Usul's FC dailies

[Usul_Princess]

Couldn't decide whether this should go in Misc or here....

This is a fairly important poll for me. I've become much more confident in placing my own Food Club bets. I would need a green light from the mods first. Most likely in the distant future, but strictly on NC boards. I was pretty broken up about what happened to Carrie. (I'm sure she'll be unfrozen, but still..)

I've been wanting to do my own bet placements for months. (I made a whole HTML page in December about picking 13:1 safeties) but with all the paranoia going on, I don't think it's worth doing it right away. This CG scare may be resolved in the future, but I can't take my chances.

There are plenty of downsides to this - The main being that even if the bets are put on NC, or Neopets, word travels fast and it'll eventually get around that new dailies are being made over here and expose NC to a very high number of other unwanted Neopets users. I'd potentially be inviting chaos here for the sake of making a couple extra NP.

That's why I wanted to do this after the majority of users, both on NC and Neopets to feel that the site is safe again. It wouldn't be for another 5 months at least. (Possibly around or after Christmas.)

Even though the concept of FC is less difficult than it looks, it's so much easier to mooch off someone else's daily as opposed to creating your own.

Right now I'm on the fence about it, leaning towards nixing it. I want to know why this is a good (or horrible) idea. Post which option did you pick and why.

[lavender]

What if we made it like the Werewolf boards? Where it's only visible to those who sign up and we can selective as to who can sign up?

[Jessi]

Personally, i wouldn't mind the idea of alternative bets, but I really don't like the idea of them being posted on Neocolours daily. Not necessarily because of an influx of new members, but I just don't see this boding well, at all. I think you should do your own food club bets but not have it be affiliated by name with Neocolours.

[Jazzy]

I don't want it here because to put it bluntly, I think the whole point of Food Club is to make bets yourself, not for everyone to make identical carbon-copy bets. What's the point in that? You're not playing the game. If someone told people "these are the moves you need to make in Cellblock" or "these are the stocks you have to buy", you'd tell them they were cheating and liable to get frozen. And don't tell me it's harmless, because Food Club is a very inflationary source of neopoints: you have next to no neopoints sunk into it compared to what people get out of it, and the points are created out of nowhere. The Wheel of Excitement and the like say that you'll get frozen for playing it on multiple accounts because it "unbalances the game" - thousands of people placing identical Food Club bets is a far more effective way of unbalancing the game. If you want to do that, then on your head be it, not mine.

[Wingsrising]

Frankly, I've never heard anyone complaining that telling people the moves to make in Cellblock or what stocks to buy is cheating, nor have I ever heard of people getting frozen for it. In fact, the Neodaq has thread pretty much devoted to "what stock am I buying today?"

It doesn't say on the Food Club page that you'll get frozen for unbalancing the game for sharing bets, and I'd be shocked if it ever happened. If Neo doesn't like people making carbon-copy Food Club bets, they'll do what they did when they decided didn't like people following guides to play Poogle Solitaire: get rid of the game.

And it's even more unlikely that anyone is going to get frozen for something they're doing off-site. The only time I've ever heard of things like that happening is when people were talking about/distributing programs to help play Neopets off-site.

*******************

Personally I don't see how anyone would find out that bets are being posted here unless someone told them. But regardless, I'd be interested. I'd be even more interested in some more how-to guides on making bets. I'm slowly getting the hang of how it works, based on what Cranberry posted here and on making Carrie's bets, and I can tell when the odds are good, but I'm still not clear on some things, like how to tell what safeties to make, and how to tell if I'm going to lose money even if my guys win (from not putting a big enough multiplier on the bets).

[Jazzy]

I don't care whether or not you'd get frozen for it - I know you won't get frozen for it, else all the people who have petpages with bets would already be frozen. The reason I am objecting is that I personally think it's wrong. I don't have a problem with people having a thread where they discuss bets to make, but I do have a problem with this site getting known for people stuffing Food Club.

And if the reason people want to have it on here because they think that they will get frozen if they put it on Neopets, then that doesn't exactly convince me it's a good thing to do.

