here’s a spot to leave your feedback on the new mysterious melody format! the setup is designed to group everyone into cozy lil squads of 4, alongside the iconic luminaire queen herself, melody.

i’m super hyped about this change, especially bc of how smooth it was to implement using the same building blocks as the compost feature. there’s already a great thread with feedback on the kumos site layout, and i’ve been working w/ a designer to get it feeling better than the old site. we’re making moves, i promise.

what i’ll be keeping tabs on

this new format gives us way more data than past years. here’s what i’ll be tracking over the next few days to make sure reality checks my expectations: • users joining groups but not sending any items: this will tell me if there’s a friction issue somewhere. • plateaus at 3-item sends: if we see this, i’ll dig into why it’s happening.

i’m also watching the value of items contributed, just to make sure my mental math isn’t off (no, i’m not expecting 68 million sP 😂).

finally, i’ll be jumping into individual pools to double-check that melody’s donations make sense and to catch any clever trolling attempts before they become a problem.

totally agree!

I've made a ton of huge improvements to the way that we get items, and 🤞those will translate to being able to do better filters on places like the vault and inventory soon!

here’s the deal: the algorithm does its best to balance a bunch of factors, like matching items to wishlists and dividing up melody’s contributions. some days you might get fewer items, but that also means other days you’ll be the one pulling in 7. it’s not perfect—it’s an algorithm i threw together in a week—but it is trying to stay fair overall.

like i mentioned, we’re tracking everything, and if the numbers show we need to make adjustments after a few days, we will. don’t sweat one day’s results too much—it needs a little time to even out. please give it a few days 🎁

wishlists are just one factor melody considers. she also pulls from a pre-selected pool of items like wizard tokens, group-friendly currencies, and event throwbacks that haven’t circulated in a while. stat boosters that fall below a certain sP value also get flagged as options. it’s a mix of wishlist hits and “nice-to-have” items meant to keep the pool interesting and varied.

you’re right that she was buying items too fast for most groups during the last round, so we’ve adjusted her pace to be more methodical this time. like i mentioned before, this is our first shot at an npc agent doing this kind of thing—it’s gonna take a few days to hit the right balance. appreciate your patience in the meantime 💖

if tomorrow’s results look similar, i’ll tweak the algorithm to prioritize wishlists more heavily. that said, don’t forget you’re one of several users in the group—those items might’ve been hits for someone else’s wishlist! 😊

🤷‍♂️ i totally get where you’re coming from, but i want to remind you that this isn’t set up like a gacha game—the focus is really on giving. if the concern is about daily returns, that part probably won’t shift much over the month. i hope you’ll still find joy in the process, even if it’s not always about what comes back 🎁

for me, the fun today was digging through my vault and finding stuff i haven’t seen in years—like the squibly beanbag from that collab i did in my early days (so cute! totally forgot it existed!). tossing it into the pile felt great, and while i’d love to see if someone posts about getting it, i know it’ll make someone smile either way. 😊

i know it doesn’t feel great, but it seems like a few of you ended up in the same group as someone who contributed 0 😔. across all pools, though, only 7% of users put in nothing, so it’s not super common. i totally get how one person can bring down the vibe, and i’m already working on tweaking how many items someone who contributes 0 can receive. over time, those users might just end up grouped together. hang tight, it’s a work in progress! 🙃

Just made some changes to the way that the reset script works. From my developer notes:

In addition, you can no longer join a group from 11:30PM to midnight, while Melody prepares for resetting the groups. We actually had a 4.7% rate of users who donated zero items up until about 11:30, when I assume people got into groups with not enough time to actually send items, that shot us up to a 7% rate.

