Now that we are nearly at the end of the event (don't forget to spend your tickets!) I feel like we can give some honest feedback on how we've experienced it. I apologize beforehand if this should have been multiple separate suggestions, but considering this is all related to the balancing of the event, I felt it most logical to be in a single thread.

What I absolutely loved:

1. The battlepass; the concept, the rewards (although I felt the rewards didn't always fully correspond with the level and the effort it required to complete) and the fact it was available for pebbles.
2. The lore; loved the little introductary blurb
3. New stuff! The consumed companions are amazing (and I still wish the KS companion consumed counterparts would be made available to everyone)
4. Stuff soft retiring; you need these kinds of rarities for the longterm longevity of the game, and the fact stuff soft-retires, as opposed to hard retires, doesn't make it completely impossible to obtain these things in the future.
5. The event lasting one month! Although this is a bit of a double-edged knife that I will come to later, it is nice that there is a bigger grace period so that even when you have some busy days or weeks you are most likely to find some time to play during the time the event is live.

Now onto the things that can be improved:

1. There were a whole bunch of new items! A couple of those items are returning each pack event (so every 3 months). A bunch of items are returning each ice-run event (so every year) and a bunch are soft-retiring at the end of the event. It is fun to have new content, but with the amount of them soft-retiring, I felt like the amount was a tad high.
2. The price of the items. This made the above point a bunch worse. On days where I was able to fully immerse myself in the grind for tickets, I managed to scrounge together maybe 1k tickets a day. Which was enough for only 3 or 4 items. And that grind burnt me out really fast. Definitely not something I was able to keep up for a month.
3. The voucher drop rate. This bit is split in two. One is the amount of vouchers rewarded from the little quests. The amount of time and effort that went into some of these quests (win 30 arena rounds, combine 60 tickets in the arena) did not weigh up to the amount of tickets they reward. Not by a long stretch. Two was the drop rates of tickets through other means that weren't the quests. E.g. drops in the campaign (abysmally low), rewards for the arena (pretty low for the amount of effort it took, and the risk of loosing), the trials (felt pretty balanced) and releasing wolves (felt pretty balanced as well), Oh and the battlepass ofcourse (great addition! Absolutely loved it, although the grind was a bit steep with the current way the event worked)
   
   All in all the amount of items and their prices, combined with the slow grind to get the vouchers necessary to buy them made this a pretty hard event. Now here is where that double-edged knife I mentioned comes into play. As mentioned before, during my incredibly focused, all-day-spent-on-LW-days I was able to get a decent amount of tickets, but this isn't something that I or most people can keep up for long or even have the luxury of doing. The event lasting a month is good, but it almost requiring you to farm intensively all month long isn't
4. Flow: Flow is an important aspect of gameplay and enjoyment (as well as efficiency, it really is something that can happen in all aspects of life, such as work, cooking, working out, cleaning, etc.) The way that this game was set up, with the seasonal quests being the only reliable way to obtain tickets and what these specific tickets entailed (combining 60 cards in the arena) was very disruptive of the flow. The fact that you constantly had to switch back and forth between the campaign and the arena, and you weren't even able to play the arena as you wanted because of the specific quests you needed to work towards, made flow pretty much non-existent. It makes it feel more grindy and a lot less enjoyable.
5. Repetitiveness; this is a hard one because with games like this, a lot of it will be repetitive. However, limiting the ways to obtain tickets to pretty much the quests, which only alternate between arena and campaign is painfully repetitive.

I think this touches upon the main painful issues. So onwards to how I think we can improve this.

1. Increase voucher droprates through regular gameplay. The fact that a full stamina bar of campaigning more often than not netted me only a single ticket, is just ... yeah. The drop rates need to be increased to account for the amount of items that can be purchased and their prices. Most important is that this is balanced on the gameplay of the average casual player, and not the whales that can farm all day long.
2. All gameplay related actions can give vouchers. To combat the repetitiveness, and allow for people who enjoy different parts of the game to not make it feel like they are wasting time, I think all activities around the site should have a chance to drop vouchers, in the same way that moonstone shards can drop whenever you are farming, hunting etc. Obviously there should not be a daily limit (Personally I think the limit should also be abolished for moonstone shards, but that is a discussion for another day) and the droprate should be significantly higher than moonstone shards. Gameplay related actions that could be suitable for this

1. Professions: things like farming, hunting, mining etc. should have a chance to drop vouchers
2. Playing with companions: I think this would also be a great addition and accessible to both new and old players. The droprates, in my opinion, should not be dependent on the rarity of the companion, but simply the act of playing with a companion should have a chance to drop vouchers
3. Birthing new pups
4. Breeding two wolves together
5. Completing daily/weekly tasks

