KING'S SPEECH ♕ BATTLE POINTS AND OTHER ISSUES (original) (raw)

Greetings, adventurers! Many a subjects, hopefully relevant to your interests, shall be discussed today. I ask you to please read this and share your thoughts :{) Apologies beforehand for the long wall of text!

♦ Battle points, finally! ♦
First of all, the long awaited decision regarding battle points! Many (and by "many" I mean about 80% of those who answered the survey) expressed discontentment about the way those points are handled and calculated, to a point where this Questmaster decided a change was needed. Thus, a survey was conducted to gather all of your opinions and avoid further unpleasantries.

Up until now, the points earned by each battle participants were counted for all icons in the battle, made by them or not, which lead to lots of points being earned in a single battle.

From now on, every participant only earns points from icons made by themselves. Each icon will be worth 4 points.

This Questmaster happens to think that a battle forces participants to work with caps they might otherwise not have chosen. The resulting icons should, by this logic, be worthy more than a regular icon a participant made while choosing every element by him/herself.

While 4 points per icon seems a lot at first glance, I'll direct you to the Main Quest of Chapter Two, where a single icon was worth 5 points. As you wade through the many challenges, many points and many battles still to come, you'll see that 200pts is a quite small and achievable number, and no large gap at all.

This way, two problems are solved: firstly, the distortion between points from the earlier battles and new battles won't be so huge/will be fixed quickly, and secondly, there won't be complaints about earning points for icons not made by you.

The points already earned and banked won't be taken away. They've been fairly and correctly earned, and it wouldn't be fine to change them retroactively, since a change of rules wasn't in the plans by then.

Another thing that shall be dropped is the Forfeiting rule. The 50pts penalty worked in a setting where not finishing your icons would keep all your battle partners from earning points, since the overall number of icons would be lower. Now, those points depend only on you, and, since you'd be the only one losing (or rather, not earning) points, there's no motive to take points away.

This is not a reason to sign up to multiple battles and not finish! We trust you to keep participating and finishing all battles you sign up for.

I ask of you a little thinking and perspective, instead of focusing solely on rankings or points. Unfortunately, NO decision will please everybody, but this questmaster needs to choose an option that brings most benefits to the community as a whole. This was the best we could come up with/the less upsetting for most people, and I ask you to try and understand why it's been done.

After this annoucement, point banking of the overdue battles will start in a couple of days, and all the battles that haven't been banked yet will be calculated this new system.

♦ Technical troubles (a.k.a Franko went loose again) ♦
The points spreadsheet isn't working as it should! And it's not even my fault :{c

[**Technical jibber-jabber**]
Our points spreadsheet is hosted on Google Docs, and is built using a function (=X!$C$R) that autopopulates data from an origin spreasheet (X) to others, in a way that this questmaster doesn't need to input the same values in every spreadsheet and leaves less room for errors.

Everything was working just fine until a couple of weeks ago. For some unknown, mind-boggling reason, it started not to work at all. The data still fills itself, but doesn't allow any operations, such as adding the content of populated cells (used in the Guild sheet) or sorting (what makes rankings viable).

We've tried contacting the Google support team, but had no answer up until now (sidebar, this is why this post took so long, we've been waiting for a call back but none came).
This questmaster unfortunately isn't a technology wiz, and could use some (or rather lots) of help from you, more skilled folks, in solving this wilde problem!

It is a truly upsetting matter since it messes with one of the Icon Quest cores, the points system/rankings. Please bear with us until we find a fix or a better way to calculate your points :{c Suggestions or solutions would be really accepted and welcome right now!

♦ Get social ♦
The Kaleidoskope Fair is first and foremost a social community! While it's being used by you adventurers mostly for promoting your posts, it can and should also be used for social activities (discussion posts, inspiration posts, friending memes, et all). Think a IQ-related icon_talk, 20insp_talk or more_inspired.

Don't feel intimidated by the pimps and start interacting with your fellow makers! Try inspiration posts for challenges, ask for help, play games, talk about your progress (or lack thereof) in the Quest. The Icon Quest gives you the space, the content is entirely up to you.

To stay updated with the social posts at The Fair you can check and track the ~social tag (Under "Someone posts an entry tagged" scroll down to "~social" and check "Email").

If you're shy or would rather start small, you can try posting about any subject (including not icon-related, such as watchalongs) in your guild! Your Guild is your Icon Quest family, try going to them if you need help with challenges, want to discuss something or are in the mood for a chat.

♦ Points upkeep ♦
Have you noticed a mistake in your points, or your own count doesn't match the spreadsheet? Fear not! Comment to this post (find it later through a link in The Castle's sidebar) and the CAMALOT (CAstle MAnagement Lords -or Lollipop, still under discussion- Team) shall recalculate them and get back to you in a couple of days. It would help a lot if you could also provide links to all ocasions where you earned points, which will make the job quicker and bring you results sooner :{)

Sometimes when you bring it to attention on a challenge post, the comment gets buried in the huge amount of other comments, and might pass by unnoticed. This way you can call the Questmaster's about any mistake and your points shall stay right and tidy. Don't worry about being a bother, this is what we're here for!

♦ The squeaky wheel gets the grease ♦
Once more, and I shall always remind you, that any concern, mistake, suggestion or trouble that might come you way at theiconquest can and should be brought to thequestmaster's attention before anything else. The Questmaster is always, always open to complaints or suggestions, and willing to help you. It's really not a carelessness or snubbing issue (the QM has absolutely nothing against no one! Well, maybe against Franko, but that's a story for another day), most likely your comment slipped through the cracks of the community, since there's a lot of information to go through every day.

If you asked a question somewhere and haven't been answered in 48h, if your points from challenges or the market haven't been banked in three days tops, if you have any other particular queries you might want to bring to the staff's attention, send a PM! Some questions require a tad more mulling than others, and that might be your case, but if a long time goes by, send your PM again and again until you get an answer.

I'd also like to thank everyone who has answered our survey, your input is muchly appreciated. Apologies once more for all the text, and I hope this clarified some issues. Any further questions or anything you have to say, please leave a comment and you'll be answered as soon as possible.

Cheers!

♕ thequestmaster ♕