Hey there readers, it would appear the crime spree that wreaked havoc in our towns is over and I can once again waffle on about what I thought about an event in general. Yes, Quahog Heat saw us spend 4 weeks investigating everything from Robbers to Card Sharks, and there certainly wasn’t a dull moment. 
Well it all started with a teaser from TinyCo that some 80’s Detectives were heading to Quahog, and soon we were all speculating who might make an appearance. And I think I can safely say none of us predicted Pamela Anderson in their cast of potential characters, lol.
And I have to say when I saw Donuts and MacGyver I started to think I was in my other game, Tapped Out. But no, soon sadly my Quahog would be overflowing with donuts whilst my Tapped Out premium currency cupboard was bare, lol.
The game update unfortunately had some of the usual App Store delays, and I’m honestly not sure there’s an awful lot TinyCo can do about this, they are at the mercy of the various app stores when it comes to the updates appearing for our games, but I do get the there’s frustration when one set of players can play whilst another sits twiddling their thumbs. All we can hope is these delays get shorter and that TinyCo continue to acknowledge players who are starting events late through no fault of their own.
The event certainly started on positive note for me, as once again we were seeing an event with a link to the Family Guy TV show, Erik Estrada, MacGyver and Pamela Anderson had all made appearances, so that was a thumbs up.
I was also immediately delighted to see this was a 4 week event, I think this is starting to work well for events, I prefer it to the 6 week events.
This event also seemed to be about bringing back some more 80’s nostalgia to the game, as many do forget Family Guy was at one time just one big parody of the 80’s. It’s the comfort zone era of the show, and it’s therefore no surprise the game is pulling so much from that decade now.
I also decided to try a different kind of strategy in this event, purchasing the Week 1 premium character costume, Chopper Cop Quagmire, to see just how good a leg up it would give me going forward in the event. I rarely buy premium character costumes unless it’s a must have, such as Tai-Jitsu Lois. But with the rare drop on Police Tape I thought it’s now or never to try this strategy. And at first I was very disappointed in my purchase, he seemed only to be a little help at first, allowing me a cheaper room investigation.
It wasn’t until Phase 2 his true worth started to become apparent, as I kept pulling Kingpin Consuela from investigations at a high heart level and having Chopper Cop Quagmire helped me defeat her over and over, allowing me to build up loads of resources to exchange for Detective Badges, I ended up with not only enough to buy all the Phase 2 prizes but even had enough to see me through Phase 3 when it launched. So a worthwhile investment of clams that allowed me to relax a little during the event when drops went out the window and others started to struggle. But he wasn’t the only big help, the other was a freemium unlock Erik Estrada, only problem was many if you struggled to unlock him.
But now let’s take a mor in-depth look at the event, and yes I will say this from the off, a lot of players found the early Phases extremely tough going.
FORMAT:
A 4 week event that brought back the dreaded timed characters. Now 4 weeks was fine, but the event started to show issues in the first days with the very early poor drops of Police Tape, this in turn impacted on player’s ability to unlock Erik Estrada within the 7 day timer period. Making handcuffs, essential for unlocking him, a random investigation drop was never a good idea. And not unlocking him had a detrimental impact once you entered Phase 2, as you lost his ability to do cheaper Investigations and having him as a much-needed extra character to have for Police Tape drops. I honestly believe those who didn’t get him, or were delayed getting him, struggled with due to a knock on effect throughout the remainder of the event. He was probably the most valuable of the freemium unlocks, so I’m interested to see how many managed to get him, and if you feel you were hindered if you didn’t have him.
CONTENT:
More Family Guy TV show linked content. As I said earlier Family Guy related content to keep us happy.
INVESTIGATION RESOURCES:
I felt the task lengths were fine for drops but the rare frequency was a real issue at times, we just couldn’t get enough Police Tape to complete countless Investigations, this made the random nature of the Investigation prizes an issue, as nothing worse than grinding out tasks all day to get enough Police Tape to do an investigation to only find a worthless box of donuts at the end of it. This kind of random drop is ok if we’ve unlimited resources to use to investigate but not good when things are tight.
CHARACTER DROPS:
With regards to gameplay it was good to see less characters have multiple tasks for different drop items, I know there was still some crossover but that will always happen as core characters that were unlocked in the early Districts are used in events to allow newer players to join in events. I really think TinyCo got the balance quite well in this event and used a good ratio of characters and buildings with drops. Also good to see more old characters being use for even just Donut drops, players have been asking for that for a long time..
CHARACTERS:
What did I like, well we got quite a few new freemium characters as opposed to just a whole lot of costumes. Although we got load them too.
WEEKLY CHALLENGES:
The weekly challenges were once again tough, and many struggled with the 1st one which meant their chance to get what seemed like a coveted prize, The B-Team van, gone. I think these challenges will vary between easy and very tough, and you never know what to expect until they drop.
STRUCTURE:
For the most part there was no surprises, everything you needed to do in each phase was spelt out early by simply moving through the first few parts of the main Questline for each Phase. And we’d had a mini run of Investigation gameplay in the previous short event Undercover Gigg-Olo.
GAMEPLAY:
They seemed for a while to be taking on board issues that derailed previous events, but seem to have fallen into bad habits again, the rare drop on Police Tape was an inexcusable error, but I have to say they seemed to slow down the amount of content as the event went on and the final Phase was very light and hopefully this allowed players to catch up some.
SUPPORT:
There has been definite improvements in this area, but more work needs done, for a small company they are trying hard to have a good system in place. However there is still an over reliance on sending standard responses to players, which at times either appears to ignore their concerns or miss the nature of their complaint completely.
MYSTERY BOXES:
It’s no mystery what my feelings on Mystery Boxes are, I’ve long despaired at the way TinyCo implements Mystery Boxes in events. But in one way they seem to be responding to concerns by putting returning characters in as potential prizes rather than too many useless decorations. But they also still have too many repeatable resources and the odds of winning the top prize can be brutal.
BOSS BATTLES:
These weren’t too bad, freemium players could attack up to every level within the 24 hour time frame but it would see you lose a little sleep. But at least the choice was there if you wanted to go for it, in past battles there was nothing freemium players could do to attack never mind defeat at the higher Boss levels. Also was good to see few of the bosses were Family Guy characters. Just a shame they never brought back Bertram as a returning character.
QUESTLINES:
Now the dialogue and tasks were fantastic, no issues at all there, but what I do find troublesome is having a character with a timer needing to be activated to be able to progress a Main Questline. This causes a delay in players getting new content if they delay activating the timer, or they panic and activate the timer too soon and end up losing out on the character.
DROPS:
Rare drops on an essential item should raise concerns with the development team immediately, as should random drops you can’t control on a timed character. These really are errors that shouldn’t be being repeated 3 years after the game’s launch.
EXCHANGES:
The exchanges really got better as the event went on, so there was some improvement in this area.
So fellow addicts, that’s just some of my thoughts, and I want to stress they are just my thoughts, they in no way reflect what Bunny or Lotty felt about the event, but before I ask for your thoughts I want to say one last thing about the event and that’s how fantastic the animation has been yet again, really top work from the guys at TinyCo.
Anyway that’s my ramblings, now I want you to tell me your thoughts. But please don’t turn this into a boiling hot What the Deuce post by releasing the your ire in your comments as Bunny will throw me head first into the nearest jail if you do. Please give us your feedback and thoughts in a fun in the sun sort of way. Tell us what you like, don’t like? What you’d like to see more of, what you’d like to see less off. Share with us everything and anything you think would improve FGQFS, as TinyCo do read this blog and of course Bunny also takes your feedback to TinyCo. And if you can please take a minute to complete the end of event poll at the end of this I’d be very grateful.
And just incase you can’t see the poll or find it jumps about when you’re trying answer, here’s the direct link:
https://goo.gl/forms/ASrxG4eM6FJ4ovxo1
~ Russian Tigger
Family Guy Addicts 
After narrowly missing out on Erik and finishing week one so late, I lost interest. I don’t care much for costumes which go straight to storage afterwards so this was all quite dull, even though I loved the theme and HAD to purchase MacGyver. Even so I never finished week 2 and it’s with great relief that I welcomed the end of this event.
3 years you say? Gosh how time flies… It feels like a different game thinking back to the very first event that brought us Cleveland and King Butt. Yet I’m not sure I’ll see another birthday. The moment I see a timed character I just feel discouraged and just want to give up now, the fun has but vanished. I’ll say it again, the only thing that somewhat redeems this game is you guys. You should actually get a salary for this because revenues would probably drop without you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was honestly surprised by how this event turned out for me. I played right from the start, but by week 2, I was a whole week behind, thanks to the low drop rates of tapes and robbers; so like everyone, I was just hating this event. Although, I wasn’t even too interested in the theme, since I’m a 90’s kid, so most of the references were beyond me; so I just convinced myself that even if I don’t progress that much, it’s simply no skin off my back.
Either way, thanks to someone’s comment on one of the event posts here, I started to exploit a certain reset chea–err, I mean “trick”, so that by the time week 4 rolled around, I actually managed to catch up, just a day behind. Even more so, I ended the event by claiming all the exchanges and freemium characters and skin; so I was at least glad about that.
The only things I couldn’t complete were the weekly challenges (not even one, although I was only a punk or two away from the 4th week’s prize) and a few buyable buildings using the box of donuts currency. I didn’t have a problem with the buyable buildings in the past two events, but either there were more buildings to buy this time or the amount of donuts received during event tasks just wasn’t enough. True, they did give you the opportunity to earn donuts with past event characters, but I only started playing during the Christmas event, so I only had 2 or 3 characters to earn me extra donuts.
But to sum it up:
Pros:
– Older event characters actually being given a use again
– “Exploitable investigation trick”
Cons:
– Personally not too interested in the theme
– Horrible drop rates
– Miami Cop Peter being the only freemium character to attack the boss (although, the bosses all having the same ranges of health at least made up for that)
– Box of donuts progression seemed slow (?)
Overall, I’d give the event a “D”. While I am glad to have unlocked the more important freemium content, this couldn’t have been done without resorting to trickery, while the struggles and lack of interest in the theme also pretty much hampered my experience.
LikeLike
I find the use of paid for buildings as the sole way to earn drops to be boring and tedious. Yes, they used to have characters able to drop more than one, but that was actually part of gameplay I liked. You had to think out how and what to earn first to propel you forward most efficiently. They should never have one of the drops be rare or extra rare when it involves a timed item, especially when the drop comes from a building, or you have no control over it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’d give this one a [D+]. Maybe a [C-] at best
I enjoyed a lot of the skins and animations as well as the theme but there were a ton of issues with this one.
1. Not enough freemium characters. Sorry, anything under 3 for a 4 week event isn’t enough. Erick Estrada and Pam Anderson just don’t cut it.
2. Awful drops. Certainly programming errors caused some of this but that should have been corrected or at least acknowledge the issue and give something back to the people playing the game. I feel like I should never ever have to contact TinyCo and it was the first time I ever had to do so and I hope it never happens again.
3. It felt like something was missing. The last act wasn’t even a full week. Also, why wasn’t there any A-Team stuff other than the near impossible “B-Team” van?
Favorite animation – Workout Bruce’s tribute to Flash Dance
Fav Skin – This one is tough as they did a great job with these. I love Miami Cop Peter, Aerobics Bonnie and Pusher Mort(didn’t get him but I love the look). Bonnie’s make me laugh the most so I’ll give it to her.
Fav Character – Erick Estrada.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree with the characters amount. 2 characters was not enough, specially if we consider they were both timed. A character linked to a building was missing imo
LikeLiked by 1 person
I quit after I got Eric Estrada. By the time I got him I was too far behind. Wish I could have gotten more characters/skins. It was fun., but the drops could have been better.
LikeLike
i REALLY enjoyed this event, feel like it should have been released in this summer coming up though lol see i really like the beach/summer-ish stuff content they come up with so i definitely splurged on all those different palm trees& pink flamingos lol i’m currently working on a kind of “boardwalk” on the whole beach shoreline but kinda running out of ideas. i actually could have bought more of those palm trees:etc., etc., but totally forgot an hour or so after it had ended.
✨💫
LikeLike
I completed the event. some drop rates sucked. the worst part was that second and third challenges were impossible.
LikeLike
I had good drops and unlocked everything freemium in the game… I found it quite relaxing for a change. While I didn’t care for the theme (more like Meh-ami Vice) I thought it was the best event since the Wizard of Oz event in terms of gameplay and being able to unlock all the prizes/characters.
LikeLike
I decided to stop playing after the first week. After almost 3 years of playing it wasn’t as hard to quit as I though. Done with all the frustrations of lousy drops, done with waking up in the middle of the night to play, done with all the crashing and rebooting. As Lois says ‘I’m done with it, I’m done with all of it!’ Thank you RT and Bunny and Alicia and Lottie and every one who commented here for all your help , this was an invaluable go to site for playing this game.
LikeLike
Echoing several of the above posts-if I’d not seen the characters available on this blog, I’d not have known they exist because I only got into week 2 by the end of the event. Barely missing getting the Estrada character doomed my game progress, hence my lesser interest in playing the event. I’d have purchased clam packs if I knew that I was getting something of value for them, but the packs seemed to be of limited value for the real-life dollar cost needed to buy them, hence no cash from me for this event. I wish these events would instead be like the “districts” are laid out in the game versus being via timer once the player starts playing the event-if it takes the player 8-10 weeks to get through it instead of only two, then so be it–but at least the player feels as if they can actually get progress/participate in the event beyond grinding their wheels on stuff only available in week one of a four week event. Due to drop rates and structure of this event, I think TinyCo lost potential money from me on this event, as well as getting me out of the habit of playing the game as frequently–too bad for them, and too bad for me and my 20Million+ coins/Max level status in this game.
LikeLike
I honestly don’t know how to evaluate this event. On the one hand, I was totally indifferent to the theme; the event seemed hard; the drops were horrible; and I hate the investigation system with random sources of exchange materials. But on the other hand I actually managed to unlock everything that was freemium. I got the 2 characters and the 5! outfits. I had never got through all the content in a long event before.
I got really behind during phase 2 because I didn’t clear robbers or sharks so that one room would only drop handcuffs (and in the end that’s how I managed to unlock Erik Estrada), but then I completed week 3 very quickly in only 3 days. So fo me difficulty was really random. It started hard but then the event became easy. I really don’t know how to rate this. Maybe just OK.
I can say that I found the dialogues in the questlines funny, the exhanges were more reasonable than in other events, and the boss battles were easier and more helpful than in previous events. I really liked the variable heart-metre. It gives freemium players a chance to actually accomplish something. Another strong point I see in this event is that the last phase wasn’t so overloaded with content. Just one outfit and no new character or must-have deco or something. So if you missed it it wasn’t such a big deal.
I’d also prefer to see timed characters in a separate questline like Patty in Halloween 2015, but since I’m a slow player by default (and I’ve accepted that I’ll always miss the last week) I don’t really mind waiting till I buy all the buildings in the ‘prize building’ to move on in the main questline. In this event it proved to be no problem at all.
LikeLike
Because of the poor drop rates on tapes I had to clam rush a lot of things in order to get Erik before the timer ran out. However after that all the other phases were relatively easy. I actually finished well before the end of the last phase. The later phases were an anti-climax after the difficulty of the first phase. That said I probably played every 4hrs every day
Difficulty is an interesting concept. Poor drop rates doesn’t make it a challenge – it makes it frustrating. There’s not enough in the events lately where you have to choose anything on a strategic basis. You either get good drops and can unlock things, or you are miles behind. It is all luck
LikeLike
I agree I like to be able to plan a strategy round the effort I’m willing to put in, but a flawed drop rate or a random drop means strategy is out the window and it’s more about luck. I don’t mind difficult if I can plan a away through it, i don’t like random where it’s like rolling a dice, no control over the end result.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is it my imagination or are drop rates for the same items different for different characters? I think if an item us uncommon for, say, Lois, it should be uncommon for any other character who has the ability to earn it.
LikeLike
No it’s not your imagination, the drops do seem to vary by character, even although it’s same item and same drop rate.
LikeLike
They seem to have abandoned all the “strategy” aspects to the game. Most of the drops come from buildings that you have to earn, but since they are the only source of the drop, once you have the building, no real strategy needed. The game is more about luck at this point, than any real thought process.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just started Week 2 when the event ended. I can’t afford to be a Premium player anymore…and well, being a Freemium player just means I might be able to unlock something from week 1 of a 4 week challenge. As somebody else mentioned, I’m losing interest too. I used to play the game several times a day. Now I’m lucky if I manage to play once a day. I’ve got well over 10 million coins which are annoyingly pretty darned useless in this game. But each new challenge brings a brand new currency that we need to start from scratch to accumulate just to progress in the game. It would be nice if we could spend some coins to buy clams, but people have been asking for that since before i started playing and i just don’t believe it’ll ever happen.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, at least in TSTO, you can use your in-game currency in a roundabout way to earn premium currency, since you get 1 piece of currency per level. So you can buy stuff to increase your XP & get to the next level & earn, etc.
(The only ‘city-building’ games I play are FG:TQFS & TSTO, so I don’t know how common the TSTO setup is.)
I just really really REALLY *HATE* how frustrating (not challenging, but outright frustrating & occasionally infuriating!) it is to have Rare drops (or worse, Extra Rare) for a Timed Character, esp if you’re required to get a goodly number of them (I’m looking at you, Red Ranger & your 11 *Extra Rare* Wrist Communicators!); why this is done is beyond me. It’s not a challenge, it just sucks. 😢
I did manage to get Erik Estrada & Pamela Anderson, but only via the reset trick, which frankly was a pain in the booty. Doing it showed me just how frustrating/impossible those Drops were for people just playing it straight – there were PLENTY of times I had tried 10 times in a row & gave up to try later because I was still getting boxes of donuts! :-\
I *do* enjoy FG:TQFS, and currently enjoy putting Pamela Anderson on her Rescue Pets task, heehee! But the frustration is overwhelming at times. 😥
LikeLike
Enjoyed it! Was the first event that I was able to complete. And I did it completely freemium. It was a little frustrating at first with the tape drops, but I just plugged away, didn’t loose sleep, and played when I could. Even took a day off here and there. Wish I could have got some premium characters, but alas, there are only so many Golden Clams in the world…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Loved the theme, but I only got as far as the start of phase 3 by the end of it. I got no new characters out of the event, failed every weekly challenge, and Kingpin Consuela appeared in my game a grand total of once!
By comparison, I’m already good to move onto phase 2 of the current event when week 2 starts, even after suffering many Zord decombining crashes.
I was put off from buying Chopper Cop Quagmire by how he seems to be getting a lot of costumes early in events lately. If it turns out that there’s something like a Blue Ranger Quagmire needed to get through next week while Jerome, Bruce, Cleveland etc. remain neglected, I’m going to cry.
LikeLike
i really wanted to enjoy this one- all the beach themed items and cool colorful 80s stuff. well the drops were so horrible, i never made it past the first week. back when this game started, i was always able to complete the events, get every free character, and get most items. but then somewhere along the way i feel like they made this game impossible for people who cant stay glued to their phones all day. i keep going, getting what i can, but its really starting to lose its enjoyment 😦 i really hope they make it a bit easier, i dont want to give up 🙂
LikeLike
I gave up on this event after I did not get enough handcuffs for Estrada with 3.5 days of focused effort. It’s also killed my enthusiasm moving forward. Makes me wonder if any of the developers/testers ever play the game without having any cheats on.
LikeLike
Another meh event for me. Didn’t get very far at all, only got Peter costume. After realizing the Police Tape was critical and the drops were poor, I only played the game once per day at most. I liked the theme, but the drops were so bad that I lost interest in the first week, and as with most events, I knew there was little hope of even progressing past the second week by the time the event was over, so I lost interest very quickly. Same ole pattern for TinyCo, poor drop rates and difficulty progressing in any event. I am playing less and less now. Still reading the site regularly, but beginning to think that this will have to be cut back too. Not because of content or quality, you guys are doing a great job. I just don’t want to know what I am missing because I never even see most of the stuff you reveal on your site in my game.
LikeLike