My proposal, heavily influenced by my vague memory of neopets plots but maybe have some good ideas:

1. Have your battling component as is. Don't even have to have a component for non battlers to add damage. This part subeta has down really well. Keep adding tougher opponents through the event, have a big final world boss, etc. Tally damage done and enemies defeated as points for rewards. Battle pets who have hard work put into them year round will be rewarded here and people will have fun battling. Battles fit in perfectly to the narrative.

2. Have the games component, which was pretty neat to include, so kudos to staff. Have all the games available from an early point and offer multiple days that game scores can be sent in. Things like finding ghosts and getting higher and higher scores on Pete says can all add up. Anything that the achievements tracked can be tallied as points. People who are good at flash games and willing to put in a lot of work and time getting high scores and playing over and over again will be rewarded, and the games are fun to put a lot of time into. The games fit the events narrative really well already.

3. Have a translation component through the whole plot. Have multiple and many texts to be translated, and different translations, resulting in item recipes, that are increasingly difficult to translate and increasingly expensive to go buy. Both translations completed and receipts completed gain points for the final rewards. The translations work well for the narrative of the plot and tie in with other parts of the event: translated recipes appease spirits, or make them "easier" to fight, and the recipes are helpful for the gamers (think Pete's game of combining salty sweet etc). The translations are fun to complete and put time and effort into.

So you have your 3 ways people can gain points in the plot, all worthy of putting time in without, all tied together narratively. People can pick one way of gaining points that benefits them the most (battle, games, or translations) or dabble in all three and still gain a few points. All points are still determined by their participation, time spent, and hard work. Maybe whichever category they get the post points in they get a medal: battler in 2015 spirit plot, gamer in 2015 spirit plot, translator in 2015 spirit plot.

This makes it so battling isn't the end all of rewards, as it seems to be pretty often in subeta plots (the ones I've seen), but still a valid and fun way for battlers to put their hard work and time spent to the test and participate. It helps other niches be a part of the plot without being the skipable, boring, tiny parts that lead up to battling.

Narratively speaking, the event could have been structured pretty much the same way, just having as much emphasis on the games and translations as there is in battling. I guess I'd suggest a balance of unlocking games/translations/battle opponents and unlocking plot narrative: on a sliding scale of how much gets released when, release the games heavy in the beginning, and then translations and a few opponents, then shift to a focus on escalating plot and battle opponents, and maybe a final boss, a tough translation, and a final game all at the same time.

Thoughts? I'm just thinking out loud here, after seeing a lot of subeta plots unfold similarly, and non-battlers get the short end of the stick with optional/shoehorned plot aspects, and get annoyed at battlers who do work hard and deserve high points for their high tier pets. I'm trying to avoid a scenario that gives out blanket rewards and requires participation, but always has an option for as many people as possible to participate in (fresh off the boat to veteran players all have something to do). I think subeta has all these components already, they could just rearrange how the event is structured so it's a little more fun. I know they're a small staff and small budget site, so idk what of this is out of their league. Just throwing out ideas.

Battle of the Bands last year gave hundred of millions in rewards for people who just chose the right band.

It's not like huge rewards are only given to battlers.

Also, it's a great idea to let the players know WTF is going on. Two shining examples of staff not knowing how to communicate is a post almost no one saw which confirmed there wouldn't be additional prizes for additional smelting of sP and the total lack of information given about how weapon forging and potential boss damage would work.

2nd is that top prizes for plots are 98% of the time are only sought by other battlers (aka weapons). So then those who arent battle centric, dont care for the top prizes. Wearbles, plushies, are usually lower level prizes that most can get with some effort.

I dont mind other ways to contribute to the global boss fight. It just cant be that they're all equivalent in effectiveness.

First of all, Neopets fucking sucks. Subeta shouldn't model anything after them as if doing that is an "improvement". From my opinion this whole OP is almost a pure fail just for that reason even though it's well-written.

I think this is jumping the gun giving feedback for a problem that doesn't exist yet, if at all.

I don't think that there'll be a huge disproportionate site-event amount of prizes for battlers, it hasn't been that way in past battles. The rewards that will be given for the battle will be prizes for battlers, who have spent billions of sP on weaponry and training, and hours awake stomping on the bad guy over and over paying for total healing each time.

