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"

Can you look into this? All it's doing is creating anger and hate between users. I'm tired of people sitting on the sideline and taking my minions last second.

Had an idea for the Rescue Helper achievement - to encourage people to contribute more to feeding, maybe this achievement could have some achievement prizes?

Feeding minions is a little tricky atm because of scrolling to the bottom of the page, especially if you want to feed a bunch at once. Could be moved to the side (see spoiler, sorry for messiness)

Click to reveal

Thank you for these changes! right now, I can't even feed mi ions because the same user is getting them all, and I don't understand. It's disheartening when I'm trying to work on achievements and can't

It still says 1/3 gold bubbles popped, when I did pop 3.

"You've been feeding very quickly! Take a 30-second breather. The minions need time to digest." I'm getting this message but I actually went away from the page to do something else and it still won't let me feed the minions.

EDIT~ seems to be fixed now…

I'm still having the same users wait on the sideline and they take it when I have the green bar. I give up. I understand it's a community game, but the same 10 users make it hard. I don't even know how people can feed them so fast, compared to when I feed.

I know when there's new achievements, people usually got nuts and try to finish them all in a short span. Maybe things just need to cool down again (kind of like a new restaurant. They can be busy for months, then the novelty wears out).

Before the changes, I had all my minion achievements lol. Have I really popped the most bubbles? That's crazy!

Unrelated: autoprice has a Server error (500)

The food panel on the right feels so much better! Thank you for moving it!

I just got sniped on my very first minion of the day. It wasn't even an expensive one (only worth 3k), just someone being a jerk for no reason. This isn't very fun when your work gets stolen in an instant and there's nothing you can really do about it :/

After having played this for a little bit now. I find that buying the food for an inexpensive minion ends up costing more than just buying the minion from shops most of the time. It would be great if you had only the more expensive/high rarity/retired minions in the bubbles. Also, maybe we could buy food from Celesse, like food pellets at a zoo and such, and they all eat a random number of pellets to be freed. I found that half of the time the old trapped minion game had a specific food item and by the time you buy that item and go to feed the minion it had already been fed, leaving you with an unwanted item. Maybe these new pellets can be like currency that we collect and then feed to these trapped minions. The pellets is just a way to not have to go searching for cheap food that is really hard to find because of the restockers on Subeta.

I know how you feel. Even with the changes, it sucks, and those users still sit there at the green bar and snip it. It's the same 10 users.

Food is expensive. Maybe Celesse can open a shop and have something like the RBP, but for food instead and your food goes into the bank, like RBP or any other special currency until you use it. Then you buy more

maybe can explain better than I can? give your input! :)

I think we're all salty cause we spend so much time and money feeding them and then other people come when it's green and pop the bubble. It truly feels that you've lost and don't want to even bother after 20 or 30 times of having the same thing happen over and over (even if you happen to pop a handful of bubbles, it still feels.. insulting?).

I am sorry but there is really nothing more I can really say that I didn't say in the Shout Box. In short it's disappointing to feed several times in a row, (not just two or three times but seven or so) and have the bubble near the bursting point then having to wait to feed again only to have it claimed while waiting to feed again. It's a raffle or race..I get it so I am not gonna debate it anymore. I accept it. How long, by the way, does one need to wait before feeding the same minion again?