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GwenMay -> RE: =AQ= Frostval Season of Gifting Returns (12/15/2024 14:12:56)
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I support this change to account-based donations instead of character-based for largely the reasons expressed by Lorekeeper. While this topic has already been heavily discussed, I wanted to weigh in to provide my perspective as AQ's top donor overall and in the last few contests.
My view is this: AQ has a responsibility to be fair towards their players, not player characters. This means ensuring tokens are evenly distributed to active players. The only way to accomplish this is to make donations account based, not character based. I appreciate the argument that highly invested players who play more should receive greater rewards. But the former system of logging in daily on 10 alts does not reflect a higher investment than other players. Spending 10 minutes each day logging into low level alts to quickly defeat shower monster does not make you a more active player than someone who spends the same amount of time or longer actually playing the game (e.g., questing, warring, farming, or defeating challenges) on one character. It certainly does not justify receiving 10x as many tokens (often a $50+ USD difference in value) as other active players.
As a donor, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth whenever I donate several million tokens to the community which mostly go to "storage 7" or "token mule 3" or other obvious token alts. I donate above and beyond what I need to because I want to support the entire community evenly, not mostly players abusing the system to receive more than their fair share.
I also do not appreciate how many of the players who use the 10 alt method are consistently able to achieve 100k or more in token donations every summer and, with that, achieve high placements on donation leaderboards without actually spending much if any money or their own tokens. I know of many examples of players (both this summer and in past events) doing this. This regifting does not actually help the community or reflect the spirit of generosity donation contests are meant to inspire. All this accomplishes is ensuring that some players are able to snipe top donation rewards for free or nearly free, potentially depriving top slots from players who spent real money but did not know to play 10 alts daily. This is especially unjustifiable as only players with specific knowledge gained from spending significant time on AQ forums, discord servers, or reddit - many of which are unofficial, and none of which are advertised or explained in-game - would know to play 10 alts daily to gain a 10x advantage in tokens. If we are being frank, this unfair advantage is what many players arguing against the donation change in this thread want to preserve.
This change does not remove the advantage of having alts. Alts are still very helpful for farming and storing gold, farming 50+ tokens daily per alt, storing items, and experiencing different playstyles. I also agree with Anim that there should be some reward for playing on alts, such as receiving a higher chance for giveaway items like the Crown of Frostval. These advantages are more than enough to encourage alt creation - we do not need to divert millions of token donations every year from other active players to alt-users. And the quality of life benefits from this change are obvious.
As others have pointed out, this change is likely to lower regifting and thus the total amount of tokens and gold donated. I do not think this is much of a problem for token contests - we easily blew past all community token goals the last few years, and removing regifting would not change that. It may have more of an impact in gold community goals. But all this means is that staff may want to consider adjusting community goals, not reverting to character based donations.
In short, I 100% support the change to account-based gifting and encourage staff to retain this system in future contests.
Gold storage topic: I regret to inform you but upon asking and looking into unfortunately we cannot release gold storage for free players due to data limits and maintaining server stability. ~Anim
This Season will remain account based. The topic is not up for discussion or debate going forwards. Please acknowledge further posts on character vs account based will be dealt with the utmost severity.~Anim
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