Extreme Difficulty in Obtaining Gold
singzeon
Registered Users 23 Posts
I've been playing Cooking Dash 2016 and I've worked through restaurants from Table Steaks and am currently at Banyard BBQ. I have 318K coins and 6 gold.
I would like to point out the extreme difficulty in obtaining gold, as compared with coins. Typically, one earns at least 100 - 200 coins per stage, even reaching 1000 at more advanced levels. However, one can barely earn gold through the similar route of pure 'hard work' playing the game.
This breeds a vicious circle in which players can never get enough gold, which is required to upgrade appliances or ingredients. As a result, they cannot clear more stages and cannot obtain 5-star rewards, of which some are gold. Thus, the player is essentially discouraged off the game, unless he chooses to purchase gold using real money.
Similarly, the daily goals introduced do little to help the player earn gold. Sometimes, one of the three goals is to serve a certain number of customers at VIP Vahalla. To do so, the player must first have earned enough VIP tickets. If he doesn't already have enough, he needs to prep VIP recipes. However, VIP recipes typically take long (hours) and there may not be enough time within the day to complete this daily goal. As such, he may only be able to earn 2 out of 3 possible gold, not including the bonus draw.
Although one should probably feel thankful for earning 2 gold (at least) every day, it is almost useless when small upgrades in more advanced restaurants can cost 5 or even 20 gold. Again, as these upgrades are crucial to gameplay, the player is stuck.
I understand that ultimately, Glu is a company and needs to make money. However, I hope that it can find a better balance between earning money and providing entertainment. Although I can't claim to be an expert in this field, I do suppose that there is a certain demographic of hardcore gamers that will use IAPs. Glu could perhaps target this group more effectively, rather than trying to force the mainstream group of casual gamers looking for a good time to buy gold.
As such, I would propose:
I truly enjoy playing Cooking Dash 2016 and I really hope that the game developers could perhaps take into account this issue to make the game even more enjoyable for more people!
I would like to point out the extreme difficulty in obtaining gold, as compared with coins. Typically, one earns at least 100 - 200 coins per stage, even reaching 1000 at more advanced levels. However, one can barely earn gold through the similar route of pure 'hard work' playing the game.
This breeds a vicious circle in which players can never get enough gold, which is required to upgrade appliances or ingredients. As a result, they cannot clear more stages and cannot obtain 5-star rewards, of which some are gold. Thus, the player is essentially discouraged off the game, unless he chooses to purchase gold using real money.
Similarly, the daily goals introduced do little to help the player earn gold. Sometimes, one of the three goals is to serve a certain number of customers at VIP Vahalla. To do so, the player must first have earned enough VIP tickets. If he doesn't already have enough, he needs to prep VIP recipes. However, VIP recipes typically take long (hours) and there may not be enough time within the day to complete this daily goal. As such, he may only be able to earn 2 out of 3 possible gold, not including the bonus draw.
Although one should probably feel thankful for earning 2 gold (at least) every day, it is almost useless when small upgrades in more advanced restaurants can cost 5 or even 20 gold. Again, as these upgrades are crucial to gameplay, the player is stuck.
I understand that ultimately, Glu is a company and needs to make money. However, I hope that it can find a better balance between earning money and providing entertainment. Although I can't claim to be an expert in this field, I do suppose that there is a certain demographic of hardcore gamers that will use IAPs. Glu could perhaps target this group more effectively, rather than trying to force the mainstream group of casual gamers looking for a good time to buy gold.
As such, I would propose:
- Allow an option to trade coins for gold. It is simply no use for players to earn 5000+ coins a day (one of the daily goals, in fact) when they are simply limited by the no. of gold they can earn (which is close to 0).
- Allow upgrades to be bought with all coins, or all gold. Casual gamers can choose the former option, while hardcore gamers will choose the latter option. Also, Glu could perhaps set the ultimate upgrade for an appliance / ingredient to be in all gold.
- Convert more (or all) 5-star bonuses to gold, instead of coins or supplies. These two are very easily earned and players simply do not require them. Currently, it seems as if the 'exchange rate' based on 5-star bonuses is 250 coins to 1 gold. Which would lead back to suggestion 1 of a coin-gold exchange ...
