Return of Dr. Sloth [Split 10]

[digitel_anime_fan_20]

I'm eternally happy that we don't have to to the rest of the steps to fight...I've given up on the 3-mods. :k

[Chakra_]

Me too. I've given up the 3 mods. I know it would be super to be able to complete it. Completing it would be a huge huge sense of achievement as well. However i just don't have the time to try and try again. I've got more things running in my life than to sit in front of my computer dragging codes after codes haha.

Well as long as i got finish mod 2 onwards plus do well in battle it should be enough for a nice trophy and hopefully some good rewards. If there is a step 4 or a 5 in puzzle i may just come back to do mod 3 but as of now, not going back

[Valrigard]

TNT is a bit crazy this time... unless, of course, they want people who are stuck to give up and have some fun elsewhere instead. However, for those of us who went through the plot, TNT should give out GREAT prizes (on par with LDP stuff). I think the Daily Dare should come AFTER the plot...

[Sylence]

I am glad to be done the mods and I think they released the dare now to give people who gave up on the plot something to do.

[Daze]

TNT is a bit crazy this time... unless, of course, they want people who are stuck to give up and have some fun elsewhere instead. However, for those of us who went through the plot, TNT should give out GREAT prizes (on par with LDP stuff). I think the Daily Dare should come AFTER the plot...

I have seen similar comments on PPT and on the Chat Boards and after thinking about it, and I have come to 2 conclusions:

1. TNT don't have a lot of free time this year. We are still to have the release of Keyquest (early spring - which is now!) also Petpetpet Habitats is said to be released this year and we also might still be having the Altador Cup.

2. Maybe TNT are testing the waters of multiple site events happening at the same time, because it is something that might be happening more often.

Neo has been going for almost 10 years, maybe it is time to do more with the site. Big changes have been happening and more are to come.

If Neo proves to hold itself up to 2 site events without crashing, maybe we will get more events to do.

I see it as a positive step not as 'bad management' as a lot of people are complaining about.

[cybertrini]

Me too. I've given up the 3 mods. I know it would be super to be able to complete it. Completing it would be a huge huge sense of achievement as well. However i just don't have the time to try and try again. I've got more things running in my life than to sit in front of my computer dragging codes after codes haha.

Well as long as i got finish mod 2 onwards plus do well in battle it should be enough for a nice trophy and hopefully some good rewards. If there is a step 4 or a 5 in puzzle i may just come back to do mod 3 but as of now, not going back

Wasn't this discussed in the last thread? In a past Neopian Times Editorial (http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index.pht ... &issue=331), someone asked if they had not finished the puzzle stages if they could go on with the rest of the plot. The answer was that they could not, but that was why TNT hadn't closed off the steps, to allow people the time to complete them. Someone in the last thread had said they had left the decoding incomplete and went on to the battle, but was pointed to the editorial response, suggesting that their battle points may not count unless they complete the puzzle steps.

Maybe someone should ask TNT to clear this up. Seems kinda unfair if you have been battling that they only tell you after that your points won't count...

[Daze]

Me too. I've given up the 3 mods. I know it would be super to be able to complete it. Completing it would be a huge huge sense of achievement as well. However i just don't have the time to try and try again. I've got more things running in my life than to sit in front of my computer dragging codes after codes haha.

Well as long as i got finish mod 2 onwards plus do well in battle it should be enough for a nice trophy and hopefully some good rewards. If there is a step 4 or a 5 in puzzle i may just come back to do mod 3 but as of now, not going back

Wasn't this discussed in the last thread? In a past Neopian Times Editorial (http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index.pht ... &issue=331), someone asked if they had not finished the puzzle stages if they could go on with the rest of the plot. The answer was that they could not, but that was why TNT hadn't closed off the steps, to allow people the time to complete them. Someone in the last thread had said they had left the decoding incomplete and went on to the battle, but was pointed to the editorial response, suggesting that their battle points may not count unless they complete the puzzle steps.

Maybe someone should ask TNT to clear this up. Seems kinda unfair if you have been battling that they only tell you after that your points won't count...

I am pretty sure TNT would have thought of this before hand. It seems that 'steps' in a plot just mean the puzzles. The battles are optional so they don't rely on you finishing the last step for you to go and fight. The battledome can be looked at as 'bonus points'.

[Arka]

I urge those who have decided to give up to try again, unless you just don't want to complete the step.

I decided to work on one a day. It took a long time, but I usually finished more than one a day. Even if you only have a half hour a day, just mark down where you are and start there next time.

