Rank changes? NP ratio changes?

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miazilla
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Post by miazilla »

Archkiel wrote:*high fives Miazilla*
*higfives back*

You preach it sister/brother/other! :D
klaatu99
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Post by klaatu99 »

I have a possible theory on why some games may be changing their np ratio, not that it will make TNT's stupidity any better. There are several games with a finite number of levels where the NP reward is maxxed out fairly early (Hannah and the ___ Caves, Fyora's Quest, etc). As it was, there was no real incentive to play the games longer unless one was trying for a trophy. But by lowering the np ratio, maybe TNT is thinking people will play more levels of these games rather than getting their 1000 nps and stopping.
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Wingsrising
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Post by Wingsrising »

I worked hard to get to the last level of Hannah and the Ice Caves, I'll be annoyed if I can't get 3k a day from it any more.

Like I said, I have a bad feeling about this announcement. However, I'm going to wait to see what happens before launching into full-flegded rant mode.

The stated intent of the change is "In an attempt to balance the amount of Neopoints earned among all the different games Neopets has to offer, the NP to score ratio for any particular game may change from time to time so be sure to keep an eye on the ratio for your favorite games!" There are a lot more games with crappy payouts then there are games with good ones, they might just be trying to shift things around to normalize the payout across games more. If it's still possible to earn a decent amount of NP in a decent amount of time, that could have its advantages: I for one get heartily sick of playing the same damned games every single day. With the "Daily Dare" and everything they do seem to be out to convince people to try more different games, and this would be another way to do it.

We'll see. This seems like an ominous development but I'll wait to see how it pans out.
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Veo
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Post by Veo »

Well, making some of the games more interesting is always a plus, but I just wish TNT would pay attention to their crap-job of an economy and stop punishing us for LIKING their website. -____-;;

Still, I guess we will have to wait and see what they are trying to achieve, eh?

((PS, I'm a sister too, sister! :P))
miazilla
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Post by miazilla »

That's an intresting point Wings. I guess it COULD go that way too. I really really hope it does, if more games get a decent payout then that would help the economy. But It can all to easily go the other way and with the way TNT has (not) been handling things lately.... I'm afraid to hope :/


Archkiel wrote:((PS, I'm a sister too, sister! :P))
Good to know ^^ Love the icon by the way. Is that a neopet? I looks a bit like a two eared ghost aisha or something :D
Veo
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Post by Veo »

LAWL. No, it's Mew, the Pokemon, doing a backflip silly! :P
miazilla
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Post by miazilla »

Archkiel wrote:LAWL. No, it's Mew, the Pokemon, doing a backflip silly! :P
I'm sure it is. I have never watched pokemon ._. It's on waaaaaaaay to early here. 8am on a Saturday? There is NO WAY I'm not sleepning.

So is it any good? I could always, you know, 'acquire' it by.... other means ;)
Darkarrows
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Post by Darkarrows »

I don't know if I'm crazy, but could this just be an early April Fools' Day joke? The first falls on the weekend, so maybe they just decided to go ahead early?
Madge
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Post by Madge »

Am I the only person on Neocolours who doesn't have a completely unobtainable set of goals? Am I the only person who is earning neopoints faster than she can spend them?

I mean, seriously, is the stockmarket and the 20k a day clicking link things that much of a mystery?

I'm reaching all of my neopets goals with no trouble at all; I've made something like... 7 million np since Christmas. I'm at a loss for what to do with the money I've got left over (currently a million is in my bank), I will probably pursue my old goal of getting Sail a book award trophy, or maybe some expensive battledome item.

What the heck am I doing that's so different from all of you? I play neopets maybe an hour or two a day, if that. I can do all my dailies that I do within about 10 minutes per day. I don't restock, I don't wizstalk, I don't do anything except those 20k sponser links and the stockmarket and the daily dare these days.

The np ratio change doesn't affect me at all, so I don't have an opinion, but I'm at a loss for why people don't seem to be able to earn neopoints.

