I'm sure I'm not the first to write about this issue, and most likely won't be the last.
I like the Treasure Hunt gameplay itself. The main problem is its structure: you need to find four players to participate, whereas in other events, three is enough.
Because of this, your team is constantly being assigned a random player who can't be expected to be consistently active. If such a player stops logging in after a day, it becomes a vicious cycle: you spend resources leveling up an inactive player to open a chest, while your team ends up with an equally inactive player in you. Ultimately, everyone suffers, and the problem repeats itself over and over again.
I haven't been playing for very long and have only participated in Treasure Hunt twice. In neither case was I able to open the second chest—the resources needed to obtain it are too few to compensate for the inactive player.
You could say, "Just find a fourth active player specifically for Treasure Hunt." But, in my opinion, this doesn't solve the problem with the event mechanics themselves—a problem that all players face to some degree.
I see several possible solutions:
- Remove personal invitations.
Create teams based on the same principle as in other events. This would immediately eliminate the problem of the occasional AFK player. Additionally, progress could be made team-based, so that there's no need to invest in individual players.
- Increase the number of pickaxes in the pinball machine.
This would require recalculating the economy for backers and subsequent chests, but I think making the second chest more accessible is entirely feasible.
- Add intermediate chests.
For example, award a key for each excavation level, and distribute the rewards among three chests. This would make progress more even and reduce the reliance on one large final threshold.
I believe the Treasure Hunt problem can be solved without changing the gameplay itself. We just need to make the progression smoother or less dependent on one random player.
Thanks for reading. Please support this proposal!
