I sincerely don't understand how fun is related to the payout. fun is how you play the game, not the reward you get.
besides, the rewards for clearing the whole stage are huge, giving that you get materials that aren't found anywhere else (that you don't really NEED anyway cause the weapons are reskins)

*snow

It's called a danger mission for a reason. Protip: swords and guns aren't the only weapon types.

Would you like a chair to sit for it instead?

I think its designed in a pretty good way
Everything until the final battle is hard
the final battle is hell, as it should be for, over 100 boxes of loot

Pretty nifty, I should go find some and see the numbers that'll be done. Probably more helpful to the people who don't wear DMG/ASI gear than the maxed folk, so I welcome that. Anyone recorded the timer for them? I'd check myself in-game, but it'd be at least another 6 hours and am dying of curiosity.

Krakob pretty much hit the nail on the head. Although getting just one of them proves to others that you're a tough nut to crack. Think of them as achievments, in a way.

Its a danger mission for a reason, and by far the hardest one to date. But It's going to get easier over time. I highly doubt the mat rate is going to go down because if you can beat it, then that's about 4-5 mats (elite) and fewer on lower difficulties. That's not even including the fact that you can replay this mission until no end nonstop back to back until Jan 2

So many players pull Leroys and then get curbstomped by this mission. No one is forcing you to play it, it warns you plenty before going in, and the weapons are just reskins. If you're not good enough, just avoid it and enjoy the plentiful winterfest santa hat themed enemies.

If this is an event only meant for the select few in the community with outstanding skills are resolve needed to get the weapon skins, why is it being showboated and advertised as a holiday event? What you're saying implies that OOO has funneled all worth-while rewards into one event, and then made the event so hard that only a handful of people actually get the rewards? If that's intentional, it's absolutely moronic.

By the way, nice exaggeration just for your argument. Scissors, Cleavers and Honour Blades weren't released in an event of their own made specifically to lead the community as a whole into striving for them exclusively.

I can definitively say this year's Winterfest is a failure.
Last year, I enjoyed the mild fun of the event. The mission was different from the norm, and the boxes weren't obnoxious to obtain. Now, the new Save Winterfest mission is full of unnecessary statuses and debuffs, an "arena" (really?), no keys to unlock a shortcut, the time is HALVED, and the monsters are obnoxious. I realize we have free elevators, but the mission doesn't need to be something to abhor. I'd rather be hunting the Punkin king or getting chased by the Harvester (before they screwed that event over at the end). At least we can get the boxes with Krogmos from LD, where you can actually have fun.

The Grinchlin Assault mission is a total joke, and if one of you has something to say about if I'm good at the game, I've got a response waiting.
I'm not saying I'm the best player in the game, or even close; I'm just your average endgame (bored) LD regular. But this.. this is purely obnoxious. Hearts and pills are rare, and vitas are... nonexistent. I realize this is a danger mission, but it far exceeds the actual Danger Missions. It features mobs from.... 4 families? It has cramped rooms filled with the slow status (renamed stun) and rapidly respawning mobs. Top it off with massive AoE attacks from Battlepods, shadow fire (On a snowy mountain? Whose smart idea was that?), and the wheels (Those, honestly, are fun. I wish we had more passive traps in levels.). Oh, did I mention the past glitch where you can't rev on spikes? Or how you need to run the mission 50 times for one reskinned weapon? Plus one to you few people who can solo it with no deaths, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can. I hate faulty reasoning like that. The levels themselves are intermediately hard, but then there's the boss. I've never seen a cheesier battle in the game. A burst that tends to push you into the spike walls, which before the patch you couldn't rev on, mixed with respawning thwackers, menders, stalkers, and ....rocket puppies?! Add that to massive AoE effects from the battlepod with moronically rare shield breaks. Of course, the menders tend to (unless you have a shiv/someone on them) heal the pod, and the rocket pups are right next to it on... what?... maybe 15 second timer? All of that for a smaller payout than a Danger Mission and 1/50 of the mats you need for a reskinned weapon. At least Apocrea's weapons weren't reskins and had a status added to them.

When we asked for more difficult content, we didn't mean something obnoxious. Maybe something obnoxious would be fine if we had other things more suiting to a broader part of the playerbase, or perhaps a few certain specific bugfixes that are mentioned a few times on the forum. Ahem.

All I know is that its disappointing to see this is what's been worked on for the past insert-months-here.

Call me whiny if you want, but I think more than a few of us players, new or vet, have been pretty irritated for the past year at least, and it has really escalated the past few months, coughcough.

Rundown of current fact of Winterfest 2012 vs Winterfest 2013

Winterfest had 3 tokens per big box and 1 per small box and people could gather tokens for you

Averaging 100 tokens per game was only for pros and hardly do-able.

Averaging 100 tokens now is really easy and my friend got 150 easily while playing one-handed (don't wanna know what he's doing with his other)

You have 3 type of tokens to get frosty boxes where you only had 1 last year...