TNT needs to remove neopoints from the economy to make them worth more - GET RID OF THE DAMN 20k A DAY LINKS, make them stop paying out, surely that can't be too hard? Make Nigel charge more than 20np commission for stocks, make him charge 5%, 10%, or something. Something like that would encourage people to keep their money in the stockmarket for longer.

Add more items to the economy. Tarla's toolbar is a good idea, do something else like that - make games pay out items instead of neopoints. Make dailies like the Altador king give out random items from the entire list of items in neopia at a rate proportional to their rarity. Add more things to the hidden tower at fixed prices.

Lowering the game payout DOES remove neopoints from the economy, if this is what it does, but it does seem unfair considering how much more time it takes to earn money from games than it does from restocking, say.

I'm just not sure why no-one seems to be able to earn neopoints... I've never had problems, and it's not like I'm doing anything all that unusual. I just wish I could have more pets, because not exceeding the pet limit sort of stuffs me up by not letting me paint any more.

Sorry if I seem arrogant or as though I'm talking down to you/chastising you; I'm honestly baffled as to why everyone seems to have problems earning neopoints when it's not like I keep my methods a closely guarded secret. I've only been playing on my latest account, what, two years?
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Post by Huggles »

Maybe because you're the only one without completely unobtainble goals? Really, that's all I can think of. If all of your pets are mostly done, then for most of us you've pretty much beat neopets until you find something else to waste np on. It took me restocking Mysterious Valentine's cards for a week and selling them from anywhere between 40 and 60k to buy a grey paintbrush. A week's not at all long, but that was entirely a fluke because of the sidebar. After that, my only concrete goal is a pandaphant, 1.5 mil, then my neohome. But I'd also like to buy weapons, not a whole lot, but at least 5 mil np worth. I can make around 25k a day from games if a try, plus some from food club when the odds are nice, and maybe some from restocking if I stay up all night and get banned. I don't do your magical stock market. I tried, I really did, but after buying crap for 3 months and losing np I wanted to spend now, I sold it all. Really, it all comes down to time. To make the np I want to buy the things I want in less than a year, requires me to play for at least 4-6 hours a day. That sucks.
Cranberry
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Post by Cranberry »

I make approximately 2 million per month, and this is all I do:

1. I'm really good at three different games -- good enough to often send one score and win a World Challenge. I do that three times per day, and I sell all three pieces for 10-15k (on average, but some for as much as 75k) each. This can take anywhere from 45 minutes to a couple hours, depending on what I play (if I'm bored, I sit and play Destruct-O-Match II for an hour while I watch TV. If I'm in a hurry, I play three games of Volcano Run II -- one 15-minute game each hour for three hours).

2. I play Food Club, and since I have an old account (6+ years), the payouts are great. This takes a couple minutes each day.

3. I play the stockmarket every day -- buy at 15, sell at 60. I don't care how long the NP sits there -- the stocks do go up, and then I'm a few hundred thousand NP richer when I sell. This takes maybe 30 seconds per day.

4. I do the Mystery Pic/Lenny C, and participate in all plots. The time this takes varies.

Unfortunately, I'm not earning neopoints faster than I can spend them. ;) I want to buy four new weapons for my battleset and get more into 2-player battling, and those weapons are going to end up costing around 41.5 million NP.

Anyway, to get back on topic, this np ratio change doesn't bother me TOO much (yet -- it will if they really mess with things), because I don't make most of my NP from the game plays themselves, but from the World Challenges I win. If you've mastered any game, or are even just decent, you can win a lot of WCs. Just see what the scores are like at different times of day, practice a lot, and beat some people. ;) And if you have an older account, Food Club is great (read the thread in Misc. for tips). The stockmarket is also an excellent and guaranteed moneymaker; you just need (a LOT of) patience.

