[melanthiabast]

I'd prefer to see less skipping, drop it to two letters or apply a pay-to-skip premium.
some usernames have a disproportionate power to skip others. so I think skipping should carry a premium that corresponds to the level of skipping.

Skip one letter - free
skip two letters - 25% reduction in your reward
skip three letters - 50% reduction in your reward

I'm not in favor of charging 'skipping penalties'.

I'm also not in favor of dropping the skip from three letters to two letters, specifically because I practically can guarantee you after M you would get a choke / chain break as there's only been 1 player who only played in 1 round who posted with N or O username.
Reducing it to two letters skipped means the chain has a good chance of breaking after M.

[OldK7]

Yes, It can be anything Avo wants. But this is a CONTEST on a public forum. It's not supposed to cater to the regulars alone. I know I'm probably a minority in this opinion, But this game is not a team game. I think this game should be less "Oh should I wait and let x y z post" and more "I can post, I'm doing it now".

A contest is about winning, It's not about being all nice and polite and giving people stepping stones.

You're not alone in that opinion, I agree with you.

+1

mel it's only because the game is new and not a lot of people play yet. we have 12 hours after you post to get an N or O to post and as the game grows it will get easier.

[avoran]

Reducing it to two letters skipped means the chain has a good chance of breaking after M.

and not only there

[avoran]

Should you choose to try it, I am in favor of a HUGE POST IN RED at the start of the round announcing that it's backwards round. This way there will be no "oh, I had no idea" posts later.
or better yet, choose one day a week to make it backwards day for the chain - IMO it's a lot easier for people to remember it's "Rewind Friday" then to remember even rounds are backwards and odd rounds are forwards.

I just did a little test of my magic powers. It seems I have the ability to rename the contest at will (by editing the title of post number 1). So when we were doing a backwards round the thread title could be changed to (say) CHAIN GANG - BACKWARDS. That would probably be even more effective than a reminder in the starting post, although there would have to be one there too, of course.

[melanthiabast]

mel it's only because the game is new and not a lot of people play yet. we have 12 hours after you post to get an N or O to post and as the game grows it will get easier.

Oh, I don't think we're short of M's - there's about 4 or 5 M's that play CG ... I mean that it's at the N-O-P where it lags.
If I see this changing in later rounds, then of course my opinion will change.
As things are right now there are two (possibly 3?) really big choke points of letters in the game, so I won't be in favor of skipping less letters until we get some more reasonably regular players that can reduce the breaks that happen at those two choke points.

[avoran]

Nope. you are stuck with single donations.

I don't know who wrote the software for this site, but I'm sure the other contest hosts will join me in hoping fervently that this oversight can be fixed.

[avoran]

avo, shouldn't emmilina be out for this round of chain gang? or is there another reason why some people were excluded from the previous round? or did you just forget to update it for this round?

Why? She broke the chain, which doesn't carry any penalty. She didn't delete a post.

BTW I have seen logs showing that other people I didn't know about deleted posts over the past week or so. But because I didn't find out about it until today I'm not going to impose any penalties. 48 hours is my statute of limitations.

[avoran]

Guy, what exactly is the formula for determining how rankings turn into Please Reply groups? Is it random at all, or do you just go down the list? If there's no randomness at all I'd consider buying some points.

[Guy1731]

Groups are filled from top with highest ranking point owners, where the places from players with the same number of ranking points are randomly chosen. If there are for example 3 top ranking players with 100 points, 5 with 90 points, and 2 with 80 points, the 3 players with 100 points will always be in group 1, and the players with 80 points always in group 2. But the 5 players with 90 points will randomly fill the other places, so they can be in group 1 or group 2.



Meaning with some clever calculation, trading or buying/selling points, you can 'arrange' to be in a group of your choice...

[avoran]

thanks!

Would it be really confusing to occasionally, as a special, to totally shake chain gang up by using the last letter of people's user names.

And I'm not just suggesting this because it wouldn't affect me in any way

[LockHood]

[melanthiabast]

Would it be really confusing to occasionally, as a special, to totally shake chain gang up by using the last letter of people's user names.

And I'm not just suggesting this because it wouldn't affect me in any way

I like the idea of using the last letter of your username, that would be an interesting variant.
Perhaps it could be done in addition to / instead of the alphabet backwards idea?

I think there should be a contest to guess when The Last Will be the First thread hits page 10000. I think the reward should be 10000wrz if you get the right time to within an hour. thoughts?