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The flaw to the Daily Dare. (Upgrade the Trophy System)


JakeADC

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EDIT: I have a better, revised idea that is sitting at the bottom of the page. Look for bold text near the bottom to find it!

(I do recommend reading the main point though)

 

This year has been another excellent Daily Dare created by The Neopets Team. They added a certain newness appeal with Chadley, did an excellent job with most of the prizes, (except weapons, those would be awesome clothes without the disgrace that they call stats), and reasserted Triple A as the "Master of Gaming." That being said, I am a bit perturbed on how they have carried out the trophy system.

 

The system as it stands consists of four simple trophies.

  1. Gold: Beat all of Chadworth's scores.This is hard, and I applaud all that managed to do it.
  2. Silver: Beat all Abigale's scores, and one of Chadley's. This is Bronze plus Kiko Match II.
  3. Bronze: Beat all of Abigale's scores, none of Chadley's. Nobody has this because Silver is so easy.
  4. Participant: Beat at least one score. It can be from 19 to 1. As long as you missed one game, you get participant.

As you can see, the drop off from silver to participant is too great. You can 17 Chadley scores, (while missing three netting you participant) while someone gets 18 Abigale scores, and sneaking in the two easiest of the Chadley scores for silver. This means that a smarter strategy is to coast through the Daily Dare, and pick off a couple of "high scores" to get silver. That is why I believe the Daily Dare is in for a major, and I mean major, revamp. My idea is to incorporate a points system.

 

Just skip to the next bold writing, this idea is flawed.

 

The points system I am about to show you is about to be done in a bullet point format to get across a clear and concise point. I will re-illiterate at the end, so if this makes no sense, it will be explained

  • Every day you get a choice between Triple A and Abigale.
  • Abigale awards one point, while Triple A awards two points.
  • If you complete the challenge on the day the challenge comes out, the points are doubled.
  • This means Abigale would be two points, and Triple A would be four on completion.
  • On completing the challenge, your point total will be added to the top right part of the screen. (Virtupets Station must be moved down a bit for this to work.)

To put it simply, you are rewarded for beating the twins on the day the challenge comes out, but Abigale is only worth half the points that AAA is worth. This allows you to be properly rewarded for beating the the tough challenger, but also rewarded for speed. You are just as well off beating Abigale the day of the challenge, but you are not penalized for beating the harder challenger at a later date. It ends up as a wash. The trophy system would work in the following manner assuming a twenty game challenge of the Daily Dare.

  1. Platinum: 80 points Ace the game.
  2. Gold: 75 points Do increadible, but not perfect.
  3. Silver: 50 points The standard gamer's score.
  4. Bronze: 30 points All Abigale on time.
  5. Medal: 20 points All Abigale any time.
  6. Participant: 10 points No effort needed.

This makes it so the game is correctly balanced. This makes it so 15 AAA scores (10 on time) would be 50, and 18 Abigale and two AAA all one time would be 44. This makes going for triple A scores more rewarding.

 

EDIT: I think I have found an idea that can appeal to all! (And by all I mean a very small fraction that is bigger than my other idea, haha. No idea is perfect.)

 

Ok, from the people that commented below, (Siniri brought up a huge point, so kudos to her) I now recognize that fact that it is pointless to go for AAA on hard scores due to the fact that the points would be a wash if they were late on beating AAA. Also, silver seemed to be far too hard to get if you had a computer crash of some sort. To counter-act this, I think I came up with a new points system that could work better than before, but is nothing that is too wild.

I will now do bullet points like before.

 

  • Every day you get a choice between Triple A and Abigale.
  • Abigale awards one point, while Triple A awards THREE points.
  • If you complete the challenge on the day the challenge comes out, one extra point is added .
  • This means Abigale would be two points, and Triple A would be four on completion.
  • On completing the challenge, your point total will be added to the top right part of the screen. (Virtupets Station must be moved down a bit for this to work.)