- Convert trophy rewards to gold instead of coins, for similar reasons as above.
I truly enjoy playing Cooking Dash 2016 and I really hope that the game developers could perhaps take into account this issue to make the game even more enjoyable for more people!
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Also, I don't believe that the developers are not earning money as it is. The game is rampant with ads, which I'm not complaining, as I accept that it is part of playing freemium games. Ad money + money from those who buy gold ... obviously I'm not within the industry but I would like to make a guess that it is a steady source of revenue.
The number of videos that can be watched seems to vary a bit, but as it's stated in Glu's FAQ in Cooking Dash, the number of ads available to watch is dependent on whether the supplier/vendor they partner with has ads to be watched. I don't always get this lucky, but yesterday I gained around 25 - 30 gold just from ads (each ad gives one gold, and the ads are usually anywhere from 15 - 30 secs long). Typically, if I get through all the ads available for each day, I can easily pull in about 15 - 20 gold a day from ads.
Now I know the idea of the whole ad thing may seem daunting, boring, time consuming, etc...But it's not. I save the ad watching for when I'm doing something else. I simply tap my screen to play the ad, go back to what I'm doing (I usually save the ads for when I'm playing Rock Band, lol), and when the ad is done, play the next, do whatever I'm doing, etc etc. This pretty much negates the boring, time consuming part, because you're doing something else anyways.
Oh, and just to clarify: for at least a couple of the venues, the ultimate/final upgrade for some appliances and/or food does already cost gold alone, so that idea is already being somewhat implemented in the game. But I assume you're referring to that being the case in all venues.
Wanted to also make mention of this... Earlier today (prior to coming onto this forum) I actually contacted customer service for Cooking Dash and suggested to them that I think it would be a good idea if they added another reward for serving all of the customers, similar to the 5-star bonus reward. This would increase the chances of getting gold as well, without horribly 'breaking' the game in some way. In some episodes within certain venues, serving all of the customers is a lot harder than getting five stars, especially if you're leveled high enough that you have the higher Prep Kitchen Recipes. There are a lot of episodes that I can go into with the higher Prep Kitchen recipes, and I've got five stars after only serving them two or three times (along with the regular customers as well, of course, lol). I've actually found it kind of odd that they don't already give a bonus reward for serving everyone in each episode, because they make you feel like it's some sort of awesome accomplishment (by letting you know you served everyone, and having the episode icon and wings being gold rather than being that pale pink color with silver wings. They make it look like it's so awesome to achieve that.... but it means absolutely nothing if there's no reward for doing it. Lol.
What device do you play on, by the way? And which venues specifically do you have unlocked right now?
Actually yes, I am currently relying on watching the ads which you've mentioned as the only 'steady' source of earning gold. And sadly, whether is it where I'm from or my demographic in whatever way, every alternate day I get 8 ads (hence 8 gold). To be honest, this is really slow. In 14 days, I can only get a maximum of 56 gold. It does sound a lot like that, but as you would definitely notice, the upgrades are costing much more in gold, especially for later restaurants.
I am currently at Enso Sushi, where most of my ingredients are at Tier 1 and most of my appliances at Tier 1 with some at Tier 2. Based on a simple addition that I did, it will cost me 225 gold (hope I got the number correct) just to upgrade all appliances and ingredients to the next tier. Again, I'm not one of those hardcore gamers that will want 100% upgrades for every restaurant. For me, I've left my past restaurants with all ingredients Tier 2 (except the first one where all are max-upgraded) and all essential appliances at Tier 3 / 4. To me, for some such as the drinks dispenser, I am perfectly fine with 2 out of 4 slots and at 50% of max speed etc., hence I don't even bother to upgrade (given the scarcity of gold anyway).
Again, I must say I'm rather in awe that you can get an average of 15 - 20 gold every day ... To be honest I think if I'm getting that rate of 'constant' gold, I'd probably stop complaining so much XD But yeah, as it is, 8 gold on alternate days, and I already constantly check for ads every hour or so like a madman.
