darkSpyro

My husband joined the game a few days ago and couldn't find how to sign up to activate from the game. We then came across this: https://activate.amp.demonware...-islands/#faq20 Now wondering if despite the recent updates Activision has started to plan the end of Lost Islands.

Could just be that they've given up on the whole friends visiting/gifting system. Guess there's nothing more to do with all those kudos...

Or maybe since there have been so many issues with visiting others, they will be switching from Activate to somebody else?

Tough on the newbies as kudos are great at low level.
I will forgive them for giving up on kudos if they let us trade our kudos for gems. I am happy to forfeit my 8000 or so kudos in exchange for the same amount of gems

I've only actively added friends through Activate, but can you not currently also add through Facebook and the Game Centre? Maybe they are simply switching to these other two methods as being the only ones.

Does anyone know if the 3 work together?

Through a different game, I added a friend in the Game Centre, and whenever I cannot connect to Activate, that friend appears as the only one in my list (along with Aura). I don't see the Game Centre friend listed along with the Activate friends when I do connect, but that could easily be because that same friend is also on Activate, so the name changes and he shows by that account. Its smart enough to not list the same friend twice.

Quote: spicemill

Tough on the newbies as kudos are great at low level.
I will forgive them for giving up on kudos if they let us trade our kudos for gems. I am happy to forfeit my 8000 or so kudos in exchange for the same amount of gems

8000? Hell, I gave up collecting them when I passed 20,000 kudos six months ago and there STILL wasn't anything new to spend them on. And in those additional six months, nothing at all has changed. They're still absolutely useless.

I have only been playing since Feb. So really enjoyed everything the kudos brought at first.

I will suggest he tries Game centre.

I get all the complaints about kudos, but the more I thought about it I realized that we are not the masses. We were able to gain lots and lots of kudos because we developed connections on these forums. Most people who play the game are probably not on here so they don't have that advantage. At the most, they may only have a few friends. It could take them a while to get enough to buy many of the items, especially Admiral Thumpback. Kudos may seem a waste for us, but they may be hard to come by for most players.

Quote: obidawsn

I get all the complaints about kudos, but the more I thought about it I realized that we are not the masses. We were able to gain lots and lots of kudos because we developed connections on these forums. Most people who play the game are probably not on here so they don't have that advantage. At the most, they may only have a few friends. It could take them a while to get enough to buy many of the items, especially Admiral Thumpback. Kudos may seem a waste for us, but they may be hard to come by for most players.

Quite true. Even at the beginning of the kudos system, many of us were scrambling to try to get enough kudos. It takes quite a while to build up enough to get the Admiral, 100 topiaries and the few other things you can buy with kudos. I think the biggest deterrent for many of us was all the problems associated with visiting - game crashes and worse. Now that seems to be much better than it was, but there's nothing new to spend kudos on so it seems a little pointless to keep collecting. Still gifting, of course, just in case other people need kudos, gems and wish stones.

Newer people such as myself need to not overlook visiting as a source of gems & wish stones. Not only do you have Hyde and Ma-Boo as possibilities, you also can get gems as a random reward when clicking the kudos. Even better if you have Batterson.

On topic, Activision is really terrible about communicating with the public. The fact they have stopped taking new Activate accounts means...anything or nothing. Anyone's guess at this point.

Wishful thinking...Lost Islands 2?

Quote: obidawsn

I get all the complaints about kudos, but the more I thought about it I realized that we are not the masses. We were able to gain lots and lots of kudos because we developed connections on these forums. Most people who play the game are probably not on here so they don't have that advantage. At the most, they may only have a few friends. It could take them a while to get enough to buy many of the items, especially Admiral Thumpback. Kudos may seem a waste for us, but they may be hard to come by for most players.

Good point.

I think i became bitter about kudos a loooong time ago when v1.6 was released. The visiting system was virtually flawless prior to that. The 1.6 update introduced kudos, but also crippled the visiting system for months and corrupted an awful lot of game saves. There was little or no apology from the developers - we were treated as though we'd broken their game for daring to have so many friends.

You are all talking as though it is in the past.


I have no idea why but banksia28's game is now corrupt and appears lost. It doesn't even acknowlege that an account exists, yet it still appears in other people's games.

If I do start a new game with heaps of gems, there will be no friends, diggs, Fiznik, Cali or Ol Mac.

I would have to wait for a chance to win the alter egos, for a sale on the character houses etc etc etc.