 

All I have done is make it so no matter what, you get at least 3 points from Triple A, and can at most get 2 points from Abigale. This makes going for Triple A a lot more important, no matter the circumstance! :)

Edit on the Edit: All twenty AAA scores late would be silver, (60 points while silver is 50) so you can get 16 AAA scores with 4 Abigale, and still get silver.

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Unfortunately, I got a participant this year, just because I missed two days. I like your suggested system a lot better, and I especially like the points. I would have gotten a bronze, if it weren't for maths nightmare. But I really like this idea. Will it ever be implemented? I don't know, but I support it. (I'd probably make only a bronze in your new system though, unless they did classic games like Meerca Chase)

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I do like the idea but I think Platinum looks too much like silver, I would prefer diamond ;)

I don't think it will be implemented though, since they changed the trophy system already because of too many complaints of people not being able to come online everyday, but doing all the challenges when they were able to come online. If your internet isn't working for a day, you can still get gold now (The extra day of release prize is mostly buyable) that would be impossible in your system and create complaints.

(It's never going to be something everyone likes)

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TNT specifically added the day-of prize system because under the old system, people who beat Abi every single day got better prizes than those who beat AAA in every game by the end of the DD (which is much, much harder). In your system, these people would tie, which seems horribly unfair. I don't think people should be punished for not completing day-of (beyond not getting the bonus prize).

 

That being said, people knew exactly how things would work and exactly when it would end. If you knew you were going to not have internet access during the final day(s), you could set your participation based on that knowledge (or find a way to get internet access to at least do the dare -- note that the last day's dare took less than a minute to complete, even against AAA). I think TNT could fix this issue by extending the end of the competition a couple of days for "catch-up" with no new games being released, but a lot of people would complain. And this is how every single other site event works. I got a crappy trophy in AotA because I missed one of the last days (not the last day, 3 before) because my hard drive died. I went to the library the next day to complete the requirements, but there was no way for me to catch up (TNT allowed people who missed the first day to catch up, but not those who missed the second day). It sucked, but it wasn't really TNT's fault (and they've adjusted things since then). In other cases, an event ended while people were evacuating or without power due to a hurricane. Again, not much TNT can do to work around these things. It's the nature of MMPORPGs (or whatever the acronym is).

 

In the past, if you challenged AAA and didn't beat him (but beat Abi's score), you'd get credit for an Abi win in the final trophy standings (you just would forfeit the prizes for that day by choosing the wrong challenger). I'm assuming it worked the same this year. So I don't know how it could be more fair, without adding in too many trophy levels.

 

I'm not trying to be unsympathetic to those who couldn't do one of the challenges for whatever reason and got stuck with participant -- I know how much that sucks when you put the work in until circumstances kept you from completing. But as much as it sucks, you got the trophy TNT said you would get for that level of effort.

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not being able to come online everyday

this is the reason ;)

really nobody has lots of free time everyday and tries for a game (s)he didn't play, also who could for 2/3 of the month consecutively?

the only thing I suggest that the silver trophy should be able for who beat like 4 or 5 aaa (or chadley) score. One is really easy and for whom already beat like a lot of chadley (or aaa) and only a few of abigail compared to whom did all abigail (and only one chadley or aaa) is unfair.

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All the thought you've put into a new trophy system is great, and on paper it looks wonderful. I think a lot of people have already identified the being able to complete games the 'day of' issue with real life getting in the way and what not. However, people are always going to find something to complain about, no matter how something is changed; you just can't please everyone.

 

I would just alter the silver and bronze tiers to be, if you've challenged both of them at some point, but ended up beating Chadley more than Abigail you'd get silver (so 10 or more win against Chadley vs. 9 or less wins against Abi), and the other way around you'd get bronze (10 or more wins against Abi vs. 9 or less wins against Chadley). Of course, nit-pickers would point out there's 20 challenges so it could end it a tie, meh, just give them the silver in that case.

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In the past, if you challenged AAA and didn't beat him (but beat Abi's score), you'd get credit for an Abi win in the final trophy standings (you just would forfeit the prizes for that day by choosing the wrong challenger). I'm assuming it worked the same this year. So I don't know how it could be more fair, without adding in too many trophy levels.