I used the plodding method- no math calculations at all.

1 2 3
1 2 4
1 2 5 and so forth then

! 3 4
1 3 5
1 3 6 and so forth, then

1 4 5 and so forth, and after all of those were done, then

2 3 4
2 3 5
2 3 6 and so forth

2 4 5 etc,

then

3 4 5 etc

You can make it go slightly faster by clicking the code in the guess box to make it move back to its spot in the list, rather than dragging it.

It is tedious, but it does work, and it involves no mental work other than staying alert.

If you don't mind some mental work, use the charts that have been referred to, and find which last (or first) symbols you need to get the result you are looking for:

If you have

1 2 (blank) see what you need with the last symbol of the initial code, plus the last symbol of the 1 and 2 codes to make the destination code. This way you can eliminate some of the guesses and just put in the third code box those codes which would cause the result to be the destination result. I didn't use the code charts but found it faster to write down on a piece of paper which codes added up to the destination code.

If you decide to only spend even a half hour or an hour working on this, then you will get it done in a few days.

[Matrinka]

According to JellyNeo we're going to get Chapter 11 today... and more Battledome challengers. (This is speculation from the appearance of clockwork/robot creatures in the banner).

http://www.jellyneo.net/

[Ange]

Yay, updates!

I've more or less exhausted the current challengers...at the very least, I'm bored with them lol.

[Daze]

Is any one worried that there will be no news today?

From the calendar:

Mar 3rd - Cancelled due to lack of interest

[Pickles]

Thanks to AySz88, who emailed me his cached files, here are the posts that went *poof* from last week. In spoilers, because there are many (don't click on it if you don't want to read them - it's approximately 3 pages worth of posts!!). It's not perfect as I had to reformat it from a saved html, and I didn't include dates/times/sigs (and there may be a few posts still missing from the end), but here we go:

If anyone missed it while pinkpt was down:

Battle time

3 challangers
Garoo Elite Junior Squadron 8
Garoo Elite Strike Commanders 35
Garoo Elite Specialist Riilan 175

Excuse me but can someone tell me if there was another step while I was away. Last thing I did was escape the gaurds and defeat the 3 challengers.

And man, the commanders are getting tough now. I also miracly beat Riilan although my record isn't too bad with him, 1 win and 1 loss.

Excuse me but can someone tell me if there was another step while I was away. Last thing I did was escape the gaurds and defeat the 3 challengers.

Nope, no new puzzle steps.

Heh, I didn't miss out on the challengers. (Gotta have *something* to do while PPT was down... ) I've slaughtered a bunch of 'em: Juniors - 350, Commanders - 80, Riilan - 8. Wish I could get Riilan up to a nice even 10...but not likely. Definitely appreciating my SOA and Golden Compass, though! I'm hoping there's not "win limits" like last year, but even if there are, my win ratio in the battledome definitely got a lot better.

One MAJOR thing I did notice when the battling started: there was NO LAG! I kept expecting the page to take forever to load...and it didn't! I kept thinking, "Is this really a plot? I mean, seriously? I'm battling and there's no lag!" I kept expecting it to start lagging, and it never did. The battledome was loading faster than NQII! To me, this proves TNT was more than ready for this plot.
(On a side note, it even started letting me type messages again instead of saying I didn't have permissions about halfway through the weekend.)

My husband was rather amused - his battle pet had been turned into a Chomby by the lab recently, so he was using the "Chomby Stop" to kill the Juniors (for quite a while with no weapons, even)...and as he said, "literally squishing" them - this amused him greatly to be able to do real bug squishing (in reference to the second Meridell war). He did, however, grant me the permission of clicking the "go" button once for him with a ROTL and Ghostkerbomb already selected...that was a cool feeling. (Admittedly, though, his wins make me kinda sick, particularly the first one: Juniors - 750, Commanders - 130, and Riilan - 20. He said he got bored once it started to take 2-3 rounds to kill the Juniors, or he wouldn't have stopped at 750.)

Anyways, IDB has the challenger stats up if anyone's still trying to fight 'em. I really doubt they'll be up for much longer - it's been what, 5 full days plus today? (Though, the longer they're up, the more I have hopes that there's no win limit this time!)
For those who consider themselves bad battlers - even if you've got a beginner pet (hit points as low as 11 or 12), do not assume you can't do anything here: you can probably beat the first guy at least once with little to no trouble with a snowball or two, and those cost, what, 2 nps each? If you're having trouble with it, PM me, and I'll be glad to offer tips specific to your pet.

