Oh, thanks for checking this again! I was just looking at the topic made and it seems now the cut dropped to around 4,000 snowballs. Despite being much lower, it seems reasonable considering how many people threw only enough for the team prize or just a little above it ^-^;

I still didn't expect to get it but I do feel happy I got caught in the middle of it xD I'm glad the people who threw twice as much as me will feel at least a bit more rewarded this way! Throwing 30k+ was crazy.

[edit] LOOK!

Oh cool. :D Thank you Keith (and !)

I can't begin to imagine how the minimum for the toys was calculated, but I imagine it was monitored to keep it from getting too high for some players. If I remember right it hit 90 at one point.

I agree there will always be slackers and complainers and I'm sure both teams had a fair share of them. I guess the problem is how to deal with them. I would consider 200 an okay amount. It shows an actual attempt.

I guess active participation might be a better term for me.

It seems the top ten number was dropped to 4k from 38k. Four seems a bit low to me. I originally thought 10,000 would be the minimum, give or take a couple thousand. Maybe that's just my misconceptions though, based on the what I was reading the few times I went to the threads. I wish we could see a breakdown of the numbers. Like X amount of users threw 0-100, 101-200, etc.

lol.

just realized i was the initial top 10/13% cutoff lol at 38332

but anyway, the new top 10% number just reveals how many people didnt actually contribute to the teams.

Assuming homogeneity, the average amount of snowballs thrown for both teams total is 5k-ish. Dolly's team avg is roughly 2,031, while Tobias' avg is 2,117. Without knowing the standard deviations, I can only assume the minimum score of 4k is the 90th percentile/top 10%.

The unusual high amounts of snowballs thrown (anyone with scores of 38k or 100k) is unfortunately skewing the average number of snowballs thrown per user. Hence why my numbers appear to be all over the place. x.x

Believe me, I'd kill to see the breakdown as well. D:

Not true. That's the whole point of averages. Say Tobias has 5 members and Dolly has 10. If all team members on both sides throw 10 balls, the average for both teams is still 10. Yes, it means Dollies had more people who could bare the weight (if one of those 10 throws nothing, the other 9 would only have to throw 1.1andabit more to balance it, while if one of Tobias' people threw nothing, the remaining 4 would have to throw 2.5 more), it also means that it's easier for Tobias' side to pull ahead (if one of the 5 throws 11 instead of 10, the team average becomes 10.2, while for Dolly's side, if one of the 10 throws 11, the team average would be 10.1). These numbers are on a small scale, but they show the double edged knife that is a large team vs. a small team.

Which is of course ignoring the psychology of people hoping to get a quick win and joining the team that has the most members assuming it'd win. But that's a whole other story.

, 4k, really? Heh, guess I was close with my bell cure method. I used that a bit earlier in the whole event and reached a number that would indicate you'd need an average of 3k for the top 10%. (Meaning top 10% threw an average of 3k.) Whoohoo, I was right. :3 But yes, the 60% of people throwing 0 or 1 really throws off the numbers.

, yes at that breakdown. So many yes's.

So were the people who threw < 2 snowballs not included in the member count at all? Because the information on the Snowball page shows that the score was just a straight average. For Tobias for example, 1,940 members threw 4,107,382 snowballs, for a score of 2,117. 4,107,382 / 1,940 = 2117.21. So if the "freeloaders" are included in that 1,940, then the "secret sauce" you said you were including didn't work.

Oh gosh, this is too much thinking for the holidays! But thanks for sorting that out for me. So Tobias had an easier time pulling ahead but Dolly had more people who could support any possible slackers... That's interesting...

I did think that there were a lot of people looking for quick wins and therefore didn't help their team.

I thought there would be more snowballs thrown in the top 10%, judging by the types of forum posts I saw here. I'd love to see how everyone threw.

Also, judging by the repetitiveness of the event, I bet that a lot of people just stopped and gave up at a certain point (I know I did). How many people threw over 5k, I wonder?

lol I actually kinda like math like that, so it's happy thinking for me. =P Also, considering the top 10% included some one who threw 4k, I suppose you could say a maximum of 476 people did over 5k? If I had to guess I'd say about 450? Easily? The thing is, I too saw a lot of people post a lot of crazy numbers, but I did not see 476 people post crazy numbers. So while that all did sound daunting, there was room for lower numbers too.

, I have the same question. I think what happened was the special sauce was just something to prevent like 11k retired items getting into the system through people who had thrown >2 snowballs. Not something to even out the scores with regards to the >2 people. As Keith said, they accidentally also applied it to achievement hand out when it shouldn't have been. Why they even count at all I don't know, but I do know that if they were removed altogether, I would not have my achievement. So, being a selfish person, I am okay with this set up.

In the news comments when the Snowball Fight was first announced, he specifically mentioned the "special sauce" in reference to the score. If he changed his mind or misspoke that's one thing, but it just seems like it wasn't working as intended.

, I know, I saw it too. But in the threads, it was very quickly determined there was no secret sauce since anyone with a piece of paper could figure out it was just Total Snowballs / Team Members = Score and nothing else. Which means that staff members could do the same and if it was supposed to be something different, they could've fixed it at the first sign of trouble. Considering they didn't, we can assume this is how it was meant to be. (Admittedly, it took them 2 days to figure out something went wrong with the 10%, but they had 7 days for this part.) (To be very honest though, I don't think the 10% was a mistake. I think they realised they hadn't been clear and to placate people, they told us it was a mistake. Though, again, selfish, I got my achievement so I don't mind, but, yanno... Black helicopters.)

Wait, I'm confused. If so many people were cut out of the equation (not throwing more than a snowball) then wouldn't the final scores be a little different too?

I'd just love to see the breakdown of how everyone threw, if there is such a thing out there. But with the math I've been seeing, things are starting to make a lot more sense.

I know that I threw around 500 snowballs - mostly because I was starting to get tired of the event. I think that a lot of people threw but not obsessively due to the nature of this event and just how repetitive it was. I wasn't trying to get Top 10% or anything, but it's nice to see that the number was lowered so that more people could get what they deserved.