Has anyone else notice the dip in NP payout for games?

[Usul_Princess]

I usually make NP the old fashioned way, and play games/dailies, and am content with a sure 15K-20K/day because I'm no longer aiming for painted pets anymore.
But in the span of like 4 days the NP ratio has sliced my earnings by about 1/3. I could earn about 14K playing Jubble Bubble, Tyrannian minigolf, Extreme herder, Carnival of Terror, and Spell or Starve. So maybe I'd earn like 5K from sponsor games.

Extreme herder is the worst one. The payout was never fantastic, but I can barely get 1K out of playing 3 times.
Same with spell or starve. You could get a score of about 350 and get 1,000np each time. Now I'm lucky if I get 1,400. Frankly, this annoys the hell outta me. I hardly know the first thing about restocking. I'm too slow to snipe/haggle. My saving grace was SSW when I had premium, so making a profit off codestones weren't a problem. Why are the games so stingy? This is the slowest, and most likely "safest" way to earn np, because you can't be accused of scamming or whatever. So I have no idea what this site is losing by cutting the pay in nearly every single game.

...and the stocks hate me. Out of the 6 years I've played, I've made no more than 100K off shares. I also used to do basic free jobs in faerieland 4X/day that all had the max payout, like 3 years ago, but now you barely break even with free jobs or coupons.

(/rant)

[Cranberry]

I've noticed the lowered game payouts (it's a very recent change), and I agree that it sucks. However, as far as the stock market goes, if you're buying 1000 shares of a stock at 15 every day and selling all of them when they hit 60 (or higher), there's no reason why you shouldn't be making money. I often make 300k+ on a single sale. Are you investing in just a few (bad) stocks or something? You need to diversify the portfolio, and make sure to buy every day.

[Officer 1BDI]

I don't have the patience for stocks, but in light of this new ratio development, maybe I should develop some....

[Fjorab_Teke]

My strategy with stocks is to buy 1000 (just for the sake of quickness) of whatever's at Current 15 and I have the least of it. If none are at 15, I check back later. If it looks like the day may end without me seeing a 15-point stock price, I might leave it or buy a 16/17. My sell point is 90, but 60 does seem to be the quicker and more certain route for profit even if it's not as long-range potentially profitable. I avoided the stocks for the longest time simply because I didn't sit down and figure it out.

The same goes for Food Club. I bet on "easy winning" 2:1 odds (where all the others are 5:1 or more), since the long-shots really don't win often enugh to make a profit unless you're really darned lucky. The payoffs for the low ones aren't as nice, but they're pretty steady and fairly predictable.

My favorite flash games for NP are Meerca Chase and Kass Basher (still calling it WAK, oops, but it guarantees me 3K/day). I also love Neggsweeper (ALMOST 3K/day, factoring out cost to play).

[mellaka]

Neo started rotating the NP-payout ratios so hopefully the games you like will start paying better again soon. I'm not sure how often it changes though.

As for stocks, I buy 1k shares every day but still don't make many nps off the stock market. I only have about 150k shares though. I'll make some nps in bunches then none again for months, or at least what feels like months.

[Usul_Princess]

I think I was just too impatient with stocks as well, but I could use a real lesson in stocks 101. I did know about the 1000 shares @ 15 thing, but the spikes felt so random. Like I needed a selling alert or something.

I really do hope they fix this ratio thing...soon. And God help them if they screw up Tyrannian minigolf!! It's my favorite game ever and I've been practicing for like 8 months on how to get a gold trophy on the 1st of the month.

[Madge]

Just make sure you check your portfolio once a day to buy shares and check if you need to sell them. I sell at 100 and I most recently made a MILLION NP on a single sale. Of course I've had this portfolio for about 3 years now, but still....

As for games, they vary the payouts depending on how much different users are earning in the game. So that game I've forgotten, where you have to climb up the hill by throwing a grappling hook and each level gets longer and longer, the score you need for 1,000np varies between 200 and 2,000. When it's 200, everyone plays it, so TNT's program is like "Hmm, people are earning too much, we should lower the payout", and then it becomes 2,000, no-one plays it, and TNT's program says "Hmm, people aren't earning much, we should raise it". This just keeps on happening. Find new games.