I agree the economy is pretty shitty, though. I wouldn't be making as much NP as I do now if my account wasn't so old, and if I hadn't already had a lot of NP to invest in stocks so I could build up a nice portfolio. I also painted all my pets and bought their petpets long ago, when everything was cheaper. I would not want to be starting over now.
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Fjorab_Teke
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Post by Fjorab_Teke »

Yeah my goals are getting the the point of nearly unobtainable since my pets are all painted (thankfully my Peophin was painted Darigan before the price nearly doubled on the PB). I COULD literally afford one of my main wishlist items (just gotta decide between two of them), which are still in the Hidden Tower (at least for now). But when I keep seeing that poll question about returning Thyoras Tear to the Hidden Tower, I sit and pine at it, because that's one of my other main go-for items. If I get that and a Leaded Elemental Vial (whenever I'm danged lucky enough to stumble into it) I'll find yet another goal to reach, like my Neohome and getting my Peophin a Booktastic award.

I could see this game thing as potentially good, but I think it will CAUSE more problems than it solves. Anyone wondering yet how glitchy it might become with them swapping things like that around? I sure am.

[EDIT] I know they've tooled around with payouts before, but I'm wondering if this means they'll do it with more frequency now. At least since they've apparently decided to do this they've given us a heads-up. :)
Wingsrising
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Post by Wingsrising »

If you don't feel like you have enough unobtainable goals, all you need to do is start training/battling. That will give you tons of unobtainable goals very quickly.

The price of some of the basic Battledome items is insane. I'm very lucky I got my h4000 helmet back when it was around 2 million. And, when TNT put a freezer in the tower, they put it in at around 8 million. So when they do stick things at fixed prices in the hidden tower, it doesn't necessarily keep inflation at the level you want it.

If by the 20k a day links you mean the process_click links, I'm very annoyed to learn those things still work. It's not only horrible for inflation, it's not fair to people who follow the rules (since we're not supposed to be using them).
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dandelions
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Post by dandelions »

It's not that we're not meant to be using them- they're not disabled. We're just not meant to be using them like people were before, to earn 50k a day. And I say that as someone who hasn't used them since they were blocked on petpages...they're not illegal, just inconvenient.

I agree with Madge. Like I said on another thread- I play Neopets for about half an hour a day, usually less, and make about a mil a month <i>solely</i> from the stockmarket. I have quite a lot of painted pets which I don't plan to repaint, so my pet goals are on hold for the moment.
the last thing we need is to make it harder for people to make NP on the site. The poor get poorer....
No. The <i>first</i> thing we want is for np-making to become more difficult. Games are an awful source of income for the economy as a whole because they make money without putting any money in. This is a direct cause of inflation- and, I would wager, the largest single cause of inflation on the site. Want to argue with that? Try and come up with a single activity on the site which generates that much NP out of nowhere.

Let's take today's Daily Dare game, with fifteen hours left in the Neopets day and the vast majority of Americans (the bulk of the players) not online yet:
Total Plays Today
208,162
Now let's assume that each player got 400np, which corresponds to a score worth 200np on a normal, non-featured game. That's 80 million neopoints in nine hours. It could be 210 million np by the end of the day assuming that the number of plays per hour stays the same (it's actually more likely to increase). Meerca Chase has another 280,000 plays at the time of writing this- assuming it pays out 200np per game, that's another 100 million np. Yes, Meerca Chase is among the most popular games on the site, and the Daily Dare is bound to be popular, so the np they generate is going to be a lot more than, say, Gourmet Club Bowls does. But there could easily be several billion np generated by games out of nowhere in a day.
Wingsrising
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Post by Wingsrising »

dandelions wrote:It's not that we're not meant to be using them- they're not disabled. We're just not meant to be using them like people were before, to earn 50k a day. And I say that as someone who hasn't used them since they were blocked on petpages...they're not illegal, just inconvenient.
I definitely interpreted that editoral as telling us not to use them. I just wish they'd actually disable the damn things.
No. The <i>first</i> thing we want is for np-making to become more difficult. Games are an awful source of income for the economy as a whole because they make money without putting any money in. This is a direct cause of inflation- and, I would wager, the largest single cause of inflation on the site. Want to argue with that? Try and come up with a single activity on the site which generates that much NP out of nowhere.
I often wonder how many NP the stock market puts into the economy each day. I'm torn between encouraging other people to use the stock market, too, and the suspicion that if the stock market becomes too popular it will have to be modified to pay out substantially less.
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