The December event wasn't very fun, it wasn't exactly awful but it wasn't very rewarding for what we were expected to do in the first place. This is for possible improvements, so spitballing is appreciated, no arguments. I'll be updating this as things change/ideas are thought out.

To preface: I do not hate this event, I don't hate the idea, I just would have enjoyed it more if the execution was better

Don't support these fixes? Let me know why, your idea might be good too, hell it might even be better! Let's talk, we both want Lioden to be the best it can be.

We'll start with what was GOOD about the event:

-The gifting/pooping concept was fun
-General decor/stuff in the mantis shop
-The bars to open the store was very well balanced and very fair, a vast improvement from the October event, and I'm glad to see that the data from October has been useful
-I absolutely love snuhlions even if they are bizarre and entirely useless
-The advent calendar
-The encounters in explore. I love the leggy felis, please give me leggy felis decor.
-Community effort (to a degree)

What was just plain bad:

-The absolute, dismal lack of event currency in explore (continue reading before typing up a comment about alternative methods to get stink bugs)
-Gifting/pooping having a karmic slant
-Poop not guaranteeing stink bugs, even one, coupled with the chances of getting one from a shit pile being as low as it is
-Heavy reliance on RNG and user assistance
-(By 109872 - The message after pooping implies you're an awful person, and it has more negative effects than staff things (click for more detail)

Why the pooping and stink bug issue was, well, an issue:

Event currency is not supposed to be super easy to get, but games are supposed to be at least a little fun, and trying to get stink bugs was akin to pulling teeth. Within a week, I was already fed up of the event, and had all but given up, because I knew no matter what I tried, the reward would not be satisfying enough for the effort.

Stink bugs being hard to get in explore made the site reliant on other users to "provide" stink bugs, and there's a number of issues with this and how it was executed:

-Pooping was made out to be a bad thing, and didn't indicate it gave event currency. The flavortext for leaving shit was incredibly negative, suggesting you should stay anonymous, should you choose to poop and not gift. This coupled with it not being made clear at all that poop gives stink bugs, the event was already heavily slanted towards the userbase not giving enough shits for the reward to be satisfying at the end of the event. Just in general, relying on your userbase to be the main source of event currency is a poor idea. That should have been supplementary at most.

-The shockingly low chance of getting stink bugs from poop was incredibly frustrating. I would say that it came to less than a third of chance to get a single stink bug from a shit pile, and if you didn't have valuable things to give away on the forums (more about this later) then the chances of you getting many shits to dig up is unlikely.

-Players felt the need to give away valuable items/an absurd amount of GB in order to JUST MAYBE get enough event currency. There were multiple users offering 100+GB in value in hopes of getting poops, that even then would only MAYBE give them a stink bug. When your event is that hard to get any kind of result from, your system is broken, and it needs to be changed. This wasn't just a few users deciding to do this out of fun, it was a huge thing, and too many people felt stressed about the lack of currency for this system to be actually functional. This event ended up "Pay to maybe win sort of" instead of being a community event.

Pooping and gifting shouldn't have been karma based. Why is giving holiday currency bad karma? This is heavily suggesting the staff didn't want the players to provide a shot at getting stink bugs, coupled with how hard they are to get in explore, there's not many other ways to view it. Punishing people that want to have good/neutral karma for actually helping people get event currency comes across pretty shady. There wasn't even any direct money-green esque tinfoil hat conspiracy garbage that could be pulled from it, since pouring USD into the game wouldn't give you stink bugs.

More may be added.

Regarding why having such a main user-assist focus just didn't work this event:

-The low chance of stink bugs. No matter how much people came together, the low chance of getting event currency was atrocious and held the event back. The reward at the end of the even is tier 3 and being able to buy applicators - something that just wasn't a reality for a good portion of players, even if they could dedicate an absurd amount of hours to the game - which brings me to my next point.

-This event punished those who couldn't play all hours of the day. Stink bugs being hard to get meant that an absurd amount of time each day would have to be put into the game in order to get a less than satisfying amount, if you wanted even a workable amount of stink bugs, you needed to be around a LOT. I actually experimented with this - I didn't touch my sideblog much RE exploring, but did more on my main. The results were exactly what you'd expect, someone that couldn't dedicate all the time in the world just wouldn't get a workable amount of event currency. I'm pretty much housebound bar rare visits and trips out, and I still struggled.

-Relying on your userbase for something as big as this so incredibly unwise. Have faith in your userbase, but don't put your userbase's enjoyment and reward in other people's hands. Have faith in your userbase, don't blindly trust it. User contribution to events such as this, where the main currency and reward is resting in the balance, should be supplementary at most. A way to get bonus currency and maybe help you hit that last stretch goal for the decor/apps you wanted. Making it the main/equally as influential is a bad idea that's guaranteed to cause dissatisfaction.

This is only SOME of the concerns I could raise, but these are the main ones. Now, since this is a suggestion forum, and not somewhere to just be critical, I do actually have some solutions that could be fleshed out to combat the issues brought up.:

-Have stinkbugs be more frequent and not massively userbased. Just have stinkbugs show up like they do in the other events, and have user interaction be supplementary on that front.

-If you want user assistance to stay a main feature, improve stink bug chances on shitpiles. Have most shitpiles guarantee at least one stinkbug, and have a rare chance of getting between 2-3, and have a fairly low failure rate that result in getting 0. This doesn't 100% guarantee every shit will have a stink bug, but you're also not screwing the userbase over.

-Don't make gifting/pooping karma based. This was just a bad idea overall. If you WANT there to be a karma element to the event, this wasn't the way to do it.

-Make snuhlions karma based instead! They would need to be changed up, but snuhlions could be karma based! You could build a snuhlion in someone's den, or knock one down, and gain a stink bug either way - essentially the same thing as stomping/chasing locusts in the september event, but with snuhlions. That way you can still see the majestic shitshow you construct, but it actually has a use.

-Be more upfront about pooping. Make it more obvious pooping has a shot at leaving the player stinkbugs.

-Leggy felis decor please and thank you

-(Thank you 60326) The poop message should be funny, not harsh. This whole event is a joke, there's no reason to harsh the vibe that much. Make a joke comment about it, lighten up!

More will of course be added as time goes on.

No idea how to sign this off so just. Gestures.