| Charles Evans 25 |
I recently started playing this.
The early going seems tough (but just about doable, at least for me) without spending any real-world money on in-game purchases.
My recommendation for those playing without real-world money purchases is to get the second chest-cracking stand in the bank vault as soon as you can raise the crystals to unlock it. Then maybe expand parade size to two or three, and start saving to unlock Pluto. (Which latter is going to take some time, since Pluto is 150 crystals.)
And as a general comment, apparently once the California Screamin' ride is unlocked, you are in danger of getting dropped into special events. This is a problem if you still only have a very small team of low level minions to do things at that point.
I landed in the 'Princess and the Frog' event with only Mickey, Goofy, Woody, Jessie and Tinker Bell on the team sheet and lost several days not even able to get off the event starting line, because none of the minions I had could search for a crucial item necessary to unlock the first event character, Eudora.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Day 23 of play; Cinderella's fairy godmother welcomed/recruited. Princess Tiana also unlocked - five and a half days left of the limited time event to collect all the tokens needed to add Princess Tiana to my growing legion of minions. Don't know if that's long enough. Fifteen rare tokens and fourteen epic tokens required. Will give it a go for a few days, and see how close it looks like I'm getting, and maybe call it off and concentrate on other stuff if it looks too big a challenge.
Fortunately the necessary epic tokens for Princess Tiana recruitment have a chance of being produced not just by a few of my minions running specific missions but by the two limited time event attractions I have purchased.
Recently Cinderella (level 5), Prince Charming (level 5) and Bo Peep (level 4) have been my 'most valued players'. Bo Peep in particular has been running 'find limited time event tokens' missions practically non-stop ever since she hit level 4 and unlocked her level four missions.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Progress report (limited time event - 4 hours 10 minutes left to collect all tokens required and initiate welcome procedure).
Common tokens cleared for Princess Tiana (they were when she landed in the 'inbox'.) On course to clear the 11,000 special event currency by the deadline. 10 rare tokens needed still for Princess Tiana. 6 epic tokens needed still for Princess Tiana.
Yes - if you don't have the premium content, the epic tokens are actually easier to come by than the rare ones in my case.
I have been staring longingly at the building which has a chance of manufacturing one of the rare tokens every 4 hours. I don't have the gems to buy it because I spent them on Pluto instead.
Still... it looks ridiculously simply to level Woody and Jessie up now, thanks to Pluto. :)
Meanwhile, Daisy Duck is creeping closer to the welcome mat... 3 bow tokens left to acquire. (bows as in pink hair decorations.)
| Charles Evans 25 |
Progress Report:
Tiana recruited earlier today with a couple of days left on the clock. Not enough time remaining to raise the event currency to get past the 'Buy Mama Odie's Tree' event hurdle. (14,000 event currency needed for that for the record; current event currency after recruiting Tiana about one and a half thousand...)
Still: given my position with a very small team when being dropped into my first Limited Time Event, and zero expenditure of real world currency on the event, I'm fairly pleased to have made it to two attractions and four characters. Tiana was the goal I set for myself when I found myself in this situation back in mid-February.
Next limited time event like this, I might angle for four characters and three attractions, assuming the format is approximately the same.
It looks like 350 gems might be advisable as a spend for anyone planning to attempt to at least finish an event like this - 200 to buy the first premium character right at the start and to hit the ground running, so to speak, and 150 for the premium attraction.
Having early Mickey & Friends/Toy Story/Cinderella characters on your team and levelled to a minimum of four looks a good idea as well for making progress. I was missing a lot of those and/or they were under-levelled at the start.
| Charles Evans 25 |
End of Limited Event analysis (part 1):
With the clock running down, it looks like I'm going to end up in the vicinity of 8,600 event currency short of attraction number three - which I wasn't expecting or aiming to get this time (see previous posts) but given such event length is 26 days (or at least the current one is), I'm doubtful I could increase my currency income in the next such event to cover that kind of deficit (or not without characters from the current 'Princess and the Frog' limited time event scoring event currency in the next, which seems to me unlikely.)
