So I can already see you over there looking at this like : LET THE SALT BEGIN!
This is not a ranting thread, but just a few ideas that have come up about some of the problems I feel could help make the Christmas presents event a little bit more enjoyable for new and old players... Although a lot of these ideas have been based on facts that old players must face, they are facts that new players will come to face.
This might be a little long, but I hope you'll read it all.

IDEA #1 : The ability to gift yourself.
Now I know what you're thinking : TEEEEERRIBLE IDEA.
But I'm not talking about unlimited, but mostly use a limit like the 10 gifts limits per players ( a player can only receive 10 gifts from the same person, so it seems logic that this player can gifts himself 10 times ). I know realism doesn't really have it's place, but in reality most people buy presents for themselves nowadays... or perhaps just me ( I didn't even get socks irl this year... but oh well) And if you think about it not everyone will be able to get friends to gift them, or get the kind of gift they want.
Conclusion : gifting yourself would allow players with very few friends to get a bit more gifts, but most importantly, gifts that they want (exemple : cute, though, etc...)

IDEA #2 The wishlist!
This one touches the santa thingy for trading gifts.
First of all, let's start with the basics before explaining the idea.
The santa's thingy allows players to trade a total of 10 gifts a day through it for the small sum of 100 gralats (10g per gifts). However, the players do not know what they will receive. This can be a problem.
Why is it a problem? Because if you've been playing long enough (and got plenty of gifts in past years) you've most likely gotten quite a bunch of stuff. But some of that same stuff stays for a few year.
Still don't see the problem? Following my memory(I know that's not a very good source, but let it slide for now), if you get gralats, then the item that was in the present was most likely a duplicate.
So if a user could choose which types of presents he wanted wouldn't that solve a part of that problem? Basically, it would allow users to secure presents of a certain type instead of getting a random gift. Is this thing a cute or a though? I don't know man, I don't even know who sent it to me, so how am I supposed to ask them?
So idea #2 would kind of be a wish list, you'd be able to select your gift as usual, but before sending it you'd have a secondary menu with all four types (selected by default) where you select which types you would like to receive (and basically which one you absolutely do not want to receive).

IDEA #3 - Santa thingy part 2 (this one is a bit more of a rant... sorry)
So another thing that I've come to realize is that the santa trading thing... it takes way too long. Why can't we just send all 10 at once if we have the gifts?
So obviously idea #3 would be to allow players to send multiple gifts at a time.

IDEA #4- A quick look at idea #2, about those duplicates
Most people have no clue what they've received up until now... like me for exemple. So why don't we add a new type of gifts, the mystery presents. I don't really know how the scripts decide which item you'll earn when you open a present, but I'm guessing they are stored in somekind of array (table). So why don't we create this mystery type of gifts by simply putting all of the gifts type into one. That way I believe that it may be easier to get less duplicate item and a bit more mystery... the point is that this idea would allow people to have a increased chance of getting items instead of getting gralats (personally I got over 10k gralats and I hope it doesn't happen to anyone else :/ ).

IDEA #5 - If the item received in the present is a consumable item (food) offer the opportunity of getting gralats.
Yes I just talked about getting less gralats like 4 lines ago... but the reasoning for this one is quite simple.
Unless you are collecting them, they are pretty useless. I mean that in a way that they serve no real purpose.
Back in the days, before the AP system, it played a certain role for towering as it allowed you to heal while you were protecting flag instead of killing yourself. But now if you're a towerer or even a pker, your ap is probably too low for food to have any purpose. On the opposite if you sit at graal city all day, you're AP is probably at 100 so you're the reincarnation of Jesus-Christ. If you're at 100 AP, you most likely never use food item anyway, because the only thing that can damage you are : bombs, arrows, baddies, yourself and the outside world.
So when you get consumable items.... It's like getting the glow in the dark pull-ups, neat but if they're gonna keep me awake all night then what's the point.

IDEA #6 - Gralats
So the gralats you'll receive from a present is around 300-500 I believe. But for a gift that you'll buy for 700 gralats, that means basically that those damn box cost around 200-400 gralats, man that's one expansive box and ribbon. So idea #6 is simply to increase the value of gralats obtained from a duplicate.

IDEA #7 - THE CONSUMABLE ITEMS KIND OF RANT IDEA
So I'll start by saying whoever added these in the presents you must be the evilest dude in the evil dudes history and if you're not a dude then you'll be a dude for this time around.
So the food items... can we just create a chef type of presents? Combined with idea #2 we can litterally not receive a single consumable item from the presents obtained through the santa thingy(if that's what you want). So best idea ever am I right?

That will be all, if you have anything to add please do so.  

Posted by eevee2

It's like getting the glow in the dark pull-ups

I laughed.

I agree with a lot of your sentiments, though they have (mostly) been discussed before.

In particular food items (recycled from like 5-6 years ago, till date) are lame. No one needs 40 yule logs. At least give me a re-made candy cane or something that isn't the same stale cookies from last year and the year before.

Gralats? If it was fair and square 700, no random (200-400 was in all I got), this would almost feel fair. However, if it were 700, I would still feel ripped off in the sense that I didn't get a gift. And no, it's not abusable - people who are gifting their alt accounts or whatever have a limit on the number they give/get. This number is easily scaled to allow for a set amount of 'personal' gifting. You know what? Don't give out any gralats for christmas. Even in real life, the guy giving out 20 bucks for christmas is a lazy jerk who didn't come up with a present in time. At least go to the corner store and get some scratch and win tickets.


Additions?

Start art submissions in october and curate the serious entries. Spend some time working with players to guide them towards submitting acceptable entries instead of wasting thousands of hours of free labor.

