Games NP Ratio changes?

[wandersong]

Just saw the news about the NP ration changes, what the FAQ says:

I got the same score as before in a game, however, I received less Neopoints.

If you notice that a certain score in a game earned you say 800 NPs one day and only 700 NPs the next, do not worry, this is not a glitch.

In an attempt to balance the amount of Neopoints earned among all the different games Neopets has to offer, the NP to score ratio for any particular game may change from time to time so be sure to keep an eye on the ratio for your favorite games!

Has anyone noticed any changes yet? or will it only start tomorrow? Personally, I am not pleased with the idea of having to re-calculate NP ratio everyday before i do my daily games......

[Sandmaster]

I haven't noticed any changes. I'd just be afraid that my favorite games would lose their fun because easy neopoints would be a thing of the past. Unless of course it brings the ratio up on other games i consider hard. If that happened I suppose it might not be bad. I'd just be worried that a game like Bruno's Backwoods Breakaway would turn into a game where 1000NP's is only feasible if you can get 5180 in the game. I can do it easily but games that become tedious like that would lose their fun factor. I don't know if that makes sense but I'm definitely curious to see what the outcome is.

[Huggles]

A few people have said they've seen changes, but I haven't seen any myself. I expect we'll know more tomorrow. Either this will be much ado about nothing, or a catastrophe. Worst case scenario is you'll be forced to recalculate how much np you can make every single day and stuck hoping your daily games will remain profitable. If it becomes too much of a hassle and things fluctuate enough, I suppose you'll have to wander around aimlessly in hopes of a RE dropping np in your lap.

I think it's rather ridiculous. A few increase or decreases in payout each year is manageable, but a daily fluctuation could potentially be disastrous for the majority of players who make most of their np playing games. Wait and see I suppose. I was hoping they'd let us add more games to our favorites as there are some I don't play everyday and forget about if I don't see them listed.

I wonder if this is because of the Daily Dare. There are people playing games now who either wouldn't play games or not the particular games chosen, and discovering or becoming good at them in order to beat AAA or Abi. I know there's a few I had stopped playing ages ago and started up again, namely Faerie Cloud Racers, after realizing I could earn a decent payout. Not to mention the prizes and the 6k people are earning from beating AAA because of the featured game double payout. Or perhaps we had the Daily Dare to butter us up for this change. Or maybe it's payback to the masses for those sponsor link petpages. Or maybe I'm overthinking this entire thing

[Meer]

Ugh, as soon as I read the news I came straight here to vent and whine and get frustration out.

I think it's rather ridiculous. A few increase or decreases in payout each year is manageable, but a daily fluctuation could potentially be disastrous for the majority of players who make most of their np playing games. Wait and see I suppose.

That's exactly what I am thinking. I make almost all my NP through games. Knowing the NP ratio and what score I need to get on my favorite games is important to me. I know what games I can quickly get 1K a play from, and I have a bit of a routine of daily game playing. This is really going to screw with me!

I'm really upset about this, because it could potentially make a lot of my best NP earning games too hard for me. I know what games I'm good at, and I judge how "good" I am at a particular game by how many NPs I can earn and how well I can get to the 1K payout mark. This could be disastrous for my NP income, and very frustrating for my daily game playing!!

ARRRGGGGGGG!! TNT why do you always have to mess things up!

[AySz88]

Hmm, it doesn't seem so horrible to me. I read it this way: If you really are good at a game compared to others, it should probably still pay out well for you. If the NP ratio would need to be adjusted anyway (i.e. if it was based on an outdated average score), it'll just adjust automatically now. I don't think it'll adjust daily - they say "from time to time", but we'll see.

The fact that this adjustment comes at the same time as the rank/skill level adjustment suggests to me that they're doing NP ratio based on average score. Personally, I think they should (also?) try to normalize NP per time needed to play the game, not by average score, though of course with some padding on the low end such that Splat-A-Sloth doesn't become a 10-NP game.

[yvonne_l_d]

I'm hoping there won't be huge fluctuations all over the place. If the score to NP is based on the difficulty rating of the game, it should stay fairly constant. I do hope that is what it's based on. If it's based on the popularity of the game, that will be more random, because the popularity will change depending on the NP payout.

[bgryph]

I have a bad feeling about this but I want to wait to see what happens before I freak out about it.

Also note that there are a lot more games with absurdly low payouts than there are games with very good ones. It may be that they just want to normalize things across the games. If I can still get a decent amount of NP in a decent time it might not be so bad to have things mix around a bit: I don't know about anyone else but I get bored with playing the same games day after day after day.

We'll just have to see how it pans out.

[eilu]

I think we'll have to wait for next month to be able to gauge the effects. Currently, games with low payouts have a very high average score (because people have been getting high scores to get the NP), which reinforces the low NP ratio; it's a vicious cycle. The real effects of the fluctuating NP won't be felt until the roll-over.

Also, with people aiming for trophies, games will end up with higher and higher average scores as the month progresses; it will be wildly cyclical since there will be low average scores every roll-over.

I hope they peg it at a weighed average difficulty, it'll be more difficult, but more accurate. If it's average difficulty, a few people at either extremes will be enough to falsely bias the ratios; a weighed difficulty would be a better reflection of how the whole population finds a game to be. It will also be less prone to wild fluctuations.

[Machiito]

Personally. I think this is just a really sick April Fool's joke.

I mean, April 1st is on a Sunday this year. Think about it. >>

[Karnatu]

NP ratios have changed before. For example last year Meerca Chase 2's ratio was at 1.2 and now it's 1.5. That was a great change for me as I hardly earned 1k from it a day now I'm earning around 1.5k.

[yvonne_l_d]

Personally. I think this is just a really sick April Fool's joke.

I mean, April 1st is on a Sunday this year. Think about it. >>

If it were an April 1st joke, they'd probably have announced it on Friday, when they post the staurday and sunday news.

[shapu]

I don't have a problem with it.

I think about it this way: There are some games that are absurdly easy to get 1k np on - Zurroball, for instance.

Then there are others that are impossible to get 1k np on without real help from random game items - like, say, Typing Terror.

And then there are games like Usuki Frenzy, which are impossible by design to get more than 350 np.

And it's not as if the games' NP ratios aren't posted - now, it's easy to see (even easier now than it was with the old games room) what the neopoints/game points ratio is. Just divide 1000 by whatever that ratio is, and there you go - that's your score needed for 1k neopoints.

Now, I don't know how it's going to be figured - will they normalize it so that the average score is 500 np (which would be bad) or so that the average score is 1000 np (this would be good), or somewhere in the middle? Will the MEDIAN score (which I am sure is far below the average score) be 500 NP? That would be OK, I think.

Anyway, this is a wait-and-see issue. But from what I'm guessing about it, it's not going to be a big hairy deal, and it may actually make some games MORE profitable, not less.

[Machiito]

Personally. I think this is just a really sick April Fool's joke.

I mean, April 1st is on a Sunday this year. Think about it. >>

If it were an April 1st joke, they'd probably have announced it on Friday, when they post the staurday and sunday news.

Gotta think like they do. It would have been obvious it was a joke then~!

..in all seriousness, maybe you're right. >>;

I'm just paranoid when it comes to changes near the start of April. Always have been, always will be.

[Rubywinged]

The only thing i see bad is that as has been said easy games may now not give the payout wich is bad for only occasional people who play....

Also all the guides to some easy np wont work anymore....

[Siouxper]

When you think about it, a lot of things will lose their validity if this is serious.

And the news is posted, nothing about this new thing.

I haven't noticed anything different though