Did You Buy the ME Island?

[Administrator]

Just curious as to how well things worked out for BFS. Did you buy the island?

Poppy

[dragonmagic1]

Indirectly I did as I purchased some ME at the middle of the event and it gave me a huge boost and allowed me to just go forward. I am one of the ones that strongly supports game developers whether I need the resources or not I always give them a couple of bucks every week or every other one.

[CesspitX]

I purchased it. Cost ~$15 to get the last 980 eggs I needed.

While I may strongly reconsider future payments, I figure $15 for a year (so far) of fun with dragon eugenics is well spent.

[viviane]

Yes i did, i must say I was also somewhat fed up with this eggs collecting, my timer resetted after midnight and i was busy for over an hour with collecting. I thought they could have just given us straight the amount corresponding to sweep, friends and treats and just leave open the amounts on colosseum and removing obstacles lol

[Pixie]

I did buy the island. It's been a long time since contributing to their paychecks, and when/if the day comes there is no longer new content added, I wanted the park to be complete.

Gives me pause to think of what so many people buying the island will do to the future of the game. Have a feeling the free playing form of BFS we have come to love and respect may be a thing of the past. They do need to find a better way to communicate the rules of the events up front to avoid the bad feelings created by this event. Don't feel there is anything wrong with premium content, not necessary to play the game, but it needs to be clearly stated up front what is needed to achieve each prize.

[dougclind]

Pixie, couldn't agree more about being clear about things. I think, in part, this is due to a trend to laziness and greed in recent years. Program developers come out of school with the get rich quick mindset where you rush software onto the market in order to be first. It takes a lot of trouble to write down documentation for software, what it does, how to use it, yadda yadda. And what the heck, most people aren't going to read it anyway right? (wrong!) So with managers who have dollar signs in their eyes and dreams of beemers and Armani suits and parties at the Playboy mansion, who has time to actually EXPLAIN anything! Come on, let's get real here. The customers are just cash cows to be milked and who cares what THEY think anyway. Yeah, don't be a chump: just milk 'em, dump 'em, and then move on to the next cash cow.

Am I being too cynical? Nope, just observing what I see and putting a name to it. Ask yourself how many pieces of software have you seen in recent years that actually come with usable docs? I can't think of any. Microsoft is the worst sinner but only because they have the most software. Anyway, enough philosophy for the day. Squeaky wheel gets the grease so maybe if we holler loud enough BFS will respond with better clarity in the future. It's only when no one complains that people figure they're ok and keep going the way they're going. So let's fire away and make some noise. Even the Bible tells us the principle of making noise about things (the illustration of the widow badgering a judge for justice until he finally gave in just to get rid of her. Luke 18 or 19 I think. Look it up.) Wise words.

[Susie Spieler]

So far the vote appears to be about 50/50 and there are a lot of serious players in this forum. I'd like to know how often players would be willing to spend $10-15 for an event like this. I think that will be a future experiment for DV. Even completionists have a limit so at what point will even those players say that's enough.

[myke]

I didn't buy the island. Pixels just aren't important enough for me. Consequently, I sometimes miss out on stuff. It's my choice, and I can't bring myself to blame a company for trying to tempt me to give them money. I'm the one who won't compromise

And this is notwithstanding that BFS communicated this event so extraordinarily poorly. That's a separate issue.

[Lamonster]

I spent $20 because I didn't have the patience to sit through all the loading screens to visit 5 friends each day.

[Bloodstone]

I bought the island. Twice!

[notbloodstone]

Apr 29, 2014 14:43:22 GMT -6 Bloodstone said:

I bought the island. Twice!

Me too! But only half as much.

[lemmyloop]

I didn't buy the island. I had some technical difficulties and missed a couple days of the event (some were double ME weekend days...) and as such I had too much to catch up on. Had it only been $10 I would probably have bought it. But unfortunately it was not to be.

[freitag]

Apr 29, 2014 12:24:17 GMT -6 myke said:

I didn't buy the island. Pixels just aren't important enough for me.

