Content:
As we all know, the July event has had a few rough patches, from a pervert Apademak to an absolutely nerfed explore. I have a few criticisms of my own & a few possible solutions, even if they’re implemented in future years. Please note that everything in this has come from my own experience as a player on both lioden and in July events. I am entirely aware that everyone has different experiences. If anyone would like to do similar experiments to document & share I’d be happy to have more tests & results c:

What are the problems?

Currency:

Since the revamp, MS abundance has been a problem. 2021 came with difficult to find shards & the explore cost remained at 5. After a few days, MS were easier to find, and Celestial Explore gave MS during non-encounters. 2022 began with the same problems. After roughly 12 hours of asking to increase shards found in explore, BOTH the MS explore price dropped to 2 MS & MS in explore became easier to find. In a rapid 12 hours, apps were worth 2-5 gb, people had hundreds of AC, and lioden began to frenzy with possible infinite MS. After a short 18 hours, the explore rate was bumped back up to 5 MS per step in an attempt to fix the exploit, but quickly cause problems. After another 24 hours, one last fix was attempted, with Celestial Explore steps costing 3MS each and encounters in CE giving only 4-8 MS.

There still remains one problem: AC is too easy to gain. In part, this has to do with combat, but that’ll be brought up later. In a swift 30 minutes of explore, I gained 160 AC, and only half of that was battling. If I explored for 3 hours, I’d have the potential of gaining a staggering 960 AC. With that, I’d be able to buy every base app TWICE and still have 160 left over. That is an unbelievable currency rate. The current average of online members at one time seems to be roughly 2700-3000, so if 2900 person spent only 3 hours in the whole event exploring and gained 960 AC, and bought exclusively apps (specifically 8 base apps), there would be 23,000 of those base apps (combined). Focusing on just the base apps, that is an UNGODLY number of applicators. At 5,750 of each, the only apps to that can compete with that number (negating the current amount of those apps currently in circulation) is the may apps, hyena apps, green mane app, 2 harbinger apps, Shard of Evil Crafted apps, November mane apps, and a select few November base apps. By adding the # of the July apps currently in circulation (4370, 5209, 4876 & 3538), the only apps that beat those numbers comes down to the May apps, Hyena apps, Brimstone Base & marking apps, and the Ethereal, Fossil, Sacred, & Supernal Mane apps.

You may be asking, why does this matter? those are ALL apps that are easy to get during their release. The hyena apps and November mane apps are respectively the easiest to get since as long as the tier is unlocked or your partake in the storyline, you get the app, and they are released every single year. As for the May & October shard of evil apps, all that’s needed is the currency or items. They’re relatively cheap and it’s possible to get multiple apps as long as minimal effort is put in. But why exactly is this bad? In short, none of these apps are “popular”. They often plague poor offers & low value trades, and although some of the marks are indeed good looking or fairly common, their mass availability ruins the mystique around the apps.
But how does this affect July apps? Isn’t it good that they’re easily accessible? In short, over abundance leads to what I’m going to call the “Brawl Effect”. Overabundance leads to overall dislike, no worth, and overspread with the frequency of Tier 0 or 1 marks.

Combat:

Combat heavy events aren’t new. For the June and October events, defeating enemies are the main way of collecting currency. But what sets this event apart? To put it short, location. Unlike both of the mentioned months, the only location to encounter event enemies is in Celestial Explore. Rather than short bursts of energy, it’s possible to stockpile MS to spend at one time rather than a couple times a day, and enemies are the main draw, but these enemies were never meant to be easy. Since the revamp, enemy difficulty has been a hot topic with many saying they struggled to win even a single battle. As a result, in 2021, battles were adjusted to “reduce difficulty” although specification was never made and it was never mentioned again until 2022. When the event began again in 2022, many once again made note of the difficulty of enemies. In an attempt to fix the issue, the community voted whether removing large attacks or stun locks should be removed. About 24 hours later, large attacks were removed and stun locks remained. Despite this change, battle was still too hard for many, causing the removal of stun locks, therefore making the dragons no more than common enemies.

What’s the problem, then? Simple put, event enemies aren’t made to be the equivalent to a hyena or enemy lion in explore. Although it’s nice to be able to win most of the battles, it’s different when losing is the difficult to achieve outcome.