Nope. Everyone this year who challenged Chadley but only beat Abi immediately sank from Gold/Silver to a medal.

 

Anywho, as other people stated, the day-of completion reward should remain as simply a bonus instead of something that would give a huge advantage. I took more than 1 day to beat Chadley at jolly jugglers and Goparokko. It'd be very irritating for me to have taken all that time and effort to beat him when it would've been more rewarding and easier to just beat Abi on day-of-release. That said, if you tweaked the points system a bit, I think it would be waaaay better than the system in place now. People shouldn't be able to beat Chadley/AAA everyday on release day just to get a participant trophy because they got suspended for the last day or something. It is also kinda irritating how some people can cruise along with Abi for the entire DD and just get 1 AAA score and be on par with people like me who busted our butts trying to get as many Chadley/AAA scores as we could (for bragging rights and personal satisfaction).

 

I think the points system should keep all the current trophy tiers in place, with Gold being nothing but AAA's scores. Silver would be a bit of a safety net for those people who put in the time to get all AAA scores but missed a day or 2, but it would also require more effort than just 1 AAA score in a sea of Abi challenges. Bronze would catch those people who did mostly Abi challenges with maybe 1-3 AAA scores. It would also be there for people who started out with nothing but AAA but then couldn't do the rest of the Daily Dare for whatever reasons, or vice-versa. The medal would just be the "An attempt was made" prize for people.

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Wow. They should definitely reinstate the you-beat-Abi-but-not-AAA safety-net clause. That makes people more willing to try for AAA (which results in more game play, more time spent onsite, more profits for TNT, happier players, etc. -- all good things!).

 

The better daily prizes are supposed to be the reward for beating AAA rather than Abi -- it's up to you to decide if it's worth it, knowing that you're already in contention for silver. So people who beat AAA more often than Abi have more valuable prizes already. I know the year after TNT screwed up the Megasuperb prize, I was in grad school and didn't have a ton of time for DD, so I went for the beat-at-least-Abi-on-the-day-of prize (before they did away with the rankings by day-of). Yet I still beat AAA most of the time, and I didn't begrudge the fact that others only beat AAA once, because I knew what I was signing up for, and I got AAA's (mostly) wearables and books for my efforts (vs. Abi's cheap stuff). But for games that were too challenging or took too much time, I went with Abi, and bought the AAA prize if I liked it. Maybe TNT didn't do such a good job differentiating this year, but that year, Abi's prize was usually only worth a few hundred, vs. several (to tens of) thousands for AAA. That adds up pretty quickly.

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I am going to copy past my new idea. If you have any questions, or concerns do not hesitate to ask!

 

Ok, from the people that commented above, (Siniri brought up a huge point, so kudos to her! :thumbsup: ) I now recognize that fact that it is pointless to go for AAA on hard scores due to the fact that the points would be a wash if they were late on beating AAA. Also, silver seemed to be far too hard to get if you had a computer crash of some sort. To counter-act this, I think I came up with a new points system that could work better than before, but is nothing that is too wild.

I will now do bullet points like before.

 

  • Every day you get a choice between Triple A and Abigale.
  • Abigale awards one point, while Triple A awards THREE points.
  • If you complete the challenge on the day the challenge comes out, one extra point is added .
  • This means Abigale would be two points, and Triple A would be four on completion.
  • On completing the challenge, your point total will be added to the top right part of the screen. (Virtupets Station must be moved down a bit for this to work.)

 

All I have done is make it so no matter what, you get at least 3 points from Triple A, and can at most get 2 points from Abigale. This makes going for Triple A a lot more important, no matter the circumstance! :)

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Excellent suggestion. Personally, I'd grown frustrated of learning a half dozen new games, trying and trying to beat AAA and failing. This year, I goofed off and got a Silver without breaking a sweat, only going for a few Chad/AAA levels when the prize was really great. Bruno being one of those. It does seem totally bass ackwards that I got a silver when others tried much harder and only got a consultation prize.

 

Also, the "Day of" awards made it not worth the risk to loss the strength/endurance/defense boost.

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