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Feature So percentiles

Fortunato

Avatar: 72902 2010-02-03 18:45:17 -0500
32

[Grey Goose Mafiosi]

Level 51 Troll

ZOMBIE CANNONBALL OF GORE

Let’s do a little bit of math. there’s around 170000 characters right now. That means that the top 10% is seventeen thousand characters. The top 1% is 1700. I don’t know about anyone else, but that would qualify me for just about every percentage-based milestone peen around. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that describes practically every active player in the game. This would seriously devalue a leaderboard milestone peen if everyone who played for a week got it. What about milestone peens for getting to the second page or the first page of the leaderboard? That’s about where you need to get if you care about that peen, in my opinion.

Fortunato edited this message on 04/22/2009 2:20PM

Inconnu

Avatar: 48966 2011-07-31 19:36:53 -0400
100

[The Scrotal Safety-
Commission
]

Level 69 Camwhore

Qui est cette chienne

Fortunato Posted:

What about milestone peens for getting to the first page of the leaderboard? That’s about where you need to get if you care about that peen, in my opinion.

100% signed. This + occasional removing inactive players from top positions would be a wonderful system.

Pretty much everything else not gonna work.

Samildanach

Avatar: 143751 Tue May 19 21:18:21 -0400 2009
11

Level 34 Hacker

“43 4f 44 45 20 4d 41 53 54 45 52”

Fortunato Posted:

Let’s do a little bit of math. there’s around 170000 characters right now. That means that the top 10% is seventeen thousand characters. The top 1% is 1700. I don’t know about anyone else, but that would qualify me for just about every percentage-based milestone peen around. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that describes practically every active player in the game. This would seriously devalue a leaderboard milestone peen if everyone who played for a week got it. What about milestone peens for getting to the second page or the first page of the leaderboard? That’s about where you need to get if you care about that peen, in my opinion.

Instinctively, to me, setting a static number target with a theoretically growing playerbase is problematic. If a player stays active after hitting that point, there’s just no way a new player can break in.

If it were instead a percentile based on active players that pruned inactive former players from the boards (based on whatever definitions of active/inactive seem appropriate to The Powers That Be), I would be more likely to sign onto that. My usual disclaimer applies.

meeeeeeeeee

Avatar: 15443 2010-04-04 18:27:25 -0400
49

[Brainfreeze]

Level 35 Troll

Sneakily vicious and filled with virtuous pit bulls.

A good reward system for a large (and growing) playerbase would have nothing to do with percentiles, except if time since you joined can be completely discounted, and it truly is some kind of measure of pure talent or excellence. Any time based reward scheme has to be milestone based, as otherwise, only us older players will ever see any of them.

Fortunato

Avatar: 72902 2010-02-03 18:45:17 -0500
32

[Grey Goose Mafiosi]

Level 51 Troll

ZOMBIE CANNONBALL OF GORE

Samildanach Posted:

Instinctively, to me, setting a static number target with a theoretically growing playerbase is problematic. If a player stays active after hitting that point, there’s just no way a new player can break in.

If it were instead a percentile based on active players that pruned inactive former players from the boards (based on whatever definitions of active/inactive seem appropriate to The Powers That Be), I would be more likely to sign onto that. My usual disclaimer applies.

This would be true if there weren’t a large percentage of people who decide to stop. There are also several boards (buildr and flezz) where the holder’s position can go down.

baou30

Avatar: 138741 Fri Mar 27 19:20:32 -0400 2009
2

Level 21 Emo Kid

I lol'd a little. :bigbarf:

Agreed, as long as it’s first page, imo.

Log in to see images!

meeeeeeeeee

Avatar: 15443 2010-04-04 18:27:25 -0400
49

[Brainfreeze]

Level 35 Troll

Sneakily vicious and filled with virtuous pit bulls.

k, I’m not thinking about this carefully am I? A large proportion of the playerbase will not be trying for a particular category, and so will be easily overcome. The top percentile based reward will, however, be unachievable except for long term players, provided it’s kept small enough.

My instinct is still that it should be static milestones, but I guess we’ll have to see how it plays out.

Samildanach

Avatar: 143751 Tue May 19 21:18:21 -0400 2009
11

Level 34 Hacker

“43 4f 44 45 20 4d 41 53 54 45 52”

Fortunato Posted:

This would be true if there weren’t a large percentage of people who decide to stop. There are also several boards (buildr and flezz) where the holder’s position can go down.

Short of people no longer wanting to top the leaderboards, I find it hard to believe that even the flezz and buildr leaderboards can have significant volatility among truly active players. If two equally good players start the game with a season’s difference in timing, and both stay equally active, the first to hit the ground will always have the advantage based on nothing more than hearing about the game first. Given a significant headstart, players of less skill can still maintain a lead over good ones. This, of course, isn’t really even corrected by my suggestion, it’s nature-of-the-beast material – I’m just not sure your examples are that good.

I also don’t think I follow why the “large percentage of people who decide to stop” is a factor. If we’re going to reward performance as compared to the rest of the community (which seems to be what the leaderboard peen is for), why shouldn’t it be based on actual participating members of the community? What’s the qualitative or philosophical distance between removing 10 inactive players or 10,000?

Fortunato

Avatar: 72902 2010-02-03 18:45:17 -0500
32

[Grey Goose Mafiosi]

Level 51 Troll

ZOMBIE CANNONBALL OF GORE

I could live with static peens, if they’re high (the way the job point ones are). Say, a 50 incit wins peen and a 100 incit wins peen, or a buildr score 10-20-30-40-50 series. 50 would be a valuable peen.

