Let's get one thing out of the way. I don't think the May event is a bad event. In fact, there are some things about it that a really like, so I am going to list them before I get into this post: groupies, decor, applicators, craftables, and the storyline. In fact, I think May has one of the best storylines! But that is not what this post is about. More than any other event, myself and other people have experienced a ton of small irritations and annoyances that build up over time and unfortunately make this month less fun to play compared to the ones that come before and after it.

One of the biggest gripes I've seen and heard people talk about again and again is the arena tokens. Last year, on one account, I accumulated an excess of 900 arena tokens while also using as many of these tokens as physically possible to participate in tournaments. Even if I participated in a tournament every hour on the hour, I'd be absolutely STUFFED with tokens. When the cost of entering a tournament is negligible, the tournaments need a steeper entry fee, the tokens need to be used for something else, or they need to be scrapped altogether.

Another complaint that goes hand in hand with arena tokens is the incessant notifications for this event. You get a notification when somebody challenges you for tokens, you get notifications when somebody responds to your challenge for tokens, and you get a whole message when tournaments conclude. You can't even opt out of the arena tokens notifications, as players will continue to challenge you for them regardless. Also, why are unanswered challenges for tokens rewarded with nothing? In February, if a user doesn't respond to a flirt attempt, the flirting user still gets their currency. If, for some reason, somebody really DID need some arena tokens, it could take the user quite some time to acquire arena tokens if nobody responds to their challenges.

The most annoying one is the tournament result notifications. The system feels incredibly outdated, and many users feel disappointed upon realizing that the new message in their inbox is a tournament result and not a new stud request or trade buyout. If users are disappointed to see notifications for the main feature of this event, something is surely wrong.

One thing that really sucks for some users is the need to manually accept 4 quests a day from V'kai/Vashkartzen before exploring, lest their efforts in explore be wasted. I personally have wasted HOURS claiming and fighting lions in explore just to realize that it didn't even count because I forgot to accept the quests immediately after rolling over. Accepting quests isn't a part of every event, so it isn't always ingrained in user's daily routines and habits, causing a lot of people to unfortunately miss out on event rewards. Though, those rewards are just MORE event tokens, and reputation, which is another type of currency that users can accumulate far too much of without always having a great place to spend it. There's a cap to how many groupies a user can claim a day, with many users not always claiming the maximum amount per day, leaving reputation left over to spend on some of the most NOTORIOUSLY hated markings at the end of the month.

Now, there are some more urgent problems with this event that go beyond a simple annoyance with arena tokens and notifications. I've noticed that many users feel that this event is a terrible, boring grind, and I can't say that I disagree. There is little incentive to explore, as there are fewer explore interactions, and the event explore interactions don't really have a lot of impact. There are 12 interactable explore encounters this month, with EIGHT of them just being simple battle/claim interactions. There is very little incentive for players to explore this month, so to many players, exploring feels like a total grind that just eats up their time.

The limited interactivity with this event goes deeper than that. I've already expressed my contempt for the arena token challenging system, but I haven't really touched on the actual tournaments themselves, which are the main point of this event. Even though May describes itself as a community interaction event, yet there isn't really that much active or engaged interaction. Instead, the interaction between users is a grind as well without any actual user input. The tournaments are randomly assigned to players within your stat bracket, and then, without any input from the player, the tournament rolls for who wins what bracket, and then it's over. Users arent required to pay attention or care about the other users, so they often don't, which is a real shame. I'm not expecting lioden to become a true PVP game with real-time user battles, but surely there must be a way to engage the users beyond mindlessly and compulsively entering a tournament once an hour.

Plus, there is absolutely no real incentive to raise your king's stats for this event. What is your reward for getting more stats to graduate to the next stat tier? More manticore beetles per battles? Unique items? Nope. Nothing. Once you graduate to the next tier, you go from being the highest stat king in your bracket to the lowest. Where you used to win a decent amount of battles a day, you're getting pulverised in this new tier. Why bother leveling up your lion and use stat increasing items when you could just sit at the top of your tier for the rest of eternity? Though, it is not exactly apparent that individual stats actually matter in this event. I've heard many users complain that their king lost to another king that had 600 less stats than them on multiple occasions. Do stats actually matter or is it all random? When users ask themselves this question, neither answer is really appealing, which adds to the feeling of disappointment with this event. If stats DO matter, than it's just a race to the top of their tier, while being careful not to go over, which isn't a fun way to play this event. If it's all random, why even bother or care?

This event needs a massive overhaul, and not just to the way that tournaments work, which is what many user's suggest when talking about reworking this event. Does lioden need to transform into MMO PVP game with complex combat and real time battles for the month of May? No. Could the May event use some more active user engagement and choices that require thought and preparation? Yes. Creating a game as large as Lioden is hard, and you can't ever please everybody. Adding new features takes time, and reworking old features sometimes takes even longer, and you could end up with an inferior version of what you were trying to improve. I'm not trying to discount the Lioden Developer's effort or passion for this website, as those things are crystal clear to myself and most other users. I just feel that some simple tweaks to notifications would drastically reduce user's annoyance, and there are many features of this event that could be improved. The May event has some GREAT foundations that an amazing event can be built upon. But, in it's current state, I can't say that I'm excited to log on every day, and I dearly wish that this was not the case.