The fact that people are logging numbers that are humanly impossible is a pretty good indicator they are using programs. "can't track it" is more like "can't be bothered to track it"

Until I see the numbers myself I'm not going to believe any hearsay. Unfortunately, throwing 2 snowballs is considered participation and if they want to drag down the rest of their team then... Participation is technically defined as "the action of taking part in something" and technically those people who threw 2 snowballs did participate.

In the future, I think that in theory, the Subeta team should think about how to deal with freeloaders. But I do think the system of an average score among users made everyone on their teams accountable, and I liked it in theory. It's really too bad that there was people like that on both teams, but I can't think of any way to deal with this issue besides installing a system like the one that was run for the Snowball Fight, or kicking out those who haven't thrown over x. But what would x be?

No, you can't track auto-refreshers. Who would know if you spent that time throwing 10k snowballs by hand or with a refresher? There would be no way to do it besides using the honour system. I think Keith once said that auto-refreshers put a huge strain on servers and users shouldn't be doing it, but there isn't a way to track it.

To my understanding, you would be able to try and block auto-refreshers by installing different blocks, things you have to click, etc. but you wouldn't be able to detect if they were using it. We can try to deter people from auto-refreshing (which should be happening more I think) but we can't detect it.

There's a board that I found here that's a little old but still relevant.

We should be deterring users from using auto-refreshers and we should be putting in methods that don't reward auto-refreshers, but we cannot actually detect the usage of them.

In theory, the idea of the Snowball Fight was great. But with a lot of user feedback I think there is always room for improvement. I understand why people may be complaining - I totally understand. I wasn't too into the event. Yes, I was in Team Tobias, I threw under 1000 snowballs due to my disinterest in the event, but it was still fun for me at the beginning.

TBH I think the easiest way to deter auto-refreshers, and stop awarding the users who do auto-refresh, is to just change how event prizes go out.

Subeta is really in love with it's 'top x' prizes, but the ONLY events I can think of where that works are something like a battle event where you can't just auto-refresh your way to the top, or the ornament/HA/etc contests. If Subeta wants to do events like this Snowball Fight or 'turn in Free Beer for stuff' bs the prizes should simply be participation based, with no "winners", and the tiers should stop at something that a user could hit in an hour or two a day of participation. Throw 50 snowballs and get a sled and a trophy, throw 100 snowballs get five random Melody items, throw 200 and get 10 Melody items, throw 500 get 20, the end. No higher tiers, no top players, no 'refresh this page 100k times over the next 5 days.' If the users who are on all day every day get bored within two hours of the event starting, oh well, because forcing them to auto-refresh just to participate doesn't make them not-bored.

I totally agree there should be more deterrents to AR. My whole point is that it is encouraged and rewarded during site events, which is insane and completely unfair to the user base at large. Several other users on this page alone said straight up you have to use a program to even have a HOPE of catching up to other users. No, you can't necessarily "track" ARing but the results alone will show you who is doing it. People are throwing 8-10k snowballs a day for ten days and you're saying that is humanly possible? Nah, it's not and I think it's pretty clear those people are using a program. No one is staying up for ten days straight refreshing the page by hand. As an event, it lasted longer than Vesnali.. which is way too long for a snowball fight that should have went for 2-3 days tops. I think that contributed to the ARing (because just refreshing a page is boring as hell).

I would also think that since that behavior is known to be hard on the site (that has enough trouble as it is and IIRC, the site went down a few times and lagged a whole lot), not to mention pissing people off, it wouldn't be a thing that is overlooked and brushed off. I think not even trying to police it is frankly lazy, especially when people have no problem admitting they are doing it. It can be against the rules without actively persecuting people who are putting up reasonable, attainable numbers for things. Common sense alone should be able to point out who is abusing bots and whos putting in work.

ETA I completely agree that "top x players" is a huge contribution to the ar problem. And that refreshing a page 100,000 times is excruciatingly paint drying boring.

Tiers are a really, really, interesting idea. The only problem with that is how high you're going to set the highest tier. It has to be a hard-to-obtain number but not so hard that no one will be able to get it. I think with the principle of the Snowball Fight with team vs. team fighting, it didn't seem like a necessary thing to include tiers. When you have 1 side vs. another it's simplest to think about it with the "top x" prize system.

I personally stopped participating because throwing snowballs just wasn't interesting. With or without an auto-refresher the event started getting fairly repetitive for me, and I think that's another facet to think about. Even with tiers though, people will continue to use auto-refreshers for their own convenience, especially when you have to wait a certain interval before clicking a button. It would reward those who throw many snowballs, yes, and be a good alternative to the "top 10%" idea, but auto-refreshers will still be present.

But that being said, I really hope tiers are thought about the next time an event happens. We have similar systems with our Achievements, so why not with an event?