Plus, we had a new chapter yesterday (Did anyone get the Star Wars reference in the last panel of the second page – "I have a bad feeling about this?") The radar blippy thing was cool, too - caught me by surprise, as it's not something you'd usually see in their comics.
Looks like we'll be at some point infiltrating Sloth's ships and trying to find the Space Faerie's token! {excited} I predict having to go through a maze of unique space-ship corridors and possibly having to unlock doors...or maybe having to go through multiple different ships from his fleet to find the right one…
And of course, we've *got* to still have some different battles coming up...I doubt I'll personally be able to beat Ylana or Garoo himself (depending on how hard they start off), but I'd love to give it a go...
If this plot continues on the lines it's been going (great comics, great puzzles, great battles – with no lag!), it's likely to become my second favorite (to the LDP) or possibly even favorite plot yet!
Wow, I just wrote a book. I guess that's what happens when I think of a million things to say over several days and can't post 'em. Heh.

Yay it's back!

I've only managed to beat the strike commanders 5 times, though 5 is a nice number so I'm cool with that
I've beaten the juniors 99 times. Just once more and I'll have 100, but I've been having a bit of trouble with them now that they've got so many hp...lol It's still fun though.

300 - 65 - 5. I'll probably wind up leaving my wings like that unless I want to bump up to 350 with the Junior Squadron (I probably could, I just don't feel like I've got a lot of time now that the week's actually started-- weekend was massive fun, though)

I always wanted to note that this is finally tying in with their attempts at the plot... whenever they attempted the plot last. Back then, they were preceding the plot with everybody's Petpet's being stolen, if anybody remember; they even posted an image of a Grundo with a sack, presumably full of Petpets. The Grundo's image path put it as 'war_opponent##', whatever the numbers were. I remember quite well because I wrote an article for the Times about how it would be best to prepare for war. It wasn't accepted, which I thought a bit strange until they announced that all the Petpets had been found busily consuming a large green mound of jelly. Way to cancel the plot, TNT.

So the fact that the island and its mutant Petpetpets finally got mentioned is not only a good nod to the fact that the island plot wasn't quite as useless as it actually seemed to be, although I'm banking on it still being pretty useless, but also finally reveals what those poor Petpets were being kidnapped for; hideous experiments. (At least, I don't recall it having been mentioned elsewhere). Well, good to know that Back in the Day, when I said war was brewing, I was right-- if a few years too early. ^_^

70 - 70 - 13 for me so far. Not sure I want to battle anymore or if it is necessary. 13 is about all I can do right now with Riilan, without a 100% freezer.

If anyone missed it while pinkpt was down:

Battle time

Yes we missed you PPT.

and the battling is great, looks like we'll be infiltrating Sloth's ships next, more puzzles, more battles (and no lag!!! ), great plot

Garoo Elite Junior Squadron 8 +400
Garoo Elite Strike Commanders 35 +200
Garoo Elite Specialist Riilan 175 +30

I could have done more Juniors and Commanders but decided to stop on nice even numbers. I am sure there will be another wave to come.

Aww, Daze, you make us look bad with your Riilan kills.

News is up: doesn't appear to be a new comic or new steps. Challengers are still around.

Garoo Elite Junior Squadron 8 +6
Garoo Elite Strike Commanders 35 +2
Garoo Elite Specialist Riilan 175 +0

Ackkk. Think there is a cap on the number of points you can get for battles. You can tell my pets aren't exactly optimized for battles...xD

Think there is a cap on the number of points you can get for battles.

We won't know until they hand out plot points. They've only really ever done a cap (that we could see at least) in the TOW plot. {shrugs}

Yeah...I definitely hit my limit:

210-Garoo Elite Junior Squadron
22-Garoo Elite Strike Commanders
0-Garoo Elite Specialist Riilan

Garoo Elite Junior Squadron 8 +85
Garoo Elite Strike Commanders 35 +6
Garoo Elite Specialist Riilan 175 -1

I kinda feel ashamed of myself trouncing the Junior Squadron so many times... but I simply can't beat the second level more than 6 times. I've been using a combo of two scarab rings and a fierce attack. It works very well against them.

I'm so glad the PPT is back! I was trolling the JellyNeo boards... but everywhere else seems to lack the community and maturity of these boards. I luff them!

The news is up. I don't see any plot related stuff.

I kinda feel ashamed of myself trouncing the Junior Squadron so many times... but I simply can't beat the second level more than 6 times.

Meh, don't feel bad. It's a battle. You're *supposed* to trounce 'em. I brought mine up to 400 (it made me feel better after getting a Tooth of Terask from NQII Evil when I beat it again today ), but I think I'm maxing out. I *might* be able to get to 450, but they're taking 5-6 hits before they die now. I managed another tie on Riilan, but still can't get him again.

I'm so glad the PPT is back! I was trolling the JellyNeo boards... but everywhere else seems to lack the community and maturity of these boards. I luff them!

I'll second that any day.

Edit: Found this, for your amusement: A plot parody

I've tried to beat Riilian many times, but I've about reached my NP spending limit for bombs and with that darn scorchstone . . . he healed 1 turn before I creamed him! Any suggestions? My battle pet is lannine26551 and my weapons are Tyrannian Lupe Tooth, Shiny Shoal Shell Shield, Unstable Slime, Battle-Ready Pencil Box, Blue Scorchstone, Snowglobe Staff, Scarab Ring, and empty (I was using Chocoloate Chip Battle Biscuits or Smelly Dung Muffins, but I'm out; I still have a few muffins in my SDB, but I'm hoping to save them for DoN).

Think there is a cap on the number of points you can get for battles.

We won't know until they hand out plot points. They've only really ever done a cap (that we could see at least) in the TOW plot. {shrugs}

And that was only because of the glitch that made the challengers not get more difficult for a period of time.

And that was only because of the glitch that made the challengers not get more difficult for a period of time.

Huh? I fought in that "war" but don't remember anything about that?

Anyhoo, I'm at 400/100/15. I want to get to 500 for the easy guys but there's probably a win limit so I don't feel like going for it. The middle guys I could probably go for another 25 or so, but again, limit + effort. The last guys I'm stuck at 15. 100% freeze + Jade SS + Drain Life whenever the hell he feels like it =

Also I've made a great profit off of codestones, muffins, healing potions, and snowballs. *rubs it in the face of those snobby "omg it's just speculation that there'll be a war I'm such a knowitall bluuhhhhh" guys on the neoboards*

And that was only because of the glitch that made the challengers not get more difficult for a period of time.

How on earth did I not know that? Heh. That makes all the effort worth it then. Maybe I will push for that 450 after all.

I've tried to beat Riilian many times, but I've about reached my NP spending limit for bombs and with that darn scorchstone . . . he healed 1 turn before I creamed him! Any suggestions? My battle pet is lannine26551 and my weapons are Tyrannian Lupe Tooth, Shiny Shoal Shell Shield, Unstable Slime, Battle-Ready Pencil Box, Blue Scorchstone, Snowglobe Staff, Scarab Ring, and empty (I was using Chocoloate Chip Battle Biscuits or Smelly Dung Muffins, but I'm out; I still have a few muffins in my SDB, but I'm hoping to save them for DoN).

I'm no the best expert on the battledome around here, but try this:
Use the Snowglobe Staff and one of your multi-use items (not a muffin) on the first turn. If it does NOT freeze him, back out of the battle (leave the battle and go to the status page to withdraw from the fight) and heal (I've found it's easy and free to heal by fighting the easiest guy if you haven't maxed him out yet), then try again.
Once you manage to freeze him on the first round, do a fierce attack on him while he's frozen with a couple of snowballs (yellow, peach, and sand are fairly cheap and do a lot of damage - sticky or icy aren't much more expensive). With any luck, you'll be able to take him down a lot with that, and then finish him up within the next couple of hits. Burrow is excellent with these guys if you don't have it, as well as Drain Life - but I've never been able to get the Snowglobe staff to work when I'm using either of them.
Hope that helps! Good luck!

Yeah don't you guys remember when we got our results back last time it showed each opponent and how many times we beat them. If we hit the cap then it showed the opponent in gold. I believe it was the ToW.

I hope they don't cap it. The win limit was quite low last time

Quote:
*rubs it in the face of those snobby "omg it's just speculation that there'll be a war I'm such a knowitall bluuhhhhh" guys on the neoboards*

I don't think many thought there wouldn't be any fighting. The biggest debate has been whether it would be a 'war' and as we know, this isn't a war but a battle element within a puzzle plot. I think most of us see a war as an all out battle such as Curse of Maraqua (which was the last war plot).

If TNT didn't cap the wins at some point, they would be mainly rewarding the people who were rich enough to afford fabulous weapons, had enough time to play zillions of games and train their pets or other reasons that might not be instantly apparent to me. I'm not saying that some people might in some way deserve more for their superior efforts, just that the majority of players and what is reasonable have to be considered. It would be really interesting to be involved in the process of deciding the details of the scoring for the plots!

If TNT didn't cap the wins at some point, they would be mainly rewarding the people who were rich enough to afford fabulous weapons, had enough time to play zillions of games and train their pets or other reasons that might not be instantly apparent to me. I'm not saying that some people might in some way deserve more for their superior efforts, just that the majority of players and what is reasonable have to be considered. It would be really interesting to be involved in the process of deciding the details of the scoring for the plots!

I want to agree, but I feel that if people are going to earn nps to buy weapons and train their pets, then they deserve to be rewarded. The win limits in the ToW were very low - even I managed to hit most of them.

I am a medium level battler - I am still training my pet and have only a couple of really good weapons (RotL was a plot prize) and I do spend as much time as possible fighting in the plots for points, so why should I be penalised for that?

If TNT are to cap the wins, then they should make it a more realistic limit or incorporate a new system for battlers.

Everyone starts off the same - we all must learn the hard way on Neo and to try and make it 'more fair' for new players or those who have never trained their pets is not achieving anything, it is just allowing an easy win to those who have not put in any time or effort and takes away from those who have.

One MAJOR thing I did notice when the battling started: there was NO LAG! I kept expecting the page to take forever to load...and it didn't! I kept thinking, "Is this really a plot? I mean, seriously? I'm battling and there's no lag!" I kept expecting it to start lagging, and it never did. The battledome was loading faster than NQII! To me, this proves TNT was more than ready for this plot.

I'm not a battler, so I've been a little bored the last few days, but Ido want to add that TNT definitely deserve credit for being well prepared for this plot (knock on wood).

I have a nice 30-30-30. If they set the cap at 30, like ToW, I should be fine. But if they set the cap at say 100, and penalize me from someone, say with 90-10-0, of course I would not be very happy.
Unless TNT have a proper way to evaluate battledome scores, I would suggest they keep the caps reasonably low.

To me a proper evaluation will be something like "What is the maximum HP opponent you have defeated?" - to facilitate the process, TNT should release 3 or 4 different types of opponents, with, say starting HPs as 1, 11, 101, and increase their HPs by say 5, 10, 50. Also they should give only 5-iconers, no healer/freezer to opponent 1, 8-10 iconers, 10-20% healer/freezer to opponent 2 and 12-15 iconers, 30-50% healer/freezer to opponent 3.
Under this scenario, someone with weaker pet and weapons, may fight opponent 1 and win 51 times to get 251 points, whereas someone with stronger pet may fight opponent 3 and win 5 times to get 301 points.

In this plot, I would say TNT has got the opponents right (more or less), now whether they will get the scoring right! I don't think so, and so I hope they get the cap as reasonable. I don't like to show my might against a weakling like our opponent 1.

30 isn't very high for a win limit. It should be a bit higher than that.

30 isn't very high for a win limit. It should be a bit higher than that.

Exactly.

My daughter's pet:

Lvl : 22
Str : 22
Def : 22
Mov : 16
Hp : 13 / 13

No Faerie Abilities and only these weapons:
Tomato Smasher
Illusens Earth Potion
Obsidian Dagger
Evil Snowball Wand

Defeated the Juniors 14 times!!! With a better weapons (and not expensive ones either), she would nearly make 30 wins.

That is a very low win limit when even the newest of users can battle.

If TNT need to cap wins, it has to be reasonable.

It seems that, so far everyone likes the plot. Though I'm sure there are a lot of complainers out there. TNT can only please so many people, and I'm sure they're doing the best they can to make this plot as fair and as fun for most of us. I'm personally enjoying how the plot is going so far..... well except for the fact that I'm impatient and just can't wait for the next step to come out and I do wish I could beat Riilan more than once

I think that most win limits would be fair if they were to tell us in advance what they are. And that no win limit could be truly fair keeping us in the dark.

A relatively low win limit (such as the 30 discussed) with a significant difference in the relative power of enemies doesn't require anyone to spend hours at the computer but rewards people who've trained and invested in their pets.

Conversely a high win limit would reward the people most into the plot, because they could battle weak enemies over and over for more points, while also giving an advantage to stronger pets (Allowing them to beat lower level enemies faster as well as to rack up more wins as they increase in difficulty).

But if nobody knows what the case is the system rewards people in a way that isn't necessarily correlated with effort, training, or how much they care about the plot. I would like to know what is needed to fulfill this step completely, even if i can't reach that goal (I can't beat the strongest enemy in this plot section 30 times, for example)

The issue with revealing the win limits is that they haven't decided what they are yet.

