Welp, it's that time again...Lumi is just around the corner!!! 🎉

As much as we all love this beloved holiday, I know it's also a stressful time both online and in RL. Because of this, I know there are those of you that have suggestions for how to better the Luminaire experience this year. I have a couple of suggestions myself. If you can think of anything, please feel free to add to the list!

First off - Lumi trees and gift giving:

Please, please, please have the gift giving page the same way as the gift page at the gift center! On the first page you'd have two options: to give a gift to a friend on your list or to type a name in; exactly the way you can do it now when sending a gift to someone via inventory. On the next page would be this:

A page identical to the Gift Center page. The only difference is that you could select unlimited items from the list provided instead of just five like you can in the Gift Center.

This would make gift giving a breeze and so much less stressful than the way it is currently:

Step 1: Choose name and gift from drop-down menus on page one. Step 2: Click button to put gift under tree (refreshes page) Step 3: View the page that says you've successfully put a gift under tree Step 4: Click the back link (refreshes page) Step 5: Repeat steps 1-4 X amount of times for X amount of people. Depending on how many people and items you have to give, that could take you way past Luminaire and well into the new year... 😲

It's just a horrible, horrible headache the way it currently is.

Secondly - Snowballs:

Yes, this topic's been brought up time and time again and there have been mixed views on this. However, these are my feelings. Please just hear me out:

There needs to be some way for people to keep from getting snowballed 100% of the time if they don't want to take part in this annual event. Yes, I know there's the but that doesn't work 100% of the time. Some people, like myself, take immense pride in creating HAs and don't like to see them covered in snowballs. "It's temporary" you might say, but if you're continually getting pelted, it's no longer temporary. "There's the Hairdryer Of Melty" which is another rebuttal that's used. Yes, there is. However, those things are expensive. Add the cost of all the Lumi gifts on top of the 395759275237560 Hairdryer Of Meltys that you might need to buy and you won't have enough to give gifts this holiday season. Not to mention, you dry yourself off and someone hits you again and you're back to square 1.

I'd like to see something, some way, of being able to block snowballs 100% without having to temporarily block people for the Lumi season to keep them from snowballing you. It's not only unfriendly, it doesn't seem like a good use of the blocking system. Yes, you can block for any reason, but even I don't like the thought of blocking over something like this, even temporarily. I've done it, but it doesn't make me feel good because it's not a reason for which I'd want to block someone. You'd think that, to keep in the holiday spirit, if someone asks you not to throw snowballs at them people would oblige. Sadly, though, that's not the case.

I'd love to see either a CS shield that you can buy that blocks snowballs 100% or simply an option in User Dashboard that turns all snowball effects off, so that people that want to hit you can hit you but the snowballs' images/effects won't ruin your HA that you spend so long on, or an option in User Dashboard to completely block all snowballs from hitting you.

Lumi's supposed to be a fun holiday. Yes, these are pixels, but it's real time that a person takes to make these HAs. There needs to be a way that that's respected and preserved. Pixels aren't important a lot of the time, but a person's time and energy is. If someone's fun of Lumi is taken away because of these snowballs and their requests for not getting snowballed are continually denied or ignored, then it's unfair to that player causing unhappiness. Heck! It could be all of 10 people on site (I'm willing to bet there'd be more though) that may not want their HAs covered in snowballs, but it'd be nice if there was some sort of option that could keep all HAs free and clear from snowballs, their effects or the snowballs themselves, so that the time that's taken to create these HAs can be preserved and respected.

I think there needs to be a way this year to make everyone happy in regards to these snowballs - no shield for those that love getting pelted, the use of the shield for those that want some but not a ton, and a new option for total reflection of snowballs for those that don't want any.

Thirdly - Melody's Cottage:

It might already be implemented but I totally forget so please correct me here lol! I'd love to see an event come up every night at midnight to remind us to visit her again. I think it'd be very helpful for us forgetful people who are busy with a trillion things lol! XD

The best way to not get snowballed is to never make a big deal of how you get snowballed. I probably get snowballed...3-4 times per year. Max. People who snowball are going to do it with people who are all FAEDUAIGHAESFOSFIHWEUIHFJEAIOJ WHY DID YOU SNOWB ALL ME. When you go and complain about the snowballs, you are painting a large target on you. If you just ignore it, people are going to ignore you as well.

So no, there shouldn't be a way out of the snowball game. It's not disturbing as having chunks of your avatar taken out. There was a logical reason to have people opt out of organ harvesting, but I don't see any aside from "MUH AVATAR QQ" for snowballs. You have the shield. Use it. It's the winter equivalent of the Hypno-Monocle. I still got hexed.... believe 11 times, despite wearing the monocle. It's part of the game

Completely agree with (what a surprise)

Also adding an alert for Melody's Cottege would take a lot away from the achievement for visiting every day. There is already a forum group you can join, and the news page always has the link there.

