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RE: Winter Gold Donation Contest

 
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11/2/2023 1:36:18   
Korriban Gaming
Banned


quote:

The old system, therefore, does not reward their efforts. Some might argue that this is fine, and that low-levelled players should spend their Gold elsewhere. My response is to caution against projecting our own views on what lower-levelled players should be concentrating their efforts on.

Why do you want to tailor what is meant to be endgame content for people who are not at endgame? Do you know what's the best "gold farming" method before endgame? It's Ballyhoo. I don't know what to say if you think watching a couple of ads per day is considered effort for a contest on top of it being incredibly silly. Rather than trying to overcomplicate things and cater to every single level, why not just cater to those at the max level? Players are already forced to power level to play the game properly, the contest aside. If they can't even fix the low level scaling problems, why should they add on another problem for themselves when one doesn't even exist.

It's not about projecting our own views on what lower level players do. It's simply giving them the best advice as veterans of the game. If anyone is gonna tell lower level players to dump their gold in the contest for completely random rewards, this is bad advice and that's a fact. The lower level players have the freedom to follow said bad advice but it comes off as scummy to even suggest that to them as veterans ourselves.

quote:

Running separate contests doesn't solve the problem of lower-levelled players. Nonetheless, this discussion has never been about rewarding player effort across the board. It's about whether (and how much) the efforts of max-level, paying players are weighted against the efforts of non-paying, lower-levelled characters. A consensus (or decision) on this is sorely needed.

It doesn't have to. This is a self-created problem. You expect them to compete in something that isn't meant for them, obviously they have no chance at winning. Separating the Guardian and Adventurer accounts solves the problems of the disparity between free and paying players. I think most are in agreement that fixing the disparity between free and paying players are enough. Low level characters don't need to be a part of this.

quote:

No. I'd prefer them to remain cosmetic. This is for the same reason I don't support @Sapphire's idea:
quote:

I think it was more or less shot down, but yes I do feel like a daily top 5 or 10 or 15 or something prize for top gold donators for that day would provide incentive and fun. I just don't see solely a community prize paving the way to reach goals, unless the items were pre-made, info subs posted, and the items were so good that everyone makes a push to obtain it. People aren't going to donate massive amounts out of the goodness of their hearts. Let's be real.


A daily prize is a huge amount of additional effort on top of the already considerable outlay necessary to host a donation contest to begin with. Not only that, but this contest runs alongside Adventurer and Guardian giftbox sets during the single busiest period of the year, when I would also hope the staff have some sort of opportunity to have time to themselves. I'd still take issue even if we had more leeway (as @Korriban Gaming rightly points out, donation contest items are also exclusives), but it's particularly problematic given the circumstances. Cosmetics offer a level of exclusivity without the same level of investment. Of course, there are downsides, but I think it's a better compromise.


quote:

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I really don't think color custom is worth shelling out extra gold/tokens.


I agree with Sapphire. As I pointed out previously, cosmetics are simply not enough of a motivating factor to dedicate 20-30 mins everyday for the whole year, even more if you have more than 1 character. Unless we get a cosmetics feature added to the game, I will maintain my stance that this is insufficient to motivate people to farm gold. If players put in so much time to grind gold everyday, why should their reward only be a 5 minute job of slapping on different colors for something that's already going to be created? That doesn't sound very fair to me, sorry to say but if players are willing to put in time, so should the devs. There needs to be more, otherwise it might be better to just leave the whole event as a contest format.

< Message edited by Korriban Gaming -- 11/2/2023 1:42:34 >
AQ DF AQW  Post #: 26
11/2/2023 6:05:57   
CH4OT1C!
Member

To respond to the counterarguments made by @Korriban Gaming:

quote:

Why do you want to tailor what is meant to be endgame content for people who are not at endgame?

Before making my counterpoints, I think it's worth mentioning that all of your points essentially build on your answer to this question i.e. that this entire contest is inherently elitist and pretty much exclusively for endgame Guardians. To reiterate, there's no issue with taking such an elitist position on this matter. To be sure, there exists some circumstantial evidence to support your theory e.g., the Gold rewards are calculated in absolute amounts. The issue is exactly that though, it's a theory. There's also plenty of circumstantial evidence to support the opposing point: why isn't an endgame contest explicitly labelled as such? Why are low-levelled characters able to donate at all? If it's because you want to let them donate for the sake of generosity, surely isn't that a "there are rules for thee, and rules for me" scenario? If so, why isn't it consistent between it and the Token contest? Your narrative of the contest could be true, and I would appreciate official clarification on the matter. But, based on the available evidence, I disagree with you. I don't think this contest was ever intentionally designed to explicitly and solely cater to this group, that certain facets were simply overlooked.