My big thing is that I want them to matter.

Evil Trout

MODERATOR
Avatar: 35 2023-04-24 23:24:10 +0000

[Crotch Zombie]

Level 21 Hacker

I'm just out to get milk, I'll be back in 2053!

Fortunato Posted:

Let’s do a little bit of math. there’s around 170000 characters right now. That means that the top 10% is seventeen thousand characters. The top 1% is 1700. I don’t know about anyone else, but that would qualify me for just about every percentage-based milestone peen around. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that describes practically every active player in the game. This would seriously devalue a leaderboard milestone peen if everyone who played for a week got it. What about milestone peens for getting to the second page or the first page of the leaderboard? That’s about where you need to get if you care about that peen, in my opinion.

The flaw with your math is that while there are over 170k characters, the leaderboards are only made up of characters who are eligible for that E-Peen™ and who are active within the last 30 days.

meeeeeeeeee

Avatar: 15443 2010-04-04 18:27:25 -0400
49

[Brainfreeze]

Level 35 Troll

Sneakily vicious and filled with virtuous pit bulls.

I think what CZ were trying to avoid with the percentile thing, was needing to constantly add more peens, as players reach each goal in turn. I’m not sure there’s really a way to avoid that though, unless you make each goal take exponentially longer, and there will be players who automatically start with a full set, with 0 effort required. Will these players lose peen if they drop below the top percentile bracket?

Possibly a C-
abbage

Avatar: 76887 Fri Oct 24 03:39:44 -0400 2008
9

[Leafy Green Vegeta-
bles
]

Level 35 Hacker

Herbaceous, biennial, dicotyledonous , and flowering.

meeeeeeeeee Posted:

I think what CZ were trying to avoid with the percentile thing, was needing to constantly add more peens, as players reach each goal in turn.

I think you’re right, and also the fact that “I’m better at foo than almost everyone!” is more peenworthy than “I’ve done a lot of foo.” It’s more in keeping with the original idea that peens were for topping the leaderboard, with the acknowledgement of things like “nobody’s ever going to get on top of the “most forums pwned” leaderboard unless everybody ahead of them gets hit by a bus.

Ideally, peens should not only be desirable and meaningful, but reasonably acquirable.

meeeeeeeeee

Avatar: 15443 2010-04-04 18:27:25 -0400
49

[Brainfreeze]

Level 35 Troll

Sneakily vicious and filled with virtuous pit bulls.

Next question. Will players with the Leaderboard peen be automatically granted all of the milestone peen? They were, presumably, at the top of the clbum when they acquired their peen (even though it might have been quite a bit easier to get there, way back when)...

Leechbait

Avatar: 38669 Mon Nov 03 13:38:26 -0500 2008
15

[Grey Goose Mafiosi]

Level 30 Troll

“Permafail”

Samildanach Posted:

Short of people no longer wanting to top the leaderboards, I find it hard to believe that even the flezz and buildr leaderboards can have significant volatility among truly active players. If two equally good players start the game with a season’s difference in timing, and both stay equally active, the first to hit the ground will always have the advantage based on nothing more than hearing about the game first. Given a significant headstart, players of less skill can still maintain a lead over good ones. This, of course, isn’t really even corrected by my suggestion, it’s nature-of-the-beast material – I’m just not sure your examples are that good.

I also don’t think I follow why the “large percentage of people who decide to stop” is a factor. If we’re going to reward performance as compared to the rest of the community (which seems to be what the leaderboard peen is for), why shouldn’t it be based on actual participating members of the community? What’s the qualitative or philosophical distance between removing 10 inactive players or 10,000?

if 1 plpayter wants to grind flezz or valuable moar files

and the plaer who started a seaspn befpre him wants to win ay dom

player grinding flezz catches up on flezz baord

you cant play every part of the game at 100% at the smae time

Samildanach

Avatar: 143751 Tue May 19 21:18:21 -0400 2009
11

Level 34 Hacker

“43 4f 44 45 20 4d 41 53 54 45 52”

Leechbait Posted:

if 1 plpayter wants to grind flezz or valuable moar files

and the plaer who started a seaspn befpre him wants to win ay dom

player grinding flezz catches up on flezz baord

you cant play every part of the game at 100% at the smae time

... true?

However, given any two given players with a month between their start times, if they both want the same peen, and both work at it equally hard with equal focus, the one who started first will always be ahead of the one who came a month later. As discussed, a “Top X players” peen is unachievable for those who started later, unless the players above them on the leaderboard are all on the same plane when it goes down, or decide they individually decide they no longer want to be on a leaderboard.

scully

Avatar: 12797 2015-07-20 16:59:13 -0400
77

[Good Omens]

Level 69 Camwhore

I really do talk ****!

There is a clear difference between a milestone and an effort based achievement peen. Milestones are intended to represent longevity and pure continuation in a game. The idea is simply if you keep on plugging you will achieve those things. Spider-man is a milestone peen. It will simply happen. Veteran is a milestone peen.

The job board peens are hybrid peens. A player must be very focused to earn them quickly, but a player using minimal effort (clicking to accept a job when running one of those forums) will eventually earn those peens.

I think milestone peens are cool. They give a “hey, I’ve been doing this for awhile!” reward. They also have the ability to encourage players to look further as to what is available goal wise.

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