But that isn’t the way they did it.
I do not have the love shack, but I do have quite a few daily Alis and several weekly energy sources. So, no issues with energy, yet I had lower requirements. I have a neighbor with less energy sources, also has no love shack, and yet they had higher requirements. There is really no rhyme or reason to the difference in requirements for this quest, except maybe as an experiment to see how many players would spend and how many would just give up. I do not believe this was done in an effort at fairness.
In my opinion, it actually would be unreasonable, or at least unethical, to penalize players who have played longer, or spent more money on the game, just because that gives them an advantage. That is the whole point of the game....to build the kingdom. And growing the kingdom eventually, and inevitably, gives longer term players an advantage. If the prize is the same for all, the requirements to earn it should be the same for all..... with the exception of lower lever players, and there are already different requirements in place for lower level players.
Ps. I totally agree that it is very wrong and unfair that newer players do not have the same opportunity to get extra energy sources that older players had. I don’t necessarily mean the love shack, I am talking about the new lower minimum energy drops from the new daily alicorns and unicorns. The older ones give a minimum of 4, but all the new ones are minimum 2. That is just wrong, and will definitely hurt newer players in the long run, as they will need twice as many daily alis to get the exact same benefit.