I'll continue tweaking, but remember the reset only happens once a day so there is only so much room for tweaking before we have to wait and see what happens ;)

🚨 OH, QUICK NOTE 🚨

i’ve been thinking about why there might be a gap between the stats i saw coming in yesterday and how things felt for y’all at the end of the day.

part of this (as mentioned earlier, i implemented user shops entirely for this!) involved getting a better understanding of the “user price” of items. as discussed in this thread on npc agents and historical prices, we’re now able to analyze shop purchases over time to calculate more accurate pricing.

in the past, we updated these values sparingly (sometimes only after multiple purchases) because i was worried about it being gamed. but with years of shop history now, that’s almost impossible, and we can even consider features like alerting you if you’re pricing an item way below market value.

right now, there’s a background script running to update every item’s “user price” based on this new data. in many cases, it’s drastically lowering the value of items to reflect their actual prices in user shops today. for example, i just watched it adjust 200 items, and many dropped from 5–10 million sP to around 20–40k—that’s what they’re actually worth in shops rn, but the old values weren’t being updated properly as prices fell.

so, if you pulled an item from your vault thinking it was “worth” 5 million sP, but it showed up as lower when distributed, that’s likely because the script adjusted its value during the day. this won’t apply to every item, but given the swings i’m seeing, it might explain a chunk of the discrepancies.

this process should smooth out over the next week or so as the script finishes running on all items. it’s a heavy task (digging through years of history for each item), so it’s running slowly during off-peak times to avoid bogging down the database.

[edit] i just watched this item update from ~4 million to 50k

i totally get where you’re coming from! i can’t take anything away from your experience, and it’s clear how much you loved the old format. that said, the feedback we got from that version showed that a lot of people ended up paired with folks who didn’t participate at all, which left them feeling pretty bummed. while we didn’t collect much data back then, what we did see showed participation dropping steadily throughout the month.

i hear you loud and clear about wanting more ways to connect or personalize things within your group. here’s what i’m working on to bring some of that energy back: 1. 🎭 unmask: this will let you reveal yourself to your group if you choose, and anyone else who unmasks will be visible to you too! 2. 💖 react: you’ll be able to send reactions to your group throughout the day. i’m building this using the dropdown system (and the new reactions on kumos) so you can express yourself without fully giving away who you are. these reactions will show up in a little chat for everyone to see.

your feedback is super valuable, and you’re absolutely right—it’s missing that human touch rn. most people didn’t seem to get it from the old feature either, but i think these tweaks could help bring back some of that warmth and interactivity you’re looking for. 🙏

day two went out last night, how fun!

it looks like about 10% more items only went out to a single person, and 3% of those went out to the person who sent them in :( i'm still tweaking this method, I'll be making some tweaks through the day today and I'll post about them here -- but just know that i'm looking at and reading the feedback ❤

smart pairing isn’t live yet—we need about a week of data before we can start doing matchmaking based on past results.

right now, we’re tracking a daily “score” tied to your pool. i get that it’s frustrating when the distribution feels off (sounds like you might’ve gotten stuck with low-value items from one person), but after melody processed everything yesterday, most items (~90%) were valued around 200k.

i’ve been making daily updates to improve things. yesterday’s changes included:

today, i’m working on improving value matching so contributors ideally receive items closer in value to what they put in. that said, edge cases still exist, and if you contribute the most or least, your results may average out over time. hang in there—it’s getting better! 🙃

i’m working on melody’s items today too, but keep in mind—it’s 12/12, and she’s got to budget for buying presents for hundreds of pools every day for the rest of the month! i can’t have her blowing all her sP in the first few days just because people felt like tossing in items worth 5 million sP. she’s shopping from user shops, which is fine—puts some sP into the system (not a huge amount) but also eats into her own spending money.

back in the day, she’d just wave her hands and poof an item into existence, but i’m really trying to cut back on that kind of magical generation to keep the item economy tighter. might loosen up on that a bit though, who knows. 😏

hehe, good thing i have to care what people do with their monopoly money. inflation hits even a virtual economy like subeta—if we hand out a billion sP a day, prices spike to match, and suddenly we’re scrambling to increase prizes so new players aren’t just locked out of progress. and surprise, that just dumps more billions into the system. rinse, repeat.

irl i vibe with relaxed monetary policy (modern monetary theory 🙏), and i’m cool with throwing out piles of sP if it actually circulates. melody is a great example (so far she’s burned through 1,328,121,626 SP 👏). BUT the higher the item price tier, the tighter the supply. if melody scoops everything in user shops, it causes weird upward pressure, and yeah, that locks newer players out of the game again.

