Witts End...Is It Over?

OMG...I really don't know what else to say I thought the hearty meal quest was ridicuous needing 25 miso, tiramisu & T Rex fillets (which BTW i still havent been able to complete as previously collected items dont count). As I move thru the game, I've now found that you need an insane amount of flaming skulls to complete quests! The one I'm on now requires 90 skulls plus charging a collection twice just to receive 1 diploma towards the van helsing collection. Then I find that if you're lucky/rich enough to get all diplomas for the van helsing collections, they require 100, 150 and 200 skulls to charge the silver, golden & diamond VHS collections respectively! I thought ok this is insane so let me keep moving forward with other quests. Then I get hit with the grand success quest where I have to collect 50 bronze, silver & gold medals...and gold medals are only in the paid rooms. As much as I love this game, every ounce of fun is being sucked out by GI and who can afford this? Has anyone actually been able to complete these quests & events without dropping huge amounts of money for diamonds? I thought I could push through the crappy 1.10 update, but if this is the future of MM it may not include me. Too rich for my blood

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Also if you don't want to pay for skulls, etc you have to request from friends. GI has taken the ability to add friends away and has also made it incredibly painful to request & accept gifts. The gift sent modal is ridiculous & they don't do anything to make requesting gifts easy for us (like listing friends in alpha order, providing ability to search for a specific friend or being able to request a gift like flaming skull from all). Thought about contacting GI, but after hearing about all of the horror stories in dealing with GI, I can't say that I'm really hopeful it would actually help.

Still curious to know if people are able to complete quests & events without spending tons of money. Please chime in

Iv completed all full moon quests and events without spending money

Wow! Really Brad? That's amazing. Im curious as to how? You must have to invest huge amounts of time painfully requesting & accepting gifts from friends? How did you collect items that require you to search paid rooms (like the gold, silver & bronze quest I mentioned in my original post)?

Thanks for responding!

Hate to complain without trying to affect any change. Just gave the game a 1 star rating with the following review:

Game has great potential, but with the recent updates has become outrageously expensive & impossible to play. Older versions had "glitches" that evened out the playing field in favor of the game players. With the new updates, GI has not only fixed the glitches, but also made changes that take away from the user experience and make game play slow, painful & frustrating (e.g. gift sent modal when accepting gifts, not listing friends in alphabetical order for easy searching, not providing a way to search for specific friends, not filtering friend list when requesting gifts that require friends of a certain level, removing ability to add friends via friend code to collect diamonds, and the list goes on and on...)

Quests & events in the new version require impossible amounts of items to collect & charge. You of course have the option to pay for the items, but when you need 200 flaming skulls to charge a collection at 6 diamonds per skull, it gets a little out of hand. You can request these items from friends, but again GI has not only made this task incredibly painful, but also places daily limits on the number of items you can send & accept. 

From what I've seen, most of the updates have been in GI's favor with none of the enhancements focusing on usability for the end user. If anything they take functionality away from us users. Examples:
1) When accepting gifts we used to be able to tap anywhere in the friends picture. Now we have to tap a ver specific & small button at the bottom of each friend picture. What is the reasoning behind this? Who gains what from this "enhancement?"
2) When accepting gifts we used to be able to simply tap to thank the friend who was kind enough to send us a gift and move onto accepting the next gift. Now after each gift there's an annoying & pointless "Gift Sent" modal. Again, another "enhancement" that decreases usability for us and significantly slows down the process of accepting gifts. Many of us have hundreds of friends so imagine this modal after a gift from each of your friends. Very time consuming! You're other option is to skip this painful process & directly pay. Win for GI & loss for game players. 
3) Using charms used to increase the number & frequency with which items dropped from rooms & when trading with or banishing creatures. With the latest update, drops are noticeably less even when running charms. End result - you have to spend more of your resources to collect items that you need for collections, quests, etc. 
4) There is a legitimate function that allowed us to add friends (by accessing the friends button on the right & then going to the services tab). Having many friends in the game is beneficial to game players as we can request gifts from friends, make trades with friends, etc. There are also achievements where we're rewarded for reaching different friend thresholds (e.g. You get a gift for having 100 friends, then 200 and so on). There were already limits with this function. Each person could only be added 3 times in one day. Now GI has completely removed this feature. 

