weekend notes: addressing feedback and clarifying testing goals

hey everyone! it’s the weekend, so i’m not working much, but i wanted to address a few points that seem to be taking up a lot of space in the conversation. i think it’ll help clear the air and calm things down a bit.

0. i was wrong about quest points

so, it’s every 5 quests. mostly. i ran a script on 5,000 quests, and while it’s supposed to be every 5 quests, there are some inconsistencies. the code is not exactly a joy to read without documentation. curse young keith for not writing any 💀.

this does mean it’s less rng than i thought, but my main point still stands: quest points are a currency you bank until we release something you really want.

with reputation, the idea is to make rewards more dynamic. not only will you unlock access to new items at higher tiers (e.g., we can add new tiers for npcs a few times a year), but you’ll also gain bonuses like increased prizes. i’ve loved the discussion in this thread about npcs reacting differently to your rank—imagine being addressed by your title or seeing unique dialogue as your reputation grows. it’s a cool way to make the site feel more alive and reactive.

this system also has potential beyond quests. for example, future events (no promises on a plot—resources are tight, i’m still the only programmer, etc., etc.) could take your npc reputation into account.

picture this: high reputation with blake steele could start you inside the krypts instead of at the entrance. or maybe an npc who knows you well gives you access to exclusive shortcuts or insights.

this is all brainstorming rn, but it shows why a reputation system feels more rewarding and versatile than just banking quest points. it opens the door to a richer, more immersive experience across the site.

1. this is a feedback thread for a testing feature

• the numbers are placeholders, purchasing items doesn’t work, and i’ve already outlined that there’s a lot left to do.
• this kind of testing is not about everything working perfectly yet—it’s about catching issues and gathering feedback. if change makes you anxious, i suggest reading the thread and waiting for the official release instead of jumping into testing.
• for example, nightly resets won’t happen during testing because the feature isn’t live yet. what will happen to the blue building? not decided yet.

2. more npcs = more quests

• i’m aiming to drastically increase the number of npcs offering quests. there are tens/hundreds of npcs on the site who could give these smaller quests for picking up items.
• the idea is that while you’ll do fewer quests per npc, you’ll have significantly more npcs to choose from.
• their shops will offer more prizes, giving us a great place to release new items while balancing rewards and availability.
• i'd be interested in how many wizard tokens those of you have banked who would be sad about the loss of additional tokens. are you actually excited to get those extra tokens daily? judging by the banked tokens in currency, i just can't imagine that is the case for most users.

3. manual options still exist

• you don’t have to use the new auto-options! if you prefer, you can grab the item from your inventory or manually navigate to shop search, buy it yourself, and come back to the quest page. i'll make this more clear 🔎
• the new options are there to make things easier, but they’re not mandatory.

4. most users aren’t doing all the quests

• it’s great to hear that some of you enjoy completing all the daily quests! however, that’s mostly gold account users—the site’s most active group.
• based on site data, the number of users who even do a single quest daily is low, and the number of users completing all quests is even lower.
• please keep in mind when you're talking about anecdotes like how you play the site that we have thousands of active users a day, and most spend less than 30 minutes on the site.

5. rethinking junk items & frag loops

• i hear the feedback about junk items, but let’s talk about why that’s even a thing. what purpose do junk items serve? none.
• tossing them into the fragmatizer to zap into currency isn’t engaging or fun. i’d rather have fewer items circulating, more ways to spend sP, and better rewards for actually doing things.
• the idea that there are even "junk items" that need to be collected to frag is a broken loop.

6. quests aren’t "fun," but they’re essential

• quests aren’t the most fun mechanic, but they keep the economy moving.
• that said, i’m actively working on rewriting games into kumos (tiles, anyone?) and trying to balance these system changes with creating actual fun.

a personal note

i’d really like to keep posting feedback threads like this—gathering input, making changes, and sharing things while they’re still in progress. i get it—change is hard. but it’s happening. i need to make changes to keep myself interested in the site, because how things are running now isn’t sustainable.

the question of "why fix something that isn’t broken" is frustrating because i can see how these things are broken. quests are something that less than 15% of active users even touch daily. less than 2.5% of active daily users complete all of their quests. that’s a broken system. these changes are aimed at fixing it by:

• balancing and increasing rewards,
• decreasing the total number of quests per giver but increasing variety, and
• giving you goals to work toward, like higher reputation and better rewards.

i want this process to feel collaborative, but that only works if we’re open to discussing changes instead of jumping to ultimatums.

thanks for reading, and for your feedback so far!