So: next such limited time event, four characters and two attractions is probably the best I can do again, unless I buy premium content with gems (which I probably won't have in the necessary kind of numbers by then.)
I'm currently winding down, aiming to hit enough event currency left over to collect 3 gems instead of 2 gems when the limited time event runs out and unspent event currency gets cashed in, and looking to bank enough regular magical currency to clear/reclaim land for the next batch of attractions that have to be built. (65K regular magical currency required to clean the cheapest plot currently available.)
Meanwhile, I have acquired pirate number 2 (Elizabeth Swann), am trying to collect enough hat tokens to upgrade Buzz Lightyear to level 5, and am trying to clear up some side-trek character quests. (And in theory accumulating tokens for eventual acquisition of Cinderella step-sister number one (Drizella) and of Mike Wazowski.)
And now that Pluto has his house (why my gemstone count is currently in single digits - next gemstone purchase goal incidentally to get a fourth parade float slot) I have both of the Pluto missions which can collect Daisy Duck specific tokens now available, which should make levelling Daisy Duck easier.
I'm interested to see if the option of the 'Comfy Tiana' costume disappears when the limited time event ends - at the moment it is open to me, but I have no hope of getting the necessary tokens and currency before the event ends.
| Charles Evans 25 |
End of Limited Event analysis (part 2):
When the clock ran out I had actually done slightly better than I thought and was only 8,000 event currency short of attraction number 3, but still, that's probably too big a deficit to clear for attraction three if the next such limited time event starts any time soon.
For the record, the 'Comfy Tiana' costume seems to have disappeared at the event's end, taking the 'glitched fabric' tokens I had collected with it, so I now know not to make any particular effort to collect those in future unless I'm *certain* I can secure a costume before an event runs out.
And which missions give which Princess-and-the-Frog related tokens have been shuffled round slightly, making it more difficult to level Princess and the Frog characters who have been recruited, at least in the absence of attraction number three.
In other news, my minions are still searching for the last hat token necessary to push Buzz Lightyear to level 5, and I am now one Mike Wazowski token away from recruiting him (at least let's assume from the name that Mike is a 'him') and I have Daisy Duck flipping flapjacks (to try and get that last token)...
Oh: and a lot of Mickey and/or Goofy side-trek quests seem to involve them eating a lot... Goofy is just coming off a 6 hour sandwich eating marathon.
Edit:
I got a platinum treasure chest off the calendar today, and instead of the usual street decoration, this one actually coughed up a Sea Serpent Swing attraction. I promptly had to reorganise some things so I had somewhere to deploy it, but according to the wiki, it's dead useful for generating hat tokens for some of the pirate characters (including Elizabeth Swann - wahoo!)
| Charles Evans 25 |
Crisis situation!
A news update landed in my in-game news thingummy, which brought to my attention that at some time soon Gameloft will be 'adjusting the levelling up costs of several characters upwards' or words to that effect.
The characters included include a couple of sets I'm nowhere near access to (Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast) and the Cinderella set (which I do have characters from.)
I have no information on when the update is going to 'hit' but I am frantically trying to level my recruited Cinderella characters before it arrives, and the levelling costs subsequently get much more exorbitant for them.
I have successfully levelled the Fairy Godmother to 5 (up one level), Prince Charming is currently levelling to 7 (up one level) and I am frantically looking for glass slippers to try and get Cinderella to 7 (which will be up one level if I pull it off) before the update arrives.
My current guess, based on factors such as the start of the 'calendar' day in-game is that I have about twelve hours (in which case I'm out of luck on the Cinderella front) or one day and twelve hours (in which case I might just make it as far as getting Cinderella to 7 goes) left.
