Pink Poogle Toy Forum

Here's one big long rant about Neopets' games. I know some of you will disagree with what I say, and that's fine since everyone as people have different opinions. My rant in particular, is about the food fetching quests, and the Wheels.

Snow Faerie Quest and all other variations of "Grab X and return to me" quests: It seems like every quest requires at least 8000 Neopoints or more in order to purchase all the food. I just received one that wants me to grab 2x 9000 NP food, and another one that costs about 2000 NP. That'd be 20k I'd have to spend in order to finish the quest. What does one usually get in terms of the reward with Snow Faerie quest? Around 2000 NP, a Magical Snow Ball, and some sort of food that can sell for a couple of grand. Is there any sort of reason to actually do these quests? I mean, I find myself only doing the ones that cost a total of less than 10k now, only because I find it sort of fun to get that *surprise* at the end...............which is accompanied by a loss of a couple thousand Neopoints. Same deal with Esophogor and the others. Big fetch quest, small reward, everytime. Not fun.

The Wheels are no better.

Excitement: Probably the best of them all. The occasional time, you do at least win a few hundred NP. The majority of the time though, it's the random prize, which is an amount < 100 np, which means, yes, another loss of NP per spin. But alas, it costs 150 NP to play. Can't complain too much.

Knowledge: Here's the worst one of all. It takes 500 NP to spin. 90% of the time, you land on the "?", which gets you some sort of game hint like more time in Sutek's Tomb. It's nice the first time. It get really old by the 100th time you see it. The other times you spin, King Hagan will give you a nice lovely and useless quote. Or maybe you get extremely lucky and win a window, book, fruit, or shield that's worth at best, on par with the 500 NP required to spin the wheel. I don't even want to recall how many "Small Metal Shields" I've won. I know it's "fun" to spin the wheels.....but only to a certain extent.

Mediocrity, Misfortune: They're pretty much tagged as, "lame wheels", so I don't blame whatever you get out of them.

Monotony: I don't play it that often, takes way too long to finish. So no opinion.



Now, I understand that one can't expect to win big every time. But to me, it's gotten to the point of just being ridiculous. I want to spin the wheels, I want to do the quests, but it's becoming incresingly difficult with it almost being guaranteed that you'll lose money. TNT needs to buff up chances and quality of items.

Your thoughts on this? Think I'm completely out to lunch on this matter? Do say. I want to hear different voices

Actually, this is a really good point. I find myself no longer doing the quests or maybe of the freebies for this very reason... I've even completed the Altador plot but I don't bother collecting the freebie that is unlocked because it's going to be a crappy prize anyway.

Neopets should update the darn thing.

By the way, welcome to PPT. Set yourself up an avatar and sig pic and you'll officially be one of the family.

Thanks for the welcome 7 years of Neopets on this very day as well

And your point about updating them is exactly what I would like to see. Change up the tips/quotes on Wheel of Knowledge. Make it so that I don't lose 500 NP every.single.time. on it. Ask for a more random assortment of foods with the Snow Faerie, instead of expensive things that simply outvalue the reward every.single.time(Look, I just started another Snow Faerie........and surprise surprise, I need to spend 18k on it).

Simply put, make them worth playing. Right now, they're not, regardless of how much you enjoy playing on Neopets. I've sent a friendly message to TNT about it as well. Chances are, it won't even be looked at though. Oh well.

7 years hey? *thinks back to when he first began*... hey... 7-8 years here!! (Minus one year for the inactivity.) Looks like we have a vintage-arian here people!!

Maybe we can all do a big article about things Neopets should do to improve their site. You never know who may be watching/listening.

I dunno... with the wheels all they need to do is shift the probabilities or something, but with Altador plot...? Any gift Altador gives out, no matter how cool will soon turn into worthless junk because of the sheer numbers available- heck, he could give out paintbrushes and scorchstones and they'd be worth 1np after 6 months or so... Maybe they should just rotate the stuff, like the WoE's disease. (e.g., this month there's a chance he gives you a faerie, next month he gives away random battledome stuff, etc)- that way stuff won't flood the economy too much.

I agree about the quests... they're not balanced for the neopian economy anymore. Edna, in particular, has got to be the worst offennder!

I like the idea of rotating stuff given out by Altador, but I think the prices will still take months/years to recover on any item, no matter how long it's given out. If they truly made it random, where you could get *anything,* it might help, but any time there's a limited set of objects that can be won, the values WILL deflate, and quickly. Look at the first common "dropped" items that Tarla gave away - most of them are still under 1/10th of what they were originally worth. (I know people who gave up restocking because of her - you could really lose out on something very quickly that had been worth a LOT just two days prior). Sure, it was great for those trying to get more expensive books, collect stamps or coins, or plushies, but I know anyone who already had worked hard to get these was likely as frustrated as I was when I watched the book values deflated.

Quests:
Unfortunately, the quests are a result of a mess.
Snow Faerie: They *started* with the chance of winning great things (I've seen screenies of people winning Fire and Ice Blades, Draik Eggs, etc from Snow Faerie). Unfortunately, this caused the required items (mostly "uncommon" foods) to skyrocket in price. Why *wouldn't* you spend 8k for a chance at a Draik Egg? Problem was, prices went up, too many people were getting great things, and then TNT suddenly realized this and went "Oh, shoot! We need to stop those great items from being too frequently given out!" So, suddenly, instead of winning great items semi-frequently, you might have a minuscule chance of it (maybe, occasionally getting gourmet food). Instead, you're more likely to get a "rare" food, which, ironically, tend to be worth 500-900 nps as compared to the "uncommon" ones. Since the "rare" foods are neither gourmet, nor needed for quests....they're essentially worthless for the most part. I definitely think the Snow Faerie could use with a little more rarity variety again (both in requested items - maybe a chance at needing less than uncommon in rarity and possibly rewards).
Kitchen Quests: Suffered from the Snow faerie's inflation, as they also tend to require "uncommon" foods. Not to mention, I'm fairly certain that the original kitchen quests were around before the training schools were, and had a shot at training your pet.
Edna? Well, I agree. Edna does stink muchly. However, there's always that chance of pulling up a snorkel snout....
Esophager (as long as you're not doing a Brain Tree Quest) can actually be fairly profitable as long as you only do ones that involve the cheaper items.

Wheels:
Excitement used to be only 100nps a spin, hence why the random amount is less than 100. I've always wondered why they never updated that...
Knowledge - I've actually gotten job scrolls off it, and sometimes battle scrolls worth a decent amount. I know I'm at best breaking even overall, but I really would like to get the avvie (which does seem quite impossible).
Mediocrity: has been better since they fixed it. However, since it's gotten better, the cost of most Tyrannian foods/furniture items have gone down. Yeah, deflation.

I have noticed, however, that the ability to earn nps off games has seemed to have gotten easier. With the vast number of games, and the varying ratios, you can pretty much find some that will give out the full 1k/play reasonably (Kass Basher and Zurroball, anyone?) and in short time. For a while, when I had time, I was making an easy 25k in about 25 minutes a day just by knowing which games had the best ratios at the point. I think this, in large, has attributed to inflation.

At this point, though, I don't think there's much that can be done to combat the inflation. Yes, they *could* change out the Altador prizes, or increase the chances of good results from Snow Faerie or the wheels, but what's most likely to happen? Yes, you'll be more excited...at first.
The items given out will deflate quickly (but uncommon items will inflate even more for quests) -> people will stop needing to spend as much on the rarer items (but the quests will get expensive and people will once again stop doing quests) -> people have more random nps laying around -> people are willing to pay more for things like paint brushes, battledome items, codestones, or wearable cloths -> prices on these items will inflate even more.
In the end, this will get none of us any closer to getting the painted pet we want, the cheaper training we wouldn't mind having, or that shiny new Leaded Elemental Vial.

Okay, so I'm not an economy buff or anything, that's just my limited-understanding-of-such-things take on it.

Edit: wow. I wrote a book! I hope it still makes sense to me this afternoon when I'm more awake!

Well the only reason i still spin any of them is for the avie, same for doing Edna quests.

Those are just more parts of the whole game, you just have to know how to play them because they're a different ballgame. Unlike flash games, you're not guaranteed a profit so you just have to set your own limits.

For the quests, I have a set amount that I will spend, and if it costs more then that, I wait it out (1-2 hours) until I can get a new one to try again.

Esophagor: 500np
Edna: 300np (lately 1k because I'm shooting for the avatar)
Snow Faerie: 3k
Kitchen: 2k (would be less if I didn't train my pets)

I rarely don't profit. Sometimes I'll pay edna 900np for 3 quests, the first two I'll get an eye wrap, and the third I'll get an apple lantern. First two weren't a profit, last one was profit enough to make up for them though.

Same goes for the wheels, but you just have to do the ones that have what you're after: avatar, good shot at lots of np, etc. These aren't things I do daily though, because of the randomness. But once in a while it's fun.

I remember when I did snow faerie quests regularily about two or three years ago... and they were worth it then usually. Once I got a stormy negg that was inflated or fairly new or something... made me 80k. Which was a lot for me those days. XD

It's a shame that the rewards are so lame now. I hadn't thought about why I had stopped doing quests until now... I just did.

I think they messed with the snow faerie too much. I have clear memories of bothering to do her quests when I first joined neopets(arouuuund....5 years ago? That was on my oldest account, mind, not this one), and winning some neat stuff. Not fire and ice blades or draik eggs mind, but I got some 80k items. But ya, they have made it pretty much useless...it used to be that you could do a few quests before you ran into some insanely expensive one, but that doesn't seem to be true anymore, and the prizes have gone way downhill. They need to make the rewards a bit better I think, and maybe broaden the range of items she asks for, so maybe the inflation won't be so bad.

I rarely do the snow faerie quests now. I remember about a year ago she much more frequently asked for items that were less than 3k. Now she rarely asks for items worth less than 10K. It's just not profitable to do the quests anymore and it's become really frustrating to get quest after quest that's just too expensive to do.

I don't think I've ever received a good item from Edna. The only one that I frequently do is the Esophager.

What really needs some updating are the old old games like NeoPoker, Scorchy Slots, and Dice a Roo. I never understood how you could have a SUPER! win worth 5np, and a medium win worth 7 when you're on the same dice color.

The wheels need help. I'm not expecting them to be my main source of income or anything, just getting a bit more would be nice.

I would at least like them to update the 100 space to 150 on the Wheel of Excitement.

When the cost was 100np, it was fine - you didn't win or lose - but now, when you land on the same space, you're losing.

Same for me as well.
I have all my freebies set up in a folder in favourites, then I can open all the pages as seperate tabs at once, and close as I do them. Seems to be quicker for me, then I find myself not actually playing the game until the next day.
The flash games have become dull after 6 years of playing, and I find myself doing the freebies as habit rather than out of enjoyment.

When was the last plot? Time for a new one surely?