First off, thanks for fixing what was apparently a bug - i haven't had recipe missions for almost a week and am looking forward to having them again.

Second, if it is determined that there MUST be extended cool-downs for rare and epic double-recipe missions, then wouldn't it be better to link the extension to the acquisition percentage of the rarities in question? Which is to say: slow down the occurrences Bros Stilskin when we've acquired 80%-90% or so of RARE recipes, and slow down the occurrences of ADR when we've reached 80%-90% or so of EPIC recipes.

As it is, we are having our ability to get EPIC recipes severely retarded when we have relatively few of them acquired. The slow-down is apparently triggered when having around 80% or so of recipes in total; we get nearly all common, uncommon, and rare recipes and then find we can no longer get the Epic ones at anything like the old rate - penalized for having too many common recipes by slowing our Epic recipe gain.

Now, i wouldn't mind at all if extended cool-downs were rescinded entirely; but, failing that, i'd like to see the cool-down extensions actually make sense and not feel like we are being penalized in useful game mechanics (epic recipes) for being too successful in less useful game mechanics (common, uncommon, rare recipes).

Thanks again
- m.

Well, it was written for the CNE people and they'll know what it means. If you're very curious, there is a long thread on the subject on the Kongregate CotLI boards that should enlighten. It's something that only recently has started effecting the most active players and may not have touched you yet.

It's not connected to flash sales. It is connected to recipe mission cooldowns and the last two updates affecting their behavior.

And since I also am not really dealing with the Kongregate forums and don't expect others to do, I guess it is story time once more.

As most of you know, each mission has its cooldown period where it doesn't show up again after it has finished. Not only that missions are collected in a pool of same kind missions. This takes care that you can only start a certain amount of missions in the same pool. The most clear effect for all probably are the EP and Gold missions which only allow five or four missions at the same time, respectively. A couple of weeks ago, players started noticing that they didn't receive recipe missions as they were supposed to receive them. Most noticably were the missions for the rare and epic recipes, both the single and two-recipe versions. For the sake of easier overview, I'll call them R1, R2, E1, E2 and CU (the mission for common and uncommon recipes).

Since most of the players noticing the immense increase in cooldown of the R- and E-missions are connected in chat or in one of the forums (Armorgames, Kongregate), they analyzed it was connected to the fact they were reaching high numbers of recipe completions. I got wind of the whole situation when Kevin hosted the Q&A on reddit and players asked him about it and started to share their amount of available recipes. Apparently those players had all the CU-recipes, a ratio of more than 85% of the R-recipes and a significant amount of E-Recipes, too.

The initial feedback individual players got was that the missions worked as intended and that cooldowns of recipe missions increased once a certain ratio of recipes were owned. As far as I recall, no details about what ratio it really is, was given to the players.

A few days and quite an amount of 'lively' feedback later, CNE published the first update. With this the R1 and E1-missions were not affected by any increased cooldowns. So, only the R2 and E2-recipe-missions were taking longer to come back.

This lead to further wonderful feedback which Erika herself faced at the following Q&A last week. Kudos to her for taking in what I partially would call abuse. A couple of arguments went on since Erika published the answer, the total ratio of recipes (common, uncommon, rares and epics) would affect the cooldown increase. One was that players should not run any other recipe missions but the E1 and E2s to not have unneccessary penalties while the increased cooldown was still a thing. Meanwhile the harsh feedback continues.

Azaryah's first post mentioned the update from last Friday. Apparently there was a bug which caused the whole pool of recipe missions being on extended cooldown instead of only the R2 and E2 missions.

I hope, I covered it all. If anyone wants to add something how this all came together, please add.

Now, on to my opinion:

This is the more difficult part because I can understand both sides.

First, from CNE's point of view I absolutely understand not giving away somewhat free epic gear for nothing. After all, there is a business model behind this game and if players had the feeling getting all crusaders of on all epic was easy with the recipe missions, the whole business model would fail. And thankfully the only way CNE can make money in the long term is due to players buying jewel event chests regularly. However, once players think they can get the epic gear easily the numbers of motivated customers decline from my point of view.

I know, starter packs and normal jewel chests are a source of income, too. But players who are with the game since two years hardly need any starter packs or jewel chests since the initial 20 crusaders are decked out. Only exception might be the 20+ crusaders for which jewel chests are valuable, however the same business logic applies, too.

So, in short: Yeah, I understand CNE's motivation to challenge the way players can get recipes after a certain point in the game. Without the extended cooldown, active players get epic recipes faster than new crusaders are introduced. Quite a lot faster to be honest.

However, as a player I also have my problems with it. The whole situation feels awkward, to be honest. When recipe missions were introduced nothing was said to warn players about it. There were players who wrote that this must have been introduced after crafting was done and once CNE saw how fast players were aquiring epic recipes. Moreover, since the most active players were hording jewel chests, epic material is not a challenge so all epic recipes were turned into the missing epic gear.

Regardless of that, I think it doesn't shine the brightest light on CNE that players had to find out about it themselves and that CNE's communication was and still is very limited on this. And yes, I also feel that players should not be penalized for actively playing the game. After all, in a F2P world this is the way players compensate to be somewhat able to follow those players who pay for getting an advantage. They invest their time and sometimes they throw around their sleeping schedule to finish an E2-mission as soon as possible to restart its cooldown clock.

However, I also wonder what CNE could say to calm the 'mob'. Again I think Erika was and is very brave to face the community through mail, forums, chats and the reddit-Q&As, especially when civilized communication doesn't seem to be possible in some parts. If CNE doesn't want to change the logic, there is hardly anything to do than sucking up the feedback and see if something might be done in the future.

And with this I come to your suggestion, Azaryah:

In generall, I like it. I would do it like this, however:

Remove the cooldown extensions for R1 and R2 completely. Let the rare recipes be the norm. The most active players, those who are facing the extended cooldowns, have nearly 90% of those recipes anyway. Let them have the other 10%, too.

For the epic recipes, get in there with transparency. For both E1 and E2 missions. Extend the cooldown for both missions in double or any other multiplied value of the ratio. Meaning, if I have 20% of all epics, give me an increase of 40% or more. Make it transparent as you do with the reset fatigue and make it calculable so players understand what is going on and don't have to guess. If they want to plan their day around the game, let them have it.

Got all of it until the end? You poor souls :)