And for what it's worth, the Cellblock one, you can indeed get frozen for, because it's considered to be someone else playing a game for you. I'm not saying things like suggesting you set up an intersecting diagonal and vertical column is cheating, because that's just simple logic, but if you ask someone else what you ought to do next, it is as much cheating as asking someone else to play Korbat's Lab for you.

[Wingsrising]

Note that Carrie didn't get frozen for posting FC bets. She got frozen because she was hacked, possibly because she was well-known from posting FC bets. Whole different kettle of fish.

[Cranberry]

It doesn't say on the Food Club page that you'll get frozen for unbalancing the game for sharing bets, and I'd be shocked if it ever happened. If Neo doesn't like people making carbon-copy Food Club bets, they'll do what they did when they decided didn't like people following guides to play Poogle Solitaire: get rid of the game.

That right there is what I've always worried will happen, which is why when I posted about Food Club here, I taught people how to play instead of providing a list of bets for the day. It's not hard to learn how to play, and the NP is worth the effort of doing a little simple math. I never use the damn petpages and I've made over 15 mil in pure profit from the game.

[Wingsrising]

Maybe, but I've never managed to figure it out very well, and it's not because I'm stupid or can't do simple math.

I doubt that petpages that post FC bets are going away. The only thing that could be done about them, if TNT wants to, is to either get rid of FC or to randomize the game individually for each account.

[Usul_Princess]

*comes back*

.....o_O? What is this?

I don't feel like quoting people who I agree/disagree with about game cheating. It's not worth getting into it over, and I don't really care.

Jazzy, I had no idea you felt so strongly about the idea of group FC betting. Wings is 100% right about Carrie getting CG'ed. (I'm in her guild, and she posted that she clicked on what she thought was the Fox News link though Neopets, when it linked to a CG'er.) I was strictly talking about avoiding CG drama for now, and to make a daily that everyone would be interested in. If I was genuinely afraid of posting bets on Neo indefinately, I wouldn't waste my time suggesting the idea period. Let alone dump the risks on NC.

I already had a link about how to choose 13:1's better on DazedBoy's petpage.

http://www.neopets.com/~DazedBoy

(Forgive the coding. I lost 60% of the format when I overwrote it back in December. You can tell all of those pages are outdated because I still have a petpage app up for a UC plushie shoyru who found a home in November.) Even before this post I thought about doing it on my shoyru side account because some of my sides are completely locked down. No neomail, no neofriends, etc. So I can deter a good number of people who don't how to read where/how to contact me about various stupid questions, and hopefully reduce the number of neomails on my main that I'd be getting from hosting FC.

I didn't think it was currently a good idea to post it anywhere. (Neo or NC) until this cookie thing died down which is why I suggested to wait until at least Christmas to formally start. Regardless, I needed opinions like this good or bad because I never would have known otherwise.

I didn't expect something like this to go sour, and have the fun sucked dry from a mere suggestion.

At the end of the day, contrasting opinions aren't worth getting hostile over. Breathe in, breathe out. Think of the happy fuzzies tomorrow.

[Cranberry]

I don't think anyone was being hostile... this seems like a pretty polite debate to me.

[Jazzy]

Agreed. And my view isn't exactly a secret - I've never agreed with the petpage betting and have told plenty of people this privately, it's just that I don't make a habit of replying to people's posts in AaToW with what I think because it's inappropriate. On this thread, however, you did ask what I thought. I know Carrie was CGed rather than frozen for what she was doing and have never said otherwise (and as you'll see above, I pointed out that none of the others are frozen), but that doesn't change my opinion that it's still cheating, since it requires no judgment on your part to make a bet based on what someone else is telling you. I think Cranberry telling people how to play, and you telling people how best to choose between people is absolutely fine, but telling them "bet on these people" is not.

