So, after having calming down and gathered my thoughts, here are my quick thoughts of this year's Altador Cup, AC12:
PROS:1. Tournament System: It became clear there were problems with the Bracket System making it not any better than the previous Double Round System. For a while now I and many others believed a combination of the two systems would work best... and that's what JS did this year! What I'm calling the "Round Robin-Finals System", we now have just one round robin (so each team plays against each other) followed by a bracketed finals. This is a big improvement as one of the biggest complaints of the Altador Cup is that it went on too long. Now, including break days, the Altador Cup is just 25 days so much more manageable. And with each team playing against each other combined with finals I feel we get just as much of a fair assessment of each team's capability to decide rankings.
2. Flagging Concept: Last year's AC was surrounded by a freezing epidemic, JS trying to catch cheaters but many innocent players were caught in the crossfire. This year, to decrease unfair freezings, a Flagging System was made. If a user is suspected of cheating, they're flagged and can no longer submit points for their team or rank up. However, their account remains unaffected otherwise. This is a major step up from just outright freezing, and as always a player who was unfairly flagged can easily submit a ticket to get unflagged. There are still some problems, but we'll get to those issues in "cons".
3. Bye Days Are Break Days: Previously the "Bye Days", days there were no matches, still had plays counted towards personal rankings so weren't that much break days. This year, playing games on Bye Days did not increase personal ranks being official break days. Personally, I approve of this. A break gave players, especially those focused on playing, a chance to rest and relax their minds until the next wave of matches start, coming back refreshed and maybe in better moods. But if you could still rank up on Bye Days that wasn't going to happen as those are lost prize points if you don't play. So I like that the Bye Days you couldn't rank up.
4. Bracket Trophies: I like how this year the trophies design aren't based on who got first, second, third, and then one for the rest but rather it was what bracket you were in. Probably another way to discourage cheaters or All-Star groups who just wanted the prettiest trophy on their user look-up, now there's 6 team who gets the top trophy design.
5. Staff Communication: A big thanks to Scrappy for holding a Q&A before the end of the cup, answering our confusion of the results (we'll get to that), and will be holding another Q&A sometime today. Considering one of our many complaints about JS is their lack of communication with us that TNT constantly had, this is a step in the right direction. Players have valuable feedback and maybe some worthwhile ideas that could help the site. We all want the same thing, for Neopets to thrive and be the best we know it can be. Already after one Q&A session did one idea to improve the AC section was made. Also we got to understand to going-ons behind the scene to see the bit of humanity that JS has been reluctant to show. Players feel more comfortable if they know a bit about the people running the site, we loved TNT cause we knew certain staff members and occasionally communicated with them to know what's going on. Yes, there will always be those who criticize and complain, but there's also those who do so because they want to help improve Neopets. So I thank Scrappy for braving the storm of criticism and complaints (while keeping a positive personality) to tell us what's going on and answer our questions.
CONS:1. Point System: What. The. Meep. Now there was no problem with the point system during the Round Robin, it made sense since at that point every team was considered equal. But when the finals came that should have changed. If we were to stick to the point system, the higher the bracket your team was in the more points match wins should have been worth. Instead, all teams still got the same amount of points which completely ruins the points of the brackets and messed up the final rankings. The teams in the top bracket are, for that year, the best of the best so results will probably be mixed of wins and loses even for the 3 teams in the lead. Meanwhile the teams in the lower brackets are more likely to be swept by the team in the highest position of that bracket, thus getting most of the points. What this means is that, unless higher brackets wins were worth more or you locked/semi-lock the brackets, when you compare points you may get results like 7th place jumping to 3rd because the original 3rd place team had tougher teams to face while 7th, the top of the middle bracket, was able to sweep the middle bracket getting them all those points. I can understand wanting to give the teams who played well in a lower bracket to jump up to a higher bracket position, but it should be something like 7th to 6th, not 7th to a podium position for having faced less stronger teams that year!
2. Flagging Penalty & Clearer Rules: While better than freezing, still there was issues with flagging. Innocent players were still flagged thus all their work was for naught if they were unable to get unflagged. Also it was unclear why some were getting flagged, at least until it was revealed there were rule changes that we didn't know about with one change made something that was previously allowed not anymore. During Scrappy's Q&A, a suggestion of a "penalty box system" was made. Penalty Box is to Flagging was Warnings are to Freezings. Instead of being Flagged, you're put on notice you may have broke a rule and for one day you can't get any points (and if you keep breaking the rule they increase the number of days until outright Flagging you, at least if it follows how the Warning system works). This is a pretty good idea, one that Scrappy agrees with and says she'll bring up or next AC so hopefully that's issue is handled. In addition, Scrappy mentioned they're trying to get the new rules written out asap so that's the second problem also being handled. Still, it was a problem with this cup so why I'm mentioning it as a con.
3. Bye Day Catch-Up: While I liked Bye Days were actually break days, I can understand it might have been frustrating to those who may have missed a day or more yet had the Bye Day off to play. But I think there's an easy solution, one that makes Bye Days both a break day and a catch-up day. Simply put, on a Bye Day it would be calculated what the max amount of each game would be at that point and let players play as much as they want up to that max. This way, for those who max out one or two games each day can still relax (and maybe even play a bit of the other games if they want) while those who missed a day or more can now catch-up and not lose any rank/prize points. And since there's no matches it doesn't affect the Team's rank.
4. No Team Changes: Once again, no teams had any new members or trades. It's making the Altador Cup feel stagnant. We want to see the teams evolve and change, add in more Species & Colour variety as well (we still need a Vandagyre player).
I have many other pros and cons but I'm thinking about writing a NT article which would go into greater detail. For now I'm going to move onto my opinions on the prizes:
Altador Cup Prizes:1. The Team Flag Banners are cute and have a use as wearables. That said I have some problems with them. One, why are all of them half yellow? Shouldn't they be in the team's color? And why is Altador's 300 points instead of 50? Did no one programming the Prize Shop notice that? Anyway, they're okay, but their been better in previous years.
2. What's with all the Yooyu-themed prizes? Yeah, Yooyu are important to the Altador Cup being the main game, but at the same time there's 3 other games you can base prizes off of plus other sports-related things (souvenirs, sponsors, etc.), not to mention all the teams and maybe how each world plays/views the Altador Cup. Not to mention a lot of these items are Gifts, meaning they're useless outside of being a collectible but even then they would only fit a niche collection (and just seeing how many could have been furniture is a reminder of a forgotten site feature).
3. Let's move onto wearables. Yooyu Gold Pendent, Yooyu Headphones, Yooyu
Dungaroos Dungarees, Yooyu Print Jacket,
Yooyu AC Team Logo Bag, Yooyu Beanie, and the Yooyuball Sports Store background all look nice and I can see having use both for Altador Cup themed customisations and outside with some clever use as shown by
smudgeoffudge. As for the wearables I didn't mention, eh, great if you can find use for them but they seem niche.
4. Island Yooyu is cute.
Overall: A pretty meh year. Notable missing item is a weapon (though that's covered by the Staff Tournament Prizes) and just too many Yooyu-themed and Gift items I think JS needs to take a look at some previous year prize shops for inspiration. I suggest AC7, 8, 9 & 10.
Staff Tournament Prizes:1. Okay, first off, that weapon. Sweet Fyora, it does two sets of 14 icons (either 7 Fire & 7 Light or 7 Fire & 7 Physical), hard to block icons too! Like, okay, we know there's a plot coming and will probably have battling elements to it but this seems a bit OP, or at the very least should cost more (and maybe be in the regular prize shop). Also, why Tyrannian-based? Is that a hint?
2. Once again, real technology in Neopia which isn't from Virtupets Space Station: a scooter (actually, it's a segway, but that's a brand name so they can't say it). *Sigh*
3. The Office Racks and Formal Day Jacket are covered in AC logos. They wouldn't be out of place in the normal Prize Shop. Not saying they can't be for the Staff Prizes, but the Staff Prizes is more meant to be a place where they could get a bit more creative/meta (with limits). Like just basing prizes off things around the JS office or funny incidents that happened.
4. The I *heart* Neopets Vest is cute.
5. Once again, there's a major point gap between 1 and 50. So if you have left over points that are 49 & below, I hope you like lunch trays! Seriously though, at least have one prize worth 10 points...
FINAL THOUGHTS: Overall, it's a year both of step forwards and fumbles. I think it's generally heading in the right direction, but there's still improvements that can be made. Once again, looking at past ACs and learning what worked and didn't work would be very helpful as well as getting player feedback. Here's hoping that the good changes we see will continue and the fumbles will be left to the past.
Island Yooyu
Altador Cup XII Commemorative Stamp
Volgoth Action Figure
