I know we're still in the middle of Masquerade, and Vesnali is far on the horizon (May), but I wanted to revisit the subject of bouquets. Specifically, wanting to draw attention early so there's some time behind the scenes to discuss what to do with these problematic flowers.

Right now, of the 25 bouquets introduced last year for Emma and Esther's wedding, most are extremely expensive, and many are completely unbuyable. There are two massive factors explaining the prices: One, users were given only 5 days to create bouquets that each required 3-6 specific flowers. And two, there was roughly a 18% chance of a floating flower being one that could even be used in a combination. (And that doesn't even take into account that you need multiple of that flower for most bouquets.) As expected, low availability + short time + high demand = chaos.

Now, a year ago, I proposed that after the wedding event was over, the bouquets could be placed into the Menagerie for purchase. Sell the bouquets in the Vesnali shop post-wedding This idea was shot down. (Amber: "You will not get them by buying them straight out, though. We want you to work for them not just drop x sP on them.") However, I would still highly suggest the read through of the 4 pages of incredibly well thought out complaints. I'll put a spoiler down below with some of the highlights.

Many of the complaints encompass the notes I made above: It was too short of a time to allow for bouquets. The bouquets required too specific of flowers. There weren't enough flowers even dropping. The "response" to this, staff ensuring that this event will come back in the future, was met with a large amount of backlash. On the whole, the people in the board were frustrated with the mechanics involved with this task, not the task itself. And saying it's likely to return introduced a whole other problem.

Hoarding.

People were frustrated that they "wasted" flowers in the beginning of the event that could've been used for bouquets later on! People were frustrated that they were missing out on beautiful wearables simply because they couldn't drop millions or spend their entire day online. People were frustrated to hear that this task might come back, and thus not knowing if they should save their flowers. A good number of people, including myself, simply ceased activity on the forums for what should've been a social event. Thank you, but I'd rather save my flowers now, than risk another 5 day bouquet clusterfuck because the price of flowers has suddenly shot to the tens of millions.

It's like staff forget that the Vesnali flowers already have a use - being the only way to get Vesnali Coins for shop purchases. And Shinwa forbid, we let them keep their central purpose without tacking on a resource-intensive and scarcity-inducing event.

. . . Deep breaths.

Right now, the prices for available Vesnali flowers are skyrocketing. As predicted, people are stocking up in the face of the unknown, more so than usual. (Sorry, but I don't want to pay 1mil for one of the ten Violet Bluebells on the market right now.)

Now, I know that staff has been hard at work behind the scenes with site features such as the garden revamp. I don't know if they're going to be unveiled soon, and I'm not asking. It's certainly possible that there have already been discussions regarding flower distribution and the like. I know that Vesnali is already well underway in terms of planning. (Like, I believe it was mentioned that they'll be releasing the wedding album as part of E&E's anniversary!) So again, there's a possibility that the bouquet debacle has already been addressed. But that's not for me to know.

All I know, is that there were promises made last year regarding the return of these mechanics, and a lot of people were unhappy. It also seemed like a lot of the criticism went unaddressed.

So I'm taking the only steps I know of by posting here, and at least making an attempt to ensure that these conversations ARE happening.

. . .

As noted above, some highlights from the board from last year.

...

General suggestion- change the bouquet suggestion to require less specific flowers.

Maybe instead of the Black Calla Lily and Black Tulip Bouquet requiring 4 of those specific flowers, instead, require 5 flowers that are black/dark/midnight in color? Or perhaps after giving Esther 10 flowers of any type, she throws back a random bouquet? Spread the love, and therefore make the prices of flowers less extreme.

Quote by Amber

Just because they&;re tied to the wedding this year, doesn&;t mean we can&;t make this a yearly event. Esther and Emma practically work around lovely flowers every day -- they are just wedding things. I personally want to bring it back next year to have forum titles, etc.</p>
<p>(I already posted in the news comments that this will likely be a thing to happen again 😊)

Source

Quote by Amber

Awaiting the canned &quot;you&;re not supposed to get all of them&quot; response though. 😔

i got u boo.