In the previous plots, they've said that one of the reasons for the delay in giving out the prizes, is that they have to figure out how they want to divide the points. I would assume that this also applies to the battle limits.

Once the plot is over, they will figure out what the limits should be so that they give out the number/quality of points/prizes that they think is appropriate.

So it really doesn't matter how many you win, it just matters how many you win compared to everyone else. If you have more than most of the people who participate in the plot, you'll hit the limit. If you're average, you'll get points, but not hit the limit, etc.

Couldn't the scoring perhaps be linked to the battledome score? I mean, for every time you defeat the enemy his health increases and the points rewarded decreases....
For example...The elite young squad, after 100 battles won I had about 9.000 points.... after another 84 battles I only got an extra 3.000 points...bringing the total to 184 won and 12.866 points...

I think this makes it a quite fair system... "rich" people with crazy pets and weapons should get definatly more points on the stronger enemies, and the do! Since most people won't be able to beat them 100x and since they can, they will earn a bonus. But if they want to earn every last penny they would have to fight perhaps more then a thousend battles and each time they win they will only receive "0,001%" of the points they already earned... Sure it gives them the option of making way more points in the plot then others, but then again they had to spend insane amounts of time in earning millions of NP to train their pets and buy them weapons... next they have to spend several day's behind the computer just to get that little bit extra... pff well if anybody wants to go through that much of hassle, they've earned a bonus

The issue with revealing the win limits is that they haven't decided what they are yet.

In the previous plots, they've said that one of the reasons for the delay in giving out the prizes, is that they have to figure out how they want to divide the points. I would assume that this also applies to the battle limits.

Once the plot is over, they will figure out what the limits should be so that they give out the number/quality of points/prizes that they think is appropriate.

So it really doesn't matter how many you win, it just matters how many you win compared to everyone else. If you have more than most of the people who participate in the plot, you'll hit the limit. If you're average, you'll get points, but not hit the limit, etc.

I don't think the fact that the scoring is arbitrary because TNT doesn't decide it untill the end of the plot makes it any less unfair. Players have no way of knowing what the average of other people is while they're fighting.
If this information were, say, calculated on a once every 6 hours basis (reasonable given the computational effort involved) and posted in the battledome than it might be different. Then individual players would be able to tailor their effects to the position on the bell curve that they would like to occupy.

Quote:
I think that most win limits would be fair if they were to tell us in advance what they are. And that no win limit could be truly fair keeping us in the dark.

From an Editorial:

The long answer is that one of the main challenges of a plot is being prepared to take action when the opportunity arises. Telling you how long things will last defeats the purpose! Instead, we have a system of "base points" that everyone is entitled to when completing a plot, and then an added bonus system designed specifically for the insanely dedicated plot-goer.

We won't give away all our secrets, but there are times when we have no control over how long a plot step will last, or how many players will be able to participate before it's over. In those cases, especially for steps we can't leave open for players to complete at their leisure, we don't count participation toward the final score. Rewards for these steps are given in other ways, and again, these steps are designed specifically for those hardcore players. There are a good number of users who will stay online all day and wait for a new plot step. They've done the previous steps and are ready to move on. We don't want to leave them hanging while users who haven't logged in for three days try to catch up.

So, during a plot, check back as often as you can because you never know what will happen. If you're not able to check in for a few days, that's perfectly fine! The major steps will be here waiting for you and you can still participate to earn points.

It would be the same for knowing a win limit - it takes away from what TNT try to achieve in a plot. I personally don't want to know what is coming or what is expected of me in a plot. The fun is deciding what you personally can do with the time allocated.

It wouldn't be more fair knowing a win limit because it only benefits those who don't like and/or want to spend hours fighting for their plot points. Once again this method doesn't really solve the problem it only gives those who don't want to do a lot in a plot more benefits then those who are "hardcore plotters" and spend as much time as possible earning themselves points.

I don't necessarily enjoy every hour I spend battling but I do it so I can enjoy the rewards of my labour.

Thank you for the quote from the editorial. I understand better, now, how the plots work.

I can't beat the third guy at all. And I've maxed out on the second after about 5 battles. So I'll work on the little guys again.

Yeah don't you guys remember when we got our results back last time it showed each opponent and how many times we beat them. If we hit the cap then it showed the opponent in gold. I believe it was the ToW.

I remember the limits, but I don't remember their difficulty not increasing. Are you sure?

