Hiya, starting a thread to give constructive feedback on the Trapped Minions Rework! This post builds upon comments made here: 👑Trapped Minions Rework!, was not sure if the news post was the feedback spot.

While I really love the idea of community feeding and rescuing minions, I think the system rewards final feeds too much, and is too punishing or too risky for people who enjoy feeding or grinding at the bubbles. This mainly comes up when there are less active feeders, but comes up even when there are.

Positives (Saying these first because the rework is cool):

• I like that the new rework lets you feed minions with others, and that it gives you a chance to rescue minions.
• The pool of minions includes Collection minions, Retired minions, and Artifacts.
• There is a leaderboard and achievements as another reward over just rescued minions.
• It feels satisfying to try and rescue a variety of minions.

STAKES (WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT) - THE VALUE OF ITEM POOL, ACHIEVEMENTS, LEADERBOARD: The stakes are why this should be fixed and fair (imo):

• Minions have sentimental, but also commercial value. I have seen very valuable minions in the bubbles, some with User Prices of ~100k-500k, some with prices of ~1 million or more, and some with ~20 million or more. The most valuable minion I've seen had a User Price of ~100 million sP and was a Collection item!
• Achievements are non-monetary stakes too.
• The leaderboard and high scores are a competitive incentive.

AN ISSUE - investment-heavy consistent feeding is too risky, and last minute feeding is rewarded too heavily:

• The system too heavily rewards last minute feeds and does not incentivise consistent feeding enough.
• It encourages a watch and wait playstyle - precision feeding over consistent feeds.
• While I can understand enjoying this type of playstyle, there is a time and resource investment for feeding minions. Each feed requires a food item, player input, time, and attention.
• Rare and valuable minions require a significant amount of attention and feeding. It can take between 50-90 feeds to get their bubbles to pop, which can take between 20-30 minutes if no one else is feeding the minion.
• However, the player who gets the last feed is guaranteed to pop the bubble and rescue the minion. Although this requires some attention, it does not need a lot of food resources and does not involve constant inputs on the page.
• The risk is consistent feeders losing morale or dis-engaging from the feature. I've seen a last feed happen a number of times in a row, on common as well rare/valuable minions.

Why it does this:

• It is too easy to achieve a last feed. It is really easy to monitor when a bubble is about to pop, and to estimate someone else's feeding cooldown. The page shows how close a bubble is to popping down to the percentage, as well as the number of feeds a minion has received, AS WELL AS who is feeding a minion in its most recent feeds. If one or two people are feeding a minion, you can infer when their cooldowns are up to easily get in a last feed at between 97-99% (usually 99% for rarer minions).
• Achievement rewarding overall contribution is currently broken:
  • The Species Collector and Bubble Popper achievements, which are awarded for popping bubbles, are currently working.
  • The Rescue Helper achievement, which rewards consistent feeding contributions to the bubble popping, is not working.

Possible fixes:

• Make it less obvious when a bubble is about to pop:

• remove percentage indicator or info about Recent Feeds, which gives information about who is feeding and how many players are feeding.
• Or, only show information about when a bubble is about to pop after a certain number of feeds - E.G. you need to have two or three feeds to see an estimation of when.

• Or, incentive consistent feeding more! Users had a really good suggestion about how to do this here: 👑Trapped Minions Rework!.

I agree that the progress bar should be removed. I think the shaky minion is sufficient indication that a pop is nearing. That will help prevent 'snipes' from taking over the whole experience.

The food items in our inventory should be much higher on the page - perhaps to the left of the batch of minions. As it stands, on pc using Chrome, I must select the minion, then I have to scroll down to select the food and give thumbs up/down. Then I have to scroll back up to select a minion. The page seems very "narrow" with huge margins. This was common on Kumos and it seems like there's plenty of space to work with to avoid scrolling so much.

I did 95% of the work for a very difficult minion and this user waited and then niched it. I had the same handful of users take all the minions I was working on feeding. It's not fun. They sit and wait until the progress bar is 97% finished

Suggestions:

• I think the feed list should be removed, along with the progress bar.

• Usernames should also be removed so people have no hard feelings towards others working on achievements!

• Be locked into a minion if you do 60% or more of the work

P.S. Too bad the achievements aren't working. I'd have my 5 completed for "let someone else pop the bubble last feed"