Daily Dare 2017 Review:With Daily Dare now over I want to give my thoughts on it. Admittedly I could have done that throughout Daily Dare, wished I made daily comments about the daily prizes, but hindsight is 20/20. Let's go over the aspects of this year's DD and see how it went over.
Challenges: This is my first DD getting Gold, but I don't say that with much enthusiasm. This had to be the most casual DD ever, I don't mean that in a positive way. Simply put, the majority of Chadley's challenges were too easy, many not even requiring to play that deep into the game. Chadley's score were Abigail level scores, the only reason I can see someone challenging Abigail if they didn't have that much time or liked her prizes better (or thought her prize would be worth more due to how easy Chadley's score was). And for the few challenges which were difficult felt like a curve ball meant strictly to strike out the casual players who would otherwise have gotten Gold.
A few pages ago it was discussed the low scores were meant to draw in more of the Neopet casual players who might feel discouraged to keep coming back daily if Chadley's scores were too high. However if that was their worry, I'd would have instead skipped Daily Dare and done a Game Masters Challenge. Daily Dare is meant to have the players who are good at games show their stuff, and the more casual players still can participate by challenging Abigail which is why she's there. If anything, those few "curve ball" games (mainly Barf Boat) probably discouraged casual players more than had the Chadley scores been Game Master level.
Another option would maybe do something similar to how GMCs do their trophies. Instead of just having Gold, Silver, Bronze, & Participant do a multi tier system where the more Chadley/AAA challenges you won gives you a better trophy. For example:
Participant: You played some games but never finished all of them.
Spiffcredible: Only beat Abigail's scores.
Spifftastic: Beat Chadley/AAA 1 time.
Super Spifftastic: Beat Chadley/AAA 3 time.
Megasuperb: Beat Chadley/AAA 5 time.
Super Megasuperb: Beat Chadley/AAA 7 time.
Uberiffic: Beat Chadley/AAA 10 time.
Super Uberiffic: Beat Chadley/AAA 12 time.
Ultimate: Beat Chadley/AAA 15 time.
Ultimate Scoretacular: Beat Chadley/AAA 17 time.
Grandultimate Scoretacular: Beat all Chadley/AAA scores.
That way it'll encourage casual players that, even if they can't beat all of Chadley's/AAA's scores, they should still try to get the highest trophy they can (since you'll also get more end prizes the higher the tier you have; note that this doesn't mean 11 end prizes, sometimes the difference between two tiers is an increase in the NP rewarded).
Story: This story could have worked, but it either needed some more drafts or a better writer. So, the main plot of the story is that Chadley is taking over AAA's title as Game Master while he's at college but is doing so by cheating. Okay, interesting premise, so this is where it falls apart. For scores that Chadley cheated to get, they were pitiful. Chadley is claiming to be the next Game Master with THESE scores? Scores that probably more than half the participants were able to beat and get Gold? If they want to go the cheaters route, Chadley's scores should not only be high but, to show he's cheating, also impossible to get. NOT impossible to beat, impossible to get; like if you tried to get Chadley's score you'd find the way the game's point system works wouldn't allow you to. Just for fun they could have made some of his scores fractional numbers (like 123.45) to make it obvious.
Character interactions also felt a bit off. They got Chadley's big ego right, but whenever Abigail would get "one over" Chadley he would say something a cartoon-y villain would say like "curse you, Abigail". That doesn't seem like it would be something Chadley does. The joke with Chadley is that he's suppose to be so cool that he's egotistic and nothing bother him.
AAA punches him into the sea and Chadley just took in stride.
Finally the ending wasn't that satisfactory. Abigail and Lulu just say they got evidence he cheated and that was it. Heck, this revelation has no effect on the anything as it's not like this invalidates our wins against him.
If they wanted to go with this story, here's my suggestion to fix it, at least for how the story goes (character interactions would need someone who understands the characters): As I said, keep Chadley's scores high but early on Abigail notices something is off with the scores (especially when they're a fraction). Like in DD 2013, Abigail gets in contact with AAA who would tell players to instead focus on beating his score instead of Chadley (meanwhile Chadley's score will actually be impossible, but you wouldn't be able to challenge him anyway thanks to AAA). Lulu will still investigate Chadley's room, but with the goal to find the way he cheated. Than at the end when they reveal Chadley had cheated they use AAA's score as proof and Lulu will reveal the method. AAA will then assure the players that since they beat Chadley's cheated scores early on and later his own scores when Chadley's became impossible they'll still get Silver/Gold they deserve. In addition the main image would change to show AAA, Abigail, & Lulu celebrating while Chadley is frozen in the corner.
Daily Prizes: What it all comes down to. I'm going to seperate the between the Daily Prizes and Final Prizes as I had a lot to say about Daily Prizes and don't want to dwarf my opinions of the final prizes.
As you expect, they're a mix of good and bad, especially some of the Chadley prizes compared to Abigail. I won't go over each one but here's a few notable ones:
Day 1 (Chemistry for Beginners): The DoD (Day-of-Date) prize looks kind of bad if not pointless since they're no longer doing Furniture items. It just looks like a squashed real world table of elements.
Day 3 (Bruno’s Backwoods Breakaway): Wow, Cursed Elixir of Neovia is a pretty good low level healer, with a bonus of two icon damage!
Day 4 (Tubular Kiko Racing): You made a one use weapon a prize?! Not only that, a prize for Abigail!? What sense does that make? This item is doomed to be Gallery fodder because who in the world would use it, especially when there are better multi-use weapons and Battle Muffins that do the same amount of icons.
Day 9 (Usul Suspects): Water Powered Pistol is an amazing weapon, and it's a DoD prize?!
Day 11 (Toy Box Escape) & Day 15 (Cave Glider): Wow, we're getting two stamps as Daily Prizes? Yeah, they're Chadley prizes (one being for a Team Challenge), but they also weren't hard challenges. Curious to see how the price of these go. Molten Boulder is also another pretty good weapon.
Day 18 (Barf Boat): You'd think the Ship Pendant would be a wearable.
Day 19 (Wheeler’s Wild Ride): Really? Both Chadley and Abigail prizes are gifts? This is a problem I noticed for a few of Chadley prizes, they're no better than Abigails. Not all items are created equal and from Chadley I expect items like books, wearable, weapons, and stamps/collectibles. Abigail and the DoD prizes are usually the Food, Toys, and Gifts (with a wearable now and again).
Day 20 (AAA’s Revenge): After some of the good weapons we got Chadley's last prize is kind of disappointing.
Once again, I regret not going over each one the day they came out as I would have been able to put more thought into them. Next DD.
Final Prizes: Standard DD Final Prizes of the last few years.
Chadley Plushie is ugly, they just squashed the Chadley stock art and added lines to make it look like seams. Remember when Plushies used to be cute depictions of our favorite Neopian characters, almost chibi-like?
Press Conference Foreground makes my eye twitch a little. Not as egregious as having a drone gift item, but those microphones are still technology that probably shouldn't exist in Neopia without coming from Virtupets/Kreludor.
The stamp probably would have been more exciting if it wasn't bland (or more than half the player base probably got it).
Nice they gave out the Chadley Site Theme again, that's worth a nice laugh.
Trophies look nice though sad the participation medal is the same as last years.
Summary: This was a pretty lackluster DD. Chadley's scores being low (for the most part), the story needing work, and prizes feeling haphazardly applied makes it feel like JS is struggling what they can do with DD. Not helping is them refusing to stray from the leftover template from previous DDs the original TNT made. Next year I feel they need to start making changes to Daily Dare as the way it is now is becoming stale.
Smiley Grade: 
You shall be named Snicklefrits! And I shall polish you everyday!
