Totally agree. We asked for a change in the storyline, because Apedemak was like... This fun character that we all loved, and then he was made into an incestuous, eugenicist rapist. And we were all like 'hey, uh, what the fuck?' and then they like threw out the entire event. That's not what we asked for.

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I did noticed the only place we have to pay the shards is in the explore thing now.. So I dont mind it much... Do we still get shards in normal explore? Othereise we are going to pretty much run out of shards and cant continue anyways :/
Before iw as a little what? About it. ..and yes the battling sucks. I can win very specific ones. But 90% of them I can't.

I loved the celestial event

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The reason why I’m disappointed with this event isn’t just because the currency makes no sense to me (as you said why am I paying to take steps in explore to barely make back what I’m spending when during normal events I can find currency using energy), but it’s because I love lioden being a “realistic fantasy” game. Every event has felt like it fits the universe. This event barely fits. It feels like a knock off lunar event (like you said).
Instead of gods that look like us (lions) and spirits and other things that have clear real life influence (Africa, etc) we’re getting alien space dragons?? Why???
November has spirits of primal lions and September has a plague that brings omens and calls upon gods and October has demons and angels. Those demons and angels still feel like they fit
Even June fits. Tying in real gods works! the world splitting open to reveal evil snakes even fits. This alien dragon bullshit does not.

Thanks for making this post. I hope what I said doesn’t make it seem like I’m unappreciative because I empathize with staff and their work but I’m not going to pretend to like something that Feels soulless and manufactured. Where are the characters we’ve grown with? Even if one is a PR nightmare and a total asshole why couldn’t we have gotten a total retcon? Or started from specific lions in the past/future? Seems like a waste of potential for something “easier”.

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I just care about July decor really so I'm happy that I finally have a dragon decor. And I like July bases. Besides that - I prefered previous version of event. This one is still okay but yeah... I guess it's good that I joined only year ago. I didn't have time to grow really attached to old storyline and characters.

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I'd say that, up until today, the community has acted in unusual good faith. The space dragons were teased last year, and instead of jumping onto any possible concern with so little info... we waited. The userbase waited until we actually had more information before raising their concerns instead of making a fuss over vague hints.

But tbh, I kinda wish we'd all had a sit down talk at the dinner table about this first. A lot could have been avoided by running by a few testing teams - even if they leaked, the information would do wonders on gauging the reception the rehaul would have.

It feels like the creators of the game's content are very out of touch with what the userbase wants, needs and is concerned with, and this is the tipping point.

The main concerns I've personally had, or seen brought up, about post-2017 July were as follows:
1. A safe, fun character was made an incestuous rapist with no warning, for shock value, and as a result the whole storyline is rightfully incredibly triggering for many.
2. The Event was bloated, with Zimbabwe namely feeling like it no longer fit in once Tefnut's Temple provided a more profitable use for the shards
3. The Celestial Raffle system is an awful way of implementing the bases and marks - they're either fought for til drama errupts, or glorified NCLs who even have *NCL manes* that die out with their marks and are inefficient at spreading base or marks or eyes.

To solve the first two problems, the team... seems to have invented several more out of thin air, as noted by Lex. These problems were entierly avoidable - moreover, it feels like a 'baby and the bathwater' situation. Instead of salvaging the old lore and storyline, they created more work for themselves and more work for the community by tossing out several years of content and replacing it with a half-finished system, with no link between the two. It's disorienting on our end, and doesn't look very good when the event's planned form is so out of synch with how Lioden works/is seen by its playerbase that it gets this much backlash in less than 24 hours.

(The third problem, which arguably resulted in the most drama, is still in place with no changes.)

Moreover, it just... doesn't feel like Lioden. Even with the Demiurge and June storyline, we were on earth! Even with kings with more realistic lore, many events still worked - and old July did too. You could be a perfectly normal lion interacting with lion gods and lion god drama. Most of the storylines did feel inherently Lioden. With this, I feel you could put it in almost any random game and it would feel just as jarring, or even more at home in those universes than this one. How does this tie into lions? Why is my lion in space fighting aliens? That's not good.

I get how and why the creative team are upset - clearly a lot of time and effort went into this. But... next to none of it was necessary. We asked for a 1-page summary of a book and what we got was a master's thesis. It's an inefficient use of all the team's time, that could have gone into other things more likely to (rightfully) get positive reception. Just reuse the old storyline assets, but with a different storyline explained underneath!

Speaking of time: it's been several years since the 2017 storyline dropped, and a year since the July rehaul was announced. So much time was there, to test waters and gauge reactions and fine tune this into something fun and spectacular. After so much time, with the community expecting the wait would pay off, to have it come out so disjoined and disconnected from good gameplay is a letdown.

Hopefully this is taken as an opportunity to bring in serious testing, and actually listening to the feedback provided. Lioden has been improving so much at taking the community's feedback and acting accordingly! It's been so refreshing to see! I think that's part of why the backlash is so biting: no one was really expectimg something this out of touch, after Lioden has had a great year of really stellar tweaks and features that fit so well with improving user experience in some way or another.