Personally I love the concept behind the game, but am being forced to stop playing as the economics behind the game are unreasonable & unrealistic. This (economics) in combination with the updates that constantly take away from usability have taken all of the fun out of the game for me. In order to avoid spending money to play & progress in the game, you are required to lean on friends. The "enhancements" they've made around friends & gifting have made it so painful & time consuming that this game is no longer an option if you want to also participate in your real (non virtual) life. If GI brought back some of the old "glitches" & removed the useless gift sent modal, I would be inclined to pick the game back up. 

My recommendation: unless you're willing to shell out huge amounts of cash to complete quests & events or spend all of your days painfully requesting & accepting gifts from friends then avoid this game like the plague. 

Brad5868 wrote:Iv completed all full moon quests and events without spending money

Yes I have too!

Jacobsplace wrote:

Brad5868 wrote:Iv completed all full moon quests and events without spending money

Yes I have too!

Thanks so much for responding guys! Can you share how you're able to complete quests & events without spending lots of money? I really like this game, but it's just too expensive & they've put so many restrictions on friends & gifting that it seems to require spending all day every day to progress in the game without spending money.

jill I'm in the same boat as you. The full moon banishing items never drop for me and I refuse to buy them.
I'm not sure why I keep playing a game that just seems to add stress lol

jill4444 wrote:

Jacobsplace wrote:

Brad5868 wrote:Iv completed all full moon quests and events without spending money

Yes I have too!

Thanks so much for responding guys! Can you share how you're able to complete quests & events without spending lots of money? I really like this game, but it's just too expensive & they've put so many restrictions on friends & gifting that it seems to require spending all day every day to progress in the game without spending money.

For me, I've had loads of time to play over the past 5 months due to being off work ill, so I am well stocked up on turtles, tools, not to mention runestones to enter the fortune telling room. So I'm able to use loads of charms and charge artifacts to help in the search. Have used a few diamonds but they have come from levelling up, not purchased! Given time, stuff will drop!

Caz

I completed those quests as well without using diamonds and without playing 6 hours each day.

I think GI counts on the fact that people get impatient. That's why people buy diamonds. They don't want to wait. They want to finish the quests NOW. It will all happen. The items will drop. Just give it time. Play for 30 minutes and then put the game away for a while. Don't give in to the urge to just spend diamonds to get it done.

I wish I hadn't completed all of my quests. Once again, I'm questless. I'd rather have a hard quest like Neptune or Mercury than no quest at all.

My advice is, "Don't rush. Just enjoy it. If you don't finish full moon this time around, it will be back."

CheezerWhizzer wrote:I completed those quests as well without using diamonds and without playing 6 hours each day.

I think GI counts on the fact that people get impatient. That's why people buy diamonds. They don't want to wait. They want to finish the quests NOW. It will all happen. The items will drop. Just give it time. Play for 30 minutes and then put the game away for a while. Don't give in to the urge to just spend diamonds to get it done.

I wish I hadn't completed all of my quests. Once again, I'm questless. I'd rather have a hard quest like Neptune or Mercury than no quest at all.

My advice is, "Don't rush. Just enjoy it. If you don't finish full moon this time around, it will be back."

Thanks for the reply. It's hopeful to hear that some are able to play without spending tons of money, although you're the first I've heard from who hasn't spent money or a lot of time. How were you able to complete the full moon quest without spending a lot of time? We need 450 flaming skulls just to charge the van helsing collections...and that doesn't even count the ones you need to collect each diploma! I must admit that I'm not the most patient person, but I did stop paying and tried requesting all the charging gifts from friends. The recent updates make requesting & receiving gifts so slow & painful. I do send thank you gifts as my friends were kind enough to take the time to fulfill my request. Are you saving time by skipping the thank you gift & annoying "gift sent" modal?

I send one thank you gift per person who gifted me. I can do that while I cook dinner, fold laundry, watch TV, pay bills on line....

