this event is fun and unique so it could keep returning as a super hard challenge for the strongest players or maybe be turned into a much bigger event more like the other ones but with the unique aspect that each time the buffs for enemies are different.
10. Balancion’s Trials
This event is terrible. The battles are super easy, the fact you have to come back at a particular time each day is really awkward and the rewards are terrible. It’s like someone had a cool idea about a reward system but no idea about the rest of the event. While we appreciate an interesting rewards system, what’s more important is that we have an interesting event to play. I think the problems have been covered extensively in the other thread (which I’m about to link) and are clear to everyone who looks at the event. If the Devs have a particular thought in mind with this event then they should make it clear somewhere, preferably in-game. Otherwise, I’ve posted my recommendations in detail in this post here: http://www.hunterislandforum.com/index.php/topic/28426-more-like-balancion-fruits/page-2#entry146285.
I know nobody else will give such a detailed overview of their thoughts on the events, but it would be great if anyone could point out where my opinion differs to what the general consensus is so we have a good representation of what the whole community thinks of the different events 