I thought I'd start the topic, with a few of the things that we're already seeing and what we've thought from our side.

1. The Length: We had originally planned for it to be only 5 days and in the last few minutes before launching decided to extend it (we gave it a TBA at the start) to see how it went. We should have just immediately capped it at 5 days and stuck with our original plan, it would have been much better that way.
2. The prizes: I think this sort of goes with . We meant for this to be a small thing that fixed the "opt in" problem of snowballs for a few days, and because it stretched so long people expected to get better prizes. We were upfront about the prizes that would come out at the end, though. If we'd stuck with our original timeline this would have been fine, but it would have been nicer to have a (small - remember we're releasing tons of items a day via melody this time of year!) prize shop to choose some things from.

I know a lot of people are saying "There should have been more to do" but this was actually a really small feature that just altered how snowballs work instead of it being an event/plot/mini-event.

Please leave your feedback, and how you think we could have made it cooler?

[edit]

Some more things I want to add after reading this!

• We are looking at our policy regarding auto refreshers. I agree that it's unfair, and we do have the ability to at least put a dent in them. My problem with this is I don't really have a problem with people buying 20 snowballs and refreshing the throw page because it is tedious. This was meant to be a small thing, but I get it and we're absolutely going to go about curbing them going forward. It got really out of hand in the first couple hours of this event (and, not when it first launched but about four hours later so we'd all looked elsewhere and started working other things because this looked successful).
• I'm really interested in all of the discussion about the tiers. In the past we've done tiers and people have been upset when they've been (in this case) 5 snowballs away from the tier above them. The reason that we have hidden tiers (and we released the prizes this time) is because we have no idea how much participation is going to happen. If we set it too low, we've got people completing it faster than we anticipated. If we set it too high, people complain that it's tedious and we end up with some prizes not going out, or us lowering tiers mid-game/whatever. It's a really hard problem to solve, but something I'm interested in maybe changing a little next time. We're looking through the numbers on this and figuring out where the median is (getting rid of the crazy high numbers / AR numbers from the start / super low numbers) but I think we'll have something better for the next little game of this type.

I do agree that it was good to see the prizes listed upfront, although it would have been nice to mention that they were going to be random items and include stuff from this year (3 retired Melody’s Cottage items
 =/= current year IMO)

I think the biggest problem was that staff continues to underestimate the users. The users who exploited the lack of a timer and lack of limit on buying snowballs got an insanely massive advantage compared to everyone else.

As for the prizes, I appreciate the advanced notice but I think the idea of awarding based on joining a specific team is ridiculously unfair and encourages leeching and or waiting until the last moment more than anything.

The event was fun but it just got boring and tedious after a little while. Throwing snowballs can only entertain someone for so long. Even with the prospect of prizes, you can only click on the button for so long before you get tired of it and wander off and forget the event was even going on. Kudos to people who stuck by and lobbed off tens of thousands of snowballs.

Perhaps if another snowball fight were to ensue, having other options would be nice, other ways for people to earn points if they get sick of throwing snowballs. Like ... I know it's silly but a small battle challenger maybe, you fight Dolly or Tobias. Nothing over the top, just some silly fun, each win being like a point.

Donating snowballs to other users if you don't have time to throw your own. Or if you have other plans, you drop off snowballs for your team and for say like 5 snowballs or 10 that you donate you earn a point for your team.

Just little tasks that people can do to try and keep their attention. And yeah 5 days to maybe a week max?

My only complaint is that events such as this should be consistent from the start. Anybody who was able to participate from the start got an unfair advantage before the timer was set. There were people who got 30 - 40K in the first few hours and the rest of us had to deal with time limits. Also, the wording about the achievement said "The top 10% of snowball throwers from either team will also receive a special achievement and title!" which I think many of us took to mean the top 10% from each team. Better wording would have helped, because it is now apparent that it WAS overall.

While I enjoyed throwing snowballs, the event ended up being way too long for its worth. It got boring after a couple days. Auto-refresher were a sad bonus and they shouldn't be "okay" to use by staff since it's a form of "cheating". I understand that it is a choice to use one, but it's still unfair.

I agree with about a battle challenger. It would be interesting to see a character based on each other teams. It makes thing interesting? Mini-games can also be something good ..

I didn't care about the prizes, it was expected so no complain here.

Next time though: Please, make sure to launch an event and be ready. I am registered as BOTH team right now and it is irking me. The prizes are awarded, I am stuck with something I didn't pick up and my ticket is taking a long time to be answered. I understand it's christmas and the holidays but it's frustrating to experience a bug and to never see the end.

That's all I had to say. The snowballs on me were totally fine, the lack of variety though? Not so much.

I think some of us were (or at least I was) hoping that something might have changed along towards the end, like getting tiered prizes for our effort.

I realize that everything was stated pretty clearly from the beginning about what prizes we would be getting, but I think some of us (or maybe it was just me, again, lol) were thinking that maybe you guys weren't expecting so much participation, and therefore might have changed something to reward people for our efforts.