The map have a little arena for you to fight in rather than the easy flow last year provide, you HAVE to play as a team and not bomb rush for tokens (or glitches if you remember me)

There are 2 things to do now rather than one single boredom fest (I stopped farming tokens the last week of last year update, it was boring as hell)

The price % are still the same with the scarf being 10X higher than regular boxes. Just like last year (200 tokens a box and 2k scarf)

Alsoooooo, I had to farm 6k tokens in a matter of 2 weeks to get it, you have a full month to farm em.

You can buy em for 650 ce if you are lazy.

This event is well organized... MUCH better than last year at borefest

shame on OOO.

Guys who thinks OOO is cheap?

This is too harsh. This year Winterfest has just prove that OOO did their job at making new content and not just "recycled event as last year". Sure, the difficulty and payout are not satisfying but that can be adjust later. As far I see, you just like another boring regular whiner who just love to whine about negative aspect instead of complimenting about positive aspect. At least another forum(er) give some strong point why it was bad and give a good solution to it. And yeah you are one of my guildie before, so at least I can tell.

Yeah guys. Stop licking lint off of Three Ring's belly button. It's just like when the Danger Missions came out, no one was jolly back then, rite? Arrite, well, after a while, we all managed to master them. It's the same now., with the Grinchlins. And best thing about it all, is that you can repeat that mission as much as you'd like.

Don't worry guys!!!!!

OOO purposefully made the mission so hard that you have to use all of your sparks, and then buy more from the depot (cash shop). Once you have spent all your money on sparks in the depot they will release the reskinned items in the depot for a mere 10,000 Energy!!

Just sit back and get your credit cards ready, we need to pay for the OOO Holiday Party to enjoy this "new content"...

The first time makes sense but the second doesn't. They clearly say bring enough ce, and you don't leave and don't stop complaining so we kick you out. Danielflame kinda has an attitude but Forest would only kick for good reason.

Logged on yesterday after the update. Saw the new mission, thought "Cool, new stuff to do." Joined an Elite party. Was swiftly ROFLstomped. The Slow effect is annoying as hell and makes it a royal pain to dodge those wheels in time. And the actual battles, dear lord. Respawning turrets and Greavers and who knows what else, just about every monster type you can think of, all crammed into an arena room full of obstacles. My connection did not manage to get itself above TWO BARS the entire time, despite living on the US East Coast with hefty broadband...nice to see that OOO has made improvements on that end. Think I blew through about 6 or 7 Sparks in there, and I was already down to under 70 due to Apocrea. One of the group bailed early on, and I didn't even make it to the end of the first level myself before saying "screw it" and eating my losses. The other two people in the party seemed to be doing all right, I think mainly because of their status bombs, but I'm no bomber so I guess I need not apply.

After that debacle, figured I might as well replay last year's mission. Noted the layout change, and the fact that the annoying snow was here too. Then I had a lagspike of ONE SOLID MINUTE, only to come back and figure out I'd managed to die twice within that time. Cue ragequit.

Gave it one more try today. Started off with last year's mission, and wound up in the original layout. Noted the fact that there were no more keys to provide nice shortcuts, and that the infernal snow was here too. Managed about 20 of each type of token, but I missed out on a good 15 more total, because I mistimed my final run. The lack of sharing tokens between all players winds up being an utter killer on this mission, since now everyone has to scramble to pick them all up. So much for teamwork. After that, tried to run the new mission on Advanced one more time. Wound up with just one other person on my group. Said other person died rapidly, and I was left to try some of the first battle room on my own. After experiencing several hefty lagspikes, once again said "Screw it" and ragequit.

So yeah...there's been very little that's truly disappointed me over the time I've been playing this game, but Winterfest is flat-out broken. I'm not wasting any more time on it unless it's fixed somehow.

My only big beef with this climb up Mount Krampus is the final boss room, as the rest of the mission is completable without using a Spark of Life though careful planning an observation. I've been able to catch the patterns of all the arenas leading up to the final room, and can solo them on normal and advanced. (Elite still eludes me because I just don't have the equipment to survive one mistake.) But there are plenty of spots here you can get messed up just because of bad luck. I think we will soon see lots of players being able to easily reach the final room without having used any sparks.

In contrast, the final boss room was poorly thought out and is basically just an opportunity for the game to suck up your sparks like an arcade machine sucks quarters. The core tactic ends up being "Hit that thing a bunch!" once the shield goes down, with at least one player having purposefully not revived until that time, all while under an almost constant barrage of artillery and rockets. I'm all for having more difficult challenges for us to pit ourselves against, but there are better ways to do it than this. The previous battles do nothing to prepare you for it, and it's just inconsistent with the rest of the mission.

It could have been a more drawn out battle, with stages, where the battle pod drops it's shield more often, but has a lot more health. The rocket puppies shouldn't re-pawn nearly as quickly, and the constant barrage of battle pod fire hides the ability for players to detect when enemies project their attack to much. I'm all for more difficulty, but most of us are not godlike players, make it more reasonable and consistent with the rest of the mission.