In other news Buzz Lightyear has now gone to level 5, and I have that last Mike Wazowski token I needed, but recruiting Mike Wazowski has got pushed down my own priorities queue by the game update situation. (There's only the one queue for levelling and recruiting characters, and I need it for Cinderella character levelling at the moment, plus my magical currency budget for that too...)
NB
I'm guessing that the inclusion of the 'Beauty and the Beast' characters in the levelling up amendments of the incoming update may hint at a possible removal of them from their current 'limited time event' status, and their introduction into the main story as regularly available characters (if enough missions/quests have been cleared to unlock/access them.)
| Charles Evans 25 |
Well: I don't know how long there is left before the promised increase to 'level up costs' arrives, but Cinderella is now level 7.
I also have Mike Wazowski recruited, and the first Monsters Inc. attraction ('The Laughter Floor') building. (On that latter count something really weird has happened, which I think is a bug, since about 75% of all guests with specific 'wants' for attractions arriving seem to want to see that one, and I have a swarm of six or seven of them now all creepily hanging around and circling The Laughter Floor as it builds, waiting for it to complete - I actually noticed something like this happen a few days earlier with the Tortuga tavern, as well.)
Anyway: I think that that's probably it for excitement worth reporting here for now. If anyone has any questions, post away, but otherwise I think that may be it from me here on this thread, until the level up costs rise hits, or maybe a limited time event starts.
All the best to everyone!
| Charles Evans 25 |
Update;
'Maleficent Tower' limited time event being advertised as starting in a couple of days' time; by the look of it, from facebook and the wiki, it's great if you have every character ever available, at maximum level and nothing else to do with them; not so good for participants otherwise.
I think I'm going to try and ignore it as much as possible, and concentrate on raising the regular magical currency to clear the next available land plot (price tag: 150K, since the storyline to get at cheaper land is blocked by several characters it looks at the moment like it may take a week each to recruit.)
| Charles Evans 25 |
Update:
150K land was cleared in the end; I have also since that got the storyline far enough forward to clear another land plot, but have just about run up into an immovable wall of force at this point, a far as the main storyline goes. A character who needs 8 item tokens of 'epic' rarity to recruit seems to be blocking the storyline ()i.e. no further progress until he is recruited), with quests/missions to have a chance of finding said tokens coming in at 8 hours to complete and by no means certain (epic rarity, after all) to pick up such a token.
The early going I described in the first post on this thread as 'tough but fair'; ever since Monsters Inc. characters started turning up in the storyline, it's become increasingly a grinder. Pay Gameloft real world money or watch days or weeks go past without advancing the main storyline further.
With regard to the current Maleficent Tower event (now with only a couple of days left to run), it looks to be basically mainly for players who have everything of everything, as I suspected it would be. On the 'first' stage (supposed to be the easiest) I got something like 12,000 of the 26,000 points required to clear the stage. I've picked up fewer than that out of bigger target totals in subsequent stages, because I've had fewer and fewer of the necessary characters needed to score points.
I've basically been stuck with the 'consolation prize' - for people who have neither been playing from the start nor spent thousands of dollars on the product - of three 'common' rarity characters from previous limited edition sets, and three matching attractions; still that's six legendary chests (minimum) I'd have had to bought, during the right offers (with in-game currency or real world currency) to get them otherwise.
For those looking for helpful information, each stage of the Maleficent Tower has had a different treasure chest type associated with it.
Stage 1 - 'Magical Chest'
Stage 2 - 'Radiant Chest'
Stage 3 - 'Ruby Chest'
Sadly the Ruby Chest doesn't contain a chance of getting actual gems; it seems that each chest contains a chance of acquiring decorations and/or concessions associated with the 'Dumbo' character set, and a chance of acquiring event currency and a chance of getting character tokens. In the case of each chest type, the available character token pool seemed to be related to the characters you own capable of taking part in that stage of the Maleficent Tower event, and to represent 'rare' or less common tokens. So in the current stage (stage 3) I have the characters Mickey Mouse/Cinderella/Beast available capable of scoring points and event currency in the Maleficient Tower and the Ruby Chests give me a chance of getting (randomly selected) tokens needed to level those characters up (although unfortunately not a chance of getting Cinderella's glass slippers which are an epic rarity token.)
