|
Post by doctortomoe on Dec 2, 2023 18:00:50 GMT -5
I've gotten two Christmas Aisha MP's, one each day.
And New TNT DID say they were going to try and find ways to get Cove items back into the economy. I fully approve of this.
|
|
|
Post by Duke Pikachu on Dec 2, 2023 22:21:09 GMT -5
It wasn't even past the 1st day (heck, for some they might not even had collected their daily gifts) and already TNT has caused quite the stir with their prize selections. This time being a certain item Reina is giving out: Let's start generally. I like the selection of Reina's bonus prizes; many past Advent Calendar-exclusive items. And while for some items like the Toys or School Supplies doesn't do much, there's a few notable items this helps; mainly the one-use items.
Food is an obvious place to start, event exclusive food always felt the odd to feed to your Neopet as, unlike with items like Books or Album which you can go somewhere to see what has been read/collected, what they do can easily be achieved with a common Omelette or Jelly. Now this also means most food items are low priced as no one wants to eat them as they feel special but, unless it fits a theme of their Gallery, they don't want to hang onto it. So at the very least having Reina hand out some older ones makes it feel less taboo to eat the item that was only ever given out once to everyone. I especially like the inclusion of Apple and Brie Omelette, Cranberry Jelly, and the especially unique looking Turkey and Cranberry Omelette. Infact I wished they would have also included the Turkey and Cranberry Pizza, as not only would that be at least one of each food item that can be eaten multiple times but, since they included the Turkey and Cranberry Chia Pop, that would have been all the "Turkey and Cranberry" items. I guess a special mention should also go to the Stocking items, a one-use Toy which gives out 3 Food items, most being cheap but there are some rare ones like the Chocolate Stamp, Holly Bonbons, or Milk Chocolate Orange.
Not a one-use item, but Wearables are always nice to have re-released. The two backgrounds I can see plenty of customization options for, and the sled is a fun foreground (especially for a Christmas Neopet that dresses as Santa or an elf). Though as I see these wearables, I can't help but also see the Instruments they also tossed in and think how cool they would be as wearables. They don't even need to change their Category, just make Instruments a special item which can be used as either a toy or a wearable. My Neopets can't wear the Limited Edition Guitar or Marching Glockenspiel, but they can be holding the Cobrall Charmer Clarinet which feels more niche.
Having spoken of Books and Album Items, they are ALWAYS great to see re-released. Nothing "Sticky Snowflake Stamp" level (though they have a Sticky Snowflake), but there are a few like the Soup Faerie Stamp and the Gingerbread House Coin which used to cost hundreds of thousands.
And before discussing THE weapon being given out, a quick highlight over to Sticky Snowflake. Why? Because it's a missed opportunity. Like, sure, the Sticky Snowball was also an exclusive AdCal item, but it's icons are low so no one cares. The one-use AdCal exclusive BD item they should have re-released was the Shooting Star Muffin. Granted, nowadays you can more easily get at least two constants that do over 15 icons, but that doesn't make the Shooting Star Muffin completely useless as it uses both hard to block Fire & Air icons and looks pretty snazzy.
Alright, let's get to the star: SEASONAL ATTACK PEA. The middle child of the Attack Pea family, this is a multiuse weapon that does TWENTY Earth icons and EIGHT Light icons! 28 icons! That's higher than most bombs! Ghostkerbomb has a 20% chance of doing more damage (doing between 21 or 30), and Varia is the Bomb trails behind by 3 icons (25)! And goes without saying it beats most Hidden Tower weapons like the Anagram Swords. The only weapon that is better is the Super Attack Pea which is 20 Earth & 12 Air. This was a Smuggler Cove item originally and, as you can see, for good reason. "Well, a full Earth blocker completely cripples it". Very true, with this and the previous mass release of Illusens Staff I imagine 2-Player is going to now have players carrying around at Illusens Silver Shields (which were also mass released), Shield of Pion Troect, or Pirate Captains Hat. Of course I think most most players only use 1-Player and most opponents, even ones during a battling event, rarely have any of these items so are free to be blown away by the massive amount of Earth icons many players can now be packing. At this point the only difference between a newbie battler and veteran would be stats as they're just bursting down the wall of high-end weapon accessibility.