1. Rebalance the voucher rewards for the seasonal quests, based on the time and effort required. I think this one doesn't need too much explanation, but some of these quests were significantly easier to complete than others while the payout was only marginally lower. This needs to be rebalanced.
2. Change the way these seasonal quests work. Bit of a backstory, but I have had it happen more times than I care to admit that I was fervently combining tickets in the arena only to realise after 15 minutes that that quest wasn't active at all, and I had to win 30 rounds (instead of combine 30 tickets). OR I would spend 100 explorations in the campaign without finding a single boss. And then the moment I complete the last 'defeat x boss'-quests, I find 3 in a row. This feels wasteful. This doesn't feel fun. Instead I would love it if:
1. All quests are active all the time: instead of having 6 quests that cycle (forcing you to play a specific part of the game) I would love it if all available quests are active all the time, and renew all the time as well. So the moment I defeat 5 bosses, the counter starts counting towards a new ‘defeat 5 bosses’ quest.
2. A greater variety in quests: Involve more parts of the game into these events, make it more inclusive. And allow people to play the part that they enjoy or are best at. Include fishing and farming (perhaps the soldiers need food to fight the consumed threat), mining, hunting and crafting (maybe the soldiers need tools and equipment for the threat). There are loads of ways to incorporate more parts of the gameplay that would fit logically. Plus it allows players to do the things that day like best, finding their gameplay flow, without being punished for doing things not rewarding tickets.

I think I've touched upon the things I wanted to most. I did enjoy the event, but despite not having one of each item, I am honestly to tired to even try to get my hands on those last ones, which is saying something. Even more so when I already get tired just thinking about the fact these events will take place 4 times a year. So I hope I had some good ideas here and look forward to seeing improvement for the future events.

A few other things I'd like to note are:

The game is still quite new, and obviously there are going to be some bugs and stuff to work out. I think it would be beneficial if communication on these things is done at a faster pace and in a way that it is accessible to all.

What I mean is, I saw a few days before the end of the event that someone had post a bug report about not been able to play the arena at all because of a loading problem. Combined with the fact that ticket drop rates through gameplay are low, and there was no way to refresh the event quests, that meant that they were out of luck in terms of farming for tickets. Someone replied to their bug report that the current 'official' workaround was to end the arena and start a new fresh round. This bug is something that should've been acknowledged the moment is was reported (acknowledged as in posted on the front page 'we are aware this is happening and working on a fix'), honestly should've been given top priority to get fixed since the arena was one of the main parts of the event, and the temporary work around should've been posted on the front page for all to see as well.

Make use of that front page and communicate with players.

Hard agree on most points, though I'm kind of split on the soft-retiring every apparel color-- maybe it would be less of a rub if we hadn't been deluged with so much to collect at once, but I would have liked it more if the purple-rarity set soft-retired at once and the blue-rarity sets stuck around for another year before they also retired to the RNG box. Maybe when we have more site apparel & there are fewer new things to collect once the first year is done that won't matter as much, but right now it feels like a real bummer, especially as a ftp player priced out of the CAT market.

The pebble path was great, the pve arena was fantastic and I hope we get a permanent version of it at some point as well, even if it goes back to normal arena deck sizes between events. I don't want to get rid of the pvp arena for the people that enjoy it, of course, but a bots-only no timers edition would be a huge QoL improvement for people that find the concept fun, but timers stressful or they are just unable to commit the stretch of time to sit and focus on the arena without being able to get up and leave for a little bit. I can't stand the arena normally, but this event I was able to bash out every arena achievement that the pve arena counted for. :P Great fun, a+, no notes.

I think the rotation between arena and campaign wouldn't have felt as bad if we just... straight up didn't have the 40/60 (and maybe the 10 boss kills, unless they make the holiday variety of the bosses a more common encounter) tasks; they were the big flow interrupters in what was otherwise a tolerable switch between focusing on different aspects of the event-- and as you said, the rewards for completing them were not at all balanced compared to the other tasks. But I also think keeping the campaign/arena tasks in separate lists that are always active like you suggested would still be an improvement, and offer more player choice besides, so I think that's also a perfectly fine solution for that particular section so long as the 40/60 tasks are either absent or the rewards for doing them are buffed a lot more!

@Reave I definitely agree with you on the soft-retiring apparel! While I like the concept of soft-retiring (versus both hard-retiring and always available) this event simply had too much of it in this single event. Having not all apparel sets soft-retire would help. But I kinda fear that changing it now (that the event is as good as over) or only for future events might not work out practically, which is why I left it out of the suggestion, as I can't think of a way to implement it now without backlash or causing a lot of disparity between this first event and future events... But I wholeheartedly agree that less (soft-retiring) items would help in making the event as a whole more manageable! And if the devs can think of a way to implement it, I'm all for it!