[Ailiel]

Well, since it's clearly been accepted by the Neopets team as within the scope of the rules (I cannot believe that they are unaware of the bet page situation, and no one has been frozen yet), I can't understand why you would still find it wrong. Since it is not against the rules and not cheating per TNT's tacit approval, I don't see how you can find it to be against the rules when it isn't. Are you taking a moral stance against it? That's like saying you are against pet trading and refusing to have Neocolours associated with it, when TNT has approved of it.

I use the food club bet pages and have had good results, but not always. No bets, whether they are your own or someone else's, are foolproof. You are taking a gamble every time you play. It's not like those other games, where telling someone the steps will absolutely lead to success. It's posting your best guess of what will be most profitable, and as the bet pages attest, there are many opinions on this. Sometimes they turn out, sometimes they don't. It is the risk built into the game that keeps it in check, not whether people are following the same bets or not.

I'm adrift without Carrie's page and I would LOVE to have a Neocolourian's bets here or hosted on Neopets. At least then I know I would receive a quick heads-up if their account is compromised in any way. I and lots of other people on this forum use these bets and have no problem using them, have never had a problem using them, nor have I ever seen anyone frozen for using them or posting them. So to me, the idea that it's against the rules is paranoid at best.

Cookie grabbers have always been a risk, I don't know why food club bets here or elsewhere would make anyone a particular target. But perhaps there are risks in it I haven't considered?

[Jazzy]

Are you taking a moral stance against it? That's like saying you are against pet trading and refusing to have Neocolours associated with it, when TNT has approved of it.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing, though the pet trading comparison is specious, as TNT has only given tacit approval for this. With pet trading, they've created a function which swaps people's pets. Therefore, they intend people to swap pets. With Food Club, they have never stated that you are allowed to do what you're doing: they have simply never stated that you are not. Pet trading is sanctioned by TNT, but copying other people's bets for Food Club is, at best, turned a blind eye to by TNT. If TNT explicitly said in an editorial or by any other means (eg, an official neomail to someone who's doing it) that this was okay, then I would allow it, but since they haven't, I do not want to.

Again, I am not stopping people creating their own petpage or anything else - they can even link to it here. I also have no problem with Food Club guides. But I do not want to have an official Neocolours bet page. With the Neodaq comparison above - people say which stocks they think are good, and where they tend to invest. That makes sense. But there isn't an official Neodaq page saying "Today, you should buy SHRX."

If you simply aren't any good at Food Club on your own, why isn't it treated like any other game on the site? If I said "I can't play Korbat's Lab so I need my friend to play it for me", that's cheating; if I said "I can't restock so I need my friend to do it for me", that's cheating; if I said "I can't feed Kadoaties so I need my friend to do it for me", that's cheating. So if I said "I can't play Food Club on my own so I need my friend to do it for me", that doesn't sound even slightly dubious?

[Wingsrising]

If that was what we were talking about, yes. My letting Usul log onto my account to make FC bets for me WOULD be against the rules. The rules are very clear that you can't let other people log into your account to play for you.

But we're not talking about letting someone on your account to make your bets for you. We're talking about a petpage guide that gives suggested solutions to the game.

Every Flash game that has fixed solutions for every level has 50 gazillion petpages and walkthrus telling people how to solve them. Back when there was a crossword every day, many major Neopets sites posted that days' solutions. Every time there's a plot where each stage has the same solution for everyone, people start posting as soon as they figure it out. Back when TNT made new avatars, when someone figured out how to get it, they posted and said so.

Posting your suggestions for FC I see as being absolutely the same thing. If it's wrong than so is every other petpage guide that tells how to play a Flash game with solutions or gives the solution to a step in a plot.

Another way to put this: FC is EXACTLY like Korbat's Lab and restocking... or, to make my viewpoint clearer, Wingoball. Letting someone else onto your account to make your FC bets for you would be cheating, just like letting someone onto your account to play Wingoball would be. TNT has made very clear you're not supposed to let other people log into your account to play the game for you.

Reading a guide with the exact spots to aim for in Wingoball (and many exist) is totally different from letting someone play Wingoball for you. Reading a guide with suggested bets is totally different from letting someone onto your account to make the bets for you.