The main problem, out of a sea of problems, is that this event is given for Christmas at a time where people are supposed to have fun and not be forced to grind like crazy and face the most difficult event of the whole year. That's just bunkers and that is why the majority of people are extremely disappointed and unhappy, even mad with this event. People need and expect something fun, interesting and inviting for the most festive and fun time of the year, not face pure HELL.
The fusion itself has so much and so many pre-determined and intended traps, stone walls and pitfalls to make you fail miserably that it is 100% the worst and most difficult event so far. No matter if one finish it or not. It's just the facts.
The most telling of all is the last event!!! It's freaking obvious they want you to fail it as an f2p. Eye poking!
Why?
Well, even if you have managed to reach till this final stage of the fusion and you have everything ready to go, but you only need the last rare... and your resources are super low or completely depleted, which most probably is the situation for most people... you will find yourself facing this amazingly and surprisingly impeccable miss-match timing of the last event and the fusion end.
Basically, the Fusion timer ends BEFORE the Arena event is over. That simply means, you might not be able to get the hero, or even if you do manage to get him in time, before the Fusion timer ends, you will now be facing - leveling the rare from 1/30 to 30/30 and 1/40 to 40/40, after that the epic from 1/40 to 40/40 and 1/50 to 50/50. Which means you will need about 1872 energy + , or a combination of lots of lots of brews and energy.
You see, you cannot have 1872 in the span of half a day or even less, depending on when you get the rare hero.
You'll need to have a good amount of brews and extra energy from somewhere, or gems, which as mentioned above - you will be almost certainly drained out of recourses or be extremely low. Of course, you can always BUY those things. :)
Overall, if we look at it, we will find so many of these little tricks and tripwires, along the whole event, that it is obvious it is NOT a Christmas Holiday Event - it is something entirely different, which is not necessarily wrong or bad, but it is DEFINITELY not the event to be given for Christmas. NOT AT ALL!!!
All that said, I'm a hardcore gamer with 20+ years of broad game experience and I love to "hack" pay-to-play competition games as a free-to-play and complete and beat the paying players purely with strategy, knowledge, experience and using the rules of the game at high levels by understanding them in their core - understanding how it really works and why.
I've been playing for 2 months and 1 week - around 70 days and I'm ready to fuse Tormin, just waiting for the points in the Arena event(which is why I noticed this small last trap with the timing/ending) to get the rare and go straight into leveling, ranking, ascending and fusing. Resources and food ready to go too.
I've been lucky too, I had 3 rares needed for Fire Knight Tournament and Artifact Enhance Event II(super difficult for unprepared and not end-game players, especially the second Artifact event) and I was preparing for ranking 4 6star champions, so I had the food for 4 6 star heroes, minus the bottom line - 20/20 food, which where calculated to be done with the daily energy and possible use of gems. Which, saved me, even though 33,000 points looked like impossible and are in a way, I just prepared like crazy and properly - 20x 40/40 food and 80+ 30/30 food, and tons, like 40-50 1/30 in my inbox, from farming brutal.
Basically, being able to get Exemplar, helped me to avoid working on Spider Tourney, Dragon Tourney and Artifact Enhancement I. Vital to my progress.
If I wasn't able to skip the Dungeon Tournaments - Spider, Dragon and FireKnight - which require TONS of energy, that you already need for the main events, and wasn't lucky to skip the 2 Artifact events as well, it would be impossible.
Anyhow, the event was bad for so many reasons, that simply outweigh the positive ones, which are there too.
If the event was given in a different time of the year and defined as a challenging type of event, like Brakus, people would actually kinda be ok and understand it. Sadly, it wasn't.
Adding the fact that the fusion champion himself turned out to be in need of bug fixes and was ultimately decided to be nerffed as well, makes it even worse.
Definitely not what you would expect for Christmas.
Not to mention that the rewards for the events were in generally extremely bad for the work they required. Some where really bad. Not what you would expect to get from a hard to super hard event. Which probably made the people that are not playing for the fusion to skip most of the events as well.
Placing the players who are not going for the fusion to face events that where not worth playing even solo.
Which leads me to the thinking of - are the presents they gave us planned or the negative feedback from the initial look at the event from the player base forced them to add additional gifts and boost the planed/scheduled gifts? Hm, interesting right?
Especially after the mistake with the Champion Training Tournament where it was almost crystal clear they made a mistake and instead of correcting it, they said it was planned and left it to be open for gaining points from outside of Tavern.
Lots to think about there.
My point with all of this is - the event was only welcomed and good for players who had the champions already, the rest... for the majority of people, was NOR fun, NOR inviting to play and made the expectation for Christmas fun and their experience of Christmas really negative and frustrating, contradicting and conflicting with what everyone was expecting - fun and exciting holiday event.
Yes, it is possible.
Yes, it is extremely hard.
Yes, it is a HUGE lesson Plarium needs to take and learn from.
Yes, it has its positive sides and benefits, also it has it's soul - theme, that can be interesting and challenging, but definitely in need of refinement.
No, it was not possible, unless insane amount of preparation - equal to preparation for 2 fusion events at once, plus luck.
No, it was not fun.
No, it was not easy.
No, it was not player and game-play friendly.
One thing is for sure, many lessons needs to be taken and learnt.
The biggest of them all - when you make an event that pushes 80-90% of players to be unhappy and disappointed, makes every good thing you do afterwards - the presents, the game changes and amazon prime, to be either neglected or not fully appreciated due to residual disappointment from the initial event, that preceded them. Making the positive changes and improvements to kinda fade away contrasted by the overall negativism preceding them.
It's kinda sad in a way, because they gave really good gifts, made some champions changes and introduced that collaboration with Amazon, but once you've been given a bitter and nasty taste in your mouth it is very difficult to enjoy a dessert. You know it is delicious, but you still have the bad taste in your mouth preventing your senses from enjoying the dessert and truly appreciate it.
And it is not that people are ungrateful, it is just the bad taste they have in their mouth.