This... this feels like it's two steps back, and the fact the team is likely upset that their hard work is (rightfully) met with distaste will just cause them to pull up their walls and go back to refusing to take our word and change things meaningfully. And it's mostly due to them not checking in before taking the plunge... and I think that's really sad.

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Could not have been worded better, Agryo.
I hope the staff does not take this criticism as an insult.

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I think the criticism posted is very fair, though personally I'm fine with the old NPCs being replaced as the storyline got kinda horrifying by the end and I was not much a fan of the story by then. I usually don't find events a problem, but July is proving to be at the very least confusing and tbh kind of stressful. That just might be me as I find it hard to handle a lot of changes to something I'm use to however.

The fact you use the energy bar you need to find shards to fight the new enemies the worst offender to me personally. Like, a new bar for exploring there to fight even would be helpful imo. Especially when it costs like 5 shards per step or whatever.

I do think if at the very least a bit of a "hey this is the main event stuff just a heads up" would have helped a lot for everyone, staff and players. People could have given their criticisms or opinions ahead of time and the staff could have adjusted things or gotten input they could use to help the event transition smoother.

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Zambz (#2687)

the reason that replacing characters is upsetting people isn't because we liked the storyline, it's because the characters had potential and it was ruined. Menhit, Apollyon, and Tefnut were awesome. They could have kept the same characters and started over from the beginning as to wipe that nasty ass, triggering story out of existence while still keeping the characters people liked. Apollyon and Menhit are even in February encounters! So are other random celestial lions, you can get meteorite shards during February explore encounters. It feels like, as Aggryo put it, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We told them we wanted a change not a total toss away.

I'm also bad at change and understanding events, I don't know if that's what this is because a lot of people seem to be confused about paying to explore

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Oh no I get that! Totally valid to feel that way I didnt mean for it to sound dismissive or nothin along them lines! Even I did like the characters before it got into the gross/horrifying parts of the story lol. I woulda been cool of they just revamped the story too!

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I definitely was super hyped for the event drop this year. The art is so very good. I love space, I love dragons.

However; what we got was extremely disappointing to me. As mentioned before, it really does come across as the wolvden lunar event but twisted and warped as to fit on lioden instead (the problem here being that lioden runs off of different mechanics (especially the battle system) and userbase expectations - which have thrown several wrenches into how this works and frustrated players to no end). As someone who actually actively played wolvden for some time, and was super into the lunar event the first few times it dropped, this is honestly one mechanic I'm super disheartened to see make its way over here (and only partially, as on wolvden at least you have a chance for a lunar tear for just about every encounter - if not all). I stopped playing wolvden because I didn't have the time nor energy to put into its demanding playstyle - including the lunar event grind especially, and to see it implemented in this event immediately made me lose all motivation to play this month. I would have immensely preferred if they had given us a shard to core trade in ratio and then just put the cores in regular explore with a healthy mix of passive encounters + battle encounters.

I also second a lot of what's been said above by other players.

I know staff put a lot of effort into this event, but it's definitely not what most of us had in mind, and I think a little prior communication could have prevented a lot of this.

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"I stopped playing wolvden because I didn't have the time nor energy to put into its demanding playstyle - including the lunar event grind especially, and to see it implemented in this event immediately made me lose all motivation to play this month."

^ same tbh

Apathetic about it and probably gonna drop it for now since I have other stuff I wanna focus on and this takes up too much time, like Wolvden did. Cool theme, though.

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how do i sponsor this post
don't have the brain power to write an agreement paragraph right now, so currently, i'm just pledging my support. thank you for saying what most people were thinking.

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I think the main immersion issue is a lack of storyline introduction. All of the other fantasy-heavy events have had one. Imagine the October Heaven vs Hell features without any sort of story - just choose a side, get wings/a whip, get currency and buy stuff from Aiatar/demon guy (does he even have a name?). Like, what? Nirah and the portal opening ceremony ground it so it makes sense.

All we really need for this to make sense is an NPC guide (preferably in lionlike form) and a little intro. The lore's already there if you read the Celestial Explore text: the Draconid Demiurge is taking you there and protecting you. Not sure why you can fight nebula dragons, but maybe the Meteorites give us superpowers. *shrugs* A bit of story and actually meeting our guide formally would help ease us in better.

More than anything this event suffered from a rocky start with the Tefnut's Memories Applicator price issue. If that hadn't been a thing, I'm sure this event as a whole would have been received a lot better. And the devs have been improving it based on user input.

Really the only issue I have left is how small the bunches of Meteorite Shards you get in Explore are versus how many you need to use Celestial Explore. Those 5-per-step might make sense when we have thousands left over from other years, but once those dry up it'll make progress very slow.

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I agree. The July event was my absolute favorite, but now its ruined. Gone. Tossed out with the trash like some cheap thing. I wish they'd simply rehauled the existing event, with the space dragons added as extra event encounters. Heck, not this new July event feels a little too much like the Lunar event. i just wish they'd rehauled the existing storyline instead of giving us, the playerbase, this terrible event.

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i thought this. july event was seriously one of the best events out there compared to say january.
the NPCs in the draco realm need to be fairer, and we should at least be able to pick up way more MS in explore (as a compromise).

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