Easter Event Coming Friday With Changes! Backdrops Available Now!

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yeaaaaah this kinda sucked the life outta it for me, no fun in trying to solo knowing you're against a bunch of groups and a "community clue". imo the challenge of everyone being expected to work alone plus the lack of public discussion is what gave the egg hunt its own unique charm compared to other tbt events. plus "find all the eggs" is much a more enticing goal than "find most of the eggs".

the puzzle format is much harder now but i don't see how it balances the playing field at all, groups still have a significant advantage here with having others' ideas to feed off of. having one single guess and a 24 hour limit sounds abysmal for everyone but especially people working alone. sure the old format would allow groups to rush the correct answer once one person finds it, but the leeway would give soloists a break since you could keep coming back to it. unless i'm missing something this change feels kinda overlooked. you guys made a really neat puzzle format before with clue 15 here where while we did have unlimited guesses, it was an actual puzzle that had to be solved rather than just being a clue with a different way to answer. if group hunts become the norm something of this nature would probably be more balanced than the other methods since brute forcing would be nigh impossible and a huge waste of time. having one shot without knowing if you're right also feels more like a trivia/homework type deal rather than a scavenger hunt imo.

this was way longer than i imagined but overall thoughts are that anyone wanting to work alone got boned, the puzzle change feels unnecessary at best, and the whole group aspect is both unbalanced and takes away from the event's originality. on a more personal note it feels like people who were caught during previous hunts ended up on top here and while i can understand moderating all that being exhausting it still feels kind of... bad.

anyway that's my view, as someone who's done relatively well alone the changes are disappointing. hopefully i'll be busy working anyways.
you said it way better than me, i 100% agree. i feel like im at a disadventage being alone. + the whole if you are faster you get bonus stuff. i loved just taking my mind off of things for a few hours and then coming back to it.
im still excited for it but im kinda afraid to see how the changes will affect me and the fun i have with this event.
 
Now that others mention it, I also feel a bit weird about the puzzle clue change.. I feel like getting only one shot at it is a bit harsh; why not up it to two or three tries? Sometimes typos happen, sometimes you misclick, sometimes you're just bad at spelling. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ edit: Ah I see that there's a time limit on it, so two/three tries wouldn't work

Although I do appreciate the staff wanting to mix things up and trying to find a better balance; I personally like community clues and look forward to those ones a lot.
 
wooo new egg hunt! the 24-hour thing will be a bit stressful considering i'll be a little busy on the 16th and 17th (i'll be checking up on some pediatric patients at the hospital!). i'll try my best to do as much as i can though!! hopefully the clues arent too hard and i'll be able to get eggs that i want.
 
you said it way better than me, i 100% agree. i feel like im at a disadventage being alone. + the whole if you are faster you get bonus stuff. i loved just taking my mind off of things for a few hours and then coming back to it.
im still excited for it but im kinda afraid to see how the changes will affect me and the fun i have with this event.
As an introvert myself I cannot see myself being in this event. I don't want to feel the pressure
 
I surely cannot wait for these. I've always been a big fan of these events since 2015 (The first time I ever did one.)

Not sure how I feel about the community clues, since I never was around to do the first ones since the Camp TBT event. (Granted, I never bothered to participate in that event) But I'll see what I can do on everything in this event.
 
Continuing my streak of coming back to the forum after not visiting for months, specifically for a challenge that references the events of the forum over the past months! tbh I genuinely love it when I'm able to solve the weirder, more specific clues. It's like a quick refresher of What's Been Going On :)
 
ill be working for this whole event sadly, and i feel pretty bummed about the new rules tbh. i was really looking forward to the egg hunt though so i might try to look for a few, but ive already given up on the puzzles lol. good luck to everyone participating 🐰
 
Neato. I'll have to check it out this year and see if I'll figure any of it out. Wonder what the collectibles will look like/be.
 
To address some of the recent comments regarding the changes:

First, the important thing to stress is that this year's event is also a trial for future egg hunts. If it doesn't work out we can always change it again next year.

Regarding our relaxation of the rules, I hear the concerns from those of you who are skilled at finding eggs on your own because this change may make the hunt less of a personal skill-based challenge. This was the primary change and the others were essentially added to go along with it, so I'll try to explain the reasoning for making it a bit more.

From the moderating point of view, Easter is probably the worst time of year due to the amount of cheating and us attempting to constantly stay on top of it. Yet still, despite having to disqualify many people every year, we're also aware that many cheaters are never caught. It may be the fair thing to do, but it's still not a great feeling to tell someone that we're removing all of their eggs, they're completely disqualified, and that they're also banned from next year's event while other cheaters are benefiting. We can't know for sure how many participants have helped someone with at least one clue before, but I'm sure it's a lot. Relaxing the rules will increase sharing, but I think it's important to note that it has always been happening.

After last year's event, a lot of the staff were talking about potential changes we could make. I personally couldn't think of any other online game or community that uses moderation to enforce individual participation, probably because it's impossible to do perfectly. We brainstormed different ideas, which were boiled down into these four: simply don't enforce the rule so strictly, make it a team-based event, make it something for the entire community to do together, make it so the participant doesn't know for sure if their answer is right until the reward can no longer be redeemed. The team idea ended up being used in the TBT World Championship and Camp Bell Tree events. Camp Bell Tree even had a small version of the egg hunt. The other three ideas were essentially merged together for this year's Easter event.

Each of these have their pros and cons. There's unfortunately no perfect way to do this event, including each of these ideas and our original method, but at least we can use this year to see how these different versions work. The version that's the most similar to previous egg hunts would be to simply stop enforcing the rule so strictly. However, we didn't want to lose too much competitiveness, so that's where we have the "participant doesn't know for sure if their answer is right until the reward can no longer be redeemed" version represented by the puzzle change. The community clues are a way of making the clue sharing public, so it benefits everyone, while also adding a different element to the event. To further save some competitiveness, we added the bonus rewards.