If you're devoting a ton of mental energy to the game, I can see why the recent updates are annoying. I'm in no rush to get all my gifts accepted. I tend to do my daily visits for experience/items/coins while doing my hair and makeup in the morning.

I think it's a huge mistake to have a small friends list. I don't expect any of my friends to send me collection items since the last two updates. I don't even put them on my wish list. I leave chargers up. I keep my friends list at about 400. I can get 500-600 flaming skulls in one day. Again, I can request gifts from friends while doing other things.

I actually prefer the game since the last couple updates. The prior gifting system required me to pay far too much attention to the game. I was clicking about 3000 times every day just to gift. I'll pass on that.

I'm sure it's been mentioned not to thank people for mystery gifts. That just locks you up.

CheezerWhizzer wrote:I send one thank you gift per person who gifted me. I can do that while I cook dinner, fold laundry, watch TV, pay bills on line....

If you're devoting a ton of mental energy to the game, I can see why the recent updates are annoying. I'm in no rush to get all my gifts accepted. I tend to do my daily visits for experience/items/coins while doing my hair and makeup in the morning.

I think it's a huge mistake to have a small friends list. I don't expect any of my friends to send me collection items since the last two updates. I don't even put them on my wish list. I leave chargers up. I keep my friends list at about 400. I can get 500-600 flaming skulls in one day. Again, I can request gifts from friends while doing other things.

I actually prefer the game since the last couple updates. The prior gifting system required me to pay far too much attention to the game. I was clicking about 3000 times every day just to gift. I'll pass on that.

I'm sure it's been mentioned not to thank people for mystery gifts. That just locks you up.

Interesting. Thanks again for dropping by & sharing!

Those are just my thoughts. I don't have any crashing problems. I'm on an iPad 3. People who have crash problems have a different experience.

I realize I'm in the minority, but I like the update. The gift box thing is annoying at first, but once you figure out a system, it's no more annoying than anything else.

I'm also realistic in that I understand that GI's goal with the game is to make money. Of course they are going to eliminate the glitches that decreased their profits. I'd expect nothing less from any company. Of course the updates have their issues. I'm certain those will eventually get fixed.

CheezerWhizzer wrote:Those are just my thoughts. I don't have any crashing problems. I'm on an iPad 3. People who have crash problems have a different experience.

I realize I'm in the minority, but I like the update. The gift box thing is annoying at first, but once you figure out a system, it's no more annoying than anything else.

I'm also realistic in that I understand that GI's goal with the game is to make money. Of course they are going to eliminate the glitches that decreased their profits. I'd expect nothing less from any company. Of course the updates have their issues. I'm certain those will eventually get fixed.

Yeah - I'm on iPad2 and experience some of the crashing issues. Just adds to an already frustrating experience. There's no way I'd be able to play casually while getting ready for work or doing other things with all the crashing. Your opinion definitely differs from mine (I don't like the recent updates), but I'm glad we were able to chat and share thoughts civilly Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. There's no right or wrong!

While I understand the need for all companies to make money, I expect that some of the changes they make benefit their users as well. There are many usability enhancements that could be made that wouldn't decrease their profits (friends listed alphabetically, ability to search for a specific friend, filtering friends by level when requesting gifts that require a certain level, performance improvements and so on). I was just hoping for a little more balance in the types of enhancements made. Really haven't seen any that have been for us.

Thanks again for chiming in! It's interesting to see things from another perspective. Not sure if I'll be continuing to play the game as is without some changes by GI, but I'm glad to see this forum can be used for sharing info and things like this

I have completed them without spending.
For the medals quest, the fortune room counts as a paid room and I got all the gold ones from there.
GI have made the game very tedious since the new update but I still can't stop playing!

Brad5868 wrote:Iv completed all full moon quests and events without spending money

Me too.

Also, the gold medals drop in the fortune-telling room. There is no need to spend money/diamonds to finish that part of the quest as most of us have thousands of runestones.

Also, check your Achievements tab. There are several achievements with a reward at the end that contains a Detectives Chest.

The Detectives Chest has 500 each of all the keys for the paid rooms, now including Shells for the Island.

Thanks to all who have replied with feedback. Am going to give the game a shot without spending a dime. We'll see how it goes...