If there's weapons drops from this section (as there often is) what would a non-battler do with them?

Or uploaded a stick figure to the CW contest cough

There's just so little actual fun to do if you're not a battler. :/

But I don't see why we can't make this something that people can actually do more with besides just battle.

I mean, I'm not against battling, I enjoy it. It's nice to have actual new opponents to fight, I love that. If it weren't for plot opponents the battle system would be much less exciting. I'm saying let's make events as much fun for non battlers as they are for battlers.

I wasn't going to turn this into a "staff isn't communicating well" thread because that expands past the event...

I'm not about to say "oh yes battle of the bands did well" because I've only ever heard negatives from it and I didn't participate myself.

Neopets had some solid plots in the past, I'm not saying just because they do it one way we should also. I'm saying there were a few good points in a couple of plots I vaguely remember from them that might work well in a plot like this. Pretend you didn't see the word neopets if it bothers you that much.

And I don't know what you mean by "weapons drops for this section"?

I really don't like the idea that you could be forced to choose one method to earn points. I like how events are set up now/like the Morostide plot last year, where you earn prizes for doing specific things and then you unlock essentially tiered prizes through battling. Especially now that you can skip steps as needed (or because you don't want to do them).

I do definitely support having alternate methods to earn the lower-tier battle prizes (creating weapons this time around, donating supplies during that thing with the sick snow fairies a couple years ago?, that kind of thing). It's not like those prizes are going to be hard to find even if you don't want to put in the time/sP/whatever it takes to reach them yourself if you can't battle

They've released 3 new games, 5 if you count the boat race and the book maze but you can't play them again after you win, had a day entirely made up of a translation puzzle and riddles, not to mention a ton of world building and seeing NPCs we haven't seen in ages/are underutilized.

In the weeks that this plot has been going, exactly three days have centered around battling. So I'm not really getting what you mean by "so little actual fun".

only issue I have is the battling is all pushed off to the end. I'd like time to enjoy the battling, I like helping people out. but with the bosses, I have to prioritize that so it leaves me absolutely no time to deal with the challengers with my own pets + helping people. spreading them out a little more would have been nice :)

on that note, let's make all non-battle events as fun for battlers as they are for everyone else. HA contests? Gimme some battling too pls. Mini-plot w/games? CAN I GET SOME BATTLING WITH THAT? another BotB fiasco? lol not interested unless I can fight something.

see? it works both ways. we have a fairly decent balance in plots right now. I don't think anything except the boss fight setup needs to be changed.

can I please win csc for battling something during an HA contest? I'd love this. they're never going to have an HA contest that is "create an HA that is a skeleton wearing a mask with three weapons equipped to it" competition.

really though, I feel that way too.

Idk if you were here for EPiCON, but that was VERY game heavy. i didnt mind it, but i know that a good 80%+ didnt like it, said it was too much work, etc.

When it comes to effort, battlers DO NOT shy away from a challenge. I mean, look at Gelatin Wars, it's a grind fest, but 95% of battlers just dont care and invite the challenge.

From a design standpoint, why would they make things so difficult/complicated/effort-heavy if it's just gonna get complaints?

to compare with neopets is just nostalgia goggles. if i remember correctly, old neopets plots are heavily battle centric. most points come from there. even the high value rewards were weapons. others are mostly junk. their puzzle event is good but no more than here. it still mostly pointless clicking before and after the real puzzle. which mostly already have solution posted. and their newer events just get exploited by rich players by buying event related items and sold at ridiculous price. which just discourage poor players (a lot of them are poor) from participate. and their staff didn't really respond to users input, they just go as planned. they can't really be used as example. besides, old plots are during the time when people love hard work and endless grinding, which is not easy, and can cause huge outrage nowadays.

if plot is too complicated and has too many different activities, the story will become lost, a lot of people will be confused.

and if you feel you are not having fun with non-battling part and think battling is fun, why don't train your pets slowly and join the battling fun in later plot ;)

I actually like all the points you presented! It gives everyone a fair chance to participate in the plot. Question though......does Subeta give out medals or anything for your profile for participating in plots?

Yes Subeta gives out medals for participating in plots (:

Thanks!

They actually don't really anymore. Staff is trying to move away from medals in favor of achievements afaik. We got medals from last year's snowball war but I don't have any from plots