🧠 Idea Zone

there are some areas that I still haven't considered, and would love ideas on how to make them more fun. in particular, Shinwa. Right now she's a basic layer on top of our NPC quests, asking you to go back and forth to the other quests, and pick up the pieces of her bracelet. Why is it broken hundreds of times a day and scattered to her friends / allys? i'm not really sure.

so - this is a good opportunity to re-think how Shinwa works. Can you think of any fun or interesting mechanic that she could provide on top of quests (maybe doing away with her bracelet entierly, or re-using it for something else?). And how would you change her prize structure? I know that everyone wants particular prizes, but could we make it less frustrating when you don't get what you want?

If you click on the items, it brings you to the item page. They should have hovers, I'm not sure why they aren't working for you but I'll take a look and make sure they get back to working!

I completely agree on the prizes from quest givers. I want them to be unique, and make sense to the giver. That means creating more personalized lists of items they hand out (and maybe even removing those items from stock in other places). Another reason reducing quests to 3 per giver means that we can be more unique with the item prizes and not feel like they're going to devalue immediately. If we add 10 new items to the wizard prize items, we don't want those to feel sad and usless immediately!

i completely understand and respect the amount of time and effort you’ve put into the site over the past 18 years. that’s an incredible investment, and it’s not something i take lightly. i don’t want to devalue the hard work you’ve done—in fact, i want to celebrate it.

at the same time, i have to balance that with ensuring we’re not “pulling the ladder up behind us.” just because you’ve worked hard on something that might not be fun or useful anymore doesn’t mean new or returning players should have to climb the exact same hills.

technology has come a long way in 18 years, and so has what we can deliver. my goal is to say, “amazing job, here’s an achievement for what you’ve done,” and then make that feature more fun and accessible for everyone going forward.

acknowledging the grind is important, but sometimes i need to rework features so they’re less of a grind for others. that doesn’t erase the effort you’ve put in—it’s still an impressive accomplishment! it just means we’re evolving to meet the needs of the community as it grows and changes. i hope that makes sense, and i truly appreciate everything you’ve done here over the years. ❤️

Oooooo I love the idea of her using others reputation.

Maybe she has a list of 'ally' and 'enemy' NPCs, and asks you to do something different depending on who you're going to, and you're "empowering" that piece of the bracelet, vs just fetching it for her?

oof, my bad—that was totally my fault. i quoted you, but the posts got all jumbled… honestly, i’m not even sure what i was planning to say 😰. i think i rolled it into my larger post.

thanks for brainstorming here, i really appreciate it! 💖

i’m not against the idea of a hard daily limit on quests (with extra for GAs) where you get to decide how to allocate them among the npcs. that said, i think having to skip some npcs might be tough for some users.

for a lot of folks, being told which quests they can do each day—and then just doing all of them—is simpler and more straightforward than picking from a larger list and filling up X quests.

these are different play styles, and i think there’s room to find a happy middle ground that works for everyone. 😊

hey — i’m really trying here to have a productive back-and-forth. i’ve acknowledged that change is hard, that change is coming, and that i’m willing to meet in the middle on the things you’re talking about.

but comments like “lol i just don’t get how hard this is to grasp” aren’t engaging in the same way. if that’s the tone this conversation is taking, i’m just going to stop responding to your posts.

you have a real opportunity here to help shape the feature you’re discussing, and instead, it feels like you’re just trashing me. i don’t get it. if you want to contribute constructively, i’m here for that—but this approach isn’t it.

additionally, as i’ve mentioned in the original post and replies, every single item currently in quest shops will be in tier 0. this means they’ll be immediately available for sP, and you can buy 3 per day. the changes only apply to new items added moving forward—and even then, you can always buy those from other users who reach the tiers before you.

banking currencies isn’t inherently bad—we just want to make sure you’re banking them for reasons that feel productive and intentional, like they’re part of the game. if your mindset is “i always need to have X just in case this rare thing happens,” then that’s a sign we’re not making things predictable enough. it shouldn’t feel like you need to hoard thousands of tokens (which represent your time and money!) for some hypothetical scenario.

for quest points, we can see the average amount users have and how often they’re spent. from our side, releasing items that get immediately bought up and forgotten about (like seasonal quest point items) feels like a waste of effort. this new system gives us a better way to release npc-themed items without it feeling pointless.

there are always two sides to these things: the players completing the quests and the team designing and releasing the items. we’re trying to find a balance that works for both.

i went ahead and reset the 🧙‍♂️ wizard quests. since the reset isn’t on the cron, it has to be done manually—and i might not poke it every night while we’re testing. 😉

someone asked if i could add another quest to show how the system works, so i threw together one that only took me about 15 minutes to create (and that upgrade applies to all quests!). check it out:

miss maybel’s minion quest. imagine it might be more fun if she prompted you from her shop (not the case yet, but maybe someday).

