Loyalty Reward

[Trixi Fang]

Edit: I have rephrased my statement for clarity - initially I was trying to bring the flawed Loyalty system to the attention of SV players and its staff whilst only mentioning that it was unjust how the reward is tied to the final week and failure to complete that week results in not being rewarded for the ultimate Loyalty item. I did not intend to narrow it down to that alone, though that is an issue.

The current Loyalty Reward system is, as many players agree, rather flawed. It focusses heavily on missions and farming, which is not only unbalanced when there are so many other mechanisms by which one could earn points, but lacks variety for the player. It also makes it harder to complete, regarding timeframes specifically, given many of us are returning to SV as adults with markedly less time on our hands than we used to have. From what I've seen in-world, the majority are indeed adults - a vast contrast to the days of SW when there was a younger player base.

Also, to circle back to my original point, and to echo Adriella's statement (below): it is also greatly unjust that the cut-off date is cleaner in SV than it was in SW regarding the reward at the conclusion of the fourth week. It gives the player less time, especially, like most of us who have jobs now, cannot always commit to the time required to earn it. Relaxing this window a bit would honestly be appreciated by many, I feel.

[Reya SmallVerse]

Hello all,

While we understand that completing the Loyalty Challenge requires a decent amount of commitment, it is currently operating as intended. Allowing shortcuts or reducing the existing requirements would diminish the value of the rewards earned by players who complete the challenge under the current system.

That said, we do have plans to introduce additional activities in the future that will allow players to earn Loyalty Challenge progress through more options than what is currently available. Missions will continue to make up a significant portion of the necessary points, but our goal is to provide players with more variety in how they choose to complete the challenge.

These additions are planned for a future update after higher-priority development work has been completed, as the Loyalty Challenge is currently stable and functioning as designed.

We'll be sure to keep the community informed as these plans develop and when any changes are implemented. Thank you for your feedback!

[Aribella Lafonte]

I disagree and it was never this way on SW.

What I do think is that the specific requirements need to be lifted assigning just how many times the activities count. For example, planting, painting, sculpting which only count as once. We all have different interests and I feel that anything we do should count and not have such restrictions. Perhaps limit to how many times per day that they count, but not only once per week. This also puts too much emphasis on missions for those that don’t like to play them. I fully support missions, I create them, however, I don’t feel that it is right to force them on people. (plays will not suffer since they are the only source to gain significant xp) Common Sense Psychology: Putting too much pressure to do something brings on negativity and displeasure doing that activity. You are inadvertently teaching players to hate playing missions and having to put in the efforts to complete the task. It takes away excitement and makes it more of a chore.

The loyalties in general should have more flexibility to what we like to do in the game and as long as we log in to do them, they should count, no matter what they are and should be repeatable.

Also, the requirements to play upward of 10 missions, usually around 13, is too high for Non VIP.

[Reya SmallVerse]

Hello all,

While we understand that completing the Loyalty Challenge requires a decent amount of commitment, it is currently operating as intended. Allowing shortcuts or reducing the existing requirements would diminish the value of the rewards earned by players who complete the challenge under the current system.

That said, we do have plans to introduce additional activities in the future that will allow players to earn Loyalty Challenge progress through more options than what is currently available. Missions will continue to make up a significant portion of the necessary points, but our goal is to provide players with more variety in how they choose to complete the challenge.

These additions are planned for a future update after higher-priority development work has been completed, as the Loyalty Challenge is currently stable and functioning as designed.

We'll be sure to keep the community informed as these plans develop and when any changes are implemented. Thank you for your feedback!

[Trixi Fang]

I disagree and it was never this way on SW.

What I do think is that the specific requirements need to be lifted assigning just how many times the activities count. For example, planting, painting, sculpting which only count as once. We all have different interests and I feel that anything we do should count and not have such restrictions. Perhaps limit to how many times per day that they count, but not only once per week. This also puts too much emphasis on missions for those that don’t like to play them. I fully support missions, I create them, however, I don’t feel that it is right to force them on people. (plays will not suffer since they are the only source to gain significant xp) Common Sense Psychology: Putting too much pressure to do something brings on negativity and displeasure doing that activity. You are inadvertently teaching players to hate playing missions and having to put in the efforts to complete the task. It takes away excitement and makes it more of a chore.

The loyalties in general should have more flexibility to what we like to do in the game and as long as we log in to do them, they should count, no matter what they are and should be repeatable.

Also, the requirements to play upward of 10 missions, usually around 13, is too high for Non VIP.

I agree with you, Aribella. To be clear, I wasn't suggesting any major changes were to be made to make it unfair on how hard players work. But the point I was making was similar to yours - not all activities are created equal. And when it's so clearly skewed towards missions being the quickest/biggest earner points-wise (as a mission-maker myself), it can be hard and not everyone indeed enjoys missions. More so when a good quantity of SV players are now adults with less time on their hands than they used to have. This is not the first time this subject has been raised - it was supported in SW as well. And so I agree - it would be very helpful to introduce a system that isn't so skewed towards one reward system over others to not just make it fairer, but potentially easier to achieve

[Adriella Spencer]

...the monthly Loyalty Reward should be granted to the player even if they've left a week of points incomplete (up to a certain point)...

That kind of defeats the purpose of the challenge, no? Why should players still be able to get the reward if they fail to meet the requirements to get it? That sounds totally unreasonable to me.

What I find unfortunate is that there is only one chance to get the reward in the last week of the month. If I am remembering correctly, in SW the week number was not pegged to dates and therefore did not apply to every one at the same time. So it was possible to complete 3 weeks in March and complete your 4th week in the first week of April and get the reward early. And if you didn't complete it that week, you can still try in the other weeks of the month. It only reset once you had completed the entire challenge, not at month's end.

I think the loyalty challenge consists of a good mix of activities, although a few are missing:

• gaming - pool, wild cards, arena etc.
• crafting
• trading

Purchasing a package from the SV store should also count because it is the ultimate show of loyalty.

I'm not sure why missions and farming are featured so prominently. What's so special about them?

[Trixi Fang]

That kind of defeats the purpose of the challenge, no? Why should players still be able to get the reward if they fail to meet the requirements to get it? That sounds totally unreasonable to me.

What I find unfortunate is that there is only one chance to get the reward in the last week of the month. If I am remembering correctly, in SW the week number was not pegged to dates and therefore did not apply to every one at the same time. So it was possible to complete 3 weeks in March and complete your 4th week in the first week of April and get the reward early. And if you didn't complete it that week, you can still try in the other weeks of the month. It only reset once you had completed the entire challenge, not at month's end.

I think the loyalty challenge consists of a good mix of activities, although a few are missing:

• gaming - pool, wild cards, arena etc.
• crafting
• trading

Purchasing a package from the SV store should also count because it is the ultimate show of loyalty.

I'm not sure why missions and farming are featured so prominently. What's so special about them?

I agree. I was poor in the phrasing of my initial statement. What I was after is what you have outlined here - not just one chance to obtain the reward. And there aren't nearly enough ways to obtain it, as it stands. I think also having a cleaner cut-off date, unlike the old SW days, is also not fair on the player after working so hard to get there. I definitely think there should be a more balanced system.

[Trixi Fang]

Hello all,

While we understand that completing the Loyalty Challenge requires a decent amount of commitment, it is currently operating as intended. Allowing shortcuts or reducing the existing requirements would diminish the value of the rewards earned by players who complete the challenge under the current system.

That said, we do have plans to introduce additional activities in the future that will allow players to earn Loyalty Challenge progress through more options than what is currently available. Missions will continue to make up a significant portion of the necessary points, but our goal is to provide players with more variety in how they choose to complete the challenge.

These additions are planned for a future update after higher-priority development work has been completed, as the Loyalty Challenge is currently stable and functioning as designed.

We'll be sure to keep the community informed as these plans develop and when any changes are implemented. Thank you for your feedback!

Thank you for your reply, Reya. If you'd be able to spare the time to look over my revised statement (I admittedly phrased it poorly, which was not my intention) and the comments of the other players on this thread, it would be much appreciated because taking these into consideration for future changes I think would be highly beneficial.

[Eon Angelz]

• Spin to win (4 points) takes 1 minute.
• Completing an Approved Mission (4 points) takes 6-10 minutes
• Sowing, Harvesting, and Pollinating Plants (6 points) takes 5 minutes, at most.
• Painting and Sculpting (4 points) takes 10 minutes.

That's 25 or so minutes per week. It's a different story if you don't have VIP, but you'd expect nooblings to be playing their missions for tokens anyways.

Adding more options will only add more avenues for players to afk through kudos, and also decimate the need to mission altogether. The state of missions is dire as it is.

Purchasing a package from the SV store should also count because it is the ultimate show of loyalty.

Being VIP doubles your points, so in a way this is already in effect.

Common Sense Psychology: Putting too much pressure to do something brings on negativity and displeasure doing that activity. You are inadvertently teaching players to hate playing missions and having to put in the efforts to complete the task. It takes away excitement and makes it more of a chore.

Players hate missions because the ones worth playing don't have the EXP reward to match it. Kudos is not a negative factor. If anything, Kudos gives you the opportunity to earn extra exp. Doing 6 missions for 1500exp will take longer than just doing the 2 missions and the rest of activities for Kudos for that same 1500exp.

[Aribella Lafonte]

Adding more options will only add more avenues for players to afk through kudos, and also decimate the need to mission altogether. The state of missions is dire as it is.

We already afk during Kudos for painting/sculpting if it is someone that doesn’t do those activities on a normal basis or if it’s a sculptor/painter not already working on a project or already completed that activity for the week. Then let’s not forget those having to afk playing a mission i.e. Bill’s Butterfly Park or any other mission players grind on because it can be completed in under 3 minutes.

Players hate missions because the ones worth playing don't have the EXP reward to match it. Kudos is not a negative factor. If anything, Kudos gives you the opportunity to earn extra exp. Doing 6 missions for 1500exp will take longer than just doing the 2 missions and the rest of activities for Kudos for that same 1500exp.

I think we all have a different perception to what we call missions that are worth playing. For me, that would be one with more content and you’re right (for this perpective) that it doesn’t reflect the proper xp for the time/effort it takes to complete it. So I agree. Then when you put it in a majority of other player’s perspectives, they only want to put that time/effort in for what a mission is and its rewards; to gain tokens/xp, the content doesn’t matter. Most do not thoroughly enjoy playing missions. (Reality, sadly)

Kudos itself on it’s own isn’t a negative factor. It just doesn’t have flexibility or acknowledge that we have different communities within the game and each have different things that we like to do. SW always had missions as a big part of earning loyalty points, but what sets it apart is its attitude toward playing those missions as part of it. From what I remember, there was less negativity towards them, I have no idea why. For me, I don’t feel the quality is as good, for others, I am clueless. I just know that most players don’t enjoy them as much. So that part of the Kudos make me and others cringe. Sad when I myself create them. 😭 I guess I can say that while I love to create them, I enjoy playing them much less. Here anyway, the attitude/enjoyment towards missions here sucks. There. I said it. For me, it is poor quality. (Not all)

Plays on missions suffer because players tend to play what is in the front of the mission panel to cut out time searching for them. And the payout system putting more emphasis on its flat payout not taking time/effort into account is the biggest source of its attitude on missions and that was SW’s fault that is hard for SV to correct for. 😔

But, let’s take this as an example; I also play Wizard101. They have limited timed events where players can earn rewards. This is by checking out or doing other activities in the game that involve other players. This would be helping on a quest, rating a house, taking part in a gaming activity, etc. Each activity gives a certain number of points per day. Because of this, players can choose which activities to do and can repeat them the following day if another is not something they don’t wish to partake in, for example, Deckathalon or Beastmoon that only appeal to a specific group. Players can still accumulate those points to earn the reward so long as they are accumulated within the week of the event to add up to the prize amount of points. No activity suffers because players have the ability to choose or those activities exist taking them away from questing (missions). They are still required to gain their levels/xp. But what it does do is get players to log in and go out to experience different areas in the game to help support other communities as well while getting a reward for doing it.

But while players may complain that there is nothing to do (on Wizard101 or on SV) having such loyalties shows players what all is available to do within it contradicting that statement. Adding crafting or whatever other activity is a benefit to Kudos and offers more flexibility. What is sad though, that players here don’t utilize what all is available to them, and this includes the gaming widgets which could also be included in the loyalty.

I am not for removing missions from Kudos or significantly taking away their importance to be included, I am just suggesting them to be less “in your face” while introducing more flexibility and activities to help players further explore other aspects within it.

[Trixi Fang]

[LIST][*]Completing an Approved Mission (4 points) takes 6-10 minutes

Unfortunately, with regards to missions, it's 2 points per mission for VIPs rather than 4, and taking into account it's at least 5 minutes per mission (minimum) and there's 18 points to fill, So if you were, that's a minimum of 45 minutes, but that usually works out to over an hour by the time it's over. Spin-to-win as well as Deluxe is also 1 point for non-VIPs and 2 for VIPs max, not 4. Not terrible, but takes a lot longer than you think to earn. And I agree with Aribella's last point that it should indeed be more varied - there are so many wasted opportunities as to the use of the other skills when it comes to Loyalty variation