Anyway: at this point I'm waiting to see what the next limited time event is, and stockpiling what gems I can acquire for possible premium character purchase, if I decide to make a push for the characters in that event. Otherwise, I intend to expand my parade size, acquire probably a Monsters Inc. or Pirates of the Caribbean float, and start saving up for Davy Jones.
| Charles Evans 25 |
AAAAARGH!
Some sort of 'Honey Bees' event has just started and is going to carry on for the next 4 days and 23 hours.
Annoying bee graphics hover over parts of the area you control, and instead of giving actually useful tokens, for levelling characters you control up, some activities may now give away tokens which will make (if you collect enough) one bee graphic go away temporarily.
If you collect an eye-watering number of tokens, you might score enough points from getting rid of bees to actually pick up something useful (14 points required for a legendary chest; 23 points for a special attraction, plus leaderboard prizes for top scorers). Unfortunately, though, your chances of getting that many points look to be zero unless you spend a pile of money (although you're probably better off just spending the money if you have it on getting something useful directly) or you have most/all of the characters and attractions which were released in the 'Winnie the Pooh' limited time event (which was twelve months ago.)
So basically five days for participants who got all the Winnie the Pooh stuff last year to have a really good time with it, and five days of annoyance for everyone else.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Fortunately the number of event-specific tokens you could accumulate in the Honey Bees event turned out to be capped, so after picking up two dippers and two honeycombs, my characters lost interest in finding any more and got on with locating more useful stuff.
My characters swatted a grand total of 0 bees in the course of the five day event. (I could have used the accumulated tokens to swat one bee, but then my characters on some missions would have started looking for more all over again, potentially instead of stuff actually useful for recruitment/levelling up.)
For the record, when the Maleficent Tower event concluded before the honey bee event, I had about 6,500 MT event currency unspent - which converted into two gemstones. I'm not clear on what the exact conversion rate is for unspent currency in a MT event, but it seems to be worse than for event currency from events such as 'The Princess and the Frog'. (Princess and the Frog was 2,000 event currency equals one gemstone.)
At the moment another 'big' event (equivalent to 'The Princess and the Frog') is being trailed, with a 'Moana' character set and attractions. I'm not sure what I'll do. After picking up the Pluto Easter costume (actually available at the moment because it's Easter, and necessary for sending Pluto to search for fabric for some other costumes) for 60 gems, I'm currently down to 218 gems. I'm debating whether to get the opening premium Moana character once that event starts (likely to be 200 gemstones), waiting for the premium attraction instead halfway through the event (likely to be 150 gemstones) or just forgetting it and increasing parade size (and thus gemstone income; I did actually get a 'Bambi' float in a treasure chest a couple of days ago, which would be useless for token generation right now (no access to Bambi characters unlocked) but still have a chance of making gemstones, except I need to open another parade slot up to run it).
EDIT:
Update - Got a 'Fantasia Gardens and Fairways' attraction in a platinum chest, which would have been more useful a month ago, but which should at least help to see Cinderella the rest of the way to level 10 (Cinderella currently level 9) on the Cinderella hat tokens count.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Since a 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' chest has appeared on my in-game calendar, for a couple of days' time from now, it looks like the 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' characters will support in the next big event (Moana) and said event will commence then.
Needless to say I have absolutely no Snow White characters or attractions at all, and will not have by then (unless I get one in the calendar giveaway chest at the event start.)
Looks like I will have time to push Prince Charming to level 9 before then though. (I have the tokens; I just need a 16 hour gap where I won't need to recruit or welcome anyone else... :D )
| Charles Evans 25 |
Pre-Moana event analysis:
At this point (with less than 24 hours to go) my feeling is the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves character set has NINE characters in it, and that the Moana event is likely to have an expectation that a LOT of event currency and tokens are supposed to come from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves characters - great if you have them, too bad if you don't.