My study To back up my problems with these adjustments, I conducted an experiment. For roughly 15 minutes, I explored and fought every enemy I could. I did this with both of my kings to see how much stats affected battle victories. These are my results:
Astero (2412 st):
Normal Dragon Enemy: W/W/W/W/L/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/L/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/L/W/W/W/W/L/W/W/L/W/L/W/L/W/W/W/W/W/W/
Boss Enemy: W/L/L/W
Cynwrig (472 st):
Normal Dragon Enemy: W/W/W/W/W/L/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/L/L/W/W/W/W/W/L/W/W/W/L/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/W/
Boss Enemy: L/W/W/L/

My Findings: For those who do not wish to count, Astero won 37 times and lost 7 & Cynwrig won 43 times and lost 5 times. Astero had an 84% rate and Cynwrig had an 89.5% rate. Those are absolutely staggering rates considering my lower stat king had a higher rate than my stat monster. This also proved to me that these battles are not stat based but rather RNG/skill. Most of my losses were the result of me trying to roar away a burstling but nonetheless it was a loss.

Why are these high success rates a problem? Everyone likes a challenge, but everyone also likes easy money. Rather than a challenge, it feels like every time I lose, it’s just because I’ve won too many battles as compared to a loss and every victory just feels repetitive.

The Storyline

Let’s all be honest here. While it’s great to have a storyline for this month, it being the storyline that was retired feels a bit like a letdown. While I know that not everyone else has played for as long as I have, it feels like there’s something not quite right.
What’s wrong with the storyline itself? To be honest, my biggest problem is that it was supposed to be retired and was brought back and now it feels out of place. Nothing was done to link any newly established lore into this story or justify the existence of CE. There isn’t anything wrong with the characters themselves or the fact that they’ve made a comeback. Each character has a great personality and it’s nice to see them all again.

The rewards My other main issue is that any décor or background awards can be otherwise bought. In Tefnut’s temple. Which is available. The only current motivation I have to get through the story is the apps at the end, but I don’t feel like that should be the only reason to go through the event. I’d like to go through it, exploring each option for not only the story, but the decors! By having them other places, it once again makes the event out of place and a little unnecessary.

The Solutions

Currency

This one’s a little tough to solve. For me the problem is more with AC than MS. Most of this problem would be by making battles harder & successes lower than my previously stated 84-89%, but I think there’s another way to solve this. Simply by removing a few AC enounters (that are an alternative to the MS gain when there isn’t an attack or button pressing encounter) and replacing them with either earning nothing OR giving a crafting item (space rock, prismatic shard, comet shard and/or different rocks like shiny rocks, shiny stones, large rocks, or just rocks). That way AC gain is slowed a bit since about half of the ACs I gained were from encounters that didn’t require me to attack or press buttons.

Combat

To put it shortly, I want a bit more challenge in combat. My suggestion would be to either put back either stunlock or large attacks but introduce battle buddies! To keep the difference from June’s kings & their boosts, maybe for Menhit, have her boost HP gained when resting or have her do a decent sized attack when resting, have Apademak start the battle by draining a bit of the Dragon’s essence (doing anywhere from 10-20 damage), and Apollyon granting you his might & boosting your attacks by anywhere from 3-10 damage. These would all be unique from June’s battle buddy boosts and making things easier while still keeping battles a challenge.

Storyline:

As I stated, my main problem with the storyline is that it was brought back from retirement and now no longer fits in with the theme of the event. Our new theme is still spacey, but is more centered around dragons. Although I know many love Apademak & co, it may be time for Lioden to stick to their guns and let them go. At least as main characters. Allow brand new dragon characters to take the forefront in a brand new storyline, but still allow Menhit and Apollyon specifically to be apart of the story, maybe assisting in whatever problem the dragons may have. This would allow them to both still continue to be battle buddies & apart of the new story.

Conclusion:

In short, there is a lot with this event that is good and bad, and there’s stuff that could’ve definitely used some adjusting! I think the main problem in this event is with the shadow of the previous July event hanging over the dragon event, it’s been held back from its potential. Even if next year, this event causes the same chaos it did this year, I’m excited to see what comes of this event. It has a ton of potential and I trust that Lioden staff will make whatever decisions they feel are best <3

If you do not support this suggestion, please tell me why! I’d love to know so that I can make any possible adjustments to my suggestion!! I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks!