That's an entirely new level of desperate. I'll add two rusty bolts and a half bag of cheetos for the Arcade Redux.

I'd say keep to the basics: if you love the game and can't find your way around it's F2P mechanics, take a shortcut using the P2P options available. Or ship a crate of snickers and crisps to the devs' office with a note and a wish.

Well...the way i see it then the whole system will need a completely new redesign...since removing bonuses wont really solve issues on why there are various types of armors.Sad thing is the gear system is so bad taht i have no idea how they could fix it or improve it.

Also dmg resistance is not much of a big deal in sk so even when the bonuses are removed people will still stick to few gears.

Also has for those attributes bonuses which you talk about are those for every gear or ?

I shall fill the pot with another 200 dollars if these expectations are met:

-Change the stat bonus for Black Kat Hood/Cloak (3*) and Black Kat Mask/Mail (4*) from Damage Bonus High to Damage Bonus Med.
-Remove the requirement of Wicked Whiskers on the Claw/Eye/Hiss variants of the Kat Armor equipments.
-Allow the ability to upgrade the Black Kat Mask (4*) into a Black Kat Cowl (5*) through alchemy crafting.
-Add the Kat Cloaks (3*) to Montague's reward pool along with the Kat Hoods in exchange for Ancient Page tokens.
-Add Moorcroft Manor furnitures to Montague's reward pool in exchange for Ancient Page tokens.
-Allow Black Kats to still have a chance to appear as rare encounters outside the event, if only at a lessened appearance rate.
-A sincere apology.

For an alternative, extra 100 dollars:

-Add the Magikat Hat from the beta, along with a new armor counterpart akin to the Kat Suit costumes (preferably clawless), to the Mewkat's drop pool along with the Vertical Vents and Ghostly Aura accessories it can drop.

Accomplishing these does not have to be done by the end of this current iteration of the Kataclysm event, but rather the next airing of the event being the suggested deadline.

This thread just went from desperate to demeaning to the team behind the game.

I'll admit that I based the suggested percentages on my poor, personal luck. Figures.

In that case, I stand corrected.

I do think Kataclysm is horribly designed, it just isn't fun, at all. That's the worst way to keep player "engaged" in playing event-affected areas.

I'd rather see something like this:
- ability to convert 1000 Ancient Pages to 1 Book of the Dark Rituals,
- remove Whiskers being dropped from Margel - they only provoke scammers to abuse desperate players, I myself was a victim once (seen the Book in trading window to confirm "legitimacy", traded 6kE, got scammed),
- ability to convert 200 Ancient Pages for 1 Whisker,
- add Whiskers to drop list of Black Kats with 5x drop rate of the Book.

Additionally, I wouldn't mind if there was a "pity timer", each Black Kat killed would increase the chance to find the Book(/Whisker). Not just the way it is now (simply relying on probability of success in independent trials) but by using Hypergeometric distribution (which bases on finite population and finite number of successes within that population).

If you think that's too beneficial for players - add a limit to number of conversions proposed above (i.e. 1 for Book, 2-3 for Whiskers)

Honestly I am getting (literually) around 1-2 kats per 35 runs of alone in the dark. Come on this a really bad joke they really need to do something about the spawn rate of the kats.

Purge the whiskers from the class armors. It's so brutally obvious, only liars and idiots defend the current system.

Merge the BKC into the black kat hat alchemy chain and stop dropping it from the boss. Seriously, eventually there will be more Cowls than players if it keeps up. This now means you need 12 whiskers for a complete black kat set, but so what. If you're willing to go half way already for a one half of a cheat set, chances are you're gonna double down getting the other.

Overtime: Drop the +Med damage from Chaos, and add -Med movement. That's right, movement speed reduction.

@Enfeebler
Did you report the scammer and/or contacted support to inform the issue? Gotta say i'm quite curious about OOO/Grey Havens' position about that.

Shouldn't you have mailed Grey Haven about this first? :P

This is basically a business deal lol

I agree that it would definitely have been the best approach. I just came along to ride with the idea.

This thread is just so offensive, what if someone came up to you and wanted to pay you to do what they wanted. There's nothing wrong with the spawn rate in any of the events, and if you have bad luck well guess what? its bad luck. Stop trying to buy your way though the game and realize that maybe you actually have to find the items. Whats next, you gonna start a petition an bribe for better darkfang drop, cause that's essentially what you're doing here and here's a little foresight; they arn't changing anything just cause you're offering money, you'd have a better chance just asking them to change it, which they won't.

This thread belongs in suggestions, but it should be deleted so no ghost copy is on general

"This thread is just so offensive"

Hey there friend, it's not meant to come off as-

"what if someone came up to you and wanted to pay you to do what they wanted."

I think you're skimming over the point of-

"There's nothing wrong with the spawn rate in any of the events, and if you have bad luck well guess what? its bad luck."

Okay, okay. I get'cha. What I mean is I'd say there's at least some tweaking that could be done considering how many threads crop up about how the issues could be alleviated. Bad luck will always be bad luck, yes, but there's more underlying issues than simply drop rates or spawn rates.

"Stop trying to buy your way though the game and realize that maybe you actually have to find the items."

Whoa there partner, nobody is trying to buy their way through. Nobody offered to set up a lemonade stand outside their HQ or do their Christmas shopping for them. Don't read into it in such a literal sense. We'd donate because we want to help them and help everybody enjoy the event more, we're not saying "hey do this and then you get money because we know better than you do and we pay your salary so you should listen!"

It's more of a way to show and back up that we feel, as players participating in an event, that it could do with some improving to make it more enjoyable and have its rewards more easily accessible. At least that's what I meant it as.

Right now, the high-end things are geared towards people who "buy their way through." Or you could, you know, have six books drop for the whiskers since there's nothing wrong with the spawn rates.

At the end of the day it's not purposely looking to bribe anybody into doing something; it's showing the genuine concern for the current state of the event. Making the non-black kat armors not need Wicked Whiskers, making the Black Kat Cowl craftable with its 4* version, etc. Things that have been brought up before. That's the end idea as I understand it.

Now about that lemonade stand...

The general idea for monetization is you frustrate the users enough so they spend real money. You reduce payouts until the free to play break down from spending too many hours farming and pay for the thing they want instead of farming for it. The problem with this game is the inherent value people see in spending on this game is not validated by what's left of the community in 2016. GH should have given people a reason to play on day 1 of the takeover if they wanted to do right by the game. In other words, the paywall is not validated anymore by the value people see in the game, but it can be, if GH actually lowers it and gets groups like Jempire back in to flood SK.

I can almost guarantee you that asking for the one thing you want to pay for will not occur, as MMO analysts have determined as a whole that making people buy compensation prizes for themselves instead of their end goal item keeps people in the game spending.

Tactics of frustration cater to the whales who spend 4 or 5 figures in one go. Yes, they exist.

There's an entire South Park episode dedicated to the people in question: http://www.hulu.com/watch/709504

Except instead of that, the current core SK players more resemble the boys in the episode where they got into WoW.

With all the hype around the transfer, the Casino and all that, I sort of forgot that GH's main priority right now should be to make the game popular and turn a bigger profit. Formerly popular games like Toontown faded away because they couldn't evolve, and fell into obscurity. I don't want that to happen to SK. (although one of Toontown's biggest problems was that the engine powering it was primitive and easy to exploit, leading to a lot of hacking, people accessing paid content with free accounts.)

If they want to succeed, GH should study current MMOs and what makes them successful. They should also try to find what made SK popular when it was at its peak. Now that SEGA, frankly one of the stupidest companies in video game history, is finally gone now, maybe SK can become at least sort of profitable again.

You're right, success shouldn't always be measured in money.

But there's no such thing as free lunch. If they have no money, how will they pay for the servers? How can they market the game to draw in more players? How will they give us more content and maintenance?

This isn't about peer pressure or giving in to fads. When I used the Toontown analogy, I didn't mean the game died because they had no microtransactions and all that junk that started in the 2010s with mobile games. I meant the game died because it stopped being profitable, after it stopped being popular. It stopped being popular because it was from another time, and failed to live up to evolving standards.

When I say they should study other hot MMOs to get a handle on making the game profitable, I don't mean to follow passing trends, I mean to have someone interpret the data and find out what works and what doesn't. If they can afford it, I'd say they should call in a marketing specialist to help them out. Like Tom Kalinske, the guy who singlehandedly put SEGA on the map in the 90's, and is the only reason they're still making games now.

Grey Havens doesn't need to sell out to stay relevant. They just need to adapt, so they can be able to fund that mission they've set out on.

@Jessecho
I agree with your points in general, I happen to be quite familiar with most of them. My concern is that we must not lose sight of what truly matters, what the purpose of funding the business and turning in profits is meant to direct and develop the game's path and future for.

The most important trait of a MMO is the integrity of players within scenarios where they can work, compete or simply socialize together, either it be on short-term or long-term sessions. This integrity is the basis for any MMO's foundation towards success, and a long-lasting one at that. Their parenting company (developer-wise and publisher-wise alike) must ensure to never carelessly (let alone at all) compromise it and risk dividing the playerbase subjected to it.

For example, the addition of Wicked Whiskers as components for crafting the Kat armor pieces that are exclusive to teammates of a party leader carrying a Book of Dark Rituals was said to be for the purpose of encouraging players to fill in parties and gather players together to fight Margrel. However, the exclusive nature of this entire scenario was bound to be such a compromise, leaving it still untapped proper by a large majority of the playerbase even for nearly four years.

@Petater
You may be providing truthful statements, but they still do not answer my question.

The issue that I don't think No-More-Starlight seems to have neglected is that this is tantamount to a bribe, albeit not an illegal one.

Accepting this money for a change is a frightening idea. What if other players start doing this, but ask for ridiculous things? Such as houses? Or dual wielding? (Note that I am not really against these things; I just don't think the devs want them.)

I don't think that Grey Havens should make the changes you request because you are paying them for doing so. It implies that other people can control the game's development by doing the same...even GH says "We're making a one-time exception," players down the line may say, "If it happened once, why not try it again?" Basically you are telling me that the whales, who already get the lion-share of items of items, will now hold full control of a game played by more than just whales.

That's called catering to whales. It's one thing to boycott. It's another to outright pay huge sums for something. And what will you do if GH decides to make a change that solves your problem, but not in the way you suggested? Will you still be satisfied?