I do NOT have thousands of dollars to throw at chests to try and collect Snow White and the Seven Dwarves characters from scratch and get them to whatever levels the Moana event considers necessary for token finding; I suspect the only other option for participants to complete the event will cost at minimum 700 gemstones (based on Princess and the Frog premium purchase prices) necessary to buy two premium Moana characters, one premium Moana attraction, and one Moana parade float. And at best that's going to get a relatively 'immediate' return of maybe 70 or so gemstones for completing character groups and levelling up Moana characters within a reasonable time-frame. (With a few more gemstones to come for levelling up over time.)
I currently have two hundred and something gemstones. And even if I had seven hundred, I'd really have to be a Moana fan to want to eat a net cost of 630 gemstones total for completing the event.
At this point, I think my strategy needs to be to see what the Snow White chest available 24 hours after the event starts on the calendar has in it, and if it's not a character, forget about the Moana event entirely, apart from picking up the first two Moana characters (who are the ones, as I understand it, most likely to matter for Maleficent Tower events.) Absent at least one Snow White character, I need to prioritise parade size (since parades actually might generate gemstones, and are a reusable source) and Davy Jones. (I now have Minnie Mouse unlocked and recruited and guess which character I need to obtain fabric for some of her costumes... That's right - Davy Jones.)
I may need to pick up Aurora's Spinning Wheel (premium: 65 gemstones) at some point to help Sleeping Beauty character recruitment too if/when they unlock.
I'm not sure what I do if there is an actual Snow White character in the chest, but I'm reasonably certain it will be something like a concession or decoration (the highest percentage likelihood contents for such a chest.)
Summary:
My feeling is I should wait until 24 hours after the event starts to see what's in the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves chest, and then spend gemstones on other stuff, unless it's a character in the chest, and forget about Moana event except the first two Moana characters.
Oh: and Davy Jones is looking more and more essential a premium buy.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Moana Event:
Well, 24 hours of Moana Event gone, and the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves chest did not contain a Snow White character, but instead the common attraction from the Snow White set (the Seven Dwarves' Cottage), which may save me a couple of hundred currency as a purchase in a future Maleficent Tower event, but doesn't do much otherwise for me at the moment.
Meanwhile, I am completely hamstrung in the Moana Event by the fact that I need 'Sina Hat' tokens, but Goofy (who is the only character with a chance to collect them, by carrying out his tuba-playing mission) keeps turning up other tokens instead.
It's like the start of the Princess & the Frog event, where I simply could not get pincushion tokens necessary to recruit/level up Eudora - and my previous experience from that event is once you get behind at the start, you never get a chance to 'catch up' lost time later unless spending hundreds of dollars is possible.
I need two Sina Hat tokens right now to advance the Moana storyline anywhere; that's going to be a day or more to get those (Goofy tuba playing mission takes four hours, and with family events, etc, over Easter I can't exactly login to Disney Magic Kingdoms every four hours right now to run six or even five of those a day) with time ticking away on the event all the time.
I decided not to throw gemstones at the event, and have increased my parade size to five, and acquired Aurora's Spinning Wheel (which latter will help with recruiting the Rapunzel characters now starting to appear in the main storyline.)
At this point I've basically written off the Moana event as a secondary concern at best for the next 25 days or so; yes, it would be nice to get the characters, but without a Snow White character to support, and with the ridiculously low chances of getting Sina Hats at the moment, getting even halfway through the non-premium characters and attractions is looking dubious right now.