This assumption bleeds into the counterarguments being made:
quote:

It's not about projecting our own views on what lower level players do. It's simply giving them the best advice as veterans of the game.

This builds upon your existing points. That there are separate primary motivators between the eligible and excluded groups (material rewards vs generosity). And that, because they have no hope of success, eligible players are giving them good advice by telling them not to bother. My position is that the system is broken but, following your narrative, I'm not sure we can pat ourselves on the back for giving these players good advice even if this is true. We're not telling them which decision is best so much as informing them that they have little to no agency to begin with. They aren't practically able to donate for material gain even given their best efforts, since it's practically impossible for them to scrape any sort of reward at all. Even if you disagree with my calculations, that much is pretty much impossible to deny, which is why I presume you reiterate the point around forcing power-levelling. This in itself implies power-levelling is intentional and to be encouraged, another assumption with scarce and dubious supporting evidence. You don't "need" to power-level, it's simply that level-scaling mechanics at lower levels are problematic. Even then, it's far from impossible to play.

These same assumptions build into:
quote:

It doesn't have to. This is a self-created problem.

It's a self-created issue if you assume the contest intentionally excludes everyone but max-level Guardians. But my statement follows very different assumptions, that the contest intends to be more inclusive.

quote:

Do you know what's the best "gold farming" method before endgame? It's Ballyhoo.

This point follows a slightly different narrative, that actually non-eligible players aren't putting in much effort at all. Unfortunately, we don't have a published formula on how much Ballyhoo contributes to Gold. So, to give the best possible response in limited time, I went and checked how much Ballyhoo gives on a level 1 test character. For this position to hold, Ballyhoo either needs to allow players to compete, or at the very least contribute a significant proportion of their Gold cap. On point one, the rewards are clearly level-scaled (my Level 1 character got 100 Gold) and don't enable competition. On point 2, Ballyhoo certainly gives more than a standard level 1 monster. However, you can only visit Ballyhoo 4 times a day. It's never contributing more than 10% of your Gold cap in total. In other words, it's not significantly cutting down effort either.

We're going in circles. And the reason for that is because two completely separate, mutually exclusive assumptions are being made about the contest. One assumes that the contest has intentionally been built to cater to, and be dominated by an elite group i.e. Max-level Guardians. The other suggests the contest intends to be inclusive, but fails to achieve said goal. I think, for there to be a constructive discussion on this topic, we need the staff to explicitly clarify who this contest is meant to cater for.


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@Sapphire: Your point may well have been unintentional, but it is difficult to interpret...
quote:

I'm not concerned about "low-level players". If a player is low level either due to 1. Being new 2. Lack of drive to play 3. Real life obstacles prevents it… Then I'm sorry, tough luck. Attempting to cater to players who don't play much I find to be asinine. The game isn't a charity event and The Gold dono event is about dedication and availability to play, really.

... as anything but inherently exclusionary. Like @Grace Xisthrith you believe that, if they really were Gold farming, they wouldn't be low-levelled to begin with. Therefore, we should only cater the contest to max-level players. The same can be said of your view the contest should disproportionately benefit Guardians to incentivise Guardianising a character. However, irrespective of how well-intentioned the justifications for these measures are, it doesn't change the fact that they still ultimately exclude/disproportionately downweight everyone except Max-level Guardians. As I mentioned already, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with holding that view, but we do need some explicit confirmation from the staff as to whether this is how the Gold contest is intended to operate.

< Message edited by CH4OT1C! -- 11/2/2023 9:38:48 >
AQ  Post #: 27
11/2/2023 6:43:10   
legendd
Member
 

Agreed. But more importantly who is entitle to the donation rewards, those "hardworking" ones and/or those who are:
1. active but not gold farming (like Sapphire and myself)
2. new and returning players

quote:

I think, for there to be a constructive discussion on this topic, we need the staff to explicitly clarify who this contest is meant to cater for.
Post #: 28
11/2/2023 10:39:33   
Korriban Gaming
Banned


I think we're all largely in agreement about changing the format so Adventurers can compete so let's not go in circles with that any further.

With regards to lower levelled players

quote:

why isn't an endgame contest explicitly labelled as such?

quote:

It's a self-created issue if you assume the contest intentionally excludes everyone but max-level Guardians. But my statement follows very different assumptions, that the contest intends to be more inclusive.

quote:

We're going in circles. And the reason for that is because two completely separate, mutually exclusive assumptions are being made about the contest. One assumes that the contest has intentionally been built to cater to, and be dominated by an elite group i.e. Max-level Guardians. The other suggests the contest intends to be inclusive, but fails to achieve said goal. I think, for there to be a constructive discussion on this topic, we need the staff to explicitly clarify who this contest is meant to cater for.

