Quote from GM Wyrom:
Okay, so here is the deal everyone.
Games, digging, and DSD have the draw of the GM created unique (T5) and jackpots (T6). This is a different pace from other events where the draw is the alternate currency, such as bloodscrip. Games and digging have existed for many years in their current form.
Item tiers are separated by rarity. The rarer the item, the better quality the item is. For a while we mixed items into the T5 that were much better than the rest of the items. I’ve mentioned in the past that 2014 was a shift where some of those items were worth too much, which clouded and jaded the perception of item quality. We suffered through the criticism in 2015, but in 2016 we created a new jackpot tier to separate out those T5 and now T6 inconsistencies.
T6 prizes are ultra rare. So rare we only had about 7 of them total last year go out. The odds at winning a T6 this year in games and digging are exactly the same as last year. DSD has increased odds at a jackpot (I mentioned about 25x as good). But we can anticipate somewhere around 10 jackpots going out per week if we have the same level of participation as last year. This means the majority of players involved will never see a jackpot win.
That brings us up to speed to this jackpot prize pull. We wanted to come up with a system that says, "You played a massive amount but never found a jackpot, now you can trade everything to get one." Obviously it’s up to us to determine what a massive amount is. Luckily, we have all the data that tells us what numbers we feel comfortable with. This isn’t something everyone is going to be able to do. But it’s finally a way for someone to actually get to trade in everything they’ve found (seashells) to get the top prize. It also fuels a secondary market.
The main objective with games, digging, and DSD is still the random prize pull you get. That’s not changing. You can still get lucky and win something, multiple times even. We’re not decreasing your chances at all there. We are just adding a level of game play to those who invest lots of time and energy to get another chance to pulling from the best of the best.
Now the jackpot value isn’t going to be the same across the board. You might pull something you hate. You might pull something you love. But remember, seashells are the incidental loot here. The alternative was the "junk" prizes we started with. Keep that in mind. You can save your seashells for other things, like the perm-ifier or one of the shops on Caligos. You can save them to see if next year has something different. Or you can trade them all in and take a shot at a random jackpot item, just like you do playing the games.
The cost will be 250,000 seashells for a guaranteed jackpot. You don’t have to try it out. You never have to deal with it. We will not be breaking it down by perceived player values. It will be the same jackpot feeder that already is working for this event. Again, the alternative is it doesn’t exist. We wanted to add something different and hopefully exciting for some of you. And we wanted to create a marketspace for seashells.
Just a reiteration -- that this is not taking away ANYTHING ... not from this year, not from past years. It is an added BONUS for those who have high amounts of seashells.
Wyrom, PM