Mocaverse feedback
Noah Ralston
A leaderboard should not have been used for the Mocaverse event.
I like that it uses materials. Gives it more crossover experience. And the luck throughout is good, gives dopamine. It is the leaderboard that is the problem.
If distribution will even out over the event and everyone will have equal chance. Then a leaderboard is the wrong thing to use. Leaderboard is for those that have exceptional skill or ability to grind. In this case neither is true. It is purely luck. So for luck winning situations a draw at the end makes sense. Those that do all the tasks have equal entry.
I assume the point of this event is to have fun, create community, and get people thinking about Mocaverse. Doing a draw at the end gives me hope while collect stars and I am only disappointed at the end when I don't win. Right now I continually lose hope through the whole event. Bad game design.
For an event with such a massive prize (9 lands!) I would think there would be more depth to it. I don't mean more grinding, but connection to what Mocaverse is. But that is a different conversation.
Anyway, the end result is this event is creating happy feelings for a few people and negative feelings for most people.
- Leaderboards - by exhibiting skill and grinding
- Items - by participating (completion) and from prizes (random draw)
- Energy - by burning $berry and participating in community events
Gabriel
Decided to comment on your entry here since I also had a few thoughts on the mocaverse event and this seems like a good forum to discuss these things.
First a few thoughts regarding price distribution for events in general:
With so many players now playing pixels and just a few high end prices for each event, there seem to be two good options: pure luck distribution or skill based distribution (eg if there was a flappy bird clone). Rewards for pure grind will end up rewarding the same few accounts every event and lead to problems like account sharing and unhealthy 24/7 grind like we saw during p2a. If grind shall still be rewarded, but to satisfy all players, separate price pools putting different weight on grind, skills and luck ("quest completed to participate in a draw", like the airdrop spots for p2a participants reaching a certain threshold) seem like a good option. Regarding rewards for grind, tiered price pools could be interesting as well, eg. a draw amongst the top 100, another draw amongst top 1000.
Now to the MocaVerse mechanics:
I would argue that the leaderboard itself is not the issue, and it is not what I did not like about the Mocaverse event. It is also not the fact that amazing prices like lands were distributed to pure luck. After all, it was pure luck with the otherspeck boxes and carnival tickets as well, which felt more rewarding.
My issue with it was, that the design made me feel the bad luck everyday, and it felt unfair on multiple levels, even if I did not mess up the schedule and claimed all the batteries possible. On the battery level, some players received 27 multiple times, others did not receive 27 a single time. Some players got an even distribution of materials from the machine, some did consistently receive a weirdly low amount of one of the 5 materials, as if there was some individually predetermined probability.
I agree, that seeing the leaderboard and constantly seeing you do not have a chance to get in there or to the top, even if you do the best you could, craft all the resources, spend all the energy, felt discouraging. I still think there should be a leaderboard, and there can be a nice eg decorative or berry price for the top 10 or top 100, or a badge or glowstick or whatever, to be able to flex your win. But, for future events, I think it would feel more fair to everyone to distribute massive/high end prices like lands through a system like we had for carnival and otherspeck. A small chance at it for every star/ticket/box. More chances for putting in more effort, while also giving a smaller chance to the casual players. Like that people would feel rewarded for the effort they put in, just by being allowed more draws.
Generally, even if this one felt unfair to me (while it was not) I do appreciate the team experimenting with different designs for these events, and it is a good thing that the events are different and feel different, and there is variety to the experience. All events with the same system would become boring soon as well. Eg I did really like that the event was more connected to the core game loop of resource generation compared to the other events. To see the influence on the marketplace and player behavior and strategies was great as well. Especially since I think anticipating and preparing for ingame market movements due to a meta that changes from time to time with events and updates are a very fun part of the pixels experience. The overlap with p2a was interesting as well as you needed to make decisions on how to better spend your time and energy.