Recruits activity based on score rather than waves

[Alucard]

I’ve been wondering about this for a while, but why is the activity based on the number of waves rather than the total score of the day/week?

I mean the most time effective method to get the most number of waves would be to spam easy waves with the tourist skill. The problem here is the fact that you would have to spam the same levels over and over again.

The total time would also not be good since I’m pretty sure that you can just leave the game on with one last chicken and it would still count towards the total time.

The most logical choice ( at least IMO ) would be to have it score-based since it would encourage the exploration of the galaxy and completion of the planets’ missions. Of course, even this case has a bad-side, the fact that once you explored the entire galaxy and done every possible mission you would meet the unoriginality penalty, being forced to play even more or just spam the 120th Anniversary or weekly challenge.

What do you think?

• Leave it as it is, wave-based
• Change it to score

[EmeraldPlay]

The unoriginality penalty only persists for 24 hours after playing that mission, so that wouldn’t be an issue.

[InterAction_studios]

‘Activity’ is really meant as a measure of time spent playing the game. But, as you point out, you can’t use actual time for that, because it’s easily exploited. You can’t use number of missions either, because some are short and some are long. Score wouldn’t work either, because harder skill levels award more points. Waves are the best measure I’ve come up with so far (though it’s not perfect). Even if you try to exploit it, you’re still spending time playing the game. So what have you really achieved?

Note: Keys are also predominantly awarded based on time playing the game. This is very much an intentional design choice. Yes, there’s a boost for playing on harder skills, but even on tourist you can gain keys simply if you play for long enough. This approach avoids penalizing rookie players that can’t otherwise make any progress. This is also why you’re awarded keys even if you lose a mission.

[Davoid]

Also I want to say, once there are a lot of people playing the game, say after release, getting most of the “Top X awards” is going to become almost impossible. I think a larger amount of people should be able to get those medals than just one per set amount of time.

[Alucard]

Indeed, for the time being, since there aren’t very many users, it isn’t that hard to get in top 10 or even get first place. But in the future, perhaps when the game will get fully released and there will be many more players I’m pretty sure that the difference in score will be very small and would create frustration.

Some ways to avoid that from happening would be:

1. The rate at which the ranking reset to be decreased from a day to a few hours or something like that. (It should be taken in consideration that there will be players from all around the world or some would not have very much time to play it unless it is weekend)
2. Change how the medals are given, be it either top 10,100 or top 1% (How many users will play it should make a difference here) or getting above a specific score. (This might feel unfair for the old players compared to the new ones, but one thing is to compete with less than a hundred and to compete with a few thousands.)
3. Make it so that the medal is given only one time per player. (This might be a little extreme, at least IMO)

Pretty sure there are many more ways this possible issue could be solved in the future if it will exist.

[Fractorial]

The rate at which the ranking reset to be decreased from a day to a few hours or something like that. (It should be taken in consideration that there will be players from all around the world or some would not have very much time to play it unless it is weekend)

I’m fine with one reset per day as daily missions can only be played once per day in which every player has the opportunity to play it regardless of timezone.

Change how the medals are given, be it either top 10,100 or top 1% (How many users will play it should make a difference here) or getting above a specific score. (This might feel unfair for the old players compared to the new ones, but one thing is to compete with less than a hundred and to compete with a few thousands.)

Good point here.

Make it so that the medal is given only one time per player. (This might be a little extreme, at least IMO)

This will make players lose motivation of playing missions competitively (and frequently).

[Alucard]

Regarding the first point, I should have been more explicit. The reason for the time reduction would be just so more people could get that reward, instead of a few per day it could be one or very few per some hours but then it would not make sense for it to be called daily challenge.