I just read the prize list over on Wikia and boy did the prizes take a nose dive this year!
I already griped about the coins and packages. More complaints!
Normal buildings from my age. Junk, junk, JUNK! This is where people say, "But Orius, this is helpful for people who just leveled up." Well, I just leveled up to PE on Tuesday, and they're STILL junk to me. Normal residential buildings - ha, ha, ha, no. I have a Habitat (yes, I know I should have built the Inno) and Oasis-type buildings and I still have over 5,000 extra population. Granted, I still need to build the barracks for Conscripts and Snipers, but that requires less than half of my excess. Supply buildings HELL NO. That's either a Garage that needs to park itself on a 2 lane road, a Lamp Factory with its awkward-ass 3x6 footprint, or the ridiculously large Cattle Ranch that's bigger than most GBs. PE has the worst supply buildings I've seen in the game so far, which is why I haven't bothered to build them. Culture buildings? I have a PE culture building alright -- it's called Alcatraz!
Then throw in the Hagia, FoD, a Tiger Den, various set pieces and unique event buildings and I think I was at 17,000 extra happiness at last count. Decorations? Do I really need to get into just how much decos suck again? And to top it off, I'll probably win plenty of this junk in the GE anyway, so that makes them even less appealing, if that were possible.
Where's all the buildings from the previous Summer Events? Okay, so I won't miss the crappy Straw Hut or the Witch Doctor with its wonky motivation bonus, but I was hoping to win some Beach Bars to make up for PEs crappy supply options. There's no Bazaar, or the set pieces from last year's Summer Event, but those are available in the DC, so that's not a serious loss, and I get tons of Palm Trees anyway. OTOH, the Oasis, Fishing Hut, and Tiger Den are on the list, but they're DC prizes now too (although the Oasis and Tiger's Den aren't bad buildings).
Edit: Palm Trees are on the wheel, saw one on my main. We kind of don't need them given how often they pop out of the Summer Chest on the DC, but they do kind of fit the theme.
And where are the avatars? Their removal means more junk green spaces clogging up the wheel now (which is probably how Inno likes it), and they were the only event avatars besides Frosty that ever made a return for the benefit of new players.
This time it's a cartoon SABRE of some kind 16th - 18th century type ?
I believe that's a cutlass actually. That's as classic pirate at parrots, pirate talk, rum, and the Jolly Roger.