World Challenge [Split!!]

[everconfused]

It makes perfect sense.

If a game works better for long game plays, you can go for the high score.

If a game works better for multiple plays, a minimum of 3 games is hardly a stretch.

The only real complaint is that now you have EARN your prizes and np instead of exploiting the system.

Duke, I'm glad you got rid of that person from your guild! I hope he was reported or TNT saw what was happening and put 2+2 together.

Bori, to alot of us these changes don't make sense. Most of us DO earn our prizes honestly. Most of us try our best to get a good score and if possible to play at least the 3 times that will earn us np. I know any game I enter the WC for that I can play more than 3 times I do - until I get the message saying I can't submit any more entries ... or the dreaded Score Review message (only on CofT, grrr). The changes in the WC rules has made what was fun - and a good challenge; it's making me try harder to get at least decent at some games - into something that feels almost like work.

I stand by my opinion that this will encourage, not discourage, cheating in one form or another. Be it people playing against themselves on multiple accounts or getting their friends to enter and play just enough to get a sendable score so the person can get their map piece.

[Cranberry]

It makes perfect sense.

If a game works better for long game plays, you can go for the high score.

If a game works better for multiple plays, a minimum of 3 games is hardly a stretch.

The only real complaint is that now you have EARN your prizes and np instead of exploiting the system.

Take it from someone who's played the WC pretty much every day since it started: it does NOT make "perfect sense."

Take Faerie Bubbles, for example: a 2000+ scoring game (needed for the high score, and often for a win) takes about 20 minutes. That means that if I want to get three games in, I have to start RIGHT at the beginning of the hour, and even then it will probably take too long for that third score to be processed (because WCs actually end at :57), and I'll end up with only two scores for the hour, therefore becoming ineligible for a prize. If someone else gets the high score, all that work will be for absolutely nothing.

The new system works okay for whoever can get the highest score, but that's one person per hour. If five people all go to play a game and one is obviously better than the rest and wins the high score for the hour over and over while the others struggle to get their three games in, how long do you think they're going to bother trying? Not long. This could very easily cause interest in the WC to drop dramatically, and then NO ONE will get anything -- at least five people have to be playing for ANY pieces to be given out. This is the absolute worst change they've implemented yet.

Edit: Oh, wow, it's worse than I thought. Already fewer people are playing the games. On the neoboards people are saying they're not getting their pieces because even though there have been more than five people in a WC, not all of them sent three scores each... so NOBODY gets ANYTHING. What kind of screwed-up system is that? Who thought that up? That doesn't solve anything.

Edit2: Now it says "Players in the top 3 places listed below with a minimum of 3 scores submitted each player [and] a Rating greater than 0 win a picture piece for their World Challenge Gallery!"

Are you kidding me? Seriously? No one's going to get any pieces now, because the majority of players usually have a 0 or -1 rating. I'm glad I have three full Tyrannia maps right now -- I'm going to hang on to those, because I have a feeling that if things stay like this, they're going to get a lot more valuable.

[Duke of Earl]

I haven't played the WC in over a day... (been busy with my userlookup) And now it doesn't even look like it's worth my time.

Oh, and one of the accounts of the person I mentioned has been unfrozen already...

[Cranberry]

Yep, they've ruined the WC. Over on the IDB, a guy just posted and said he won five games of Mootix Drop last hour, had 0 losses, AND had the high score for the hour. He got 0 pieces. None. Now, I think he worked for a piece, don't you? It's not his fault if four other players in the challenge couldn't get their ratings higher than 0.

This new system is NOT stopping cheaters. All it's doing is turning people off the WC. It's peak hours right now and there aren't enough "higher than 0 rated" players in the challenges -- imagine what it'll be like overnight or at other less-busy times. I hope TNT realizes this isn't working and changes it back SOON.

[BoriYeltsin]

You don't need 5 people with a rating higher than 5 to get a valid world challenge going.

Let me just be sure I'm understanding something.

You think you should be able to play one game for 10 minutes or so with a good enough score, send it in when there are only a few people playing and get a map piece for that?

It's World Challenges, not World Freebies.

Something that might make sense is to put a max number of scores you can send for some games, like you can't send more than 3 scores for Dubloon Disaster or 1 score for Faerie Bubbles per World Challenge per hour.

That might work better instead of having a minimum scores sent requirement.

I think the reasoning was to try to stop the people who've been cheating by using 2 (or more!) accounts to play the same game so they can be assured of getting a game piece. But this isn't the way to stop those people - in fact, I think it'll encourage cheating.

Doesn't affect the guy that was in my guild that we got rid of a few days ago... The amount of cheating he did was insane. He had 4 or 5 accounts and used them all to play various games with the low score abuse so that his main account won a ton.

Though I also see the abuse where you're coming from.

I think there's an ip restriction with the new changes, too. You can't get matched against someone with the same ip.

