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PD -> RE: Summer 2022 Season of Gifting & Independence Holiday Super Event (6/27/2022 16:18:33)
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A bit of commentary before the contest begins. While I don't think any of this will actually happen because it's likely they are going to use the existing code to hand out rewards, it's worth getting these concerns out so that it is known. Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't. But putting this out now there is better than nothing.
On donation receipts distributions:
It is well known that over the great majority of the receipts usually happen from the first week and the last week. In the last donation contest, I documented that in the lull period, not a single donation was gifted between the lull period. Those who are going to participate in the middle of the contest will likely receive nothing. Not only this, but this kind of system also favors those whom play with multiple characters on their accounts. On an anecdote (but well substantiated to others whom have likewise benefited), I took advantage of both facts to receive around ~110,000 tokens last year. So why should I complain? Because if the contest were merely about giving to those whom don't spend that much on AQ nor play often, then this system fails at doing this. The ones whom play in the middle will be left to dry, and those with only a few characters will get crumbs compared to to those with multiple accounts; the vast majority of multi-character account players likely also are the same people whom are likely to donate the most in the first place.
My solution is to what I suggested doing last year. Only hand out the receipts after the contest, evenly across all participants of the contest. So if we've donated 10,000,000 tokens after the event is over, and there were 2000 donators, then everyone will get 5,000 Z-tokens after the contest is over. This will also discourage people from using multiple accounts to increase their chances of getting receipts over other players by punishing them via contributing towards the dilution of the after-rewards.
On ranked contests, sniping:
Sniping itself isn't really the problem so much as it is the ranked scheme. Because this is a zero-sum game, my gain is your loss. And people have found out that the way to secure your ranking is to donate everything within a few last moments so as to not allow your recipients to be able to donate them back due to not having time to cash in and donate what they received back. Additionally because of the tighter ranks than the winter contests, only people whom feel confident enough to win will actually participate. And the tighter the ranks, the less confidence people will have. Now it's good that last year we decided on expanding the ranks from 15 to 25. (and in retrospect, it was good that the rules were not retroactively changed as was originally planned) On the other hand this is probably only marginally going to increase confidence in being able to win a top prize. Even with this change that's only really 10 places more, which doesn't give me much more confidence that this will be substantially more fair. Which leads me to the next point...
On Tiered contests and alternative designs:
It's at least agreed by several others than myself that doing this would be a much fairer schemed compared to what we're doing now. Besides the fact that contest liekly reuses code and design, why cannot we not change the design of these contests? Or why could changes not have taken place between last year and this years' contests if enough people were unhappy with how it all went down last time?
If nothing changes because the belief that the current design encourages more participation, this could hardly be further from the truth. On the other hand the more someone feels like they have a "fair" shot at winning a prize, the more they are likely to participate. And we know from last year the expansion from 25 places to 50 had greatly increased the competitiveness and donation even outside of the normal linear increases of overall receipts from year-over-year. If we had tiered rewards with thresholds set at what most people consider "fair", this will encourage more people whom usually do not participate to give this a try. If it's a code-reuse problem, then perhaps we ought to just stop doing these things and consider doing something else.
We could even experiment with a collective event like we had with Neko and Nilak. We haven't had one of those in years. Why not try this again?
On set suggestions:
Another thing from last year that has left a bitter taste on most peoples' mouths. The set from last year left very few satisfied, and was mostly the result of a few of the winners whom basically overrode the opinions of the others. I could have been part of this said working group. Initially I even gave my implicit thumbs up because I cared more about the fairness (and I still care about this first before everything else) of the contest than the actual rewards. What I and most people didn't know (and thus asked to then be dis-associated with said working group afterwards) was that an extremely niche-designed set was the result and very few people ended up being happy with the final product. No opportunity from feedback outside the working group seemed to be considered, and this group seemed to wield disproportionate amount of influence over the final result. Which on the one hand it is not possible to make everyone happy. On the other hand we got a final set which left most of the people unhappy and could have been avoided if the discussions were more open than they were. I'm actually okay with the idea of people tagging along others', but it's worth remembering that those whom won in the other placements also deserve a say in what the outcome is.
On that same note, it's important that we get a good design out the first time, or good enough that only a minimal amount of tweaks will make it so that the vast majority of people will be left satisfied. And we know that the staff's budget for time is ever-limited. Only minimal tweaks were made last year because re-working the set afterwards is unfeasible given time constraints. Perhaps this year, instead of only at the end, we should have an active discussion starting now about what the set and items should be. It doesn't have to be decided now, but I think having a longer discussion on this will give us at the end a better product.
On the daily prizes:
I did suggest last year on an "encouragement" reward to donate every day. However with the current design of the contests, this falls into the same flaw that receipts do above. The winners of these rewards are going to be those whom flood the pool with their multiple characters. Instead of doing a niche item prize like this, I suggest something of continuous rewards. IE, for every 1000 Z-tokens you spend, you get 1 rare GGB box (not the final idea I have in mind, but an idea to be thrown out there so others can bounce off it). Yes, you probably will have a higher probability to win said prize if you wait until the middle of the contest, but this means you'll have to be part of an incredibly long queue and this doesn't even guarantee you'll win. There will only be 620 possible winners if this starts on Friday. And we all know that this doesn't mean 620 unique accounts. It's characters, so even fewer people than even that will even have it. Not to mention if people forget this piece of advice, prizes might not even be handed out.
These are my main concerns, as ever. Again if I have to be brutally honest to myself, none of these suggestions or concerns are likely to happen or even be listened to. Yet it's better that these problems are known than to not be.
On a secondary and personal note: I ought to have enough tokens farmed and saved from the last 2 contests to be able to win a top prize without spending money assuming that receipts should help me go over the top if my initial isn't enough to win purely on its own. And the fact that at least it's top 25 this time instead of top 15 only should give me and others a little more breathing room. Not much more, but enough that I have reasonable confidence in winning without spending money this time.
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