With so many users on site, how would staff have the time to look at who throws how many snowballs? They'd have to go through everyone who seems suspicious like their activity. However, we can't actually figure out if they are using auto-refreshers. We can say that their activity looks suspicious and then maybe freeze an innocent person who really does have all day to throw.

The only way to think about it would be with a tracking system. That system would automatically freeze people who seem suspicious, who really might not be at all. They would have to go through long ticketing system, very much like Neo, and that creates more people too. We would be working on the assumption that because of irregular behaviour, this person should be frozen. However, we wouldn't have any actual proof of whether they did it or not, and I think that's problematic.

I would agree that the Snowball Fight went on waayyy too long without any variants to the event. Next time, it should've been shorter. Either that, or different variations should've been added.

If ARs are going to be against the rules, then we need a proper consequence. And we also need a really good way to decide if people are using ARs. I think it's super dangerous to be working on assumptions without hard evidence that this person is using ARs. Just a suspicion because of odd numbers should not be enough to freeze/suspend a person. There would need to be additional measures to decide if people are truly using ARs.

I understand why ARs should be blocked, I just don't think that there is a way to tell if people are truly using ARs. Instead, we should be exploring other methods that will deter people from using ARs. If there is no reward for using them, then ARs will not be a problem. (In theory, anyways)

I think you're right in a lot of ways. I had only heard that the total number of team members had gone down and that it was because staff had cleared inactive users. At least it was hopeful heresy. I would have liked to see the numbers myself. I don't mind using the averages as a score. I wouldn't have thought of using any way other than that. It is usually a pretty fair way of scoring.

That two just burns me though. I mean, I was kind of fine with everything else. Except this. Well this and no leader board. I'm normally fine with whatever the staff decides to do with the exception of a few instances. I can usually just say Oh well! and move on. I don't like this though. But I guess all I can really do say ARGH! and move on while being slightly bitter yet hopeful every time it gets mentioned in the future.

I don't really know what x should be or even if it's possible to differentiate the freeloaders from the busy people, but I think the minimum needed for the team prize (58-60 snowballs) would have easy enough for most users. Especially since the event lasted for so long.

I am super happy that my inventory is no longer being held hostage though. Now I can do quests without feeling like I'm losing valuable time.

This truth.

I mean, wishful thinking, am I right? :) I do wish that we wouldn't have to hunt down all these things that are being said by staff.

I would really like to see how the final numbers break down, like what the top 10% list actually looked like. (Minus usernames, if that's an issue). But it would be interesting!

If people have to throw a minimum to keep on being involved, then people would throw the minimum and stop to stay involved. Wouldn't that still contribute to the problem?

I can't think of any good way to solve a lot of these issues that I've seen! It sucks that all we can do is say "No!" "Oh well!" and just sit around hoping and waiting.

if they cant police autofreshers, then just let it go.

why dont we make future events NOT RELIENT on having to simply refresh a page. Make it more complicating.

Make users have to click things in sequences or make choices (like battling).

Considering the questioning of how many users were in that top 10%, could you at least let us know how many users threw 2 or more snowballs and thus were included in that count? Maybe that will help reduce skepticism.

But if that minimum keep increasing wouldn't the user have to keep participating? I thought the team prize was a good idea.

I guess it all depends on the user. When we battled Jaxon my pitiful little tier 3 battle pet lost 514 times in my effort to equal out my battle score with those of the people with better pets. Whether it worked or not, I don't know as I never saw a breakdown of the prize tiers. If there are promises of prizes, I think the active users will do what it takes to get them.

I like idea of a prize shop or prize tiers. The problem I think with tier rewards or top Xs is that the dedicated users will get them and that always (always) prompts complaints about how some people don't have the free time to get on the site and the rewards should be more fair/catering. Always. Always. I don't think every event should be rewarded that way though. Sometimes you just have to lose and I think winning/losing prizes are fine for small events like this.

I'd hate for this to be the end of team events but I don't know how it's going to work in the future when people don't care about letting their teams down. That drive to win or get praise or be a part of something or not be hated by your teammates is usually motivation enough to contribute to team activities, but that drive isn't necessarily strong or even present between (almost anonymous) strangers on the internet who face no backlash for their inactivity. So all we can do is rely on the staff but the staff can't necessarily punish people just for not contributing as much as they should be. Which reminds me of the PETA style attacks on the HA btw

I'm just torn because it's two and I'm wondering if every person on my team had at least met the 58 needed for the necklace, if we would have won.

This talk about auto-refreshers is probably better suited to the other board...

Anyway, I agree with about it being nice if the number of people who 'participated' was released. It would make me feel a lot better about the numbers--though if I was correct on the previous page, the top 13% of the 'participating' 40% was awarded (5.2% of total users), rather than the 'top 10%' as advertised. If you are going to lay out the rules ahead of time, it's important to stick to them.