It just feels pretty bad to have thrown 32,000 snowballs and to have spent millions buying them only to get the exact same prizes as people who joined and only threw the minimum required to get the team's special prize, but... -points to forum title- maybe that was just our/my bad, or maybe it was just the efforts of people trying to guarantee themselves a place in the top 10% (which was still next to damn impossible to do without an autorefresher or taking advantage of having no time limit at the beginning, no offense to the people who did get top 10%)

TLDR; definitely tiered prizes OR a small prize shop, since, like you said, , you guys are already releasing a lot of stuff through Melody's Cottage.

I also came up with the idea of not letting people be able to see any of the team's statistics (no numbers for ANYTHING) until they join a team, and should then not be able to switch teams. It's not 100% foolproof, but I think it /might/ take care of some of, or at least lessen the problems of freeloading/piggybacking that seems to go on with almost anything like this. (I've been on a team since day one, so I'm sorry if this was implemented already and I couldn't see it.)

You are completely right about the participation prizes, but that was the quitting line for what feels like a big portion of people.

I think the fact that unless you comitted to using an autorefresher and going on with your life OR committed to sitting there refreshing the page every 5 seconds in order to reach the top 10% was part of my fustration with this event.

I compeltely understand the staff intended it to be a small event, but it was clear from the first 10 minutes and the day or so of lag + downtime that this was a lot more in the yes of the users.

By any chance could you release what the average number of snowballs thrown per team was? I think that would be cool to know.

My biggest complain is that events should be fully thought off once they start, and that doesn't seem to be the case. It was obvious the site would crash having people trowing snowballs without limit, so why wasn't the limit added since the start of the event? Those people who were online at that time have a HUGE advantage since they could easily throw 10k snowballs in minutes. Honestly, I wonder if any of the top 10% got there without abusing of the limitless first hours. I'm getting tired of these events where if you're not online at the time they start, you have absolutely no chance at getting the top prizes (This isn't the first time this happens either. I'm seeing you Twisted Jaxon). What's the point on participating if I'm out from the top prizes since the start, and the rest of the prizes are the same if you throw 27k snowballs or 100? AT LEAST we should have gotten tiered prizes. I'm not asking for new items, but giving a few more Melody items to those who spent millions of sp would be nice.

you guys can't underestimate your userbase. if you give us free reign and tell us that the top X users or top Y% are going to get special prizes, shit is going to get crazy. just look at every battling boss event we've ever had. top 20 users get a special prize? without fail, those top 20 are always dealing millions of points of damage individually, the product of hours of grinding that no one in their right mind ought to be doing. and yet it happens regardless, because subetans go hard when you give us reason to. while the snowball event wasn't battling in the slightest, it's still a precident that you can't ignore. you have a highly competitive userbase, that's not something exclusive to the battle community. there will always be people who go way the hell above and beyond whatever you're planning for us to be able to do.

that's why my complaint for this event is exactly the same as it was for battle of the bands: prizes should always reflect individual participation. yes, even for the "little" events. if you don't want little events exploding into 10 million snowball affairs, don't take a top X% approach. tell us that everyone will get 3 melody items, and the participants on the winning team will get an extra something for their success. but when you dangle that exclusive top percentage incentive, people will go crazy, and shit will get out of hand, and everyone who falls just short of this cut off will absolutely feel slighted, because this is what happens every. single. time.

AMEN!!!!

Here's a combination of my personal feedback and thoughts on this:

1. I absolutely loved that staff were overly upfront about the snowball war in terms of what's going on and what prizes will be involved and I really really hope going forward this is something that sticks especially with smaller little event things such as this. I seriously hate playing the guessing game with things like this (snowball war, tempest, fashion week, centropolis cleanup) as to if this is just a cute fun thing to do if you want to or if there's going to be a mighty hoard of prizes at the end or not (there is ZERO consistency with these).

I like fun little cute things without prizes, or with them, but I really like knowing-- even if it's just to say "there will be a few prizes/rewards at the end of this for all your help/support/what have you!" because sometimes people are really really busy or just aren't that interested in the theme of something (like I personally didn't partake in the fashion week stuff because I'm not a big wearable person-- that bit me in the ass) and if they know if there will be prizes or not then they'll know they need to try and make time or suck it up and join in even if it doesn't seem like their cup of tea.

2. This brings me back to the good ol' days of restock wars and such, and one of the biggest annoyances of them all: there should be a 24-48 hour MAX sign up period, and the number of people who've joined either side should be 100% hidden until after the sign up period has passed. Meaning no one can hop on the bandwagon with the most members, and no one can join the winning side halfway through the plot to bring the winners side into the loosing side. This would make it to where people join the side THEY want to join/that their friends are joining or whatever, and it would NOT be based on whom has the most people/is currently in the lead.

Yes I know this sucks for anyone who wasn't paying attention and didn't join a side but to be perfectly honest the current system basically sucks for everyone else who has to go out of their way to make up for dead weight. Which is worse? Ruining an event for 3k active users or ruining the event for 1k people who only log in once a week anyways and whine because they're going to miss out on goodies from a thing they didn't participate in anyways?