it’s a balance. i think we’ve hit a good spot lately. melody items aren’t supposed to be the best in the pool!

great question! rn it considers both rarity AND price, but if it can’t find a price, it makes an assumption. (unless it’s r1-99 and dropped in the last 2 weeks—then we assume the price is low bc it hasn’t hit user shops yet.) if the price is totally unknowable, it leaves it blank.

i was gonna try using CSC values to guesstimate, but CSC is inherently “worth more” than a CW since you can spend it on anything, so there’s no clean 1:1 comparison.

today i’m digging through those scores to make sure they’re aligning w/ expectations.

also, i hear y’all about the events! i’ll add an event midway through the day for new joiners and one 2 hrs before the end for ppl who haven’t entered anything yet.

finally, thinking about bringing back ‘quality’ since we’ve got enough days to make better comparisons now.

🎉 some updates!

📝 Mysterious Melody Updates

• You now get a random selection of items from the wishlists of the others in your group (sans yourself & melody)
• The reset prize distribution script priortizes wishlist items even more going to someone with that item on their wishlist, especially if it was one of the shown items
• ⏲️ New Events
  • If you've signed up for Mysterious Melody this month, but maybe not in the last few days, you'll get a reminder.
  • If you've entered and haven't sent any items, you'll get a reminder at noon and a few hours before the reset script runs. i'm interested to see how this changes the stats!
• ⭐ Pool Quality uses the value and some other stats (wishlist items, CWs, etc) to determine the quality of your pool compared to the average

i'm still watching feedback and making tweaks, but we're starting to settle!

and finally, some major improvements to the 🤖 melody bot 🎁

the wishlist item selection strategy has been significantly upgraded to make it smarter and more effective. here’s what’s new:

Increased Priority

• wishlist weight boosted:
  the wishlist strategy weight has been increased from 2x to 3x, meaning it will prioritize this approach more often over others.

Better Item Selecting

• multi-user consideration: instead of focusing on one random user’s wishlist, the strategy now evaluates all pool users' wishlists simultaneously. this was an error in how this worked before :(
• popularity ranking: items are ordered by how many users want them, prioritizing the most wanted items first.

Smarter Scoring System

each potential wishlist item is scored based on multiple factors:

• 50% weight: number of users wanting the item.
• 30% weight: price (lower is better, as long as it’s within the budget range).
• 20% weight: rarity (higher is better).

Improved Filtering

• exclusions:
  • users in the waiting room are ignored.
  • melody’s own wishlist is excluded from popularity counts.
• requirements:
  • items must still meet price and rarity thresholds.

Enhanced Logging

• logs now provide better insights into the process:
  • unique wishlist items found are reported (just something for us to keep track of.....)
  • each potential item is logged with its score and the number of users wanting it.

What This Means for 🤖 Melody

• more wishlist focus: the strategy will attempt wishlist-based purchases more frequently.
• better prioritization: items wanted by multiple users will take precedence.
• balanced decisions: price and rarity are considered alongside user demand.
• optimized outcomes: melody will pick the best item overall using the scoring system.

Reading the notes on the pool quality - I'm not sure that it's doing what I'd like (which is encouraging people to maybe bump up their items) so I might remove it entirely.

The wishlist section is mostly intended to give you some ideas, not force you to purchase something off a wishlist. It chooses entirely randomly (but with a limit of up to one CW per person), and prioritizes a user getting their wishlist items in the reset (but won't give someone 8 items if they're all wishlist items and none to anyone else).

Melody prioritizes buying WL items, but has a sP limit, so won't be buying godlies for anyone :)

I still agree on making it so that folks can communicate, there has been some work in that direction but I'm not sure I'll get it finished before MM is done this year, but a great improvement for next year ;)

It will do it's best while giving out the presents during the reset, however it might show items that multiple people have on their wishlist! you'd be surprised at the amount of overlap, I found running it over todays pools that more than 25% of people in groups have wishlist items that overlap!