will start tomorrow then?

And you're saying I won't lose tomorrow's 30 passes if I wait to use my HoP until then?

Morrigan will be in Challenges? Level 6 or 5 I guess? And Potok will be 900p in reserved sales right?

I fully agree here.
there is no value to pay upfront for items worth the same if for the msot part you could just buy these in the blackmarket, or trade with people for them.

aswell as, if i fork over any amount of passes to pay for some prize, then i should be immidiatly awarded said prize, not hope to the divines that you dont encounter a bg halfway through they dont fix and leave you behind to miss out.

overall events shouldnt need to require passes to have a chance at winning all the gifts, they should only give an advantage, help catch up or choose to pay your way to and early end to the event. (ex, i could buy all the mace blows in the current one to finish early instead of hoping i didnt miss anything and end free.

im also very very very very upset and even angry at the nerf of a few divines on pre-pod. i find that rather scammy in itself. if they nerf the ability of some divines to be less usefull now, who says they wont nerf some of the more generous ones later aswell?

I think the prizes that are hidden by the paywall should be more obvious that you need to pay for them. My first glance at the event page logging in today was 'oh cool, two prizes', I completely missed the tiny lock in the top right corner.

The next event is the great challenge then the lottery?

It's the magic ride

Actually the key isn't so bad. In the "old" style of events, before fragments and the new divine being offered via luck item, without spending passes one could get maybe halfway through, missing out on the best prizes which were near the end/divine. Making the events easier to finish is great but now we have all these bum prizes players have been complaining about. Howrse's solution to this is the key because at least desirable prizes are being offered again. Remember how terrible the last lottery was; the average player won nothing but droppings and a mediocre BMI if they were lucky. The premium key holds the better prizes we've been asking for, only they're not being handed out for free.

I agee with you, kind of. I don't mind that you have to pay for better prizes, I just really hate that you only win a half of the top prize (meaning the male donkey uni). I've never really cared about the prizes you collect along the way, but I played the promos because at the end you'd usually get something that was worth it, it gave me a reason to participate, a sense of achievement. Imagine if you'd win 3 pieces of Zaldia's tack for free in promos and then being told you have to pay passes for the rest (I mean you can buy the rest for passes, but I hope the point got across ).

They can keep the pass seeds, Hestia's and GAs for all I care, but finishing the promo and walking away with a prize that is useless by itself ruins the whole experience for me. Sure, I will eventually buy the other donkey, but the principle still bothers me.

About that, when Altair was first released you could win the saddle cloth in the Great Challenge section, but you had to open, if I remember right, Fleeces for the other pieces.

Just read about the premium key feature arriving with the next Great Challenge and to say that I'm disappointed is an understatement.

Not only is it ridiculous in my opinion to lock items behind a paywall, but 600 passes is a *lot* to spend in one sitting. That means that players need to have 600 passes *on hand* to access this feature *at all*, which is a lot different than, say, a HoP that costs 100 passes that gives the user a chance to win a Divine each time it's opened.

For those saying 600 passes isn't a lot, that's an entirely subjective statement. For people who don't purchase passes with real currency, 600 may very well be a huge dip in their savings depending upon their play style. And for those who do buy passes with real money, it could still very well affect their game, or perhaps they just don't like spending 600 passes on something that used to be free. From the looks of it the GC prizes are doubled since there are also premium prizes offered, so one could argue that those premium prizes don't represent anything that used to be free, but we've never actually had to pay to access promo prizes like this. Sure, you used to need to pay to advance and finish a promo, but at that point we're getting into semantics and detracting from the real reason for contention.

I'd also like to note that when players say 600 passes isn't worth that much, they're not taking into account what a player might need to spend those passes on, i.e. a VIP or pegasus account membership. Not everyone can complete every daily objective thrown at them, so they might be scrimping and saving for access to things, whether it be a membership, BMIs, horses, etc. Now they need to pay out if they even want to be able to take part in the newest breeding challenge with the release of the donkey unicorns.