what went into this quest:

in 15 minutes, i:

• created a new npc, reputation tiers for miss maybel, and wrote a bit of backstory for her.
• designed a quest specifically asking for minions (something that was way harder to do before 💀).
• set up a prize pool with:
• one high-rarity food item,
• one high-value food item from user shops, and
• two random food items.

this prize setup is just an example of how much more targeted and creative we can be with rewards now. with fewer quests per day, we can make the rewards way more interesting and meaningful.

why this matters:

• you immediately start earning reputation with this npc, building a relationship where none existed before.
• as you gain reputation, you unlock bonuses like extra sP from her quests.
• it also creates a perfect spot for new content, like releasing a batch of new minions tied to her reputation tiers.

just tossing new items into the minion shop feels underwhelming, right? but releasing them as part of a quest system with a story, rewards, and goals? that feels more engaging and fun.

something fun and new—while building out the backend for that quest, i can now see this:

this lets me understand the general balance of profit from quests—how much comes from items versus sP. if we add a currency (which this tool can calculate using assigned sP values), i can see how that shifts things too.

it’s a great way to make sure we’re hitting the right balance, keeping the sense of accomplishment and the tangible rewards (aka cold hard cash 💰). i promise i’m not making changes blindly—everything is being tested and adjusted to keep or improve the overall experience!

aklsdjfalksdjf SLIGHT PANIC ATTACK.

If you did the wizard quests and got a custom wearable, or staff item (!!) they should have been deleted automatically from your inventory. If you moved them somewhere, we have a note -- please just delete them so I don't have to track them down.

The updates I made for Mabel (so that I could break out her items individually) made the Wizard break. I've also added guardrails to the prizes so that can't happen again in the future 😰

just to be clear: i’m not saying wizard tokens are a bad thing or that i have any plans to remove them. they’re probably our first non-sP currency (baby’s first currency 🥺), and i vaguely remember you could get them by kicking… the coin machine? anyway, nostalgia aside—tokens are staying.

what i do want is for getting those tokens to feel rewarding, not just something rote you “have” to collect just in case the token shop restocks or some random chance comes along.

what i’m trying to build with reputations (and similar systems) is a foundation we can expand on—something that feels less like a chore. games like this will always have some grind, but i’d rather it feel purposeful and satisfying.

for example (BIG HYPOTHETICAL, THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE, PLEASE DON’T PANIC): imagine we decide to use this system to release a new set of godlies. we could add a super-high reputation tier for a few npcs that requires quests, battles, and other features over time to unlock.

at that tier, maybe you can only buy one item per month. this means:

1. you’d steadily work toward the items you want.
2. once you get them, you could sell extras at a premium, since you’d be one of the few with access.

to me, that feels way better than hoarding thousands of a currency you’re unsure you’ll even need, only to feel bummed if you miss your chance to spend it. it’s a more structured, less frustrating system that still rewards effort and engagement. the quests we're testing here are a part of what i'm hoping to make a broader, cross site change.

• Added Rumi as a quest giver -- this is another example of how easy it'll be for us to add quest givers, and new NPCs to the site. The longest part of this was writing her intro text! I'm actually really having fun writing these for NPCs I haven't looked at in a long time, so expect a few more to get added through the day as I test other things
• 🐛 The Use From Vault option now shows the correct number of items you have from your vault. If you used this option in the last few days it might have used up a whole stack of items. I'm going to add another quest today that gives out spell ingredients in large quantities to compensate, so keep an eye out for that. Unfortunately I can't roll back more than a few hours of quests :(
• The order of the options has been changed, with buying from user shop at the top

To answer some questions, as well:

1. The purchase from main shop option does not currently take into account buffs or discount cards. It will at some point (I'll have to write that code!) but for now you'll be paying a slight premium. It also will not increase related achievements.
2. The achievements for the Wizard are missing from these quests - the ability to increment achievements is in the code, I just haven't toggled it on for the testing (since it's likely it'll be reset multiple times through the day)

quests won’t have restrictions like sarah’s current system, where you need to have under a certain amount of sP to do her quests. that limitation will be removed.

you will, however, need to make choices about which npcs to focus on for reputation. if we release new items, you’ll decide whether it’s worth building reputation with that npc to access those rewards. this approach creates a great goal-setting mechanism, encouraging players to work toward something meaningful over time.

the centralized shop system we have now—where you earn points and can buy sarah items without ever doing sarah’s quests—is part of why we’ve moved away from releasing items that way. it doesn’t encourage the same level of engagement or connection to the quests themselves, which is something we’re aiming to improve with these updates.

