The Thanksgiving cruise event was just getting under way at the time of my previous report, with plenty of familiar decor up for grabs.
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| Notification for Thanksgiving cruise event |
Even the character who we were battling to unlock was a familiar one - Tommy the Turkey was supposedly the cousin of Timmy the Turkey who was the special guest unlocked at the climax of the equivalent cruise back in November 2015.
Maple Leaves are the ingredient Tommy brings to the party, and at the time of writing there's still a horror of a bug when he is tapped on. Instead of a beautiful maple leaf dropping we get a big black box. Not very 'autumnish' and apparently not likely to be fixed any time soon. It's a damning incitement of the game that a month on this glitch is still in play - as much as I regularly criticise the running of the original game, I suspect such an error there would be resolved reasonably swiftly.
Anyway the Maple Leaf is one of the ingredients required to prepare the Maple Flan, along with Sugar, Flour and Cream. That's right - the 'big three' all feature for the flan. This trio are already in high demand elsewhere, so it's a real bummer that on an occasion when only four of the special ingredient are called for the other ingredients are such valuable ones.
Personally I got to the end of this event without too much drama. I spent 5 gems in order to finish day 9 with a perfect set-up for day 10, and am glad I did. It got me off to a solid start on the final day, and played a role in giving me a relatively comfortable finish.
We have very much slipped into a fixed schedule of a new cruise every fortnight on the Thursday or Friday, and so it was not at all surprising to see the Fall Expo cruise event released in the middle of the month.
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| Introduction to the Red Expo Ticket goal |
As with the previous edition of the expo cruise variant, Ramon the Expo Host was the prize, but only for five visits. After completing every other day of the cruise he'd stop by and yield a different coloured Expo Ticket which could be used to redeem a new recipe. I've decided that this is a much more fun format than the traditional cruise structure of fighting through for a single dish at the end, mostly because I'm cruised out and bored of them!
And this second expo cruise trumps the first because of a subtle but significant change to the format - rather than one goal string for all the new recipe there were five - one for each Expo Ticket and accompanying food. This was bliss as it meant we could unlock each recipe immediately upon earning the relevant Expo Ticket, and then make a decision as to whether or not to complete the 10 batch cooking goal that followed.
And with a range of prizes on offer such as stamps, Mastery Spice and quick serves, I suspect different players will have had different priorities. With my ongoing mastery mission you won't be surprised to hear that the Mastery Spice interested me the most so I was all over that!
On the mastery front I'm proud to say that I joined Creme in the 900 club in the past month having managed the achievement of fully mastering every recipe the Deep Fryer has to offer. With all the Breading and Batter that had to be created on the Mixer in order to make the various Deep Fryer entries it was a long slog, but it's a slog which is finally over.
As for progression in this cruise, I had a bit of a nightmare near the end. There's no skirting around it - the double XP event in Pokemon Go is responsible. Six hours spent last Sunday in Baltic conditions chasing Raikou raids took its toll, not only on my freezing fingers but also day 10 of the cruise. Fifty quick serves had to be parted with in the end, which was a price worth paying as I hatched two Chanseys that day!
RS2 News
04/11/17 November 2017
14/10/17 October 2017
09/09/17 September 2017
12/08/17 August 2017
08/07/17 July 2017
14/10/17 October 2017
09/09/17 September 2017
12/08/17 August 2017
08/07/17 July 2017
Something which caught my eye during this particular cruise was that I got seven Orange orders. Being a four coin order that's never a bad thing, especially when you're near the end and flailing, but I don't think I've ever had a certain order crop up so often during one event.
At the conclusion of the challenge Ramon duly delivered the Diamond Expo Ticket which opened up the French Apple Tart. It's the first recipe ever to be added to the Pizza Oven, and comes with two horrors which were prevalent with the last Expo cruise's final prize too. First of all it gives coins rather than gems when cooked, despite all that effort that goes into unlocking it. And secondly, Storm8 saw fit to ask the players to cook 10 batches of this 18 hour recipe within two or three days, all to win 7 quick serves. It deserves a laugh really - nice to see that the game's developers have not learnt from their mistakes that infuriated so many players last time.
We're now on to yet another cruise, this one being a winter cruise event. It's a rare case of a cruise we've not had before, although the content has been seen previously in a standard set of goals. That was in January 2016 when the Campfire Stove was at the centre of things. I've had nightmares about collecting Marshmallows from Yancy the Yeti in that quest, and now Yancy is the visitor we're shooting for.
With this cruise having only commenced yesterday it's difficult to make many further points at this time, although I have spotted that the padlocked recipe - the Homemade Panettone - is located on the Celebration Stove rather than the Jubilee Oven. The Maple Flan and Sangria (another recent cruise prize) are also housed on the original prize cooker, which suggest that the gamemakers are waking up to the fact that the Jubilee Oven is packed to the rafters. Oh how I wish they'd just start a new appliance though!