I also think Oathkeeper is making a great point that not enough people are acknowledging. I've seen first-hand how bad the rift between pass-buyers and non-pass-buyers is, and it can get *ugly*. This feature is going to cause insults to be slung from left to right, and I'm sorry to say it, but a lot of them are going to come from non-pass-buyers who are (rightfully) angry at potentially being denied access to a feature but incorrectly blaming pass-buyers for it.

Owlient seriously needs to reconsider this feature, keep it restricted to as few promo types as possible, or lower the price tag to make it more accessible.

While I don't like the premium key either, I think that we should also be pushing for better "free" prizes. Currently, the free prizes are pretty terrible, which just makes the fact that you have to pay for the best prizes worse.

Nowhere was I complaining about pass buyers. *I'm* a pass buyer. The point of mentioning pass buyers was to highlight that they are going to unfairly targeted by players who don't purchase passes, specifically the ones who don't like the advantage pass buyers get over non-pass buyers.

You've also completely missed my point about some players not being able to afford the regular things they purchase *and* the 600 passes needed to unlock the premium items, depending on their play style, how many daily objectives they're actually able to complete, etc.

It's fine if you like the premium items option, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it feels like you didn't read my post in its entirety and decided instead to comment on it simply because we have differing opinions.

About Premium Key...the free prizes are similar to prizes in every GC we had, premium prizes are only additional prizes you can win so it makes sense you have to pay for them. Yeah, it'd be nice to have more prizes in promos in general, but free prizes in this GC are quite normal for an average GC. So I don't really see an issue with them, especially since if you go for divine, you save those 600 passes with 4x multiplier anyway.

If that's the case, what's the point of even having a Premium Key, then?
This is what annoys me, and Howrse seems to be doing it more often, nowadays... it's a change that no one asked for. I'm not surprised people are upset. This is one of many similar scenarios.

Not everyone is going to be able to afford it, which means those who can afford it will have an advantage. They're going to have the female donkey, and a breeding pair, which means more breeding and/or selling opportunities. Events have changed. I used to look forward to them. Most everyone had a decent shot when it came to winning prizes (not to mention... a divine, sometimes two, was offered), but the prizes, value wise, have gone down. The number will fluctuate, depending on the event. That doesn't matter. It's the quality of prizes that have been very disappointing. And now we have the Premium Key. Perfect.

to be perfectly honest, the premium key is only terrible because the free prizes are not great either

in another game I play, there is actually this feature - a regular set of rewards, and then a premium set of rewards if you pay irl cash. and everybody is fine with that (no particular enmity between free to play and bought premium currency players either) because the REGULAR rewards are perfectly fine to most casual players, and the premium rewards are very obviously extra prizes for those who'd like a little extra bling. but this great challenge has, by my own judgement, four notable prizes (fleece, iris, hera, zeus) for the casual player, out of 21 total. not going to count the male donkey unicorn as it's next to useless without the counterpart

and four good prizes are actually not bad nowadays for the event - it's about the same as the pinatas (wand, element, athena's, hera) but... it's not a great precedent, you know? four is a very small number. it can very easily become three or two or one. or zero.

I would accept the premium key a lot more if promos were regularly like the last decorations we had (that did wonders for my golden apple hoard) but as it is, we don't have the assurance of events regularly having prizes as good as that. so we're standing on an enormously slippery slope. there's no guarantee that if the premium key rolls out, we won't eventually be looking at 600 passes for *regular* prizes and nothing of value at all for casual players

if howrse could up the value of regular prizes in promos, and do so *consistently*, that would make the premium key very very clearly an extra little bling, and I think there'd be a lot less complaints about it. but as it is the premium key is treading very close to replacing regular prizes with worse prizes, and that's the big concern with it... nobody wants to be obligated to spend passes, even if you can earn them for free

ofc I'm sure owlient has their own considerations with profit and marketing and all that to hold them back from having great prizes regularly in promos, but. I'm not exactly privy to those concerns, so purely from a (super super) casual player's standpoint, this is ))) not very good

male donkey is useless, you can always bolt it and use public coverings, as a lot of people offer them when a new unicorn is released (I believe you can still get drum unis)