A work around for this would be similar to the pre-hype for BotBs! Where a week before the due date, you announce what's going to happen and tell people to start joining a team (which will NOT have the number of people who signed up for each side displayed) (should also tell people not to make boards asking how many people joined x or y and all boards made about it locked to keep people from swaying other users to join one side or another) and that they'll have one week to pick a side. Then at the end of the week, side joining will be closed end of story.

3. THIS. WAR. DRAGGED. ON. AND. ON. I lost interest after day two and I feel like even 5 days would have been too long. Here's why:

-- Humans, by nature, are typically competitive. I'm sure that's more obvious now than it's been before (which is saying something because BOY I remember those top score tables for the omen wars xD) and will lose sleep/call out from work or school to sit here and do a thing.
-- There will always be a small group of people who literally do nothing but that thing until it ends. Which typically drives most of the other people to lose interest and wander off. -- If two days had been sign up only, and three days just snowball wars... then 5 days would have been fine. -- Due to the fact that you could sign up until the last minute, just made me feel (team candy) like it was easier to jump ship than to sink with it. Didn't really make me feel encouraged to spend more sP to throw more snowballs to try and save the ship because it was a lost cause.

4. 5 seconds in-between throws was exactly long enough for me to click to another tab and forget for half an hour. I understand why there was a limit, don't get me wrong, but I don't understand why it was surprising that users would pull out every single snowball they had/purchase in mass and call out dead so they could pelt one another with snowballs for the next several days. THERE ARE USERS WHO LITERALLY DON'T SLEEP AND SIT HERE FOR 24 HOURS BATTLING, AND YET THIS WAS A SURPRISE? ..... ???? REALLY?

No, I don't get why that was a surprise at all and I really feel like a 5 minute wait time between snowball buying with no limit for throwing would have been a better idea. A 5 minute buy time WITH a timer, too. Then I could just blast all 25 and then wait for the timer to tell me to lock and load again.

I also really hope, even though this has 100% nothing to do with the snowball war, that going froward no boss battle ever goes on for 24 hours again, please for the love of everything good in the world. Please let this be another lesson in the staff having to play the adult/law/whatever and enforcing moderation onto it's userbase because moderation is not hard coded into the human experience and we have to have things to force it onto us.

5. WHY DID SHIELDS REFLECT SNOWBALLS? That was weak, and anyone who participated should have had to remove their shield that's lame. I know it only happened a handful of times but still, every time a snowball was reflected my first thought was "CHEATER" followed by "WHO WAS IT I'MA GO PELT THEM WITH 50 SNOWBALLS :K".

What everyone has said here so far is true. The participation shops that you've actually used in past events would have worked beautifully here (I just got shy of 33k and as above stated, feel exceptionally slighted as I did 10-12 hour days of constant snowball throwing in order to get there.)

I also think that you should do a retroactive achi/title for the top 10% of EACH team. That is what a lot of us understood - and honestly why I still plowed ahead after i hit 25k on a badly losing team. The wording there certainly could have been better.

-or-

You could have ignored all snowballs thrown BEFORE the timers were installed so that only the true efforts of most were reflected. That would be fairer.

All in all, fun event idea, but poor execution in terms of reward/expectations. ~Kai

Well said... very well said, I agree with a lot of the points stated.

According to the news, to make it to the 'top 10%' you needed to throw around 38k snowballs. :(

I love team vs team stuff. It makes it more challenging and when winning is involved. nnAlso, love from Andrea. Perhaps let the sign up period go on for a week prior to the actual event. nnHate the duration, would have loved the 5 day initial plan. And the snowball shop change without prior notice. I had so many rare snowballs I would have at least liked to frag.

Also in regards to ways to make it funner in the future because I forgot about that originally:

• Again, sign up for x days/snowball war for x days.

• I liked that it was mini and there weren't any games/battles/whatever because December is an insane month for most people and ah less is better if you want more participation.

• Why didn't some NPCs join in? There could have been a 1/25 chance of nailing an NPC who joined the other side and if you hit them you got 5 points instead of just 1?

• Since the cost of the snowballs did add up overtime, I don't think this would have caused a great deal of economic problems: it would have been fun if there were "random events" while nailing random people. Something like "You hit -username- so hard they fell over and dropped their snowball money! As they wiped the snow off their face you ran off with their -amount of sP- haha!"

• Likewise, said random events could also randomly include stuff like "opps you missed -usernames- face and knocked the coffee/cocoa/??? all over them-- opps!" and instead of a snowball they'd have like a spilled coffee overlaying their HA and stuff.

• There could also be stuff like "You go to throw a snowball at -username- but then you notice they brought you -coffee/cocoa/tea- item, maybe you have been taking this a bit too seriously" and you actually got said item.

To me, the prizes were a bit unfair. I mean, seriously, why did some people get THIS YEAR'S melody items? Yes I liked the fact the prizes were stated at the beginning but there could (and should) have been some kind of limit. Don't get me wrong, Melody's freebies this year are good but why were they lumped into the prize pool?