If TNT didn't cap the wins at some point, they would be mainly rewarding the people who were rich enough to afford fabulous weapons, had enough time to play zillions of games and train their pets or other reasons that might not be instantly apparent to me. I'm not saying that some people might in some way deserve more for their superior efforts, just that the majority of players and what is reasonable have to be considered. It would be really interesting to be involved in the process of deciding the details of the scoring for the plots!

NO NO NO NO. NO!! Sorry, this rant isn't directed at you buttwig, but it's just my pet peeve when this argument pops up every time there's a battle element to a site-wide event.
Battlers spend millions, some may even spend upwards of a billion, in np plus YEARS of time training their pets. In the end, their plot prizes may total in at maybe a mil or two, not even remotely close to breaking even, let alone a profit.
If you do not have the time, you do not deserve the neopoints. If you do not have the neopoints you do not deserve the pet. If you do not have the pet, you do not deserve the (battle component of) plot points.
What if I don't have time to decode my puzzles, do I deserve the same points as those who do?
What if I don't have time to work 40 hours a week, do I deserve the paycheck of those who do?
It just seems like it's such very communist outlook that owners of stronger pets are not deserving of what they earn. I realize that not all people will have the same scores, but if a newbie gets 10 points, I get 100, and so does featheralley? I mean, it's a compliment, but hardly fair. I can see why so many top battlers are leaving, it's sad to see your entire focus on the site go poof to make the new kids happy.

Quote:
Something has happened!
Dr. Sloth has his "associates" take 20% of your Neopoints away to support his next Neopian invasion effort.

I know this has nothing to do with the Plot, but I do find it rather amusing that Sloth probably spent bunches of Neopoints getting down to Neopia to steal 200 neopoints from me. XD

Anyways. I'm not a really huge battler -- My pets aren't really that strong. (Thanks to a friend I do have a decent battle set though. ) So I focus more on getting an even number of wins in -- 10, 25, 100, etc. So basically, I just battle to get in a few extra points. I don't really mind how they count the battles, just as long as it is fair to everyone that participates in them. ^_^

Couldn't the scoring perhaps be linked to the battledome score? I mean, for every time you defeat the enemy his health increases and the points rewarded decreases....
For example...The elite young squad, after 100 battles won I had about 9.000 points.... after another 84 battles I only got an extra 3.000 points...bringing the total to 184 won and 12.866 points...

That's not how it works. The BD points TNT gives you (over on the right side of the column on the 1 player page) are the opponent's original difficulty plus the percentage of your hit points remaining when you win. So if I beat the juniors once with full health, I'll get 8 (their starting difficulty) + 100 (the percentage of my health remaining), or 108 points. If someone else beats them once and only has half of their health left, they'll get 8+50, or 58 points. The reason you're getting fewer points now that you did at first is because the opponents are getting harder, so you're finishing with less health.

And as for the ridiculous "wars aren't fair to new players" argument... I'll just repost what I said at IDB:

You want to win a Neopian Times avatar? You better be good enough to write 10 articles or comics and get them published. You want to win the gallery spotlight? You better be good at coding a neat layout, not to mention have enough NP for all the items you'll need to complete the gallery. You want game trophies and avatars, or to win world challenges? You better get good at some games. You want to do well in a war? You better spend some time and money training and equipping your pet!

I've sunk in excess of 60 mil into my set, and then millions more into training. Whenever someone says that a newbie -- someone who hasn't put years into the site and millions into their pet like I have -- should be able to waltz in and get as many points as I could, I just shake my head in disbelief. This is not how the world works, kids. I was a newbie for my first war, and I didn't get many points. I still got swept up in the excitement, fought as much as I could, and had a good time. Then I started training so I could do better next time. And THAT is the way Neo works -- you decide what you want to achieve, and you work for it. I don't know when TNT became obsessed with making plots so easy and boring and "fair" that we all end up with the same points and same lame prizes, but that runs counter to every other competition they do on the site, so I don't understand it at all.

Someone said that this wasn't fair to people who joined up long after me and put in a lot of effort, but just didn't have enough time to build up a big pet before a war. My reply:

Let's say you register at Neo and decide you want to be a battler a week before a war starts -- even if you manage to make some NP quickly and spend all of it training and equipping your pet, that shouldn't entitle you to the same prizes as someone who's been playing for years, because they have put a LOT more time and effort into the site than you have. It should give you enough of a taste for battling to get you hooked so that you'll train up and put on a better showing in the next war.