You're not the only one. In fact, when I started, I was only breeding the dragons I liked. Until I found out they might be needed to get something you like.

[anyahastur]

To tell the truth I didn't think twice about spending real money to buy the island. I really wanted to have it even though I don't exactly need the extra room. But I knew I would regret it later if I hadn't done it.
I would have preferred to be able to get it just by playing, of course. And I mean that not just because of not having to shell out the money, but because I think it's more fun to get something by means of trying really hard, you know. It would feel more gratifying. Like a sense of accomplishment.
And not being able to know the exact amount of eggs we had was very annoying to say the least.

[GregDarcy]

I did not buy the island in either park.
While I am a firm believer that the developer should be rewarded for their efforts, and I have been a regular contributor to BFS's coffers, what I see as the sneaky underhanded way they went about this has left a very bad taste in my mouth. I am seriously considering dropping the game altogether.

Yes there are apps out there that cost money. I buy them if I feel they are a match for what I am looking for. I don't buy games in this category though, unless I have a strong personal recommendation form someone I trust.

Yes there are apps that have a try before you buy approach. Ad supported apps fall into this category if they have a buy ad free version option. Yes I try and frequently buy these. Sometimes I buy them and immediately delete them as I don't really want the app, but do want to support the developer.

Yes there are apps out there that claim to be free, but in reality, but in reality require purchases before you can use them. Not only games. I NEVER get these, though sometimes I download them thinking they are in the try before you buy category. I delete them pretty darn fast. This not only include games but many wrapper apps. National Geographic does this, and I while it bought the magazine for decades. I will not support them any more. I see this approach as downright dishonest.

Then there's Dragonvale. Until recently, it had an intriguing model of "free unless you are impatient" which clearly worked. It regularly appeared in the top grossing apps list, so there were enough impatient people out there to support the developers in style. I quite approve of this model, so I started sending them "donations". Karma payments as they have been called here and elsewhere. Recently however, they have started introducing "premium" content that can only be purchased with real money. I don't have a problem with this as long as much of the content remains free. As it has. HOWEVER they decided to dress it up in an unwinnable "event". It appeared to fit the free if impatient model, until you did the math and discovered it was a deceitful method of hyping an "I need this" mentality. Then saying "what a shame. Tell you what, if you pay just a little you can have it anyway". As I said. Deceitful. I most definitely disapprove. If they had only been upfront about it, I would not have minded, and may even have bought the island. The developers do need to eat their caviar after all. But as it is...

/rant

[ElektronX]

I spent my first $15 toward DV for the Lost Island. It may seem a bit spendy for such a small amount of space, but I really don't mind, since the game has provided me with hours of entertainment.

There are big name games out there, like ones for the Xbox that costs around $50-$60. A game like that will only entertain me for a good two weeks or so, but DV just has an addictive long term appeal to it. It's worth "completing the game" by buying the island for a reasonable price for a company that has held such an exceptional customer service for a long period of time.

However, I do agree that the Egg Event was quite vague in terms of what could be obtained and what had to be purchased. I mean, it was very hard to tell how many eggs I still needed to complete the Lost Island (because I forgot to do the extra math), since there was no "counter" to how many eggs remained. While it did state that 2,000 eggs were needed to obtain the island, the completion bar hardly kept an accurate amount as to how many eggs I had previously turned in. Who knows...maybe I didn't have to spend that extra $5 when my island progress bar was 3/4 complete.

[nagini]

I almost bought it but decided I would rather have some gems to buy an extra habitat, and I only have 9 islands so I can still expand if need be. I'm quite happy with two more gemstone dragons, a habitat for them, and a bunch og gems! And I don't mind throwing a little real money into the game occasionally, but this time I didn't.

