I really think the people who threw more snowballs should've gotten more expensive items, since they in fact put more time and sP into it. It seems more fair, especially for those that didn't get the top ten achievement. This kind of goes back to the tiered prize thing. It honestly should've been done like that and I don't see why it wasn't. Or even a prize shop. Why does it seem that we're moving /away/ from prize shops, when they work so well? Award a point for every so many snowballs thrown. It's so simple, and then there is literally zero reason for anyone to complain about the prizes since they pick what they want and they get the points they earned. Subeta, I can't even look at you right now.

Also, at the beginning of the event, it clearly stated that the items would be retired. I honestly don't think this years items should've been added regardless of how many people complained of multiple use. They're going to dish out the sP to buy them if they really want them. The point is, the prizes were supposed to all be retired melody items, and they weren't. And that's a bit crappy.

/edited for grammar :x

Came to see if the top 10% calculations/winners were revealed due to all the griping And because my news page comment was ridiculously long already

For future similar events it would be nice if the coveted prize (Snow Pile BG) went to the top 50% of the winning team instead. That might keep the 'joining the team I think will win' people from profiting off the hard work of others and lessen the sting to the hard workers on the losing team. (I threw 75k and lost, you threw 5 and won?!) But even then there is a cutoff and someone is gonna be angry. And I'm in agreement on the prize shop. I know it would have been a lot more effort, but it would have been nice to have a shop set up full of some of the older/better/rare/multi-use melody items with our snowball count for points. The more rare the item, the higher the price. That way people who threw insane numbers could afford prizes that casual throwers could not, mid-level throwers whose best just wasn't good enough could get a few smaller prizes or spend it all on a decent prize, and whether your team won or lost you really got rewarded appropriately for your effort.

- Sadly, I don't think "more expensive" items would have fixed the issues from this event. Some items are going to be overly inflated, and not even sell-able at that price point :(

Really the time frame was too long, I think. I got bored of it after about a day and didn't really do much after that.

As for the prizes, when you said retired I didn't think that meant I could ge the prize I got YESTERDAY from melody. So that felt like such a HUGE rip off.

I'd actually like to see a short snowball fight pop up again. I really appreciated that you fixed it so that the snowballs didn't stay on the avatars very long. I enjoyed looking at the individual snowballs on the avatar rather that just a lumpy sooty pile of snow covering the avatars up. :)

I know that I didn't have as much time as I wanted to have to participate (December is a pretty busy month.) It might have been better to have it towards the beginning of the month.

Prizes were ok (hopefully I'll see some of my wanted items deflate a bit now.) I did love the snowball background that the winning team got. :)

No. Auto-refreshers. Period.

I didn't really participate in the event because I only had internet access via phone for weeks but seriously, auto-refreshers were officially allowed and you wonder why people didn't enjoy the Snowball War? Ó___Ò

Nothing I say is probably new by this point, but I'll say it anyway. xD

I'm super glad we were told prizes upfront. I think going back on that and adding prizes / changing it to a prize shop would be a really crappy thing to do, because it would go back on what was initially said, and I'm glad nothing to that extent was added after the fact.

I'm miffed it was an auto-refreshing event. Idk why anyone even bothered when auto-refreshers are allowed. I wish we could steer clear of such events in the future.

Limits should have been put in place at the very beginning. It gave everyone who was there at the beginning an advantage. For competitions like this, things like this really need to be implemented at the start. I wouldn't have minded if there was no limit throughout, because I feel like the limit didn't really solve anything (except maybe lag yes?). One way or another, auto-refreshers could be used. The limit didn't do anything except frustrate the people who weren't auto-refreshing.

Making snowballs unlimited was kind of reckless too. If I had the brains to figure out I could amass thousands for the recycle beast / whatever other reason, I'm sure there were others who figured out the same. It makes me wonder how many snowballs got generated because of this (what was supposed to be) small event. I get that traditional restocking would have obviously not worked. But how about a different way of earning snowballs? Via quests? Random events? The EASE of buying hundreds of these snowballs terrified me. It would lessen the amount generated. It would make it a little more challenging and a little less mundane.

Quoting the entire comment because I agree with every word. Is it a surprise to anyone from the userbase that so many people had a 30k+ score?

You guys have gotta know your userbase better than that by now. I hate the top percentage incentive outside of Battle stuff, it never works out precisely as intended.

I think the event should have been a lot shorter. About 48 hours would have been better.

