Posted by It’s that time again! We had a heap of great questions this time, everyone. I did my best to answer the ones that came up most often and seemed to garner the most interest, so hopefully most everyone gets something out of these!
On a side note — I can’t believe Tripeaks is four years old! I had just started at the company when they asked me (on my first day!) to help coordinate a few things so we could release this awesome little solitaire game the team had made. It feels like yesterday and yet here we are four years later with an amazing audience of players and that little solitaire game just keeps on trucking. Thanks again to all of you for being the biggest part of this amazing ride we’re on.
Hello Big Kahuna,
My group is having a huge problem with some Quests for the Club. Before, if we ran out of time it would give us more until we were done. Now, it goes away and no one knows what happened. Our group is Camp Tikihama. We have great players and now it’s frustrating when we are close to finishing and don’t, and then the quest turns into to a new one. We can’t get some Quests done in 6 hours when we have people from all over the earth sleeping, working, etc. We have lost 3 Quests so far and have no clue what happened. This just started on Sunday. And now u changed the Coin Chest back to 1300 max instead of 6500. We can’t log on every 20 mins and get Coins. Please change back to 6500 and give us a fighting chance. Thank you.
Michelle J.
Hi Michelle,
Yeah. The Club quests system had a bit of a meltdown there for a bit, and we had to make the tough decisions to turn them off. We’re working on a make-good for folks who missed out on their rewards, and are re-working the plumbing to make sure the Quests are reliable in giving people their rewards.
We are looking to upgrade the return Coin Chest again, but need a little time to tweak it.
Sorry about both of these. Both are good, useful upgrades to the game. We don’t like to make upgrades and have to take them back (even for a short period of time) but once in a while you all surprise us in how you change the way you play and how you feel about the changes. Sometimes re-tooling things are the best way to make sure they’re good and fair for all involved.
OK Big Kahuna, you asked for it!
1. Why are so few booster cards given out now in the end of perk chests, there used to be more when I first started? You could put all the coins on one reward card and give us a few more boosters.
2. In the recent upgrade, you have ill-advisedly reverted to 1K coins every twenty minutes, why???? Talk about back to the dark ages! You guys are very mean-spirited, I have to say. People have jobs and, strangely enough, some of us like to sleep at night. It was great to come on and collect 6K coins, well below eight hours worth but at least something!
3. A suggestion – again people have jobs and like to sleep – so would it be possible to allow one or two pauses on the Red booster button? As in some weeks none are given out at least we could make better use of them
4. In the Treasure Shrine, I would like to see three “?” spots and labelled with the booster. I can sometimes get 10 boosters and not one Trap Card!! I get lots of Shark Hooks, deliberate??? It would have also been good to have controls we could use so we could use some skills!
Comment, I realize most of this is all about forcing us to buy these cards with our own money, but you are actually ruining the game for those of us who like to play for fun and enjoy the team we are in. In fact, it is only my team that keeps me playing these days. I wish you were not so driven by rewarding the teams at the top all the time. Once you have a large number of Gems, for example, it is possible to use them to gain booster cards. Our team does fairly well, mostly under 100 place, occasionally over, but to get much higher we would need to have a lot of money and spare time to get in the top 15. I feel sorry for people in the thousands of lower teams. Many people who do not have much money, are retired or sickly play games to have something to do and/or be involved with other people.
I used to love playing this game but in recent months it has changed for the worse and I get very frustrated, such a shame that the need for us to pay seems to have become paramount!
Janet
Hi Janet,
You’ve got a bunch of good ideas and thoughts in here, but I want to reply to your comment, which is a really good point: too much focus on the top Clubs. I think this is fair criticism and something I’m concerned about, too. For what it’s worth, it’s less about being driven by rewarding them and more about just trying to keep up with them, but in so doing I think we’ve occasionally lost sight of the important point that – as grateful as we are for having such avid clubs at the top – we didn’t build the Clubs feature only for them. It’s important to us that being in a Club and playing together for Perks, Chests or Club Quests (when they get out of the shop) is fun for players of all levels, and I know that we have some serious work to do there. One of our big additions to the game this year will be an attempt at addressing precisely this issue.
Thanks for the smart suggestions and the thoughtful feedback.
Mr. Kahuna,
There are many things that I would like to see, but I think the most important one is that the maximum friends is 24 not 20. That way all team mates can share coins in a day. I think your game is wonderful and I don’t have the glitches that many do, so I am thinking that it is not you, it is them. Keep up the good work.
Jacqueline
Hi Jacqueline!
Yeah. We’re seriously thinking of revamping the entire way Friends and sharing/gifting work in the game. I can say no more about how, just know that we agree this part of the game isn’t ideal and needs some real attention in the very near future.
Dear Big Kahuna,
Why is there no reward for the top 3 players in each Club at the Perk Celebration?
I think if there were even a small incentive it may activate players to play a little harder.
Thanks!
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer!
I agree, and so does the team. We’ve also heard requests to let Club Leaders “up the ante” a bit by adding their own prizes (something like Gift boxes or something). I like that idea as well. I can’t promise anything (the team would kill me!), but I would like to see us do something like this sooner rather than later.
Greetings Big Kahuna,
I was hoping you would be able to add an additional capability for Club Leaders. As a Club Leader, I would like the ability to change the Perk that Club members are ‘helping’ on. I find that a lot of members either don’t know how to do this, or don’t read the team motto… or even the chat to know what Perk they should be working on. I think that other Club Leaders would appreciate the ability to do this also.