And now comes the controversial part: What I think. Do I play the hypocrite who cheers on deflation of Album items but shake my fists at deflation of powerful weapons? Previously, I somewhat did this during the recent Faerie Festival for allowing all those who joined Illusen's festival to be able to purchase at least one if not TWO Illusen Staffs, the final prize of her 50 Level Faerie Quests which is very powerful... if used by a Neopet who can take advantage of its special traits (which would mean a Neopet with high HP, so in a way even if you could get one not all may find it that useful). I will defend my position that my argument wasn't a powerful weapon shouldn't be a prize, but rather it shouldn't be one which was a special prize for a specific site Feature (aside from the Avatars and Trophy I guess, there's no reason to ever do Illusen's Glade; had they at least replaced the Illusens Staff at the final prize I would have at least considered it "fair" but NOPE!). And, BTW, I do not think they're doing this one purpose. This is purely naivety of how the Battledome works which has led them to placing Illusens Staff and Seasonal Attack Pea in positions of mass release. For Illusens Staff all they saw was an item with "Illusen" in its name worth a lot of NP, and now we have the Seasonal Attack Pea being given out willy-nilly because it has "seasonal" in its name and was worth a lot of NP so thought would be a fun bonus for anyone lucky enough to get one (man, I REALLY hope that Battledome Representative speaks to them about this; this is kind of something they should be trying to reel in as its clear TNT do not understand what they're doing).
But, here's the thing: I'm not mad. Yes, I know, I just went on a rant above how TNT don't know what they're doing, but that doesn't have to do with players being able to get their hands on the Seasonal Attack Pea (which, unlike Illusens Staff, any player can take immediate advantage of and will quickly go stronger as their Neopets do). But, just like with Album Items, there has been a trend of high-end Weapons reaching unbuyable prices. It's a good thing when more of these weapons are released. And, unlike Illusens Staff, at least its random if a player gets one or not (they have 31 chances if they visit the AdCal everyday, but each day it's less than a 2% chance (maybe lower)). I simply wish TNT were just more careful with how they release these high-end BD weapons; I don't want to sound like I'm gatekeeping but if everyone keeps getting powerful weapons for essentially free/little work, it makes these weapons feel less special. Not only that, if they ever want to make new exciting BD weapons, this is possibly going to force them to make the weapon even MORE powerful to get people excited about it.
I already have made by dream weapon set, infact I even have additional weapons I can swap in if the situation calls for it (infact, if I don't get a free one, I'll probably end up buying a Seasonal Attack Pea). Have they released a Weapon I owned which I bought for a significantly higher cost? Yes, a few. But, I don't regret those purchases, I've managed to have them long enough where I was able to get use out of them before they became more widely available; and just because more people can get them doesn't mean they've lost their use. It can be argued that sort of voids my opinion; I have no leg in this race. But that does at least show I care about the Battledome, and there's other issues they've been ignoring with it all the while widely releasing powerful weapons, both new and old, for use in it. The promised "Classic Mode" hasn't been delivered, mechanics like Stealing still don't work, & Codestone prices (especially Red Codestones) are very susceptible to inflation. "A battling event is coming at least". Great, we'll see how it is when it arrives, meanwhile that doesn't resolve any of the problems I mentioned nor will it solve a long running issue of there just not being much reason to battle a lot or different opponents once you earn your 15 prizes for the day.
... So this was supposed to be about the Advent Calendar (this transition makes no sense if you skipped my overly long thoughts about Reina, lol). How about going over the first two days? DAY 1:COMIC: So an odd continuation of an old AdCal animation/comic. As Stephanie (swordlilly) directed us to, two years ago a Jinjah ran way from a Kacheek baker; a Neopian retelling of The Gingerbread Man fairytale (the Jinjah already being a reference to it). It was cute, though nothing that really needed a sequel, but I guess here we are! So in part 2, the Kacheek Baker (now sporting a mustache) and Christmas Chomby friend make a gingerbread house, the Jinjah making a sudden reappearance, and moves into the candy-furnished house to the delight of the bakers. Happy ending all around (unlike the original fairy tale, let's just say outrunning a human wasn't his problem...). PRIZES: A neat Background of the inside of the gingerbread house, I imagine the Neopets available in food Colours could have some fun with this. And of course a gingerbread cookie in a shape of a Chomby, I guess explaining their sudden appearance. And finally a Y25 Snowglobe, huh, feels this is a bit random to include. DAY 2: ANIMATION: Just a flying Christmas Ixi pulling Santa's sleigh, which has no Santa, just bobbing presents which I guess jump out and slowly rain down? *Shrug*
PRIZES: Well its a Christmas Ixi day as we get a toy of it and a Morping Potion! Hm, thinking about it, maybe they should have released a wearable like a glowing red nose. They have an NC item which is an animated blinking red nose, and an NP wearable that's a clown nose, so I think there's room for an NP red nose that looked like it was glowing (even if it wasn't animated). But hey, a MP is a MP.