I think sign ups should have closed after 24 hours and then non-qualifying players removed soon after (although pre-warned this would happen so they would have a chance to stop this from happening). A lot of Team Dolly users were disillusioned towards the end and had the actual scores been available then they might have been happy to put up more competition (or perhaps they would have lost by a lot more?). It would also have stopped the fussing about if the top 10% had been correctly calculated. I think that now it has been recalculated it would be nice to see the actual final scores of the teams.

It was originally said that anyone who threw 1 snowball would get all but one of the prizes and I don't think you even needed to throw one to get the team achievement(?). As it appears 60 - 70% of sign ups never threw a second snowball (based on the numbers given by Keith in the other thread), I think a tiered approach to prizes would be more appropriate.

I liked that the prizes were announced at the start. This meant that I knew what I was playing for so couldn't complain about this aspect too much.

I also liked the concept of the snowball fight although it did feel like it was a case of just buying and throwing snowballs. I would have liked a much more limited source of snowballs and then ways to earn them, eg floating snowballs, releasing fairies, quest rewards, donating to charity etc.

the event is fun. but not for long. after a while, i was asking myself, "what am i doing? clicking the same stuff over and over again." then i started to wonder what RL pending tasks i've had. then, i started to get away from the computer to do somewhat more exciting boring stuff like doing dishes and cleaning the bathroom. however, sincerely thank you for this part because i always got a clean bathroom each time after a few snowballs :)

but the site is lagged a lot and sometimes even just went offline for me. my time allocated for subeta just wasted. i can't even do quests properly, let alone to allocate time for snowballs.

Wha were the prizes for dollus team?

I threw around 11,000 snowballs. I am okay with the fact that that was no where near enough to get the top 10% achievement, I threw what I did to help ensure my team won, but I will say that I don't like this system. It aggravated me during Battle of the Bands as well. Trying to score more than 200 points in that game would have caused pain and twitching in my right hand which I was not willing to subject myself to. Others, insanely, are. I was also surprised to discover that the time limit between throws was initially nothing and then was raised to only 5 seconds. I feel like it would have been better if it had been longer or if there had been a timer on the shop. (Though granted, my internet connection often meant that it took 15 minutes to get through a pile of snowballs anyway so a timer on the shop wouldn't really have affected me.) I was disappointed that we didn't all get old Melody items (though I did) and I had expected them to be older than they were (I'd had thought it would all be stuff that was more than two years old). But then it did say retired and not old or long retired Melody items. The event was too long. 2-3 days would have been better. I can't believe even the initial plan was 5. In defence of this event, I find it odd how everyone says they started developing wild expectations. No one said we would get more prizes at any point than what had been stated at the beginning. I feel that most people are complaining not because of any fault with the event but because they allowed themselves to start believing things without any grounding for these beliefs. They actually told use what the prizes would be before the event ended for once and yet we ended with people expectations beyond what had been stated. Why would there be a tiered system when there was no mention of one? Why would you expect it to be 10% of throwers on EACH team? It said the top 10% from EITHER team which meant which team you were on was irrelevant. The wording was clear as far as I am concerned. Not to say that a tiered system wouldn't have been nice given how the event exploded but to be honest I had no big expectations and was not disappointed with my hoard.

Also what are auto refresers?

I liked knowing the prizes and how to earn them upfront; that was great - alhough the number for the team prize was flexible - it should have said 'earned for throwing X% of your team's total, so people knew that. I wonder if anyone joined a team, threw x number of snowballs as instructed and then left, and is now finding that the number increased?nnI liked that it was a small event and we were told that from the start. Mini events are cool, especially at times of the year when people are busy.nnThe stuff I didn't like has already been discussed. The free-for-all at the start before the timer. The potential for autorefreshers which the site turns a blind eye to. The fact we all knew the scores for each team. The way it just went on too long - I feel like these things should be tidily over before Christmas.

I would've liked the event better if it lasted 5 days, as planned. There's just so much clicking on snowballs someone can do before getting bored. I would've probably participated more if I knew I had a small time limit to throw snowballs. 5 days would have been a perfect time span for the fight. It was a great idea, and I enjoyed it for a bit, but the novelty got old fast.

As far as prizes go, I didn't mind them. I haven't always been around during Luminaire. I went on a lot of hiatuses in the past and missed out on a lot of Melody items. So I liked receiving those as prizes along with the original sled. I was only expecting to get the sled, really, because that's what was promised at the beginning of the fight. It was technically a small side event, so I never expected to get giant prizes.

