First off, I'd like to say that the shells were introduced and referred to constantly by staff as a mini-game and that grabbing them can be a lot of fun. I personally felt that it was almost like a race between other players to see who can get to the shells first when they drop. It's not a lot unlike falling chairs. Also, I keep finding that the people who reject this are mostly the people who are good at fireworks and don't want other people to be able to make as much money as they do from fireworks from shells. The only people who are going to put an emphasis on the necessity of "skill" for earning credits are the people who are, in fact, skilled themselves at fireworks. If they agree with that logic then maybe they'd like to reduce the payout for fireworks even further so that it takes even more skill to make a lot of money off of it. But of course not because that would mean less credits for them which I think is really what it is coming down to. Otherwise, why would they take a stance against something that otherwise wouldn't have any effect on their ability to play and earn credits from THEIR choice of mini-game?
What? Because you think fireworks is well-designed and easy people shouldn't have the choice to be able to go with shells instead? I think it's great too that the bugs were fixed and that the mini-game is really well recreated (I actually think it's pretty much indistinguishable from the original), but that shouldn't mean that everybody has to play the game to earn credits if that's not how they want to.
Who says that it's no longer considered a mini-game? Right here Grizzly says "Shell Mini-game is back":
http://myvmk.com/showthread.php?1949-Shell-Mini-Game-is-back-and-other-Updates!
See above in response to the "skill" thing
And most of all I
certainly like credits but it doesn't appear that I DO have that much of a choice in how to get a lot of them. That might work out great for you if you like/are good at fireworks but it doesn't work out as well for the rest of us.
It really didn't give more credits than a skilled fireworks player currently makes.
In fact, someone scoring 6,000 in fireworks (in about 10 minutes time) would earn 1,200 credits which would have taken me only a little less than 20 minutes to get when the shells were worth 25 coins each. That means skilled fireworks players potentially make nearly twice as much as someone who's good at the shell mini-game would have made back when the shells were worth more. But the issue is that some people aren't good at fireworks (or can't play fireworks well on a laptop) so they're getting left out on making as many credits. Also, you mentioned that you were didn't like the shell game and you seem to have a particular affinity toward the fireworks game. I doubt that your feelings would be the same on this issue if it were the inverse.
As I previously mentioned it is being viewed as a game not only by the MyVMK staff but by players in general.
Also, making more money doesn't steal anything from anybody. You can't devalue credits unless the prices of the things you could buy with those credits (the items in the marketplace) changed with it, which they haven't and couldn't unless Amy or Kevin or any staff involved in setting marketplace prices decided to do so which is very unlikely considering they didn't when fireworks was released.
No, inflation wouldn't work that way here. It would work that way in the REAL world, but not in a game where the prices are set in a marketplace by a few people . If that logic were feasible then everything in the marketplace would have changed in price once they switched over from the shell mini-game to fireworks. But it didn't, as mentioned above, and the only way that it could is if the VMK staff members decided to raise the price on everything in the shop which they probably wouldn't because of how unpopular such an action would be.