This goes for almost anything I can think of, Neo-related or not: Anyone can take a week out of their lives and put in "100% effort" on something. I don't think that should entitle them to the same rewards as someone who's been putting effort into the same thing for years. Think about a sport -- let's use tennis as an example. I've never played before, but let's say I try and really like it. I spend a couple weeks practicing every day, putting all of my effort into learning the game. At the end of those two weeks, should I be able to perform better in a tournament than someone who's been a tennis champ, practicing every day and making the game their life, for years?

I'm really just sick of the "wars are so unfair" argument, as you can see.

I have to agree that a cap on wins should be announced, though perhaps for a different reason: there needs to be a better finish line. Without it, then those with high-level pets seem to feel obliged to battle over and over, beyond the point of having fun. In this thread, people don't seem to be having fun getting hundreds of wins on the weakest opponent; it sounds more like apprehension, or being scared of missing out on points... As a bonus, win caps can provide a certain satisfaction in knowing that you've done your part, and that you're finished with that stage of the plot/war.

I feel like there's a lot of repeat work in maxing the weaker opponents - to max the second hardest-opponent, you have to deal with its lower starting stats, smaller increases in stats, and weaker items (meaning higher stats needed to max against it). If someone maxes at 30 for Riilan, maxing just the next level down takes a couple hundred battles? And if you have a good-enough defense you could even beat some opponents pretty much ad infinitum, never getting a finished feeling (at least, from the game...).

More concretely: As it is now, I think that the number of wins to max your opponents grows something like the cube of the number of types of opponents you can beat. For example, people are citing win numbers that look to my eye a lot like c*x^3 -for example, metalmario's numbers look like 15*1, 15*8, 15*27... = 15, 120, 405... And that grows way way too quickly! The next one is 960, which isn't worth it anymore - nobody's going to click through another thousand battles after just finishing more than 500 (would they?).

I feel that, if you max out on a strong opponent, it should be very relatively easy to get to the win cap on all the lower opponents - these numbers exploding into the hundreds seem preposterous. For example, imagine opponents whose difficulties cover the whole spectrum, with win caps at 30 each and minimum overlap. Then the total number of opponents you would need to beat to totally max grows linearly with the strength of your pet, which I think is more reasonable. (Of course, the point values wouldn't need to grow linearly, to reward the stronger pets better... )

And just personally, I'd like to spend a day beating a few hundred steadily-harder opponents until I max, rather than maxing on the hardest level first and then spending days gathering points on the lower levels. (And that requires something providing a finish line on the lowest-few levels) But that's just me...

I agree with Cran. There should be some sort of demarkation on weaker and stronger pets, but I do not think we need to fight these opponents lots of times to get a good idea of everyone's battledome skills.

What I want to say is that, if you look at the 3 opponents, opponent 3 is too strong than opponents 1 and 2. And if you have a reasonable pet, you can "max" out opponents 1 and 2, whether they have a 30-win cap or 60-win cap. (60-win against opponent 2, I believe takes opponent 2 to around 250 HP atmost, not a big deal). Eventually it boils down to how many times you beat opponent 3, and 30-wins with opponent 3 takes you to fight a 800+ HP pet.
I believe you need around 450-500 HP pet to "max" a 30-win cap, whereas for a 60-win cap (when you fight 1200+ HP opponent) you need about 700-750 HP. Both type of pet is extremely rare, but making a lower cap reduces battledome traffic, and lets you complete things quickly.

This is the third time in this plot I have stuck in 1-player battle, I had 30-30-30 wins before today, today I went to 60-60-35 wins (it got stuck when I was fighting opponent 3), but I found the first 60 wins today very boring.

[theonlysaneone]

I sent a PM to Rachel as she offered to help with mods, but I now have 3 messages stuck in my outbox.

I'm struggling with my 3 mod with Orn symbols.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/Arogance1/4.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/Arogance1/5.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/Arogance1/10.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/Arogance1/16.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/Arogance1/17.jpg

I would love some help, anyone? I don't have the time or patience to try multiple combos.

Something about this rubs me the wrong way. It would be one thing if you were genuinely unable to do the puzzles for whatever reason, but you're basically saying here that you're too lazy to do them, so you want someone else to do them for you. At the very least, try your best to do them until you're genuinely stuck. Who knows? You might get lucky.

[Daze]

Chapter 11 is out.

and new challenger:

Primary Grundo Bot RZ894 300 +0

[Kenjiro]

Just noticed it when I was still maxing against the second wave.. they do keep us busy don't they.

I like how they have several storylines running at once, it makes the action more intense (a battle here, a battle there..)