I guess your suggestion for the 'serve all customers reward' is rather good as well. Personally for me, for each of my past restaurants I've managed to get at least the first season to all served + 5 stars so if they really did hand out gold, I'd be more than happy for that! I really hope your suggestion would be taken up though, as with mine too. I noticed that there was a short period of time (a few days, maybe?) where they had this 'lucky box' (not sure what's its exact name) sort of thing where you spend 10,000 coins to try your luck. Most of the time I ended up getting 1 gold out of it, sometimes I got prep recipes (which personally weren't really favoured but anyway). I basically spent 240K coins to buy the boxes and got about 30+ gold in the end. That was rather worth it, although I felt that again there arises the issue of the 'exchange rate' between coins and gold. Some episodes' five-star bonuses are coins (currently 750 for Enso Sushi) while some are gold. Most of the time, it is 1 gold (except for episode 15s). Coins increase throughout restuarants but not the amount of gold. So how much, exactly is the coin : gold rate? I would think that if they could increase the coin 5-star reward, why not the gold too.
And yup, I do notice that some upgrades are only payable in gold. So far, actually, the only one I come across is in the first restaurant where my grill and fryer are at Tier 5 out of 6. The final upgrade is 35 gold, which I did not buy since I felt that the speed and quantity was enough to play the game decently. Again, I don't aim to max out my upgrades. I only do so when the game becomes exceedingly difficult to continue. Example: it's really hard to get 2 stars or more when you're at season 3 of any restaurant with mainly Tier 1 ingredients ... But then when your Tier 2 upgrades all cost 10 - 20+ gold each and when gold is so hard to come by, then that becomes a huge obstacle to gameplay.
To be honest, currently I'm at a cool-off period where I access the game every so often simply to watch ads / complete daily goals. I've stopped playing the game proper, since it's so hard to progress and I can't upgrade much stuff. My plan as of now is merely to accumulate enough gold to upgrade the bare essentials at one shot, then continue playing the game properly. I'm predicting a recurrent cycle of this, at least for me, unless and until something changes somehow such that it is much easier to obtain gold.
The best way to get gold is via the mystery coin box. By the time it came around I had 2 million coins, so I got about 300 gold. I then did NOT do the next update and the box stayed. I still had one venue I had not started and some levels that were not 5 stars. I did not update until I had completed all the levels which was another 2 months. I took it as a challenge to complete the levels. While new venues are tempting , the mystery coin box was giving me at least 10 gold a day sometimes up to 30.
If you play cutie cakes season 4 levels , just 2 of them will get you 5,000 coins enough for a box. Sure it gets a bit boring but it got me tons of mystery boxes and a nice stash of gold and tons of prep recipes. I have at least 20 of each of the VIPS.
I only do one upgrade at a time and then replay the levels and see how much progress is made trying different VIP's. Almost all y completed venues have food 100% upgraded but the décor and appliances are 60-70% upgraded. I believe memorizing the orders is just as important as the more expensive upgrades.
Can I check, what is the mystery coin box that you are referring to? Is it the rare coin mystery box that I mentioned above? Or, is it the Auto Chef Mystery Box that costs 6 gold? I have a feeling you're referring to the first one ... but then I don't remember it disappearing after an update. I didn't update my game during that period and it just disappeared after a while. Also, I must say 'WOW' to having 2 mil coins ... I guess this again goes to show how skewed the game is: what's the point of having that many coins (with upgrades costing only a few thousand) but not enough gold to get upgrades?
As for your last para, interesting method of attempting the game. I used to do that too, just didn't have the patience to do it after every upgrade. I usually wait for a few to make the effects more pronounced. E.g. yesterday after 2 months' of waiting and collecting gold (I can only collect max 8 per day thru watching ads), I hit 200 gold. Spent 150+ on Enso Sushi upgrades, boosting most ingredients from tier 1 to tier 2 and appliances to the next tier. Replayed a few levels that I was previously struggling and it seemed way easier now. I guess this type of 'delayed gratification' isn't all that bad, but then if this is the only way to go, by the time I finish this game, there may be Cooking Dash 2020 already! :eek: