With the Winter Magic event winding down, I would like to offer feedback, constructive criticism, and recommendations.
The Good
The red ribbons that appear on the outskirts of the city contrast nicely with the background; since the ribbons are easy to see, I don’t need to scan around my city multiple times looking for ribbons. Additionally, with the overall number of ribbons obtainable from the quest chain returning to more normalized levels seen in older events, the collections around the city are more worthwhile than in the past couple of events.
The artwork, as usual, is quite good. I have the Winter Market Set and the Snow Owls Set in my city anyway, and I think the artwork goes nicely with both the previous winter buildings and the new winter buildings from this event (which are also charmingly designed). I have seen many complaints about the artwork of the evolving building, but I think it works well thematically, and although the artwork is a little busy, I don’t think the building is an eyesore. If the building were placed by itself with no other winter themed buildings, it may look out of place, but as part of a theme, I think it works fine.
Although I am not a fan of the random quest mechanic, the quests for this event were relatively well balanced, and I did not have to tear down my city to redesign it for the duration of one event. I felt the main questline could be completed in an appropriate amount of time, and I felt the “bonus” quest mechanic allowed for appropriate advancement beyond the main questline without the crazy number of prizes flowing from previous events.
The Bad
The overall concept of the gift boxes has potential, but as with many things the developers have done lately, they undermined their own concept. In theory, a player’s chances of gaining the daily prize improve with every random box he or she opens. The player knows the daily prize could be in the next box, and the player knows that every successive box improves the chances of finding the prize. Since a player’s chances are always improving, the player is incentivized for opening more boxes (and spending more ribbons, and potentially buying more ribbons if the player is on the cusp of receiving the daily prize). Which leads me to point out an awful design choice: the decision to include the shuffle as a random occurrence. This decision is truly baffling. The shuffle appearing randomly undermines the entire concept, leading to an overall frustrating experience; instead of a constant feeling of impending reward, the appearance of the random shuffle before the player has obtained the daily prize leads to a feeling of discouragement. Why continue to open boxes when the game will simply be reset at random?
Similarly, the player who is seeking multiple copies of the same daily prize who gets lucky and obtains the daily prize early still has to spend more and more ribbons until the shuffle randomly appears. A player who gets the daily prize in the first box may still have to open most or all of the 15 other boxes to find the random shuffle. This would not be as much of a problem if the individual awards from the boxes were worthwhile. Unfortunately, I feel the ribbons required to open each individual box are too expensive for the rather paltry prizes awarded.
My recommendation: improve the prizes in the boxes, and take away the random shuffle; instead, allow the player to manually shuffle the board for the same number of ribbons it takes to open a box, and award a hammer for the manual shuffle.
The Ugly
Which leads me to another questionable choice: the hammers. The hammers add extra clicks and another unnecessary layer of RNG. A player can get one, two, or three bricks from a hammer, and a house that awards a grand prize takes twenty bricks to build. On average (in theory), a player will get two bricks per hammer, and it will take ten attempts to build the house.
My recommendation: when a player opens a box, just give the player one brick that automatically adds to a house that takes ten bricks to build—no extra clicks and no unnecessary RNG.