Thank you for your consideration,
Becky Cook
Club Leader, Amazing Aces
Thanks a bunch, Becky.
I mentioned in the last Q&A that we have a bunch of improvements we want to do for Club leaders; things that help Clubs get and stay coordinated. We added co-leaders in the fall and we have something that should help with this specific thing (who helps on what perk) in the works right now.
Hi Kahuna. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. Here are mine…
1. What is the Luau that I have seen mentioned in posts?
2. What is the Big Kahuna that gives some kind of reward to some and not others, and could we all receive it?
3. If I don’t finish a Club Quest but my Club does, do I also get the reward?
4. Can you PLEASE go back to allowing more Coins earned from watching ads? I have a fabulous Club and use those to contribute as best I can to my Club.
5. Can you also include a Red Star Booster in one of the perks on a consistent basis?
Aloha Deborah!
You win question of the day! I was hoping to talk about all of these, so, here goes!
1 & 2) Kahuna rewards are a loyalty feature we’ve been testing in the game (with a sub-set of people) for over a year, which is MUCH longer than we ever intended. “Luau passes” are part of that feature. You could buy them to temporarily amp up your benefits from that feature. The theme for our Q&A this time seems to be “features that don’t work quite right” and this is another prime example. After tweaking and trying to make the Kahuna rewards work, we’ve reached the point where we need to remove it and try again later with a revamped version based on all we learned. We’ll be turning it off primarily because it does give a little advantage to the small percentage of players who have access to it, and even though it’s not many players relative to everyone who plays Tripeaks, it’s long past time we addressed it. For you Kahuna/Luau fans out there, keep an eye out for details on its retirement shortly. We know a fair number of people invested a lot into it (and really love certain parts of it), and we’re going to try to do this in a way that’s respectful of that.
3) Club Quests are in the shop for now (coming back soon) but the general rule is that you just need to contribute some progress toward the Club Quest to get the reward when it’s completed. You don’t have to max out your contribution.
4) I can’t promise you we’ll go back to more Coins for ads and stay there. We have to constantly adjust this for a whole host of reasons, but you’re not alone in feeling like this new set up isn’t great, and we’re listening. I CAN promise you we’ll keep working on it and trying to improve it. 😉
5) Huzzah! Red Star Boosters are a hot commodity again! Before we released the new leaderboard, only a handful of folks valued them at all, so we all but stopped giving them as rewards. Now it seems like there’s value in them again which is GREAT. I can’t promise we’ll do them as a daily Perk every week, but we are looking at sprinkling them back through other means as well, (Chests, maybe Treasure Shrine, etc.).
Aloha Big Kahuna!
Some of these are questions and others are suggestions.
Why is it that when we have 7 Perks from the start of a new week I see that my Club will finish Perk 7 after a lower ranking team with less points. How is this possible? If we all start at zero and the perks are given from the start on Friday that’s including Perk 7, how can a team with less points than mine finish all 7 before my team? This seems so unfair! My team works our butts off and then other teams are done! Not fair! Some of my teammates can’t afford to buy Coins when they are low. Why can’t you make it so we can buy certain members coins.
The gift boxes for everyone is a great idea but they have crummy gifts for the money! You really need to upgrade them! The Gems are a great idea but you need to add some Wilds and Volcano Cards. Not everyone is fortunate enough to afford to buy them! As a Club leader I would like the option to be able to buy gifts for certain teammates. I would like to do this to reward my top 3 players each week in my Club. This to me would bring incentive to play and boost morale in my Club.
The jackpot drop is great but why can’t you win Wave Breakers or Defrosters? Why only 2,000 coins? At least 2,500 so you can break even! Or replace it with Volcano Cards.
Can you please make some type of private chat so that leaders can send a private message to each member instead of calling one person in open chat?
Can we get more Perks for higher ranking teams that finish Perks quickly? We finish our Perks by Saturday night at the latest. We have nothing to work for unless we get another Perk.
Thank you for reading my questions and suggestions. I have been a player for well over a year now and love the game! I’m sure you think by making some of these changes it will decrease your profit. You also need to think about the players and all the money we have spent! We will continue to spend money but if no changes are made the game will become old and boring. Please consider making some upgrades and changes! Thank you!
Michelle
Hiya Michelle,
This is awesome! There’s a lot in here to discuss. I’m going to have to cherry pick a few. Hope that’s OK:
How can another Club – with fewer points on the Club list – finish Perk 7 before us? That Club probably had some players leave in the middle of the event. The Club Contest list doesn’t include points from players who left the Club during that week’s Perk event (that way Clubs can’t artificially inflate their points for the contest by kicking tons of players), but the Club does get to keep whatever progress those players made towards the Perks before they left.
I agree the Club gifts could use some TLC. We’ll get on it!
I mentioned this in another question, but I also would like to see us add extra rewards for the top 3 finishers (and let Club leaders sweeten the pot, maybe). It’s one of those things I can’t promise, but we have drawn up plans/ideas on how to do this in a way that’s interesting. We just have to get it done!
Folks might be surprised to learn that over the years we’ve done several things that we knew would hurt our profits but were important things for keeping the game fair, fun and accessible. Each time our game has grown revenues it’s been a direct result of making things more fun and interesting for all of you, and we don’t take that for granted. We don’t always make the right call, mind you, but we really try to maintain a healthy balance.
Thanks for the great questions and feedback.