How're the new changes?

Considering we have an entirely new system up, I'd like for you to take the time to take this survey just so that the staff knows what the common opinion of the changes are thus far. Please take this somewhat seriously.

In all honesty, the new system is brilliant. It's clean and well planned out. I mean, the positive differences it has brought to WDA is clear through the amount of activity alone. It's been boosted up lately compared to what was going down before the change.

I like it.
Me and Mr. Pegasus was working on an Achievement thing for TWA until he had real life to do. It was going to be flawless. He had the flawless idea and I had the achievement list written down. This whole operation you all did was very impressive and I must say Bravo to the staff for the effort.

AsianShadow wrote:

akaFilanachi wrote:

In all honesty, the new system is brilliant. It's clean and well planned out. I mean, the positive differences it has brought to WDA is clear through the amount of activity alone. It's been boosted up lately compared to what was going down before the change.

Yup :D
Good Job Staff!

99nour wrote:

I'll be honest, the new system is brilliant. The best part is, no tests Go Testers! Be free!! Fly!!! The Rank Points and Achievement Points make it so that there's so many people that want to duel more often. And also, look at the activity! Although, there's one thing that bothers me... It's sooooo complicated =(

I love this system. IT IS SOOOOOOOOOOO COMPLICATED THOUGH.

Yeah I'll agree that it's a wee bit complicated but not as complicated as above people say lol.
It's great but the system can get complicate a little bit I really don't know how you can make it simpler though lol so meh.

Kimo was once an admin so he should have some understanding of their language. He could be our translator. Kimo, tell the admins that I ate their pie.

The new system was kind of a downer in my point of view - no more competitive duels for points or anything for that matter. Not to mention that it was replaced by a strict Achievement Point System which restricted pretty much on how you would normally play in a duel with all those conditions and stuff. Now like it's a complete total down for me - it's not like a person can have special access in a forum other than special names and titles. But still, you need to change your cards/gameplay/style in dueling to achieve higher points.

AlterDevil76 wrote:

The new system was kind of a downer in my point of view - no more competitive duels for points or anything for that matter. Not to mention that it was replaced by a strict Achievement Point System which restricted pretty much on how you would normally play in a duel with all those conditions and stuff. Now like it's a complete total down for me - it's not like a person can have special access in a forum other than special names and titles. But still, you need to change your cards/gameplay/style in dueling to achieve higher points.

You can still duel like you always did. As you notice there are 2 point systems:
Rank Points
Achievement Points
You earn rank points by playing ygo, that simple, no one restricts your deckbuilding there unless you wish for it to be restricted (most players play in Open which is, well, Open, but if I remember how you play well AlterDevil I am sure you wouldn't be a-ok with someone breaking the Rabbit on you so we also have tiers you can agree to play on in that case with LESSER rewards, you get more points by playing freely.). Rank Points only rank you among your fellow players and have nothing to do with achievements in earning them, the only thing that affects how many rank points you get in a game is your opponent and tier.

Now there is a second point system, Achievement System. Other than Joke Shop things and some other bonus, completely cosmetic stuff, only thing you get with the Achievement Points you earn from this are new titles. Really, the WDA title is just fine imo (look at me for example, I prefer sporting the orange WDA title despite having access to the first level titles), so there is no reason to try achievements if you don't want to get them for the fun of it or want to get new titles, you can leave them be, no one is forcing you to adapt your deck to those. In fact you can denounce AP as useless, you don't need them, which many people have done actually and they have no issues with it. If you do however wish to tackle those challenges, they are there and there is that reward for doing so.

Before you got credits for playing. Which were honestly useless, they were virtual money on a specific forum that you wouldn't use for anything anyways. It was just adapting to a bribe system you (not specifically you, plural you) were accustomed to living by. Will you not play ygo unless someone is there to give you a external to it reward, unrelated to the game? Games are meant to be fun and we play them to have fun, I really can't do anything for anyone who doesn't want to play, wrong forum, they would be much better off in a forum where they enjoyed what they were playing and didn't view it as a chore for which they needed a form of mental manipulation via the suggestion of a reward that never existed, to do. Now you get rank points, a reward that has the simple information: the combined difficulty of the games this person has won, is this amount. Yes, you can't spend rank points, they are a proof of victory and accomplishment, which should be sufficient reward in a game in my opinion.

As a sidenote, I admit you may have not fully read or understood what the new system is. The below isn't aimed at you AlterDevil, naturally.


=====================================================================
=====================================================================

The rest is something you neither need to read nor understand, as for many it may actually be too early or it may never be time to understand fully. In our respective societies we forcefully receive the notions of a bribe mentality. While we are told that the result of our work is to aid society thus contributing to and allowing our own survival and well being, on the one hand, we are told to demand payment for it on the other. Of course I am not suggesting to starve to death, it's a large and controversial issue relevant to the fundemental structure and mechanisms of our respective societies and what you could perceive as a world society in general, while what purposes it serves, who and what there is to gain through it, are things irrelevant to the matter at hand.

The point which connects to our issue, is that for such ideals to be imprinted into our thinking process, some steps are ok to be skipped, you are paid for the sake of being paid (or "want to", even if you are not part of the working force yet, these are ideas cultivated in every person from a very young age), subconsciously you may not think of the reason you wished to be paid for, payment in itself is enough reward in any form simply in the financial value it holds, and actual exchangability of said payment, the ability to use it to survive, is merely an additional blessing. That, the worship of the reward and the act of rewarding, regardless of any meaning, is one of the unfortunate side-effects of the mechanisms used for our society's continued function as is, which again, good or bad, wanted or unwanted, whichever part of it, is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Our previous system and any system like it abused those existing mechanisms of bribe mentality, partly unknowingly for most of course, although not completely subconsciously at least. We were giving out vitual, completely useless, money substitutes, and even though, because they had no value people little by little came to understand there is no point in being after them (as the human mind, even though it is largely damaged by control mechanisms, still has basic sanity and will, even slowly, start recognizing the unreasonable if left alone), as proof of the strength of those mechanisms there were still people who felt that it was a wrong move to change it or missed the reward and regarded it as a fault (and even many of you who did not speak up, thought that you should still be receiving a "reward"), while said reward was of course an illusion, a magic trick, numbers we pulled out of our proverbial behinds to simply motivate you to follow the directions we indicated by a plastic carrot and a throwaway stick. We wanted you to do something for a reward, while having nothing to reward you with. Frankly, nothing but a scam, and while forumotion regards gambling as illegal, I regard that as something equally (or in fact even more so) unethical.

Truly, at least I knew, and perhaps other in staff, that when trying to implement such a system that discards a big part of these mechanisms, for a system where playing and achieving is a reward in itself, we would be met with great resistance due to the existance of those mechanisms. Thankfully, our ways of propaganda are strong as well (like hell they are, if we had suggested the system before implementing it, it would not have passed, only because it happened in a flash people were willing to think about it and eventually accepted it), so your imprinted and forcefully shaped aversion to ways lacking a "material" reward or a substitute of which, were not as "loudly" expressed in the forum and remained in your minds, untold. Of course we too had to make a compromise of rewards, using the title system as the main form of reward, while also solving the issue of the titles (because, for the 12485th time, "In America" is not a title!). But thankfully, we managed to keep the issue of pure dueling in itself, one with victory, experience and achieving as its own reward, as the Rank Point system only serves to show how well you have been doing in ygo or at least how much you have played or how dedicated a player you are, and all those things, and is not exchangable for anything.

Or at least that's what I'd like to say, but we did keep a lighter version of a rewarding system and that is of course the Achievement System. While the rewards are declared from the get-go meaningless to solve misunderstandings and for the achievements to be enjoyed for what they are (as I said, you only get titles mostly, which you don't need), there are also things shoved in like the forum achievements to keep a minimal reward system, at which you are rewarded for things like Rank Points (meaning that dueling isn't completely bribe free, but it is on a big part, since it's not worth it to try and gain AP purely from Rank Points and Posts, that much has been calculated), Posting, shops, tournaments etc. Because really after the new system the most frequent question was "How do we get paid in shops" immidiatelly followed by "What do we get from tournaments/competitons", yeah, since you had a job because you felt the bribe you had in the form of useless virtual money substititute was an equivilent exchange of the work you did, and not because you simply enjoyed sharing your work, for whichever reason. The same thing applying for tournaments etc. ofc, as if you always looked at rewards of the tournament and didn't simply want to win them or just play.

I won't claim trying to change society or the world, and I am not saying it is impossible, but I admit to sucking that much for not trying to do it. I don't expect neither for anyone to understand, accept, agree to, or change because of, what I have said. I have simply expressed my thoughts on the matter and by what thinking I stood to completely agree to the change of the previous system to the form it exists today, and why in my opinion we will always have the issue of the guy coming in asking what he gets for dueling for no logical reason.