NB:
If I had gambled 200 gemstones on the first Moana premium character, it's conceivable that that character might have had a 'collect Sina Hat tokens' mission accessible at some level. My reasoning, however, is absent a Snow White character to run event currency missions (and event character token acquiring) in and of itself the first premium character would probably not have got me anywhere near finishing the event storyline (and acquiring regular event character number five) which would have started to really get back the gemstone costs sunk into its purchase. I have a very tight gemstone budget, and in the circumstances, spending on the premium character is not sufficiently high in terms of recovery of gemstone costs to merit the purchase, or at least not in my analysis.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Moana Event:
This event is looking increasingly a complete washout for anyone without a minimum of 400 gems to spend as an entry 'fee' to the event (to purchase the first premium character, the float, and the premium attraction, as soon as they unlocked) or dollars available to buy the equivalent 'bundles'.
There are simply too many tokens to collect to make headway in too little time without these things.
As an example, one of the Moana event storyline quests is 'collect 30 kakamora spears'; without the premium attraction, the minimum mission time to have a chance to collect 1 spear is six hours. Throw in the premium attraction though, and Sina has a mission to collect spears available which takes four hours instead of her regular one of twelve and the third non-premium character in the set, Pua, (if you actually somehow have Pua unlocked and recruited) only takes two hours to look for a spear instead of six.
I don't know if I will complete Pua recruitment; I finally knocked off enough of the annoying coconuts with spears wandering around the map to make the rest go away (for now) and to have a theoretical chance (i.e. the Pua character is actually unlocked now), but there are less than two weeks left of the event at this point, and some of the tokens needed to recruit Pua are both rare and four or six hour minimum missions to have a chance to find one. I think it's probably possible to recruit Pua, but progress much further than that in the event (again: 30 spears needed, with minimum mission time of 6 hours without the premium location) is looking iffy.
In better news, on the main storyline front, I have Flynn recruited, Rapunzel coming into view (i.e. about to unlock) for recruitment, and nearly enough gems to pick up Merryweather when I get that far. (Merryweather is unfortunately looking rather unavoidable a premium character when it comes to trying to handle some of the more demanding in terms of epic/legendary tokens Sleeping Beauty characters; the most urgent need for Davy Jones is some distance further off right now, and so with regret I have bumped him down the priority queue.)
| Charles Evans 25 |
Moana Event:
Well: the event finished a few days ago, and by the end I had the characters Sina, Chief Tui, Pua, and Maui. (Since I don't know the film, these are mostly just names to me.) I built the three regularly available attractions, and bought (for 50 gemstones) the event float - the latter mostly as an experiment.
I think the float may have helped ensure that event currency was never short, but I'm not sure how much it speeded up recruiting or levelling up characters; it certainly wasn't preconfigured to provide any tokens specific to Pua!
Now that the event has concluded Pua looks like he/she will continues to be a nuisance, since to level him/her up, I need pig tapestry tokens (amongst other things) - and the only source for these which I now have available is one of Sina's six hour missions.
I'm satisfied with the characters I did get, and what progress I did finally make, but I think I would be considerably less so if I had gone off the deep end buying the event-specific premium characters and attractions, in an attempt to 'complete' the event storyline and get all the available content. By the look of posts elsewhere on the web, even those who obtained those items still fell short of completing the event in multiple cases.
Other stuff:
Two Sleeping Beauty fairies now recruited, and the last one incoming in the next ten minutes, to complete the trio!
The next event should be a Maleficent Tower; I am starting to level up characters to try to knock Maleficent off her perch in that.
Mickey/Goofy/Woody/Prince Charming/Cinderella now all at level ten (maximum level currently available.)
I was also lucky enough to get a 'Reflections of China' attraction in my most recent platinum chest - in the last Maleficent Tower event, this attraction was one which made 'refresh' tokens, which will be potentially very useful if it provides them again in the next Maleficent Tower.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Levelling Merryweather (the premium character fairy from the Sleeping Beauty collection) up is starting to look a chore; the Merryweather ears tokens aren't automatic acquisitions on missions - I think they may be 'rare' category tokens, and there are only three missions which have a chance to acquire them - each coming in at 6 hours long, and one of the missions requiring two characters.
