Black Friday 2014 analysis

Black Friday has landed! The pandemonium sweeping the globe is being replicated in Restaurant Story, where a large assortment of items have been brought back for a short time at discounted prices.

As usual on Black Friday, there's a 40% off gems sale to tempt your palette.

Limited time 40% off gems offer

This was the ideal opportunity if you planned to buy gems, as this sale doesn't usually happen at any other time of year (with the possible exception of Cyber Monday). The sale is now gone, although some of the items up for grabs are still in the market following something of a fiasco. Before we get to that, let's take a look at the 20 strong list of decorations included in the Black Friday bonanza, with the prices they had for the majority of Black Friday:

Black Friday 2014 sale items

And with some extra details, here's one of my famous tables:

Item	Cost	Notes
Giant Snowman*	14 gems	Limited time offer in Dec 2011
Pink Tree*	3 gems	Originally available in Dec 2011
Holiday Fireplace*	7 gems	Originally available in Dec 2012
Holiday Cake Display	13 gems	Originally available in Dec 2012
Robot Waiter	10 gems	Limited time offer in Apr 2012
Pirate Fountain	17 gems	Limited time offer in Aug 2013
Grandma's Kitchen	28 gems	Limited time offer in Dec 2013
Festive Frenchie	5 gems	Originally available in Dec 2013
New Year Party	24 gems	Limited time offer in Jan 2014
Curvy Kitchen	26 gems	Limited time offer in Jan 2014
Mother's Day Bear	8 gems	Limited time offer in May 2012
Cider Bar	27 gems	Limited time offer in Sep 2013
Thanksgiving Dinner	24 gems	Limited time offer in Nov 2013
Autumn Cupcake Stand	11 gems	Limited time offer in Nov 2012
Zen Garden	24 gems	Discounted (normally 34 gems)
Sandwich Display	14 gems	Discounted (normally 20 gems)
Spring Lunch	25 gems	Limited time offer in Mar 2014
Baroque Column	7 gems	Limited time offer in Aug 2012
Holiday Train	28 gems	Limited time offer in Dec 2013
Pumpkin Counter	6 gems	Originally available in Dec 2013

(*) This item is available for a longer period as part of the most recent weekly update, but at a higher price.

This is a distinctly different sale from the ones that have been available in previous years. In particular there are no box items have been released to purchase. Only limited time offers of the past and content which has been removed at some stage are making an appearance. And another alteration is the theme of the decorations in the sale. Usually there's a wide range of different seasons and concepts covered by the available items, but this time round there is a slight emphasis on Christmas themed stuff.

Unfortunately my feelings on all of this are not good. I hesitate to complain about the contents of a sale since TeamLava aren't under any obligation to do them at all, but nevertheless I can't hide my disappointment. The freely available box items are one of the great attractions of Black Friday for me, perhaps even more so than limited time offers, since the first prizes in the boxes tend to be of such high quality.

As for the Christmas outlook, I can only speak for myself when I say that I've got plenty of festive decorations anyway, and with more new stuff presumably coming in December I'd have preferred the focus to be more general. On the other hand, at least Christmas content is going to be useful right now rather than months down the line as is the case with a lot of other pieces.

So, let's get down to it with some thoughts on individual items. I said on Wednesday that the Holiday Fireplace was a steal for 10 gems, so for it to be reduced down to 7 gems now makes it an absolute must. I already have one so don't need to buy it here, but it's definitely a decoration which will be popping up in a lot of restaurants this Christmas.

Two other items from the update during the week have also had further discounts applied. The Giant Snowman was 24 gems up until yesterday, but has had its price slashed. I listed it a while back as a re-release request, so almost felt obliged to purchase it! I have done, and it will play an important part in my outdoor section next month. The Pink Tree is also reduced again which means it has now been on the market for four different prices! When originally released in 2011 it was 10 gems and was available for 7 gems on Black Friday last year. Then it of course came back for 4 gems on Wednesday only to now be offered for 3 gems! I've bought two of them since they're not exactly a heavy investment, and for the same reason have gone ahead and spent 8 gems on two of the Blue Trees.

Moving forward from Christmas, the New Year Party is back. I had an internal struggle last year when it popped up, so it was inevitable I'd have similar ponderings this time too. It's a really jazzy item with lots of little details to look at, but the fact that it's only really relevant for a couple of weeks of the year means I struggle to justify the expenditure. Oh who cares! I went ahead and splurged on it and will try to incorporate it into my Christmas designs when the time comes!