I hope Subeta does other tiny events like these. I find it makes annual holidays less repetitive. In all, liked the snowball war, do it again, but make it shorter :)

Nah, it wasn't completely bad xD The idea was cute, just needed a bit more planning. It needed timers from the beggining (the same timers for purchasing and throwing snowballs), it needed individual links or hashes that expire every few minutes or few seconds!, it needed a tiered prize system (preferably nothing including top percentages). It could also have a cooldown for people to buy some cocoa and replenish their energies, since I don't think anybody in their mind would be out for 10 days straight in the snow XD

Given it's a short and simple activity, it would be nice if the unique prizes were awarded to everyone past 10k? 20k? (staff could decide this after a few hours or a day) snowballs, instead of "join the team you think will win on the last minute". Closing signups would be nice, but on a really short event with Melody prizes, it could even remain open, as long as special rewards went out based on personal effort. (With clear guidelines too, please.)

About it being a simple average, I think I mentioned something similar in Peka-Boo. It could be nice to have freeloaders excluded from team score numbers until they hit a minimum (in this case, I could suggest the snowball number required for the team prize) and possibly have the total players number count as some sort of multiplier over the score. Nothing huge, maybe an additional 0.01 per person, or whatever number made sense. Like this, the bigger team would have a little reward for "recruiting" more supporters, but the smaller team could still work hard to bypass that difference. The numbers from this war could be used to test some new accounting system.

I think shorter duration + nicer scoring formula + edits on timers/hashes/cooldown periods for cocoa would have gone a long way xD On the creative side of this event, I have no gripes.

[edit] This is a bit of an offtopic edit~

Haha, we wish! xD

Yeah, instructions were to manually delete them all - what could have been hundreds of items n_n There's the option to make a gallery, QS them all in and then delete it, but that presumes the person 1) noticed it in time and 2) would be willing to waste the sp to open the gallery :x It's a bug that has happened... either last year or two years ago, but back then people were allowed to keep the doubles. because deleting gifts on Christmas is evil

Same goes for people who miss a day and still get an Essence of Melody when they collect it early on the 26th (users were allowed to keep it on the first year and then every year after that they're told to delete it, it's a permanent issue) and (I presume) for people who got multiples of team things!

I feel for the UAs too, after sorting the huge mess with the carts, they have to sort the mess with the trees (for those who didn't receive things)...

If staff take anything from this board, it needs to be this, in regards to every single event ever (including but not limited to: dancing, ToTing, kissing, and snowball wars):

The only people who find autorefreshers fun are the people using them to exploit the system, every other user should NOT have to go hunt down an autorefreshing program just to stay on top of an event. And before anyone says "you don't have to" yes you do-- YES. YOU. DO. Because otherwise you have to hand over millions+ of sP to the people who used autorefreshers to get several copies of everything while you only got half of the things because you did it the legitimate way.

All links/urls/hashs/whatever they are need to only work ONCE or at the very very least expire every 60 seconds. Subeta needs to stop catering to those who use programs to win, especially when those programs are "undetectable" and create massively unfair advantages to other users. I've heard time and time again that "we can't fight them" yes you can. Can users autorefresh on the Mystery Box? No, because each link only works once. The site has the ability to trump the unfair programs and it simply chooses not to, and that needs to stop.

If nothing else is taken from this feedback board, this needs to be taken to heart and something needs to change. Please, and thank you.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but there seems to a lot of double talk anymore with the site. That being said, I was under the impression that trophies on the user hover were being phased out in favor of a more streamlined system.

I guess that's no longer a thing too like the phasing out of custom CSS was supposed to be. Of which, both bits of info came directly from the highest admins here.

I disliked the fact that the site was causing more lag because suddenly, snowballs were in high demand and I have to agree that this seemed more like an sP sink for achievement hunters. I didn't have time to sit here for hours on end and spend millions of sP on snowballs to get in the top 10% or whatever. I had other responsibilities offline.

But to make a long story short, I have to agree with the general statement other users have already made on here: this was rushed, it got tedious very quickly and I don't want it done again.

Everything said above, basically. Like I said on the news post, I feel like I got punished for playing fair. I know I could have thrown way more snowballs manually, but as soon as I heard about the auto refreshers and people already being at 20k plus after a day or two, what was the point playing fair? I pretty much gave up then.