Even what you said; soft-retire them eventually but cycle them a few times 'for now' would work really well with that!

.... And that gets my brain thinking. IF they were to implement this, the only way I can see this working is if they announce it ahead of time, Re-open the shop for a period of time (long enough so that people have time to check in) and allow us to potentially exchange the apparel that are now cycling instead of retiring for vouchers that can be used to buy new copies of other items until the shop closes again.

But they need to make sure it is not just a single hour or even a single day period in which this is possible. And (I know) it is asking a lot so I don't think it is likely, but it might be possible..

@Gaia

Even if they change it only for future events this year and have to settle for this first one being a learning curve that just doesn't get changes now that it's over, I think it'd be worth it, ultimately, even if it will still be a rub for this event-- but yeah, if they did change it it would be best if they announced that ahead of time too!

There will probably be backlash inevitably no matter what, but even if they were like... "For fairness, this is how it's going to work this first year for all of the events, but next year we'll change how/when the rarity tiers soft-retire and announce that when we decide + and announce a reminder again as the icerun event next year launches too", I wouldn't be too annoyed. Just any kind of acknowledgement of this feedback and commitment to positive changes would go a long way.

I understand the first year is going to be the biggest PITA for players regardless, just because the sheer number of things released, whether they are soft-retiring or not... Even so, I think you hit on a lot of what they really need to reconsider for how things are balanced. It will always be someone's first year, no matter if it's a lot of the site vet's third, fifth or tenth-- and that first year shouldn't be so overwhelming. :S

I agree with pretty much everything said here. As I said on the general chat discussion,

"For the site's first major event, it has been somewhat enjoyable. However, I feel like the tasks that counted any significant number of tickets became far too repetitive. Even letting any stage's final boss count towards the boss task would have gone a long way; once the event is over I think it will be a very long time before I visit Icerun 3 again.

I think having more pathways to earn tickets would go a long way, similar to daily activities - more tickets for releasing higher level / level 10 wolves, tickets for crafting, cooking etc. (could be thematically related back to cooking supplies for the troops).

If the next major event has the same focus on area 3 / specialty arena I see many, many people just entirely disengaging with the event entirely."

In addition to this, I think the original drop rate of tickets for exploring was closer to the mark than the drop rate we ended up with - I ended up so burnt outby the end of the event and only juuuuust finished the premium track.

I did enjoy the pebble-purchased premium track, even though it is controversial - there was a lovely bit of community going around with people donating pebbles to help others unlock the track, as well as a somewhat-effective pebble sink.

Yep, support!

Overall, I didn't have a hard time getting tickets; I didn't get everything I wanted but that's also due to me having days that I have a hard time focusing, so that was more on me. That being said, I have a lot of free time, so yeah, the ticket prices being reduced a little would probably be a very good idea, especially for casual players.

Especially with the apparel. Those are meant for multiple uses, the apparel should be made a bit cheaper. I'm fine with the companion prices overall, though I'm curious why the soft-retiring ones had different prices. I don't think that should be a thing unless they have a difference like playing rewards.

I did make a suggestion to make bosses more common, so there's that. I can easily go 3+ stamina bars without seeing a single boss, and for an event that has a task for it, that doesn't work well. Either make the bosses more common or reduce the amount needed, please.

I do really like the idea of having all tasks available at all times. My biggest issue was, at least with arena, I would get one arena task left on the board, and then just keep getting arena tasks over and over again instead of it giving way to another campaign task. It did get annoying hoping that the next one would be the last and then boom, another win 0/30 arena rounds would come up. Having them always available would fix this issue. (also, can the combine ones be reduced? 60 combine takes a long time to complete, even longer than win 30 rounds for me.)

It would also make it so I didn't feel like I was forced to play one or the other because the tasks are only those. I got really tired of arena pretty fast and the activities for it liking to drag on didn't help x.o

The biggest thing needed is more variety. I'd love to get tickets from other things. Maybe have the regular activities have a chance of dropping vouchers (alongside them dropping as a bonus like shards in the original post), and I agree, the rate they drop from campaign needs to be increased. Farming the campaign for a longer lasting task (like 0/60 explore) didn't really feel all that worth it.

The best thing about the event was the length; I didn't feel like I had to rush for anything. I could take a break for a day or two and it didn't affect my overall performance.

The pebble path was great too; gave me something to work forward to. And I loved the prizes that weren't icerun event specific. I feel like maybe we should get at least one companion reward in it too.

Also do have a liking for the trials and the fact that consumed companions actually helped for it!

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Overall I liked the event, just need a little less focus on doing only arena/campaign. Let other site things count too!