One decoration I didn't take anywhere near as long to make my mind up about was the Holiday Train. I admired it upon release in 2013 but couldn't afford it for the extortionate fee of 41 gems having blown my fortune on Black Friday the week before. So 51 weeks later I'm finally capturing it for a much more healthy 28 gems! It's not the biggest but has those vibrant and jolly colours that are so representative of the festive season.

And that my friends, is where my Black Friday spending ended. Five unique items in my shopping bag, which is less than I expected. But nothing else managed to pull me in quite enough. It wasn't for a lack of trying though.

The Pirate Fountain is a bargain at 17 gems. A monstrous 4x4 piece, I came very close to the decisive double tap. But there isn't a lot of other pirate themed content on the market other than a dodgy box, which made it a difficult call. Another option would be to utilise it as a little feature at the shore when I bring out my beach theme in the Summer months. But I've got plenty of significant stuff like the Pier Fishing and Riverboat Ride which can fill the space so I ultimately turned the fountain down.

Another tough decision was the Grandma's Kitchen. It's another that I gave longing looks to first time around, and it would make a fine substitute for my Swedish Kitchen throughout December. But would it? Looking closer, Grandma's Kitchen is only 3x3 (the Swedish Kitchen is 4x4) and the scale of the hobs and pan Grandma is using is off. Hmm. So the result is that I've had to persuade the Swedes to work over Christmas!

Among the remainder of the Black Friday offers, I think the Cider Bar and Spring Lunch are probably the two most universally loved by the players. I bought them for inflated deals when each was first released so they were of no interest to me here, but I do know of several others who have longed for their return so that was nice to see.

Now, did anyone spot that the Zen Garden (not to be confused with the Indoor Zen Garden from the Asian Fusion Chest) and Sandwich Display are items which are freely available in the market anyway? Both are heavily discounted but this sits uneasily with me. A lot of players won't realise this and might buy them thinking they are going to be removed completely following the end of the sale. Could this be construed as false advertising? It's certainly murky waters...

And those waters are also about to get rather choppy as we try and make sense of the mass confusion which has cast a dark shadow (or a black shadow if you so wish!) over the proceedings. If you visited this blog on Thursday you may have seen a countdown clock I added chiming down to reset time on Black Friday, the time I expected the sales to commence. That is 8am GMT. But when I opened my game on Friday morning at 7.30am GMT, I discovered that the sale was already in full swing! It turns out that the deals began at around 4am GMT which is four hours before reset time. Here is a screenshot I took of an LTO notification shortly before 1pm GMT:

Autumn Cupcake Stand limited time offer

Doing the maths, this indicates that the sale was to conclude at reset time on Saturday morning. With the time remaining under each item in the market blocked by a sale tag, the only way of knowing the time left was through this notification, which you only get once a day!

Now is where things get crazy. The sale ended at around 4am GMT on Saturday, four hours sooner than was advertised. Just to add to the confusion, the gem sale didn't disappear prematurely, but at reset time as expected.

And it appears that shortly after everything had been wiped a number of the decorations returned at higher prices. This is exactly what happened last year, except that this time with everyone thinking the sale still had four hours to run (until reset time) not everyone had done their business! Cue lots of angry typists over on the TeamLava Forum, not least because if you made your buys shortly before their initial removal, it seems that they were taken away and the gems refunded!

The situation was soon resolved with all the deals being brought back, and at their original sale prices. Time to take a breath? Not quite! Because in the long process of writing this post, the sale has finished again, with only a small number of pieces staying, and at the higher prices they were at for a short window during the night. The drama is endless! Now the sale tags are gone (after all there ain't no sale in this town any more!), revealing that the inflated sale will conclude at 4am GMT on Sunday!

Much like in 2013, I predict that a different selection of the Black Friday items will then go on sale at higher prices for 24 hours, meaning we'll be done and dusted at 4am GMT on Monday. Unless there are goodies to be had then because it's of course Cyber Monday! The game's developers have form for giving a 40% off gems sale on this day too, so there will be another opportunity then if you missed out yesterday. However considering this debacle and the fact that you'll probably have missed out on all the offers, I wouldn't dare open my wallet!

So Black Friday 2014 wasn't the glorious experience I - and so many others - were expecting. The shambles with timings was the serious problem, although the choice of content to make available has also left me underwhelmed. All that mastery of recipes and I ended up spending less than half of my banked gems! That's not a big issue though as it just means I've got lots to spend over Christmas and beyond!

I'm off for a lie down. Thanks very much to Black Pepper, Nibble and Noms (aka Whipped Cream), The Red Chair and numerous members of the TeamLava Forum for their help in trying to piece together the madness of the last 24 hours!