A 'wishlist' with the option to say 'I want more furniture' or 'I want more hats' or (shudder) 'I want more cookies' could allow players to weight the outcomes of the items they received, instead of just blatantly making ALL their gifts one thing or another.  

If they can stop giving me 10-20 red/green striped tables, that’d be nice. Made it worse with the resale value too.  

you just wasted your whole time writing this because coco and dusty ain’t gonna do ***  

I am not convinced that gifting yourself is a good idea. It simply goes against what the holiday is supposed to be about... especially on a game. Besides that, you can get a large amount of gifts from the secret santa if you do it every day, so the amount shouldn’t be an issue.

I think that being able to pick what you’ll receive from the secret Santa would be nice... though that wouldn’t make it very secret, I suppose. I think being able to have an “auto message” for secret santa gifts would be nice, because I agree that sending in bulk is a pain when you don’t know who is getting the gift and don’t know what to say to them besides “Merry Christmas!”.

Mystery gift sounds fun, but since opening presents already is really intense on the server resources I’m not sure they could pull it off... it’s still incredibly laggy and that’s even with the times that people can open gifts being staggered.  

Or just change it so it works like this:
1. Open cute present
2. Roll for item type inside cute category.
3. Roll for item inside that item type list(excluding items you already have from the list).
- If you already got all items from the list: repeat step 2
- If you have literally all cute items: roll between furniture(40%), gralats(40%) or food(20%).

Item types(probably forgetting about some stuff):
- Hats
- Mounts
- Accesoires
- Bombs
- Gani's (juggles, pogos, etc)
- Umbrella's
- Furniture(40%)/Gralats(40%)/food(20%) (Part of the same category, also the only types you can get duplicates with since the previous method doesn't apply to them.)

The percentages refer to the chances of those things being rolled  

See, I'd rather have furniture than hats, hands down. Everyone has a preference.  

or just leave it how it is, and stop whining about it.  

My suggestion: Bring back the Advent Building

The old museum and the state shop on Belle both show(ed) off some player creations. While the Advent Building wouldn't be a store, it would be neat to show off some of the top gift submission
And if its old purpose is reused, the daily gifts could be submissions that didn't quite make the cut.  

BRING BACK THE ADVENT CALENDAR BUILDING  

Posted by 4-Lom

In particular food items (recycled from like 5-6 years ago, till date) are lame. No one needs 40 yule logs. At least give me a re-made candy cane or something that isn't the same stale cookies from last year and the year before.

This I agree, if it wasn't the same ones atleast it might be somehow be worth it to get them...

Posted by 4-Lom

Gralats? If it was fair and square 700, no random (200-400 was in all I got), this would almost feel fair. However, if it were 700, I would still feel ripped off in the sense that I didn't get a gift. And no, it's not abusable - people who are gifting their alt accounts or whatever have a limit on the number they give/get. This number is easily scaled to allow for a set amount of 'personal' gifting. You know what? Don't give out any gralats for christmas.

I agree with the fact it should be increased to around 700 gralats, because I mean if you're paying 700 to get a gift to do the santa thingy, you're pretty much loosing money when you get a duplicate.

Posted by 4-Lom

Start art submissions in october and curate the serious entries. Spend some time working with players to guide them towards submitting acceptable entries instead of wasting thousands of hours of free labor.

This I feel could lead to something pretty neat. It would probably help increase the amount of new items accepted in a year. (Which leads to less duplicate since the new items would replace some of the older items)
Your wishlist would be great Lom, however I believe it to be more realistic if it's only the type.

Posted by Bryan*

If they can stop giving me 10-20 red/green striped tables, that’d be nice. Made it worse with the resale value too.

That's another thing that I wanted to talk about, it's kind of a let down to get furnitures that you can't sell if you don't want them or if you got 300 beds.

Posted by Pokki

you just wasted your whole time writing this because coco and dusty ain’t gonna do ***

Perhaps, perhaps not. However I prefer to bet on the small chance that they'll see this.

Posted by Areo

I think that being able to pick what you’ll receive from the secret Santa would be nice... though that wouldn’t make it very secret, I suppose. I think being able to have an “auto message” for secret santa gifts would be nice, because I agree that sending in bulk is a pain when you don’t know who is getting the gift and don’t know what to say to them besides “Merry Christmas!”.

Mystery gift sounds fun, but since opening presents already is really intense on the server resources I’m not sure they could pull it off... it’s still incredibly laggy and that’s even with the times that people can open gifts being staggered.

I mean the secret part is that you don't know who you're getting it from, so it doesn't really change that. It's just that now you would be able to decide what type you get.
For the mystery gift, I had also thought about it after typing it down. Perhaps they could make a couple of mystery gifts, like a hat type, a furniture type, a mount type and an item type.

Posted by Eugeen

Or just change it so it works like this:
1. Open cute present
2. Roll for item type inside cute category.
3. Roll for item inside that item type list(excluding items you already have from the list).
- If you already got all items from the list: repeat step 2
- If you have literally all cute items: roll between furniture(40%), gralats(40%) or food(20%).

Item types(probably forgetting about some stuff):
- Hats
- Mounts
- Accesoires
- Bombs
- Gani's (juggles, pogos, etc)
- Umbrella's
- Furniture(40%)/Gralats(40%)/food(20%) (Part of the same category, also the only types you can get duplicates with since the previous method doesn't apply to them.)

The percentages refer to the chances of those things being rolled

Just like the mystery gifts, I believe that would probably be super hardcore on the server. Although it looks like it'd potentially be a pretty great way to do it.