Runedit: Please don't double (triple?) post. If you have addional comments, please use the edit button rather than posting again

[Cranberry]

You don't need 5 people with a rating higher than 5 to get a valid world challenge going.

Let me just be sure I'm understanding something.

You think you should be able to play one game for 10 minutes or so with a good enough score, send it in when there are only a few people playing and get a map piece for that?

It's World Challenges, not World Freebies.

Nobody said you need 5 people with a rating higher than 5. You need 5 people with a rating higher than 0, and that's still not happening.

Yes, I think you should be able to play one game for 10 minutes or so, send your score when there are 5 or more people playing, and get a piece if your score is the highest score. The WC rewards skill. If someone's practiced enough and gotten good enough to swoop in and take that high score position with one game, they deserve a piece.

HOWEVER, most people aren't good enough for that. Most people do play more than three games per hour -- they really work for their picture pieces. But if you look at any WC, at the end of the hour most players have a rating of 0 or lower. That's just the way it works. And so now, I could enter a WC with 20 competitors, play five games, work hard on every one of them, and win them all, and still not get any pieces just because four other people couldn't make their ratings higher than 0. How is that fair?

Something that might make sense is to put a max number of scores you can send for some games, like you can't send more than 3 scores for Dubloon Disaster or 1 score for Faerie Bubbles per World Challenge per hour.

How would that work? Say 10 people play all their allowed games of Whack-A-Kass, all get scores of 1181 every time (it's possible) and all win their games. How do you decide who gets the picture pieces? You have to be allowed to play as many times as you want in order for people to be ranked.

Do you even play the WC games? If so, which ones? You don't seem to really understand how it all works.

[Duke of Earl]

You're right, I am someone who likes a fat prize for a small amount of effort. But I occasionally play games other than mootix drop in the WC.

I think one of my biggest complaints is that the changes that are being made are reducing the fun of the WC for me. And hearing from others here, I know it's not just me.

Either way, earlier I sent a "bug report" to TNT lamenting the most recent changes in the WC and suggesting that they put it back to the way it was a week or so ago, fix the basic spelling/spacing errors that STILL exist, make sure the rules are clearly stated (the latest text, in red, sounds like a bad translation or something, and is unclear), and keeping those who blatantly cheat frozen, instead of unfreezing them. (Hmm... a long sentence that was)

If they did indeed block being matched with the same IP, I think that will be rather effective against most people trying the score spamming method.

Edit:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/ ... OSCR28.jpg

You can NOT deny that to be stupid... The people who don't have a rating greater than (maybe equal to) zero don't count as people playing in the WC? GREEEAAAAAAT.

Edit2: Ok so maybe they do count people below zero in other games... I find it hard to believe that three scores were sent from :57 to :00 (actually more or they would have matched with each other) and that there haven't been any more plays with 12 people paying for entry this hour.

Edit3: My bad, the account was not unfrozen... the person in my guild simply stumbled upon another account used by the same person that had 3 consecutive As in it instead of 4

And a final argument. If the requirements for getting pieces are so complex that nobody gets any pieces, they've messed up big time in my book.

[Kamosh]

could somebody please spell out all the things that have changed. the way they wrote it on the wc pages i'm not sure i got everything. thanks!

[Cranberry]

Kamosh, now you can't earn a piece unless:

A) You are the highest scorer, and 5 other people are playing and have a rating of 0 or higher.

or

B) You're one of the top people ("above the line"), you've sent 3 or more scores, and you and at least 4 other people have a rating of 0 or higher.

People with a rating of -1 or lower don't even show up anymore. They don't count. At least 5 people MUST have a rating of 0 or higher before anyone can earn a picture piece.

(Edited to be clearer. Correct me if I'm wrong here. This is what I've gleaned from WC-playing Neofriends and the Neoboards.)

Last edited by Cranberry on Tue Aug 23, 2005 2:52 am, edited 2 times in total.

[BoriYeltsin]

You don't need 5 people with a rating higher than 5 to get a valid world challenge going.

Let me just be sure I'm understanding something.

You think you should be able to play one game for 10 minutes or so with a good enough score, send it in when there are only a few people playing and get a map piece for that?

It's World Challenges, not World Freebies.

Nobody said you need 5 people with a rating higher than 5. You need 5 people with a rating higher than 0, and that's still not happening.

Yes, I think you should be able to play one game for 10 minutes or so, send your score when there are 5 or more people playing, and get a piece if your score is the highest score. The WC rewards skill. If someone's practiced enough and gotten good enough to swoop in and take that high score position with one game, they deserve a piece.

HOWEVER, most people aren't good enough for that. Most people do play more than three games per hour -- they really work for their picture pieces. But if you look at any WC, at the end of the hour most players have a rating of 0 or lower. That's just the way it works. And so now, I could enter a WC with 20 competitors, play five games, work hard on every one of them, and win them all, and still not get any pieces just because four other people couldn't make their ratings higher than 0. How is that fair?