We knew that most people wouldn't be able to make every single bouquet, that's why the achievement is to only make one. This will be a feature that comes back, though. Rah and I have discussed many different ways it could happen outside of Vesnali, even. Those talks discuss other ways of coming across the flowers (yo gardens becoming useful) etc. Just because you can't get them all right this second doesn't mean there won't be opportunities in the future. 😊

(You will not get them by buying them straight out, though. We want you to work for them not just drop x sP on them.)[/quote]Source

Quote by Destiny

[quote=Speiro]I&;m really surprised we need multiples of each flower to make a bouquet. That&;s not how genetech/cooking/alchemy/crafting/whatever have ever worked on Subeta, so this is a weird time to start, especially considering how hard it is to find the specific flowers you need in the first place.

It takes more than one because a normal bouquet takes more than one of each flower to fill it out. I know that it is not like normal things on here (genetech) but it isn't really supposed to be like those things? I think that it is great that they will be added more ways to get them in the future.Source

Quote by Sopheroo

People are now living in fear that if they actually use the flowers for their MAIN purpose, they&;re going to LOSE out in the end.
This is not very fun.</p>
<p>You&;re making people less willing to interact with each other, and they&;re going to go with Profit Is King instead of actually taking part in flowergiving. Meaning, Vesnali Coins are going to skyrocket.
We need close to 2000 of them to get all of the 2017 items.</p>
<p>The real solution would really to have been</p>
<ol>
<li>Giving more flowers via Donation Corner. Booyah.</li>
<li>Make all flowers usable via bouquets. Instead of having a bouquet using Orange Tulip and Red Rose, any tulip or any rose could have worked.</li>
</ol>
<p>I understand the &quot;WE DON&;T WANT YOU TO BUY EVERYTHING&quot; mentality, but I don&;t like how luck-based and grindy this is.
idk for you guys, but for a one-week event, not everyone has time to go and refresh pages like mad for flowers.

Source

Quote by Amber

I don&;t think you guys saw my post that other things are going to be worked into this in the future, like outside of the one-week event here. Flowers can brighten up a lot of our events! And making use of gardens or something else to get flowers out outside of just floating. We went with quests for now, but that doesn&;t mean we won&;t donate some during the event. Again, just because you can&;t get them on the first day doesn&;t mean you won&;t be able to make them later.

Source

I really hope they bring the last years' bouquets back lol I remember when I asked on vesnali forums if we would be able to get the bouquets this year and a staff member answered that new bouquets would be released. But I'm actually less worried now that I saw the quotes that bouquets will be released in a different way.

But yeah, we should have some change this year. Sure, probably we will have more time to make them... That could be nice and we could see if it goes well for once if we have 2 weeks to make 25 bouquets if all the things are already planned. But this is something to watch, and if at the end only a few people get the bouquets like last year, it'd be a nice change to have all the bouquets available always, and each year smaller amounts of bouquets are released (because 25 every year is too much and new players would struggle if they start playing in the 3rd year with 75 bouquets to make, not to mention the vesnali items to buy lol).

Skyrocketing? NOT. Speaking of hoarding bwa ha ha! I have a fuckton of these flowers glommed cheap over the whole year. Since I have been buying them, the price they are now? Not very high, sorry. People have been quite happy to dump their flowers.

Even through all that saving flowers behind from last year? I have thousands of Vesnali Coins already made. I'm curious, is this rare? They were easy to get, I thought. It's exactly because the people you give Vesnali Flowers to, they never actually see the flowers in question, so you can always give them non-bouquet flowers. How would they even know? If we have lots of existing flowers and new ones get created, there will always be flowers you can get that will be coins-only.

Oof, hey . I want to offer a rebuttal, but I'm not going to lie, I'm not too pleased with some of your remarks. I'm not entirely sure how my response will come off, but please, I'm not trying to attack you, simply trying to respond in regards to how it relates to the topic at hand. I apologize in advance if my comments come off too harshly.

In regards to prices- I too was looking to buy throughout the year. Perhaps "skyrocketing" wasn't the best fitting term I could have used. But inflated? Atrocious? Overblown? Yes, those might work better. When, just a couple months ago, there were some flowers that were being priced for <20k, and now the average price is >85k? Yeah, I'd say that the prices are inflated.

And on the subject of hoarding... You and I, with our collections of stored flowers, are prime examples. There will always be a market for selling off currency type things, and seeing the prices jump in the month before an event is expected. But the poor mechanics involved with the bouquets, and the mystery regarding the future of them, only increases the need to stock up.

