those are good points about time being wasted if you didn’t make it all the way through a tier. i just barely made it into a tier before the event ended, if i had missed(or gotten wrong, there were a handful that i did) just two questions, i would’ve been stuck at the end of haymaker. it seems a lot of people weren’t so lucky, and i don’t believe they put in any less time or effort than me. i sort of feel bad for that.

probably these things wouldn’t have been as much of an issue if they were known up front, i think. there have been events where i knew i wouldn’t feel happy about taking the time out of my schedule, and i simply didn’t participate. i don’t think it’s that people hated this entire event, they probably felt like it wasn’t as worthwhile of a time investment as they’d hoped, and would’ve been better off skipping it this time around as well. or just moving up to a tier where they could get one or two items and paced themselves doing so. this didn’t occur to me til seeing other comments because i got what i wanted, but…again, i kinda feel bad about seeing others lose out on so much by a relatively small margin.

In the end, I kind of felt cheated :/ I guess these events are just really confusing, or I’m just really stupid.
I don’t really get the prize system, for starters? I thought the pictures that appeared at the top of your screen were revealed as you unlocked each tier. I noticed it said “Prize Level: Stack of Hay”, but I figured that couldn’t be right, because it felt like I defeated a lot of scholarcrows…I feel if I had gone full-out on this event (like the 33 or something that got to tier 6) right now I’d be missing so many homework assignments. I just really didn’t get this event. You’ll probably get angry at me and tell me to give “constructive criticism”, but how can I when I didn’t get the event -_-

(oops, wall of text coming, haha)

This was the first time this system was used. So, don’t feel bad about being confused by it - things are rarely done perfectly the first time, and I myself had a difficult time understanding the system at first (and I’ve participated in all of MC’s events in the past, so I’m familiar with how they work). MC staff has always been great about tweaking events every year to make them work better - they were experimenting with this one, I think, and some problems just an’t be found without putting them to a proper test first.

The way this worked was that there were essentially two different tier systems in place. One was an “overall” meter - as we as a whole brought the scholarcrows’ morale down (which was done every time one of us defeated a scholarcrow), we unlocked items and eventually the pet. Had we, say, only brought them down to 50% morale instead of 100%, all of the prizes past that marker wouldn’t have been unlocked, and would have never been available as prizes or uploaded to the site including the pet. The second tier system was our individual tiers, which was based on how many scholarcrows you as a player brought down. This one determined how many prizes you would be given at the end of the event, and whether or not you could get the pet.

My thoughts on the event, and how it worked out:
1. I wasn’t really a fan of the ‘‘unlocking prizes overall” system. The two downsides to it, that I see, are that we were kept in the dark about how the event items and pet looked. This seemed to bother quite a few people, and I know I personally prefer to know what I’m working for when it comes to clicker events, because they typically take a lot of my time to participate in (as opposed to the shimmers event, where it only took a few minutes of my time really per day). The other downside is that if we HADN’T unlocked all of the items and the pet, it would have been a complete waste of those artists’ time, putting effort into making items and a coat that wouldn’t be used for at least another year, if at all. I know it was mentioned that you guys were certain we would unlock all of the tiers, but then if that’s the case, then why do it at all? xD

2. I don’t know if it was the 30min timer or the tier system, or what, but it felt like I was putting a LOT more time into this event than others in the past, and felt like I was making much slower progress. Part of it was that I was putting in fewer clicks for the time I was able to be at the computer, which made it feel like I was accomplishing less, I think.

3. I think we should have been able to see numbers tracking how far into the tiers we were. It was really frustrating to not know exactly how close I was to the next tier. xD (I know we got some indicators, but it felt like I was stuck on the same phrase for forever because I didn’t know how many I’d beaten since starting - I’m awful about keeping track of this stuff myself haha) I also think there should have been a list of the tiers. I’d heard there were six, but couldn’t get a solid list until the end - only to find out the tier I had managed to reach wasn’t the last one (and with the way it was worded, it seemed like the final tier), and the lists I did manage to get were being put up by non-staff in the sea of forum posts on this thread (though there could have been a more official list somewhere, but I never found it haha). And I think a majo downside to the tier system in general is that someone could put in as much effort as someone else, but still end up an entire tier down from them and miss out on a huge prize like the pet (if, for example, they got a couple of the questions wrong due to trick questions like the “which is the best species” question or whatever it was). With the point system, we could still use up points until we reached a specific number, and then those could be cashed in as raffle tickets. There’s no such benefit with this system.

Now, for the positive stuff! 8D The items are geat (I loveeee the spirit tree!), and I thought it was REALLY nice to be able to win bags from the fights with items from h’ween ‘13. I’d written off the ‘13 items as being forever unobtainable, and had really wished I could get my hands on a birdy beads for one of my pets, and these bags completely changed that. Not only are those items obtainable now, but I managed to get not one, but TWO birdy beads. xD I mean, I wouldn’t want to see that every single year (though that’s really just me being greedy and wanting some slight value to them, ahhhah), but I think it was really appropriate given how very few of those items were actively floating around on the site.