I saw above that some of you are worried that the bonus rewards actually make the event more stressful, but I don't think this will be the case. We need to find the right balance between making the event less stressful for participants (not just staff), yet also not remove the competitiveness completely from the event. I mentioned 3 different bonuses: first person to redeem an egg, redeem an egg when not many others were able, and the golden egg. The golden egg (and the stress involved in receiving it) is essentially the same as before except that the rush is spread across the entire event instead of culminating after the final batch. Moving this to a bonus reward also allows the winner to purchase the normal collectibles. Redeeming an egg when not many others were able to doesn't add any rush, it just encourages people to think twice before sharing answers. So I'm guessing the main concern here is related to the bonus earned by being the first person to redeem an egg. Seeing as this bonus will have only one winner per clue, I don't think it would be something that most people would feel the need to attempt every time. Similar to the golden egg, you can choose to skip these and it will not have a significant impact when comparing the rewards you receive to the vast majority of other participants. However, it's a small bonus for a person who found the answer on their own and was the fastest in doing so.

Personally, my least favorite change we're trying is with the puzzle clues because it makes it harder for both participants and staff. However, there's not really any other way to do them unless we lean even more into the benefits of sharing answers. That being said, we have this change in mind, so it's unlikely that the puzzles will be as difficult as they were in previous years. If you think this version of puzzles will be stressful, what do you think will help? More time? The time limit was included to avoid waiting a long time to receive the egg currency from them: otherwise the biggest collectibles will be unsold until after the entire event ends.

Hopefully this better explained the reasoning behind these changes, but we're also interested in your feedback both now and after the event.
 
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The new rules make more sense to me now, thanks for explaining! 😊

I personally think a revision of the time limit would be super helpful. This is completely subjective though. I live in Europe, meaning new clues will probably go live in the dead of night for me. On top of that, there are family members visiting over Easter (some other people may be at work etc) which narrows down the window to crack the riddles significantly. I am afraid it will feel extremely stressful and rushed to me to sit down in the evening after a busy day, trying to solve the riddles in only a few hours time.

As other users mentioned, I always felt it was really helpful to be able to step away and come back to the particularity difficult clues later or even on a new day with fresh eyes and braincells. With the 24h time limit this won’t really be an option anymore. All my hope lies in the possibility of the riddles not being as difficult this year as to make it more manageable.

I do understand the downsides of extending the time limit though, as not everyone wants to wait days until receiving their egg currency. Thank you for being open to feedback and suggestions 🙆🏻‍♀️💜
 
The new rules make more sense to me now, thanks for explaining! 😊

I personally think a revision of the time limit would be super helpful. This is completely subjective though. I live in Europe, meaning new clues will probably go live in the dead of night for me. On top of that, there are family members visiting over Easter (some other people may be at work etc) which narrows down the window to crack the riddles significantly. I am afraid it will feel extremely stressful and rushed to me to sit down in the evening after a busy day, trying to solve the riddles in only a few hours time.

As other users mentioned, I always felt it was really helpful to be able to step away and come back to the particularity difficult clues later or even on a new day with fresh eyes and braincells. With the 24h time limit this won’t really be an option anymore. All my hope lies in the possibility of the riddles not being as difficult this year as to make it more manageable.

I do understand the downsides of extending the time limit though, as not everyone wants to wait days until receiving their egg currency. Thank you for being open to feedback and suggestions 🙆🏻‍♀️💜
I agree that more time would be helpful. I don't have a lot of free time on weekends, and I prefer to take breaks from egghunting.
 
Thanks for the explanations Jeremy!

I agree that more time for the puzzle eggs would be helpful, maybe increasing to 48 hours instead?

I have some more questions/thoughts about the bonuses specifically because I do think the bonuses seem stressful. Will there be some announcements made as to when eggs are no longer eligible for bonuses? Because as I see it, if the egg is no longer eligible for the "not many others" bonus then it would be a waste to not share the answers as it's extra egg currency for everyone. Or is this going to work more in a "the five rarest eggs will give bonuses to whoever found them" kind of way? I think the example in the first post makes this kind of confusing when you say:
One example is rewarding any user who finds the egg where only 100 or fewer people found it. The more users you share answers with, the less likely you are to receive this bonus.
And I sort of suspect that the event thread might be a little quieter than usual if everyone is just sharing their answers in private conversations, so it's hard to gauge how many people found what egg. In previous hunts I know there would be a lot of chatter like "I found egg #5!" which at least gives an indication of which eggs were hard to find and which were easy. So if people working in groups (especially large private groups) are going to have more information or a general idea of which eggs are no longer eligible for bonuses and which ones are, that gives them an upper hand in knowing which clues are "safe to share" with others outside their group and which ones are still potentially bonus eligible.
 
I'll be honest I have some mixed feelings about the bonus award for only X number of people finding an egg. In a setting where sharing is now allowed it's going to leave me feeling a tad icky towards the end of the hunt.

In my experience during the past two egg hunts once the last days roll around there's always been a lot of frustrated people who are short on currency for the eggs they want to buy. Now that sharing answers is allowed it leaves the dilemma of well... do you want to help those people out or purposefully ignore them because you might mess over everyone who already found the egg. I don't want to feel like I'm in charge of deciding who gets to enjoy the event and who doesn't.

I'm generally not a group person, I prefer to play events alone if I can so I understand this reward is the attempt to balance out solo players but it feels a bit gross, at least to me personally. I don't really have any suggestions on how to balance out the solo vs group experience though.

edit: Regarding puzzles, doubling on the more time would be nice aspect.
 
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