[Cranberry]

Or, if you're really good at a game that's a World Challenge one, just enter that. I never give a shit how much I'm earning from one play of Faerie Bubbles, Volcano Run or Destruct-O-Match, because I really only play them to win world challenges. I win three competitions per day and get WC pieces that I can sell for anywhere between 11k and 30k each (with a few selling for more). They sell pretty steadily, too... check out my recent sales history (I've removed the usernames):

20/05/2008 Faerieland 3.18 WC Piece 31,999 NP
20/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.11 WC Piece 9,999 NP
20/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.6 WC Piece 28,999 NP
20/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.8 WC Piece 54,999 NP
20/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.18 WC Piece 20,999 NP
20/05/2008 Faerieland 3.10 WC Piece 33,999 NP
21/05/2008 Faerieland 3.13 WC Piece 17,999 NP
21/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.10 WC Piece 19,999 NP
21/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.13 WC Piece 17,999 NP
21/05/2008 Faerieland 3.15 WC Piece 16,999 NP
21/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.17 WC Piece 21,999 NP
22/05/2008 Faerieland 3.8 WC Piece 17,999 NP
22/05/2008 Faerieland 3.19 WC Piece 12,999 NP
22/05/2008 Faerieland 3.19 WC Piece 12,999 NP
22/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.10 WC Piece 19,999 NP
22/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.17 WC Piece 21,999 NP
24/05/2008 Faerieland 3.5 WC Piece 27,999 NP
25/05/2008 Tyrannia 3.5 WC Piece 18,999 NP

[daisybell]

The flash game ratios are changed every month on the 25th or 26th- I forget exactly which. Some games seem to change every month (Snow Wars II) and some not at all (Kass Basher). If you want to make 15k a day to invest, you have to play the system, and play games which are paying out well that month. I recently stopped playing Bruno's Backwoods Breakaway because it was paying out crappily now, but I've started playing Magax II because it's now paying out very generously.

Everyone has different games that they're good at, it's worth building up a good few that you can score easily on so that when the payout ratios change you still have games you can make money from. This petpage is handy for listing the games which are probably the easiest to make 1k per play from (scroll down past the sponsor game stuff to the "1000NP NeoGAMES" section. It can be worth playing some sponsor games too for easy np, but they come and go quite often).

In case anyone's interested, the five games I'll probably play this month are Attack of the Revenge, Kass Basher, Hannah and the Ice Caves (the last level only- it's worth completing the game for the really easy 1k a play you'll get from the last level), Snow Wars II and Maths Nightmare (division on Potato Counter difficulty is not at all hard, most of the answers are 2, 3, 4 or 5). But some days I'll make more from playing other games and then take a break from games the next day- I find it better to play games for the next day's stocks in case there's a stock you want to buy before you've made your 15k, or in case you want to buy something at 16 or 17, which can sometimes make sense to do.

[Kari]

This petpage has been tracking the ratio changes since TNT started doing them. It's annoying how they change, since one month I'll be making an easy 20k a day, and the next I'll be down to 6k.

The stocks are a good idea, though I always end up buying the ones that don't go anywhere XD

[Dead Webby]

As much as I think Stocks are a good idea, I don't have nearly enough patience for them :\ I've tried to a couple of times, but I've never made any money from shares. However, I might try that 'buying 1000 a day' thing, because i'm not saving up for anything so I don't suppose it matters if I lose lots of money, and if I gain some, then that's all the better.

Another little thing that really irritates me about games, is that the four times i've got a really good score on Shenkuu River Rush (well, good for my standard but a bit rubbish for most people's) the servers weren't accepting scores. Grr.

[daisybell]

This petpage has been tracking the ratio changes since TNT started doing them. It's annoying how they change, since one month I'll be making an easy 20k a day, and the next I'll be down to 6k.

The stocks are a good idea, though I always end up buying the ones that don't go anywhere XD

Thanks for linking that petpage- I knew I'd seen it before somewhere. It's interesting to look at, and worth paying attention to the positive changes in case some games go back to being profitable. I've added Freaky Factory to my favourite games list, because I can now get 1k per play from it.

I've found that it's easier to play the games for np if it's because I'm aiming to get np for my 1000 stocks to invest in- it only works as a np earning strategy if you're able to wait for the np and if you already have enough to live on in the meantime. If you can invest your daily games earnings, though, you can easily quadruple them by investing them in stocks, if you're patient .