you don't have to grind with any NPC you don't want to, and can hopefully rely on other users to grind for NPCs you don't, who can purchase the items for those shops and sell them to you, maybe at a small premium ;) we aren't requiring you to earn every point of reputation on the site, but you can, it will just take time.

i hope this gives some insight into why we’re making these changes and how they’ll shape a more dynamic and rewarding system! 😊

🤷‍♂️ It sounds like you'll be buying items from other users. Yes, there will be books, but they'll be buyable with sP by the users who earn the tiers that they're on which should make them a lot more available on the second market. You'll hopefully have way more choice in buying them.

Just wanted to flag that i'm not ignoring your layout issues! I'm hoping that any of the changes I've pushed in the last day would fix it, but they clearly haven't. I'm going to download Opera to my PC to see if I can pinpoint why / how it's broken for you. It works on mobile because that's safari.

regarding porting over reputation—we won’t be doing that. but i want to reassure you that all of the items currently available as prizes will move to tier 0. this means you’ll be able to buy them with sP without needing to complete a single quest or earn any reputation at all. in fact, you’ll have easier access to everything released through the quest shop so far!

new items, however, will be added to new tiers. everyone on the site will start from the same place and work toward those rewards. this gives us an exciting new way to release items—one that isn’t tied to currencies people have been stockpiling for years.

having individual npc shops also opens up tons of possibilities for future items. i’m already imagining all the fun ideas our artists can explore with so many unique npcs to create for!

on achievements: the existing ones for quests will absolutely be incorporated (there’s just a bug with incrementing points right now that needs to be fixed before launch). i held off adding them during testing since quests are being reset frequently, and i wanted to keep things fair for everyone while we work through this phase.

(and everyone else this turned into a more general "state of what i'm talking about" post)

tl;dr:

• daily quest cap: a max number of quests per account daily (bonus for GAs).
• individual quest limits: most npcs = 3 quests/day, special npcs like the hustler = 1 quest/day.
• customizable focus: choose how to allocate your daily quests, earning reputation with npcs you care about.
• more npcs & rewards: tons of new quest givers with unique, themed shops—battle gear, avatar items, pet-focused rewards, and more!
• reputation grows beyond quests: interacting with npcs outside quests will also build reputation.

i’m so excited about these changes because they’re going to make quests so much more dynamic and rewarding! 😊

instead of doing the same routine every day, you’ll get to decide how to allocate your daily quest points based on what interests you. for example:

• into battling? build reputation with npcs offering battle gear in their shops.
• love avatars? focus on npcs with avatar-related rewards.
• obsessed with your pets? find npcs offering pet-centric items.

and while you're working toward the battle reputation, your friends might be working toward the rumi reputation for the sickest stickers on the site. they'll be able to buy them every day with sP once they unlock the tier—and can stick them to you right away! 😅 hopefully, people will go hard in one direction and sell those items for a markup, creating a thriving market.

if we see that isn’t the case—that items are impossible to get and aren’t making it into collections or inventories—we’ll absolutely make changes.

but i’m really excited about the prospects of a system like this and what we can do with fewer quests per npc. it gives us the ability to target specific groups of items, both as requests and rewards, in a way that feels more purposeful and engaging. i can’t wait for you to try it out!

i want to move away from relying on rng for those kinds of benefits and come up with more creative, intentional ways to offer them. yes, the days of getting 3 morty cards are over—but i absolutely want that kind of bonus to stick around. i promise i’ll have a solid replacement ready before we go live and it’s removed from the main site.

regarding holiday items—this update will actually make it much easier for amber to distribute those! i’m really hoping it means we can release items more frequently as limited-time quest prizes.

for example, amber can now create a “location” (our backend term) with all the items for a specific event, like morostide. she can then assign that location as a bonus prize pool to every quest, adding one extra bonus item from that location. this wasn’t possible before—it used to be hard-coded and couldn’t handle any kind of overlapping bonuses.

i think this opens up some really exciting possibilities for future events and prizes! 😊

major backend updates: beta territory!

i’ve been thinking about how best to organize these updates as i work on features, especially ones like this that mostly exist on the backend. these changes might not seem flashy, but they’re huge improvements for how we run the site behind the scenes. if this works out, i’ll write a more detailed post later—so for now, big THIS IS BETA TERRITORY messaging here. 😉

what’s changing?

quest item tracking previously, when a quest giver asked for an item, it would just… disappear. and when they gave you an item? poof—created out of thin air. this made it really hard for us to:

• track what “rarity” means.
• control how many items are circulating on the site.
• monitor which items are being shuffled around the most.

now, quest givers have a finite stock of items to hand out. their inventory will decrease as they give them out. don’t worry—the base numbers are very high! this also means we can easily do things like:

• add exactly 10,000 holiday rewards to a quest’s prize pool.
• guarantee that only those 10,000 items will go out during the event. no more, no less. again, it seems so simple! it's not!

we’re adding more quests for testing over the next few days! you’ll notice some quests have lower sP payouts than others—similar to how quests work now.

this means you’ll need to prioritize which quests you do daily (you won’t be able to do them all) based on the prizes you want. for example, saggi’s quests will be added soon, and he’ll offer high sP rewards. however, some quests might involve risk—you’ll need to assess if the items he asks for are worth it. not every quest will be a guaranteed win!

with the hustler quest, for example, he currently pays out 55% more than other quests:

testing & balancing

i can now simulate 10, 50, or 100 sample quests to see payouts and make adjustments. while the payouts aren’t yet at the level of what you’d get doing hundreds of quests a day now, we’re actively tweaking.

this also lets us see how shops react—like what happens if 100 hustler quests were run in a day and users had to buy items for them. i’m confident we can add at least 1,000 more hustler quests to the pool. since each user can only do one hustler quest per day, it should be manageable.

with fewer quests overall, we can ask for more rare items (since we’re not asking for 30+ of them daily) and offer bigger payouts.

the end goal

when all is said and done, you’ll earn roughly the same value from quests as you do now. however, you’ll have more control over what you’re earning: • pure sP? focus on quests with high payouts, at the cost of item prizes. • item prizes? prioritize those, though you’ll earn less sP.

for example, maleria might stop putting her dark matter items in restocking shops, making them exclusive quest prizes instead. item rewards across the board are being tweaked to make this more rewarding.

tldr: • if your goal is sP, you can focus on quests with high payouts but fewer items. • if you’re after item prizes, you can prioritize those at the cost of some sP. • you won’t get huge rewards from every quest—you’ll need to strategize and choose wisely!

these changes are about giving you control while keeping things interesting and rewarding. 😊

If you click on the item, it'll take you to that 'item page', which 5 of the cheapest shop search results. You can buy directly from there!

I'm going to continue to refine this, and shop search will get it's own page, but we're building the new site brick by brick 🧱

I think it's mentioned on the first page (and I just added the "view official posts" to make this easier for me too 😰) but lots of the buffs will be re-worked to go with the new system. Instead of being RNG, they'll go with the new reputation tiers. And in cases of things like the wizard giving you a bonus token for the last quest, that still happens.

Can you walk me through how the current system is fun, what you'd like to keep (outside of the reputation system, of course, you've provided that feedback) and what you might add for fun?

i’m continuing to tweak prizes and requests, especially as i add more functionality to what quest givers can ask for or give. for now, it might make sense to just try one of each quest per day (or revisit later), since the feature is resetting often.

what i’m looking for right now is feedback on the flow of the quests and the general idea of how they’re working—not detailed feedback on specific requests or prizes yet. that’s on me for not being clearer about what i’m testing or where feedback will be most useful! if you feel like the balance isn’t there yet, feel free to step back and revisit in a few days—testing isn’t required, and reputations and progress will all reset before the feature goes live.

i also just added functionality for requesting scrolls and potions, so what i’m testing is whether those requests are working and if the system is correctly balancing their costs against rewards.

and keep in mind that while you're doing the manual work to make those scrolls, most users, right now, will just buy them up while they're cheap in user shops. that's what determines the price of the prize you get at the end, is a combination of what it thinks the items are valued at. as the cheaper ones get bought up, that should increase and the prizes might reflect what you're thinking more. and we can only do that (ask for scrolls) because she has so few quests per day, but you're probably right about the prize not being enough.

regarding your concern here:

we’re planning to build in ways to “catch up,” which we’ve done in other areas before (like item hunt). this could look like:

• reputation bonuses during special events: e.g., “catch up on maleria reputation this weekend—she’s giving 5 reputation per quest and you can do an extra 5 quests.”
• items or methods to boost reputation: maleria might sell an item for 50,000 sP in her shop that boosts you to tier 10, but only if you’re at tier 5 or above.

i also have a dashboard tracking average reputation levels (only including users who’ve started earning reputation). when we add new tiers, we’ll use that data to make sure most users are in range—or, if not, we’ll add catch-up mechanisms.

i promise, the goal is not to make you feel like you need a time machine and four years of clicking to catch up. the aim is to create clear, transparent goals that feel achievable and rewarding. 😊