Overall, I think the biggest problem was being kept in the dark about things. We were kept in the dark about the prizes, we weren’t given a clear tier list, we weren’t shown how many ‘crows we were away from the next tier - so someone could have spent hours at the end of the event in hopes that they’d reach the next tier in time, when they may have been too many away to possibly get it and have no way of knowing that for certain. I think event details like that should be made clear by staff from the beginning, and is probably one of the biggest reasons people have been upset about their results.

Diglett
I’m going to largely remain out of the conversation at hand, but I would like to point out one thing regarding the Scholarcrow morale prize scheme. The only thing that beating their morale down did was allow the prizes to be previewed. :) Even if morale hadn’t gotten to 0, all of the prizes, including the coat, would have been awarded - you just wouldn’t have seen them beforehand.

Okay, I’ll start off with saying I got to the 5th tier. The only thing I didn’t get was the halloween mushroom. (Sad. >:)

But, I must say, the effort put into this event wasn’t a lot of my part. I would simply check my phone when I remembered and answered the question. I ignored Mycena for the most part (as I usually do) due to getting ready for a new patch in FFXIV and spending time with my boyfriend. It’s not exactly school or work or family, but I certainly wasn’t glued to mycena as people are claiming you’d need to be.

I do think that it was a little bit too high of a threshold. For once, I didn’t get everything I wanted. Part of that, was, quite frankly, the dumb way the event prizes were structured. I am a coat collector. I collect Ineki and Kelphi coats. I generally only get a couple items in the event because I don’t want to collect them all, only the ones I like. The fact that I had to wait four tiers to even get a coat wasn’t very fair. And the fact that I had to go to the last tier for a chance a halloween coat, is also ridiculous. (Good chance of getting a Fog, once of my favorite coats that I’ll never achieve because they’re still stupidly rare.)

Another thing I notice that I am not liking, is the trend of not showing the coats and items before an event. It is hard to get excited for an event if I can’t SEE what I’m getting. I just end up being annoyed and not having fun with the event because of it. (I had this problem with Shimmers in the Water. I didn’t want to do the activities and had little motivation because I couldn’t see the coats. I ended up doing them, but I didn’t have fun.)

But I love the style of the questions. Trivia, scramblers, guess the picture were great. Math was okay but I kinda hated that I got so many of them. (I have no idea why.) I barely got any trivia and that was the most fun part.

So, tl;dr: Style of event was good, but the prize tiers were bad and too difficult to reach, and please preview the event items/coats BEFORE the event.

You’re allowed to share your thoughts here, Dakota, as long as you don’t get mean or whiney. Stick to ‘I didn’t like x because y, z would be way better’ and it’ll even be constructive ^w^

If I remember correctly from past events, I don’t think the survey will come out until after the item shop thing closes. Not necessarily immediately after, but sometime soonish after.

If you have a lot of thoughts about the event, but would rather keep them private until the survey rolls out you can get a head start by writing them down in a word document. When the survey does come out, you can quickly copy over your thoughts to the survey itself. :)

As for an ETA, I am not sure, but hopefully soon! Thank you for your patience! <3

Since I live on the computer, I got to the 5th tier without too much extra effort on my part. But I can totally see how people who work full time or can’t access mycena 24/7 would find this event frustrating.

The two things I would have appreciated are making the tiers more incremental, and reduced timers for correct answers.

Incremental tiers - too lazy to scroll back through the thread, but someone mentioned that it felt like we were at pile of hay for forever, and i’m just echoing that. using more gradual increments rather than the flat 25 until the 2nd to last tier would have felt more balanced imo, since it requires more effort after the first couple of tiers to really make progress.

Reduced timers - I saw several people mention the idea of reduced timers for incorrect answers, but you got the question wrong so why should you be rewarded for it? I’d prefer we get reduced timers for correct answers, since it means we took care to pick the right answer rather than just clicking randomly (like i did a couple of times with the trivia haha). As a side note, bonus questions for “winning streaks” (maybe like 5 questions in a row correct) would have been super awesome, and a great boost :D

I have a decent data plan and a tablet at home, so I didn’t have any issues getting what I wanted. After I got the strawgawn stage, I was mostly just playing for bag drops.

One thing I really, really, reallllllllly wished this event had was a counter. It was sweet to see the “you’re halfway there!” “you’re nearly there!” messages, but my achievement-loving self would’ve dearly loved a sold number like “You’ve defeated 43 scholarcrows so far! Good job!” next to the overall community count.

Some far-thinking users were keeping track of how many questions they answered correctly, but unfortunately, I didn’t think to do the same and then it was too late. XD