[flutterbye]

Apr 29, 2014 17:04:23 GMT -6 anyahastur said:

To tell the truth I didn't think twice about spending real money to buy the island. I really wanted to have it even though I don't exactly need the extra room. But I knew I would regret it later if I hadn't done it.
I would have preferred to be able to get it just by playing, of course. And I mean that not just because of not having to shell out the money, but because I think it's more fun to get something by means of trying really hard, you know. It would feel more gratifying. Like a sense of accomplishment.
And not being able to know the exact amount of eggs we had was very annoying to say the least.

I did think long and hard before paying real money. But my motivation was exactly the same. 

I bought eggs via discounted Amazon points on my Kindle, and viewed it as an Easter present to myself. I had kept count of my eggs after halfway through the second ovalith dragon, so knew pretty well what I needed.

[Dragonmum]

I didn't buy it.
The fact that I didn't know how much I needed to spend was part of it. I would have happily spent $5 or at a pinch $10, but since the Australian stores seem to always have a mark up wasn't willing to pay $12.99 for the 900 eggs, particularly since I thought I needed about 980 (I actually need 800) to complete.
I found the constant creep on the timer annoying when I could collect the day's eggs in my first seep of the day, so,the event took about 30 mins to play.

It did give me areas on to add some new friends, & to visit their parks, which I often don't do as loading takes so long.

[Kiyoji21]

I bought it. There really hasn't been any apps that have held my attention for so long that I didn't mind spending some money. However, if BFS does this sort of event again with the content only being available with purchases, I probably won't be spending money. While I think BFS has been a very good developer; this recent lack of transparency regarding the event was pretty disheartening. Hopefully things will be better next time.

[brickler42]

I decided to continue playing DV when they put in double eggs, and I concluded we could basically get the island for $9.99, not $24.99, with a lot of effort. I put in the $ for my daughter, who specifically wanted to complete the event, and in my park so I don't fall behind her just yet :-). Backflip seems to prize secrecy over user experience, which is always frustrating, especially so in this event. They're walking a fine line, unnecessarily, giving long-time players good reason to quit.

[crumble608]

I described this in another thread before, but as you opened a new one extra for this purpose, here my 50 cent :
Yes, I bought the island.
At first I didn't want to ( I don't really need the space)
But then I read the postings of some of you mentioning the wish to give something back to BFS for all the fun.
I never bought gems because that feels like cheating to me ( no offense to others intended, this is just my feeling)
The only time I spent money for this game was in the magic light and dark event.
So I changed my mind and decided to buy the island if it would stay under 10EUR.
I calculated my MEs and when it was visible that I can get the Lost Island with only buying 900 MEs, I did it.
However If BFS comes up with something new to buy soon, I won't do it. The 8,99 EUR have to suffice for a while.

The event was fun - but as others mentioned, I'm ,too, relieved to get back to normal DV play. The handling of the magic timer reset and the colosseum start/end was interferring with RL. There's something wrong when you meet with good friends and think of your game which should be opened to activate the magic reset .
I would have preferred it if the magic would have reset itself always at the same time without opening DV (like the gem tree)

In opposition to others I felt very well informed about the event (much better than with the light/dark event). It was clear what prizes could be obtained, and it was clear when the event would end. With the double magic timer matching the end day it was evident for me that that would be the finish. The only thing that wasn't clear was if the island could be obtained without money or not. I waited nearly until the last day with my IAP because I hoped BFS would come up with a special possibility to gain some more eggs. ( on the other hand that would have angered people that bought MEs earlier).
The forum , as always, was a fantastic source of information. Aditionally I went to the facebook site from time to time to look if there would be more/new information. I'm no facebook member but the newest information by BFS is visible for everyone on that page. Finally there was the mail from our awesome A-Team. (By the way : thank you guys and girls for the work you do here !!!)
I'm sorry for those who are upset / disappointed with how the event worked. I hope you stay with this funny game and this awesome community.


Finally I would like to point out that the percentage determined by this poll won't be representative because mostly the hardcore fans are posting here (the DV professionals  ), and I think the percentage to buy the island of those is much higher than the average.