Newbies who do not know what they are missing out on wouldn't worry unless they read on here of course.

As an aside to this ramble, the main reason they are ditching friends is th e time and money spent investigating corrupt games individually. If they had figured out a patch to stop it from happening it would have been different.

That's my two cent's worth.

I have played this game since about six weeks from release and am going to miss it.

I will still be around as there others around here with active games.

Update: he cannot add friends through Facebook either. But Aura still gives him a quest to get 3 friends, which he can't do. He also got a start screen sayings omitting having friends and benefits of kudos. You think they would have changed that and delete this quest if they don't let newbies connect with others...

I am also a newbie who cannot add friends. Stuck wth Aura only for Kudos. Seems that we are at a disadvantage. Not a happy bunny

I think they decided people had too many ways to acquire easy gems, eliminating the need to pay money. A friends list of 100 friends who gift frequently is a big source of incoming gems, as as the houses (which only rarely come up), and they have "retired" several gem generating companions. Half price sales on companions are also much more infrequent, and I have a sneaking suspicion they decreased the chances of getting certain rewards (Bed & Breakfast, for instance) in the Wishing Well to increase the desire to buy gems.

Quote: defpally

I think they decided people had too many ways to acquire easy gems, eliminating the need to pay money. A friends list of 100 friends who gift frequently is a big source of incoming gems, as as the houses (which only rarely come up), and they have "retired" several gem generating companions. Half price sales on companions are also much more infrequent, and I have a sneaking suspicion they decreased the chances of getting certain rewards (Bed & Breakfast, for instance) in the Wishing Well to increase the desire to buy gems.

All but the Activate issue was normal before the holidays. Ermit was always a "retired" companion that would come back every once in a while. Diggs was also listed as "A Limited Time" but was left much longer than originally thought due to no updates. Half price sales on companions were never that common except for during the personal offers that got left from the holiday updates. As for the wishing well, that's hard to say. Everything else, though, seems like it's just getting back to the way it used to be.

Also notice that the other gem producing companions that are cheaper (Hyde, Capybara King, etc.) are still there. Diggs is the only gem producing companion that has been retired. Ermit isn't really a gem producing companion, in my opinion. He does nothing to actually produce gems, just cuts the sanctuary times down. It's actually Ruggles that allows gems to be produced in sanctuaries.

Ermit + Ruggles turns sanctuaries into gem bounties - assuming you put at least two Skylanders into them, add in Ole Mac and you can run three Skylanders every 5 hours and never run out of energy or money. Wish I had the gems to buy Ermit when he was available.

Half price companions used to come up for me almost every day for the past few months. Haven't seen one come up for half in a few weeks.

The main thing about companions was they were pretty much all available at once for months. Probably is update related, and they were designated as limited time, but in a matter of a month or so they have pretty much pulled them all back.

Your perspective all depends on when you started playing the game and what you consider normal.

I'm with obidawsn. Things are really back to normal after a December special even that, for reasons unknown, was allowed to continue for an extremely long time.

If you're a relatively new player, who came in during these promotions, since they went on for so long, it is perfectly natural to think of those daily offers as being a regular part of the game.

I think the extended special offers really did devalue gems. Why pay full price for anything? You knew it would go on sale soon. If you didn't quite have enough gems for a giant/alter-ego house on a given day, you just shrugged, because you'd either have enough for a different one offered the next day, or the same one was likely to be offered again in a week or so - you just had to wait. Before, if a house was available for a day - it really was just a day, and if you wanted it, you had to come up with the gems now. Made the game more exciting really.

Yeah, I remember back at the beginning, I started when it was released. Saw some companions come and go. It doesn't terribly bother me that they are gone now, and the bounty we had last Fall and early Spring is over.

Part of the fun for me is succeeding in this game WITHOUT time travel or buying gems. I play it within the boundaries of that. I'm level 41 now, probably took much more time than others to reach that point. I have all Skylanders minus four wishing well alter egos in my game right now (I hope they give us a good way to get them) - the way I figure is I have given them a ton of money buying Skylanders that I unlocked in the game, therefore I don't feel bad playing it for "Free". I don't mind taking a bit longer to get things.

They have definitely taken the path to re-value gems. It just makes things a bit harder for me. That's fine, it will just take a bit longer to get there. I'm still not going to buy them. If they take it to the point where gems are that vital, I'll just call it a day. It's a fun little time waster a few times a day, nothing more.