Oh goodness, what even is this? All I can think of in my mind is a scenario like: "If Johnny has 5 apples and you take 3, how many apples to you have?" "None, because Johnny bit all his apples and therefore they aren't valued as apples anymore." Or some shit, I don't even know, but if you are going to be transparent about the prizes and tell us all the available information needed to earn them and the qualifications then you have to follow the fuck through.

Even if you were to try and lawyer us into believing this was justified by claiming some sort of fine print, the initial news post still said the top 10% of "snowball throwerers" would be awarded the achievement. So why were those that threw one not counted? When you throw one snowball does it become another sort of object? Were they just snowpoop throwerers? This is why I imagine the scenario I mentioned above.

I don't even know how to complain about this because I shouldn't be complaining about this, like the idea of trying to argue against a staff member trying to justify and convince the userbase about his decision to alter a predetermined qualification for a predetermined prize is ridiculous.

I actually love how this event was done. It wasn't perfect, but hopefully this will be built upon rather than scrapped because I think the transparency has a lot of potential, but only when it is followed through.

They added a hash to make the user revisit the page after a period of time (half an hour or so). But you can still autorefresh. You just have to come back periodically.

Since autorefreshers are built in some browsers (older version of Opera for example), and available as an addon for others, you can't ban browsers. You can only make it harder for repetitive actions to happen.

Also, there wasn't any time limit or hashing on throwing during the first night. So it was much easier then to rack up the points. I hope that doesn't happen again.

So 9853346 snowballs were thrown overall and the top 10% had to thrown 38332.

9853346/38332 = 257

This means that if nobody except the top 10% threw snowballs and nobody threw above 38332 then 257 is the maximum number of players that could have received the achievement. We know however, that there were members that threw a lot more than 38332 and that members of the 90% also threw a lot of snowballs and both of these factors would reduce the possible number coming in the top 10% so in reality it is below 257.

Even if it 257 represented the top 13% then this would mean that the snowball throwers that qualified came to 1977. This is less than 2800 of the 4768 snowball throwers that had signed up which means that nearly 60% were disqualified. (As the 257 is the maximum possible it is actually likely that it was more than that were disqualified.

As the numbers are such a drastic change it would be nice to know what the actual scores were especially as members of Team Dolly felt that removing players could improve their chances of winning.

I wrote on the news page already, because this 10% thing is really confusing me:

Alenwen 12/26/14 11:18 pm I can't believe that the 10% starts at 38k when so many people just signed in and didn't throw alot of snowballs at all. Also, the 10% has to be different for each team. The news said Quote:

194 is 10% of 1940 members of team Tobias and 282 is 10% of 2828 members of team Dolly. (If you count all of the participants without expluding those under 2+ thrown snowballs)

Pretty much this. If you can't punish people - that's what happens in life for many other things - then disincentivize them as much as you can.

By the way, there was a hash, but it didn't expire after half an hour. I heard of many people refreshing for multiple hours in a row, who mentioned it expiring on certain fixed hours of the day, on the hour.

's math is on point and makes sense, especially considering other people also said it seemed ~5% of users got awarded the prize. I must say I'm curious to see our scores re-tallied without those 60% freeloaders...

Meh, if we're going to say 2 snowballs was participation, then 1 snowball was participation too, why not. It would have been interesting if the requirement for being considered part of a team was those minimum snowballs for the team prize. Granted, this would have made top 10% borderline impossible, but it would have been very interesting for the team scores totals. Maybe it would have made for a more interesting war.

My idea was having freeloaders count as a fixed bonus (ex. X points per person who joins but doesn't reach the minimum for the team prize; X being a number that doesn't hurt team scores and "rewards" the team for recruiting more supporters), but there's probably a better way to refine that equation, so it doesn't become an insurmountable gap for the smaller team. Maybe a little multiplier system. Freeloaders won't count directly on team scores, but whenever the team goes up by a hundred supporters, the scores get multiplied by 0.1 more, or some other number that will make sense.

I think the problem is in the wording. What happened is a lot of freeloaders (which would not honestly surprise me, because if Mysterious Melody is any indication of participation, a good chunk of the userbase doesn't participate much or at all past signing up) signed up and they weren't counted as throwers. The news said 10% of throwers. If you signed up and threw nothing, you were not a snowball thrower. You just joined a team. Now idk how 2+ was decided on, but okay. One isn't enough to merit being a thrower and that is admittedly weird, but that aside, I don't see how this is weird.

Including people who threw 2+ snowballs? Really? It should have only included people who threw 500+ not fucking 2. Dollys team had an extra 900 people and we were expected to pick up the slack of people who threw 2+ snowballs then stopped? L M F A O Damn thats some nice "balancing mechanics."

On topic, looking over the math on this thread, the top 10% and how the prizes and achieve were awarded doesn't make sense. I think some further clarification is needed and to be honest, justified.