Thread:Chrystal Crag/@comment-22439-20150808221651/@comment-24668482-20150816111808

So I've been banishing/trading a bit while visiting between 2 games and am not seeing anything obvious. Unless the friend gets some coins or something when the notification comes up that they have been visited, and those screens are hard to tell as coins always added before you exit so hard to compare (like the daily bonus coins look like not going into inventory but are, you are just not seeing when it goes up). But the friend doesn't get the reward for banish/trade or a notification that that had been done by a friend the next time they interact with that townsperson/monster, so it does seem like there is no benefit to the friend.

I guess there are teo benefits to the visitor - 1) if you haven't unlocked that townsperson/monster yet you can still interact with them on friends boards and 2) if you have a friend at a much lower level than you and say only has 4 locations opened but you have 5 daily actions per friend. You can use the left over action to interact with their townspeople/monsters so you can get the reputation point/experience points/coins for that action.

Finally setting up the second game has also explained what is going on with the thank you gifts. I couldn't see the exact reason so few return compared to gifts sent. I was thinking it must have been just sending them for items sent from wishlist or just free gifts or just gifts from inventory (even though all have thank option so didn't make sense) but none of the numbers of sent vs TYs were adding up. It turns out, the game only sends 1 TY per friend per accepting session. So if a friend sends you 2-3 gifts and you accept and thank them all at one, they will only get 1 TY gift from you. You have to exit the gift window between each gift for them to get a TY gift for each item. So accept and thank one gift,exit the window then open it again and accept and thank another, etc. until all gifts are thanked. Bit silly but good to know I guess.

I think SS is a more balanced game than this one, but it does start to even out as you move through the game (just like SS does). The only thing that truely annoys me about it right now is having nothing in shop to buy with coins (no compass or lantern equivalents in tools). And certain puzzle configurations being set deliberately to require the use of tools. At least for treasure box and ancient cards.

It not every one, but there are some treasure box configurations that require one of 2 things to happen to win (regardless of your skill level) - either you use tools or you have a lot of luck in how new gems fall as you clear existing ones. The puzzle is set up so won't be won every time based purely on skill, as if gems don't fall in right way to allow for special gems to be created (completely by chance, you can cleverly manipulate all you want but if right gems don't fall it is in vein) then no skill will save you as you need more moves than given to clear board. If you refuse to use tools, then you will only win some puzzles every couple of attempts as it is only every couple of attempts that gems will fall in a way that you can set up special gems - it is designed to make you use tools (and hopefully to make you buy them).

And with ancient cards, the game lags so much on turning cards that only enough time to turn so many before the timer runs out. So when you increase the rank to the point that puzzle at its lowest time and highest cards you need to make a match with most moves (unlikely, no matter how good your memory is) as you can only turn cards so fast. Again forcing the use of tools that they hope you will pay real money for. It isn't as bad as some treasure box configurations (can still win without extra 'luck'). But not as fun, as at least with the evil treasure box configurations you can enjoy spotting what makes them evil and figuring out what move you need where to break the board (even though you know you are not guaranteed the gem set up to be able to make that move every time).

I think the game will need work if it wants to hold players long term to be honest. The novelty will wear off and people will get fed up with certain things done purposefully to encourage spending. The kind of people who play long term are the people who don't tend to spend money on these games, so it needs a balance where you might have to wait longer and you might have to play many more games, but you can still feel like you are getting there and making progress. It nearly has that sense of balance, but I think they have borderline taken it too far.