I will have to respectfully disagree. The new festival really isn't action-intensive. The only reason to upgrade most of the companions is solely completionist and getting one of each confessions doesn't require much in terms of actions.

The previous mode of the festival had urgency and energy. Yes, it was about fleeting links, but that's the nature of any big gathering. I might be sentimental because Hallowmass was the reason I first got involved in the forum, but the only other event that even tries to be as communal and frantic as the old Hallowmass is the Election, probably as the response for changing the Hallowmass. The previous Hallowmass style also had the sense that what players were doing was clandestine, people struggling to rise above the expected station. Failbetter definitely didn't expect people to get as many new contacts to confess to or betray as we managed through the forums. I am pretty sure it's the stuff like new players getting to 700 Spirit that led to the new, more individualistic format. Finally, you can never have too many rare expensive items.

I understand why we can never go back, but I will cherish the confessional invitations I have managed to preserve.

What I liked about old Hallowmas was that inter-player choices carried and were built-upon year by year.

You had a quality for your character showing which ones have betrayed your trust.

You had a quality for those who kept your secrets.

And you had a way to reinforce said trust by again choosing to keep secrets from past Hallowmas. I really liked the list of players I had with Trust level 3.

Pardon me for asking, I'm a bit new here but what usually happens in hallowmas?

Our residing Mayor may seems quite interested in this particular holiday...

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In any case: "the only other event that even tries to be as communal and frantic as the old Hallowmass is the Election". Thing is, Hallowmas itself didn't try to be communal or frantic. Sure, the holiday mechanically focused on social actions, but anyone who wasn't an active forum-goer or community member might deal with a handful of confessions at most. (I was there for Hallowmas 2014 and sent a couple then forgot about it completely.) The game didn't even give any reason to send and receive lots of confessions: you needed to hear that from someone who'd been through it before, a friend of a friend of someone high-Spirited. Hallowmas 2015 was the third Hallowmas and the first and only time that such massive coordination took place. It was a hell of a lot of fun (thanks NiteBrite!) but it was much more a community-led event than part of the Hallowmas festival itself. If you were outside the forums and connected social groups, it didn't affect you, Hallowmas was the same low-key event as the two years prior.

Having been through that intense community collaboration, I'm actually glad that Hallowmas got overhauled. It was a ton of fun but having all our weeks of hard work effectively erased the next year and needing to do it all over would have left a bad taste in my mouth. Now we have a holiday that socially-inactive players can enjoy too, a holiday where you don't have to redo everything later. As you say the Election probably came from the remains of old Hallowmas, and IMO it achieves the same goal a lot more effectively. It's focused on community engagement, but there's an actual reason to participate both in-game and socially. Players can have the satisfaction of grinding the maximum possible value of the relevant quality, but not wanting to just means fewer item rewards later. The social actions from this year even permit coordination like in old Hallowmas. Running the Election race has actual consequences where old Hallowmas was like a hamster wheel.
edited by Optimatum on 10/19/2017

I adore the new Hallowmas, especially since it is possible to get everything without Fate (with great difficulty). I don’t like that the Feast of the Exceptional Rose has so much truly Fate-locked content.

That being said, I’ll be happy with anything this year so long as there are actually new companions to get. In other words, I don’t want a repeat of the 2017 Fruits of the Zee Festival. We got like three new bits of writing and nothing else. I still liked it, but I was quite disappointed.