|
|
|
Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Dec 3, 2023 5:06:28 GMT -5
Nothing special for today, by the looks of it Day 3 855 np, Christmas Tombola Guy, Winter in Mystery Island, plus a mobile wallpaper, if one is inclined to download it
|
|
|
Post by Huntress on Dec 3, 2023 5:33:41 GMT -5
Ooh, happy dance. The book in today's advent calendar was handed out only via a Burger King promotion code in the US and was obviously nearly unbuyable so I obviously still needed it for my book club list. It's been heartening to see that they're re-releasing items that were originally this time- and location-specific. We didn't even get Burger King until like five years ago.
also it's inferior to Hesburger so there
My hot take on the ongoing topic of the deflation chaos is that the Neopian economy (or rather, economies) were never supposed to get this expensive and this unattainable. Like, it's outright insane that there are things out there that've gotten so expensive that you wouldn't even be able to trade or auction them within the scope of the site's own restrictions and need to be aware of some sort of a complex system of ETS-s if you even so happen to own a rare stamp. Which is a) too much trouble for someone like me and b) frankly scary because what if I attract unwanted attention this way? The whole thing is the equivalent of bones that were broken a long time ago and set all crooked, so of course straightening them out involves breaking something open again.
The one un-chaotic alternative would've been some sort of a surgical approach of disentangling all of the bot accounts and hoarders-for-the-purpose-of-inflation and I can't frankly even imagine the kind of time and effort that'd go into that in a way that'd actually make a difference to the wider Neopian userbase. Like, as an admin, I've done the occasional disentangling case of sketchy behavior on this forum. It tends to take an entire day, sometimes several, sometimes with mods working together, piecing together evidence bit by bit, setting aside all of the other actual real-life obligations. Doing something like that in something as entrenched as the Neopian economy, with all the tendrils intermingled in spaghetti code and running offsite? ...yeah, why would I even attempt that if the problem can be summed up with artificially choking the supply and I so happen to actually control the entire supply? BRING ON THE FLOODS.
|
|
|
Post by Stephanie (swordlilly) on Dec 3, 2023 19:25:56 GMT -5
The mobile wallpaper is cute! I didn't realize I was in need of one until I saw it xD I'd been using a basic color-gradient one before today.
|
|
|
Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Dec 4, 2023 5:29:26 GMT -5
Day 4 prizes 707 np, Covered in Snow, Snow Kadotie
|
|
|
Post by Breakingchains on Dec 4, 2023 11:38:22 GMT -5
Haha I should have waited to buy a kad, but I was so excited I bit the bullet when they hit 1.5 million. Alas.
Also, today's comic was super cute.
|
|
|
Post by Kengplant on Dec 5, 2023 0:22:20 GMT -5
The art so far this year has been stellar! The comics have been so detailed and on style!
It's giving me hope for the plot!
|
|
|
Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Dec 5, 2023 5:28:53 GMT -5
By the looks of it, today's prizes are new items, not rereleases or restockables 1036 np, Elderly Acara Plushie, Baby Holiday Bib, Y25 Plushie[/spooiler]
|
|
|
Post by Fraze on Dec 6, 2023 6:04:34 GMT -5
We get a plot tease on the AC today! Predictions of ~horrible things happening~ and all that. The animation is pretty spoopy too.
The Big Book of Intermediate Evil Plots is an existing item, Reginald Christmas Stamp is a new one. Also yesterday's comic was adorable! The art has been really good and on-model this year.
|
|
|
Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Dec 6, 2023 8:13:34 GMT -5
Huh, that's definitely interesting 789 np, The Big Book of Intermediate Evil Plots, Reginald Christmas Stamp
|
|
|
Post by Breakingchains on Dec 6, 2023 9:32:48 GMT -5
Unexpected!
|
|
|
Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Dec 7, 2023 5:37:05 GMT -5
Day 7 951 np, Pebble, Christmas Rock
|
|
|
Post by Breakingchains on Dec 7, 2023 12:22:36 GMT -5
Bawww the pebble is a petpetpet. That's definitely going on Rockcrystal.
|
|
|
Post by Kat on Dec 7, 2023 21:24:01 GMT -5
If anyone wants to sell their Pebble I...kind of want...to buy a second.
Willing to buy at prevailing SW prices.
|
|