In slightly better news, Merryweather does at least have a very short mission (only 60 minutes) which has Aurora's crown tokens on the 'opportunity to acquire' list, which was one of my main reasons for interest in Merryweather in the first place. I now have Aurora unlocked, and Merryweather scooting around looking for those aforementioned Aurora crown tokens. (The Aurora crown tokens seem to be at least 'epic' category drops, meaning if your luck isn't in and you don't want to burn gemstones or real world currency to short-cut past the need for them, lots of missions are needed to find them.)
Also, Emperor Zurg (from the Toy Story universe) is now being recruited. (He takes 24 hours to bring fully on board, but the Aurora tokens are taking so long to pick up, I might as well get Emperor Zurg recruited now...)
| Charles Evans 25 |
24th May 2019:
At this point I advise other people to stay away from Disney Magic Kingdoms unless they have money to spend. The developers appear to me to be trying to introduce a stealth subscription model, in terms of a daily gemstone tax, which is likely to outstrip the natural legal gemstone income available in-product on a daily basis.
To expand on this further, one of the basic gameplay and thematic features of the game is the 'happiness meter'; keep the guests happy by granting randomly highlighted ones time with characters, or by what seems to me to amount to shunting them to the front of queues for rides and you earn happiness. As well as providing a possible warm feeling of satisfaction/achievement to a product user (I have a theme park, and my visitors are ecstatic!), happiness activates four ascending levels of bonuses, with in between 0% and 100% attained, and get 100% on one level, and you start again from 0% to fill up the next level.
The happier your park is, the more likely characters and so forth are to find rarer tokens for recruiting and levelling characters up.
Happiness decays however, and needs topping up; previously, the rate was about 4% or so, (at least in my experience) per hour. Gameloft have just changed that to 14% or so per hour.
Go to bed to sleep or go out to work for the day and wake up or return to find a previous 99% ecstatic rating completely wiped out, and dropped to the previous level. And whilst you desperately scramble around trying to keep guests happy to build it back up, it's still falling back all the time.
Of course you can shortcut that by spending gemstones to raise happiness levels... except we're possibly talking about double digit gemstone totals needing top be spent there.
Or you can use Merlin elixirs to lock happiness in place - except it's a good day if I manufacture more than 100 of those and the 'lock happiness for 24 hours' option costs 350, and since you can't buy Merlin elixirs directly (at the moment) from Gameloft, but instead (if you want to raise your production rate) have to buy chests to get decorations and concessions to liquidate (and possibly to find the magical currency to liquidate them) if you want to hand over real world currency to Gameloft to try and keep happiness up, it's probably cheaper to buy a mountain of gemstones from Gameloft and simply raise happiness directly.
At the time of this post the Disney Magic Kingdoms Facebook page is full of posts by people complaining, some people are trying to organise a concerted effort to put as many '1 star' reviews of Disney Magic Kingdoms as possible around, and the Maleficent Tower event Gameloft are running seems to me to be about the number four thing being talked about on the Disney Magic Kingdoms Facebook page, numbers one, two and three being the happiness meter update. (For the record, the meter also, prior to the update, boosted magical currency income and experience stars earned, but these boosts have been stripped out completely, as of the time of this post.)
Gameloft also potentially augmented the size of the public relations disaster they have brewing, by not making use of the in-product news bulletin feature which Disney Magic Kingdoms have, to give notice of this change. (Or at least if a news bulletin was sent out, it never reached my copy of Disney Magic Kingdoms.) This change came as a surprise to a lot of people.
Instead of worrying about the Maleficent Tower event, and whether I will have enough land to put the attractions re-released with it, I am winding down my activities and pondering whether to stop playing for a while in the hope of an eventual reversal of this modification, or just to uninstall the product altogether?