On top of the three cruises since the start of November there's also been two more sets of goals from Lani.
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| Lani's gold stamp goal from 23rd edition |
Her 24th and 25th outings were much like the first 23, with three silver stamp and two silver stamp goals, along with a one gold stamp goal which could be started at a time of convenience to the player. My strategy has been as per usual - do the gold stamp goal and ignore the silver ones. And with my last Carrot Cake served this morning I'm pleased to say I didn't forget that I was working towards that gold stamp this time.
Before I throw the towel in for the night, we have a Black Friday to dissect. With the dust having long since settled, it dawned on me yesterday that this year's Black Friday goodies did the perfect job of summarising what this game has become. Because the sale was pretty much identical to the one in 2016.
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| Notification for Black Friday 2017 sale |
And that means I can look back at the above notification with tears of laughter running down my face - a 'second chance' to collect the on-sale decor?! They were available 12 months ago so at a bare minimum it is a third chance! Even last year I already had everything that was marked down and still spent 1,000 gems, simply because I had that much available in small change. This year I just didn't bother, meaning that I'm edging towards 4,000 gems and nothing worthwhile to spend them on.
Having said that, I could have splashed on some additional appliances. They were all half price over Thanksgiving weekend (just like in 2016), but with two of everything already in my arsenal I didn't see much benefit to filling up my kitchen area with even more cookers. What I really wanted was the option to purchase more Celebration Stoves and Jubilee Ovens, but alas that was not a possibility.
Another potential avenue for gem spending was a construction parts discount. Again, just like in 2016, the Blueprint, Nail and Plank were half price. With my place now just one expansion away from reaching the maximum size and only 6 Blueprints needed to execute it, there was much temptation. But I've reached this late point in the expansion stakes without utilising a single gem, so why should I fold now? The decision was made - I turned my back on the Blueprints and will instead enjoy the satisfaction in due course of fully expanding without any gem expenditure.
The last aspect of Black Friday was an up to 30% off sale on real money gem purchases. I realise I mentioned this earlier but just to reiterate - I have nearly 4,000 gems. That equates to roughly £140 of real money based on Storm8's most generous package here in the UK. You can give me a 90% off sale Storm8 and I won't bite.
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| Gem sale for Black Friday 2017 |
That's really where this game has fallen apart. Once you reach a certain point gems become as worthless as coins (I have 72 million of them!) Too many cruises and their gem producing prizes have made it too easy to earn the premium currency, and doing an about turn now would just incur the wrath of the players who at this point have a sense of entitlement to gem making dishes as goal prizes.
These news posts have really become a form of therapy for me! Without this opportunity to vent every month I daresay I'd have given up the ghost on Restaurant Story 2 long ago. Instead I'm continuing to trudge on with the mastery mission and check in to report the latest mishaps and monotony on a monthly basis. I think I'm going to get back to those pun-filled Game of Thrones themed goals now...
The Maple Leaf issue seems to be fixed on Resturant Story 2: A Cooking Carol. Anyway it seems like the game is getting better In terms of new cruises recently. I just don’t understand why in the first place they went back to Restaurant Story, a 7 year old game? I’m hoping that 2018 is a better year for this game.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting - maybe the Christmas edition from last year is still the most recent version of the game? I can't recall an app update for the main edition in ages.
DeleteProblem is that we've been getting re-releases of events now for a year. That's long enough to suggest that Restaurant Story 2 has just not done well enough for them to merit lots of time and effort when it comes to preparing new content across all the Storm8 games, and that that won't change.
In fact the re-releases started even before Storm8 announced their lay-offs in February - could it be that the failure of this game had a significant role in the lay-offs? :)
I checked in the game settings and it says that RS2 is version 1.7.9 and the Christmas version is 1.8. Obviously there were some changes behind the scenes. Recently we have seen 2 Expo cruises which have had new recipes. While they are still reusimg cruises often, at least They are making some effort. I think the layoffs are because Storm8 was doing too many games and they ran out of money. Plus most of them were 3d which takes a lot more effort. Bakery Story 2, Restaurant Story 2, Farm Story 2, Dream City and they were working on Dragon Story 2 (all 3d). This is most likely why they went back to Resturant Story. The original game probably costs lsss than half as much for them to maintain. Early this year Farm Story 2 was going down the same fate as RS 2 but recently they have been doing all new events. I’m hoping the same thing happens to this game but it’s doubtful.
DeleteInteresting, I've always just assumed that the original Restaurant Story was more profitable than RS2, hence why it still gets much more attention. But you could well be right in that it costs much less to keep it running.
DeleteHopefully one day RS2 will start getting lots of new content again but it's been long enough now that I don't feel like that's very likely - doubtful as you say. :)