The contest format has seen little to no change since it was introduced. Every year since the start, the top donors, or even top 200 for that matter, have always been max level characters. It's pretty clear to me who the contest is meant for. I don't think you need the staff to explicitly state something so obvious considering the contest has been around for a good number of years already with almost no changes.

I think the real question we should be asking is how many low level players stick around in the game long enough to see more than one donation contest or stick around playing the game and is still not at max level after a year? It simply makes no sense for the staff to spend time on improving something for a very small minority of players, and even then, the benefits are minimal/insignificant as what I have pointed out before.

quote:

This in itself implies power-levelling is intentional and to be encouraged, another assumption with scarce and dubious supporting evidence. You don't "need" to power-level, it's simply that level-scaling mechanics at lower levels are problematic. Even then, it's far from impossible to play.

Literally every single piece of advice I've seen given includes power levelling of some sort for those who aren't at that level yet. It's certainly not impossible to play when one isn't at max level but the question becomes what can you play without getting stonewalled? Maybe you're stuck on a story boss you can't get past without specific gear, so you go farm for said gear, in the process you level up and unluckily enough, the boss scales right up to the next tier and your problem continues to remain a problem and it won't go away unless you reach max level.

quote:

It's never contributing more than 10% of your Gold cap in total. In other words, it's not significantly cutting down effort either.

Because of how the scaling works, you don't need more gold than Ballyhoo can give at lower levels, whether it's for stat training or gear etc. Besides Ballyhoo, there is literally no effective way to farm gold at lower levels. And if there is, it usually comes with a fat amount of XP too which means you would also level up rather quickly in the process so you would hit max level eventually anyway.

quote:

Agreed. But more importantly who is entitle to the donation rewards, those "hardworking" ones and/or those who are:
1. active but not gold farming (like Sapphire and myself)
2. new and returning players

I do not think someone who just joined yesterday or someone who only logs in once a year during the contest should be getting the same reward as someone who is constantly grinding the game everyday, regardless of whether it's top donor rewards or even community rewards for that matter. It would be unfair to those who put in time into the game.
AQ DF AQW  Post #: 29
11/2/2023 18:58:26   
Sapphire
Member

quote:

... as anything but inherently exclusionary. Like @Grace Xisthrith you believe that, if they really were Gold farming, they wouldn't be low-levelled to begin with. Therefore, we should only cater the contest to max-level players. The same can be said of your view the contest should disproportionately benefit Guardians to incentivise Guardianising a character. However, irrespective of how well-intentioned the justifications for these measures are, it doesn't change the fact that they still ultimately exclude/disproportionately downweight everyone except Max-level Guardians. As I mentioned already, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with holding that view, but we do need some explicit confirmation from the staff as to whether this is how the Gold contest is intended to operate.


I feel as though this entire thing is either purposefully ignoring what I said or it was missed.

What I have said is I think there should be two concurrently running donation contests. One for Guardian and one for Adventurer. And the rewards being no different. This doesn't solve the "low level" player issue, but you shouldn't screw over long tenured and dedicated players in favor of players who don't play as much, regardless of the reason they are low level. It'd be a ridiculous approach. I am not advocating to remove the community set. Low level players could in theory, gain access to that. I am simply trying to provide some ideas to undo what I know would be a catastrophe if the community set is the only "motivation" for donating. Depending solely on charity is fallacy of the highest order.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

If a second set is too much work, and I agree considering there's going to also be a token set, then I think a different item-based "most gold donated" system could be brainstormed.


For example, Lets say the contest runs 8 weeks. They could make 4 items. They could be functional clones of rares that could be desirable. This reduces staff workload in item design due to the functional clone coding.

Then for two weeks, item#1 is available. In order to obtain it, each contest (guardian and adventurer) must donate the most gold for that day. It could be top 5 or 10 players per Guardian/Adventurer. After two weeks, you compete for item#2 for the following two weeks. Staff could go about this one of two ways. 1. If your character wins, it is ineligible to win the item again. 2. If your character wins, it cant win *any* other item for the duration of the contest.


You still have the community set. You create an actual contest (this *is* called a contest, duh) You split it between Gaurdians and adventurers to include them a wider range of players.

You don't kill off the gold storage chest entirely, and don't alienate those who spent all year prepping for this contest.


Then, after this event, you make the L135 gold chest for adventurers. And you allow players the ability to go into a special shop and sell their gold chests for 500 tokens (L150) or 250 tokens (L135) . You give players an alternative use for gold chests, and can thus lighten up the "hit" to this "sudden and late-in-the-game" announced change and if staff wanted to continue to push for just make this community rewards only, you've at least built some additional infrastructure to make it ok...as long as the announcement isn't last minute.


Common sense approach, easily

< Message edited by Sapphire -- 11/2/2023 19:13:41 >
Post #: 30
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