While the general cost for flowers will decrease once the event starts and more get into the economy, whatever flowers are unlucky enough to be chosen for bouquets will likely see themselves priced in the millions, if not unbuyable. Which is exactly what I was trying to get across in the first post.

So, it's really difficult to not interpret this humble-brag as an attack, given I didn't make a single comment regarding the flower:coin ratio, or changing the flower drop rate, or anything like that. Hell, I didn't even comment on my own currency amounts, with my only reference to coins being the fact that scarcity of flowers leads to scarcity of coins. I mean, congratulations that you have extra, but I can guarantee that not everyone is in the same boat.

The rest of your comment- to simply give non-bouquet flowers out- is only a partial solution, in my opinion. For the many that needed coins, yes, giving non-bouquet flowers out was the only solution. But let's imagine that you gave out 100 pinwheel flowers (non-bouquet 2017), only to find out that this year, they're specifically required for bouquets. I imagine many would be unhappy that their participation in the 2017 event was met with penalization* in the 2018. (*Yes, they received coins, and therefore items, in 2017, so their activity wasn't for nothing. But as it stands now, bouquets are valued at a much higher rate.)

I think this statement in particular kind of misses the point of the original post. As users, we have no idea if there will be non-bouquet flowers. It's why people started favoring hoarding, over flower-giving last year! This upcoming year, perhaps it'll still just be the 25 bouquets from last year. Or, perhaps it'll be 25 new ones. Who knows. If it's the 25 new- will they require specific flowers? Or will they just require X amount of random flowers? Who knows. Will staff be implementing different ways to get flowers and bouquets, like via gardens? Who knows. Hell, will staff even bring back the wedding-specific bouquets, considering their unbuyable status? Who knows.

I can make plenty of logical assumptions. But that doesn't guarantee results. It's why I wanted to make the original post- I was never against the bouquet making as an idea. I just thought that the particular mechanic was poorly conceived, with seemingly little forethought into the impact on the flower economy. So I wanted to trigger staff to actually look at it. Are we going to have a year where flowers are treated equally, and/or have some of the peace restored to the holiday? Or is there going to be another frenzy? Because even with the guarantee of it being >5 days, that doesn't solve the issue of people holding onto flowers, rather than actually participating.

I just hope whatever solution, if any, comes to the bouquet making, it will be announced at the beginning of the event. Otherwise, I'm keeping all the flowers I get for myself, thus not participating in the event and not generating coins. And I guess many will do the same. Cause, last year, it might have been actually cheaper to buy coins than the particular flowers everyone was looking for.

<3 I know, and I'm not trying to offend or be difficult. Assuming staff has discussed it is one of those logical assumptions. I figured it was likely, but I don't know for sure. I was annoyed enough at the bouquet mechanics, that I just wanted to bring it up once more to really drive home the point. And it's why, in the OP, I made a point to mention that I don't know what has already been discussed, and that I know Vesnali planning has already been underway for some time. I was also sure to include your posts from last year there too, just for further visibility and to show I wasn't trying to ignore any communications! I was reiterating that I wanted staff to discuss just so I could make my goal and intentions known, since I didn't really lay out superb suggestions myself.

That is a big relief. Thank you.

You make a lot of great threads, , but when I saw that comment I was like oh god I hope they aren't like feeling pressured to make these threads or something like IF I DON'T DO IT, NO ONE WILL, AND WE MAY BE STUCK WITH THIS

Hahaha, no, I'm not normally this worried about stuff. Staff is pretty darn great the majority of the time. ;) Mostly, I was just particularly frustrated with the headache of bouquets. And I left last year feeling like we might be faced with the same problems in the years to come. Hence, my drive to create a board. This one is just a bit more hand-wavy than my others, since I don't really have a concrete suggestion, and it's for a feature/task that has yet to come back for the holiday.

Ohh, the bouquets!

I hope getting them is easier because I have a wedding-based pet, OpalAmore. The bouquets would look great in her TC. :)

Just popping in to say those bouquets are really pretty and I'm excited to see how we all get a fair chance to make them.

I'm glad this is being looked at.

I'm perpetually behind in Vesnali because it's so short and because I usually want at least two of everything in the shop because it's so awesome. So it ends up being a favourite and least favourite holiday.

The added pressure on the flowers with the bouquet-making when I already feel like it's a currency with major pressure on it made it very un-fun last year.

Here's hoping for a less frustrating experience this year! <3