Yep, assuming each new item in the calender is 10$, i'll be 22.5$ short of the promised minumum value.

I am (combined) 40$ below minimum value on 3 premium calendars with all 3 promo included.

Used prices from: http://iis-prod.chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/30159/list-of-all-store-promotions

I am a little dissappointed in the calendars. I had, like many, thought the items would align that the minimum of the 18 items would hit the absolute minimum garunteed by the box.

(For the following I've assumed a $35 total for the new items. 10,10 and 15. I purchased 10 premium boxes. I anticipated a total of $2750 in items. I assumed a $12.50 price for the song birds. If I'm wrong, I'll own up to it.)

This doesn't appear to be the case. the 18 day minimum was $235. I only hit the per day average 5 times, 3 of those being the new gifts. I was above average once (day 16). The other 12 days I was below the average for the item's in the pre-determined sets. That's pretty poor performance, although it was pretty close.

Globally, from the packages SBS decided to distribute, there was a minimum of 235, a max of 330 and an average of 282.50.

Out of the expected $2750, I've been fortunate enough to get $2707.50, which is still short of the MIN in which I thought I was purchasing.

The calendars did not have in their description that the AVG of the boxes would be 275. It stated that the 18 items would be a MIN of $275. This doesn't appear to be factual. Before anyone quotes discord, anything said in discord is NOT binding.

I need another $65 in items before I get the MIN promised, looks like we are all in the same boat unless they say the reed candles and other event items are worth $20-30 each

For me to get the minimum each of the "new" items must be valued at $30.

There were more duplicates than I think is tolerable. I got 6 Sunsight Fireworks between my two calendars. I had only 8 items over $10 between the two calendars and the max value I got was $30. Now on the standard calendar I actually made the minimum value, but not on the Premium which I think sucks because those were more expensive.

I think having these new items with no predetermined value in the mix allows the studio to say "Oh but those are each worth $50" - not that I think the ones we have received so far are. I mean candles should be about $5 - maybe 8 since there are 4 of them. The tun of nut and honey whatever should be about $10.

I will not be doing this again. It was very disappointing and I believe a bit misleading with their minimum values.

Also Phated2845 - songbirds are $10.

Song Birds on October 8th 2019, kickstarter vault released for 24 hours had them at $12.50.

I was just trying to use the most generous numbers I could find, to give them the most benefit of the doubt I could.

Shout out to Caspian for resolving the matter. From Official Updates in Discord:

Caspian ☁Today at 1:56 PM @here Dear Elyrians, first and foremost, Happy Holidays to all our friends in the CoE community! Regardless of your religion (or lack thereof), it's important to take time each year to honor and remember those things that are important to you. Whether that be friends, family, religious observances, or all the above. So, from Soulbound Studios to all of you, we wish you happy holidays and hope you've gotten a chance in the last week to be close to those things that are important to you.

Second, it has come to our attention that changes we made to the Premier Advent Calendar to pull more frequently from a higher value set of items was rolled back during work done on the SoE event a week ago. As a result, the Premier tier has been getting more items from the lower value ranges than they should have. Rather than exchange those items in and risk taking away something you received you were excited about, we're going to remedy this by adding 3 additional items to each Premier Longest Night Calendar! Huzzah!

Again, thank you to every one of you that has made the development of Chronicles of Elyria possible. Here's to a happy, productive, and exciting 2020! - Caspian & Soulbound Studios

Wow, they can't even do lootboxes correctly

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sigh...

Failure after failure, and we are supposed to believe they are going to be able to create the most complex MMO ever?

I'm sure people will say, "Oh, it's just a small mistake, and they are going to fix it."

However, how many small mistakes, how many failed event launches, how many repeated delays due to oversight, or lack of testing, or lack of planning, does it take before we are allowed to believe they aren't just "oops" moments, and are, instead, simply a fundamental problem that has direct bearing on their ability to create this game?

I get that a lot of y'all are upset. While that update came from Discord that has notion of "anything said on Discord is NONBINDING," it seems like they are trying to make up for a real and understandable f**k up.

Am I upset that they have fallen way behind their estimates, are well outside of their cone of uncertainty, and have yet to post really any info on the NDA forms? F yeah, I am! But at the same time, since I am a software developer myself, I can totally understand a mistake like this just slipping their minds. I mean, hell, I would really like to try and see anyone here complaining about their progress try and make a new genre of MMO or even just an MMO from scratch.