I would love a change to the gift giving though, that is tedious enough

And there's a sidebar widget you can use.

How about we get an option to disable our Christmas tree and therefore, getting gifts. (aww look how boring I am) [Edit] I agree on the gift giving option tho. Much more easier and practical. It'd be nice to see what we already gave to someone. I remember giving 3 times the same gift to one of my pals.

About the cottage, I normally just pull the widget to the very top of my sidebar and ask all my friends to poke me multiple times a day LOL, so I can't not see it x_X Coming from someone who kept missing only 1 or 2 days, it's the worst feeling, but the widget has been cutting it for me if I put it on the top ^^

It would be nice if we had a mass-tree-gifting option and/or a way to track the things we've put there, yes. (As in, we'd visit the person's tree again and see a small list with the things we've put there maybe? similarly to what happens after christmas when we visit our own tree, we might have collected it all but the list of stuff is there)

Every year I rely on spreadsheets and things can get CRAZY if I don't have as much time to organize :/ Time ends up being one of the major constraints (besides currency) when it comes to how many people I effectively CAN gift, which is so sad and annoying ;c

...yea I'd love if they gave us the option to not display our trees behind the avatars (I guess disabling the feature as a whole would do that so I could take it too), I asked that 92879 times because it looks silly with bgs but last year Keith shot it down saying we can already remove them from our profiles and he wants everyone to see and use the feature ._. holidays are not optional now everyone go and be happy akjsdkj

BUT WHAT IF I WANT TO GIVE YOU AN ETHER? WHAT DO I DO?

Oh, and on the topic of gift-giving: I think the gift center still hasn't been paginated or anything? If that's left unchecked, we're going to run into a problem where it's killing the server the way wishlists do.

YOU DELETE IT FOR ME, DUH!

YOU GIVE IT TO MEEEEEEEEE

OKAY

BUT WHO DO I GIVE THE BEANBAGS TO?

ALSO ME. EVERYTHING TO ME. ALL THINGS FOR JEN. JEN2015 # Blessed

Totally forgot about that widget! XD Thanks for that!

I agree with the mass-gifting suggestion. It would make gifting easier.

I wish there was a preview of ornaments on the hover over so that you could know how it would look before actually putting it on the tree. I know there's like 10 different trees but if it was just the ornament against a white background, just so you could see exactly how it would look. Idk if it would slow down the site too much though.

I definitely support the gifting option, but I disagree with an alert for Melody and an item to 100% block snowballs. It's not that big of a deal

You can always make the Melody Cottage your homepage, or one of your homepages. I do that all the time when I need to remember to do some seasonal thing or something.

I also think the shield works well enough for snowballs. If there's something to block it completely, what's the point of even having the snowballs to start with.

I would love to see the trees and gift giving redone! I never bother to decorate my tree because 90% of the time it doesn't even work. Gift giving definitely needs to be more streamlined for sure.

I feel as though I explained it well enough - it's to respect the time and effort people put into the HAs. I think respecting that is worth preserving 100% for those that want it preserved. Personally I feel that's really important and is why I feel there should be a 100% block option.

1. Get rid of the antiquated spoiler rule for Melody items. Oh no, someone spoiled it for you? Boo hoo.

2. Tree gift giving is fun but pointless due to doubles. Allow for a user to remove an item (but not know who sent it) from their wishlist that is under their tree. Or let gift senders see what others have put under it (as well as their own gifts which was mentioned above).

3. Sure, why don't we implement 100% snowball block. However, as someone is not participating in the event 100%, that means that they shouldn't be getting 100% of the items from melody. 50%. The cost of weakness.

4. Get rid of the achievement prize for visiting Melody on all 31 days. I feel sorry for any user that has a power outage and cannot access the internet. That's not a good enough example. Here's a better one: Imagine a user that has visited Melody for 30 days and is excited by the achievement prize, but unfortunately gets hit by a bus and is hospitalized and therefore cannot access Melody. Happy fucking Luminaire. But keep the 25 days one though.

5. Send out a newsletter by mail before Fireside starts reminding them of the upcoming events. There's no need for an item reward. (Also, this is a good idea because it'll promote the Black Friday sale!)

6. Allow me to throw a molotov cocktail at 's tree so I can burn it down.

7. Implement OP's suggestion for multiple gift giving. I'd like to see that for Mysterious Melody as well.

8. Create a genetech combo item that utilizes the Essence of Melody item. The value of that item should be raised.

The Essence of Melody is priced low right now because we haven't had a nostalgic pet in a while, but it's going to inflate bonkers in two months.

Right now, it's a little more expensive than the Spectrum Potion, and a little less expensive than Nightmare. Seems like the worth is fine right now.