I don't have any problem with companies running games where extra (optional 'luxury') content must be paid for with real-world currency. I don't have any problem with companies charging a subscription for access, if they're up front and honest about what they're doing. I do find it intensely frustrating where companies pretend a product is 'free' but then handicap participants on basic level daily activities unless money is paid. (At least where the company itself provides the primary or only challenge/antagonist.)
| Killer_GM |
I'm not a big fan of Disney either, though I wasn't aware of some of the reasons you listed above until reading them now. The sheer cost of visiting Disney parks is insane. I have a family member who works for Disney, so I paid nothing to get into the parks in Florida, and I still dropped somewhere between four and five grand for a 7 day vacation there.
And they don't sell those bottles that you pay 15 dollars for, and can fill at any time you want throughout other amusement parks. I was shelling out 20 bucks for water bottles and Gatorade every 2 hours on a 97 degree Farenheit day at the Magic Kingdom to avoid anyone passing out from heat stroke, dehydration or exhaustion...
| Charles Evans 25 |
I'm not a big fan of Disney either, though I wasn't aware of some of the reasons you listed above until reading them now. The sheer cost of visiting Disney parks is insane. I have a family member who works for Disney, so I paid nothing to get into the parks in Florida, and I still dropped somewhere between four and five grand for a 7 day vacation there.
And they don't sell those bottles that you pay 15 dollars for, and can fill at any time you want throughout other amusement parks. I was shelling out 20 bucks for water bottles and Gatorade every 2 hours on a 97 degree Farenheit day at the Magic Kingdom to avoid anyone passing out from heat stroke, dehydration or exhaustion...
Disney are apparently working in partnership with a software (?) company called 'Gameloft' on this one (Disney Magic Kingdoms) so it's possible that some of what is taking place at the moment is on the software company - although at the very least Disney are apparently either nodding along or are so careless of their brand and IP that they allowed themselves be tied up in some sort of legal contract that means they have no control over what's taking place in Disney Magic Kingdoms.
My nieces went to the European Disney park near Paris last year (or maybe the year before?) and apparently enjoyed it - though I didn't hear on the adult side of things just how much it cost in financial terms. They went at about Easter, so I don't think the climate was too much of a problem, though.
Anyway, what is probably the last in-game information update from me for the foreseeable future on the 'entertainment product', Disney Magic Kingdoms:
I finally completed a long enough calendar streak to see an Amber Chest item today. For the record (and since information on this chest seems to be scant on the wiki the last time I checked), this particular 'Amber Chest' contained one happiness token, some regular magical currency and a random concession (in this case a Hot Dog Stand.)
I don't know how representative that is of the content of Amber Chests, but it at least gives anyone venturing into this particular 'entertainment product' a data point of what one of these contained, at the time and date of this post.
The concession would be useful if I had long-term designs on continuing to interact with this product, since ALL concessions have at the moment disappeared from the in-game shop (along with all decorations) - presumably because the long-time players were able to spend in-game currency to buy and boil them down to make Merlin's Elixir too easily.
| Charles Evans 25 |
14/06/19:
For God's sake, keep impressionable children away from this product (Disney Magic Kingdoms). Four times now, in the past twenty four hours or so, I've had an advert which I did not opt to see, in game, thrust upon me shortly after loading which prominently featured a skeleton (and not a comic or humorous version of one.) I suspect it would be sufficient to give some impressionable children nightmares.
| Charles Evans 25 |
14/06/19:
Disney Magic Kingdoms now uninstalled.
For the record, the advert was for a rapper called 'Travis Scott', who is apparently on tour at the moment, and who Gameloft and Disney would like to wave an advert like that in your face to let you know about.
If it had been an advert like that in a product aimed specifically at an older audience, I would have simply ignored it, as part and parcel of the price of interacting with something like that, but I consider there to be something very wrong with a product and at least the branch of the companies responsible for it showing something like that in a product where at least some of those interacting will be young players.
I am reviewing my interaction with other Gameloft products.