Something that might make sense is to put a max number of scores you can send for some games, like you can't send more than 3 scores for Dubloon Disaster or 1 score for Faerie Bubbles per World Challenge per hour.

How would that work? Say 10 people play all their allowed games of Whack-A-Kass, all get scores of 1181 every time (it's possible) and all win their games. How do you decide who gets the picture pieces? You have to be allowed to play as many times as you want in order for people to be ranked.

Do you even play the WC games? If so, which ones? You don't seem to really understand how it all works.

5 people do not have to have a rating of higher than 0.

You do not get a pic piece if you do not have a rating higher than 0.

You do not get a pic piece if less than 5 people are competing.

If you have the high score for the hour and there are 5 people competing, you get a pic piece.

This isn't a competition where everybody wins.

[Cranberry]

What are you even trying to say with that last sentence? It's never been a competition where everyone wins, and I like it that way. The best game players get the most pieces. When the WC was actually good, I almost always got two pieces of the Tyrannia map per hour (sometimes three, if I played some Destruct-O-Match II along with my Volcano Run). I worked for those pieces and I deserved them.

Right now, if you go look at the games, only the really short games (VRun, Meerca Chase, Whack-A-Kass, etc.) are having qualifying rounds. No one's earning any pieces in the longer games. The system is all screwed up -- if you read the Neoboards, the IDB, and here, nobody's happy with it except you, for some odd reason. And you didn't answer my question before: do you even participate in the WC, and if so, which games?

Also:

5 people do not have to have a rating of higher than 0.

Yes, 5 people DO have to have a rating of 0 or higher. Now people with a rating lower than 0 don't even show up on the page. They don't count as competitors. Right now, the Volcano Run page looks like this:

1. Player One - 3 wins, 0 losses. Rating: 3
2. Player Two - 2 wins, 0 losses. Rating: 2
3. Player Three - 1 win, 1 loss. Rating: 0

No one else even shows up on the page, although obviously more people than that are playing. It's now 7:55 pm NST. Unless two more competitors show up in the next 2 minutes and each gain a rating of at least 0, no one will get a picture piece. And that? That's unfair.

[BoriYeltsin]

What are you even trying to say with that last sentence? It's never been a competition where everyone wins, and I like it that way. The best game players get the most pieces. When the WC was actually good, I almost always got two pieces of the Tyrannia map per hour (sometimes three, if I played some Destruct-O-Match II along with my Volcano Run). I worked for those pieces and I deserved them.

Right now, if you go look at the games, only the really short games (VRun, Meerca Chase, Whack-A-Kass, etc.) are having qualifying rounds. No one's earning any pieces in the longer games. The system is all screwed up -- if you read the Neoboards, the IDB, and here, nobody's happy with it except you, for some odd reason. And you didn't answer my question before: do you even participate in the WC, and if so, which games?

I'm saying that getting 2 pieces an hour for submitting a few scores is too easy.

I'm saying that submitting a minimum of 3 scores per hour per World Challenge is not asking too much and it keeps the easy, low-competition wins to a minimum. However, having said that, I agree that perhaps maybe something may need to be done for the longer games.

I prefer to rely on reason and logic instead of my performance in the wcs.

Players with wins less than 0 show up on the competitor list and count towards the number of players in the challenge.

Thank you.

[Cranberry]

So, by "I prefer to rely on reason and logic instead of my performance in the wcs," are you saying you don't actually play? Because it's hard to really grasp how difficult it is to earn pieces now (or how hard it is to dominate the WC in general) unless you actually compete.

Are you sure that "players with wins less than 0 show up on the competitor list and count towards the number of players in the challenge"? I don't see their names anywhere on the challenge pages -- only people with ratings of 0 or higher are listed now.

Edit: I just neomailed one of the girls who was competing in the Volcano Run WC last hour (she's my main rival in the game, heh). She said:

"You need 5 players with ratings of 1 or better who have all sent 3 scores for anyone to get a piece. Last hour had at least 10 challengers, but only three of us had winning records (7 wins and 1 loss between us all). I had first place and hiscore, and got nothing."

So... yes, you DO need five people with a rating of 0 or higher. People with ratings lower than 0 do not count.

Also, I don't appreciate being condescended to. Thank you.

[Duke of Earl]

I on the other hand also have the tendency to be slightly condescending, I think. I'm not so sure I really care as much as I should. Oh well.

It's not a thing where everyone wins? Correct!

It's a thing where only people who play a certain few games can win. It's a thing where everyone can play those other games and get nothing. Oh, and they pay a 100 neopoints. They don't get that back either.

[BoriYeltsin]

Here's some players with negative scores.

http://www.neopets.com/challenges/world ... bug=thants

Sorry if I sounded condescending, I think all this is very interesting. Maybe tnt will read this and they'll change something. Who knows, it might be helpful!!!