FWIW, I completed the event today (a) without the pass and (b) without doing all the free tasks. For example, I skipped all the grindy ones like build a bunch of Planes/HTs. I did nothing outside of normal dominations behavior.
Also I think people are complaining about the wrong things. Event complaints can be distilled to "I want more free stuff! And nobody should be able to buy stuff!" rather than simply accepting the free stuff. Or folks complain the event is impossible to complete before all event goals are revealed; so these complaints don't age well.
Are there legitimate things to complain passionately about? Yes. Crash bases, alliance gate perk 3, cheating, but not everything deserves a complaint. Nobody is forced to purchase event passes, especially the worst event pass we've ever had like this his current (Halloween) one. Simply skip the undesired event and move on.
The events are not just about getting rewards. They are also about having goals outside of simply growing your town and attacking others, which would get very boring over time. It's perfectly reasonable that they have a premium plan that offers greater rewards for paying players, however I'm of the opinion that completing daily events should be available to all players regardless of paying. I have already put money into this game, and I'd be willing to put more into it as well. The lack of greed I saw was one of the things that attracted me to the game when I started playing. But if you are going to make aspects of the game unplayable because they REQUIRE payment, then forget it and you might as well leave it out. I will refuse to participate as it seems more like blackmail to me than an in-game monetization mechanism.
If you want to say that you "completed" an event, simply because you "completed" each task you "wanted" to complete, then what do you need an event system for? Create your own goals if that's the case. For me however, the whole idea that you cant complete the daily event because one of the tasks requires you to pay is BS. This week especially. At least in prior events, only some of the days had that requirement, this week, all of them do.
And there are other dumb decisions in this event too. For example, today, the last day of the event, there is a task to complete 4 world war battles. Who the heck can do that in one day? Seems like they are just messing with us now. Not to mention there are tasks in there that can't be completed unless you are a certain age, like training commandos at the factory (assuming you actually have one).
I figure that they are still trying to determine out the best combination of rewards and pricing to incentivize people, and that's fine. But I'm not interested in paying the cost of a console game for a few rewards that I can obtain by other means.