All in all, I think we should wait for the Dev Journal that is expected to come out soon in the New Year. If they can't, or don't deliver on that, we should then consider sharpening some pitchforks. Still, this particular instance is being resolved, and the other ones as well. We need patients and give them time.

For perspective, it took Blizzard Entertainment 4.5 years from about 2000 to 2004 and $60-$100 Million to craft Vanilla World of Warcraft. Mind you, it was based on their Warcraft III assets and game engine that was developed back in 1998 and released in 2002. So in total, it took Blizzard about 6.5 years of development to get just the essential/Vanilla World of Warcraft out the door and into players' hands.

@Kuthedk

If this were an isolated incident, or at least rarely occurring, I would be 100% on board with what you are saying.

But its not.

Barring my criticism of their communication, I didn't really lose faith until the SoE debacle.

Everything they assured us of in terms of deliverable quality, lessons they said they had learned, commitments to communication, statements about testing after DSS...evidently all just words.

I gave them another chance after DSS, willing to accept that it was an opportunity to "fail forward", and grow from their lessons learned.

But it wasn't.

THE VERY NEXT DELIVERABLE EVENT was delayed, and then bugged, and then assured they fixed it, then broke again, and indefinitely delayed...largely because they didnt do ANY large scale testing.

I wanted to give them another chance. I have argued for it in other threads - that we just wait until after the State of Elyria post, and make a judgement then.

But this is just the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

There is no process. There is no project management. There is no reliable QA. Or forethought. Or actually learning and growing from previous mistakes.

It's the same thing, over and over, one right after the other.

How can I trust that? How can I give the benefit of the doubt to that? How can I believe whatever words they happen to say next are any different than what they have said before?

Why believe anything from them?

Hey, Marovec.

I'm not a coder, but here's what I think happened. (Note: This is conjecture.)

I think they made the standard calendar first. Then they copy-pasted the code for the standard calendar to make the premium calendar. They then used the copied code as a base and changed what items were in each set (Sets 1, 2, & 3). The next thing they were supposed to swap out in the code is which set was pulled each day, so that more of the 2nd tier and 3rd tier sets were pulled.

This should have been a simple thing to change. That is something that even someone who couldn't code could swap out or you could train a monkey to do. However, it appeared that they either forgot to make the switch with the set tiers completely or only made a partial switch with the set tiers.

Based on Caspian's announcement in Discord, it sounds as if they did actually fully switch the sets out. However, it sounds as if the fix they launched to SoE was so monumentally bad that in order to return the site to normal, they required pulling the last available back up. The back up they pulled was far enough back that they didn't have the final updated code to the premium calendar.

Hence, it was not failure to properly create a calendar. Their supposed fix to SoE was just that massively terrible.

Again, this is conjecture from someone who doesn't code.

However, if this scenario is correct, then they are at least capable of coding a simple calendar. It sounds like the issue with SoE, however, is what's really stumping them.

Posted By Phated2845 at 4:00 PM - Mon Dec 30 2019

Shout out to Caspian for resolving the matter. From Official Updates in Discord:

Caspian ☁Today at 1:56 PM @here Dear Elyrians, first and foremost, Happy Holidays to all our friends in the CoE community! Regardless of your religion (or lack thereof), it's important to take time each year to honor and remember those things that are important to you. Whether that be friends, family, religious observances, or all the above. So, from Soulbound Studios to all of you, we wish you happy holidays and hope you've gotten a chance in the last week to be close to those things that are important to you.

Second, it has come to our attention that changes we made to the Premier Advent Calendar to pull more frequently from a higher value set of items was rolled back during work done on the SoE event a week ago. As a result, the Premier tier has been getting more items from the lower value ranges than they should have. Rather than exchange those items in and risk taking away something you received you were excited about, we're going to remedy this by adding 3 additional items to each Premier Longest Night Calendar! Huzzah!

Again, thank you to every one of you that has made the development of Chronicles of Elyria possible. Here's to a happy, productive, and exciting 2020! - Caspian & Soulbound Studios

So my translation of this is that we'll get 4 items sometime today... be interesting to see what that entails ~ as of now I might have to forgo my tavern idea to run a local zoo or animal habitat of some kind, lol