Neocolours

We weren't going to have a reading drive this year because Keith hated the old format, but we managed to work out a new format in time! All non-rsable books can be turned in as usual, while all r1-99 ones can be asked for in library quests. There's also a fun third activity (read Alexander the library quest ontra's text for that).

So retired books count too? Im not to quick to hand over books that we get from special events..since we only really get one. I hoard all that stuff.

Anything that's not restockable... so free gifts, genetech books, token shop, crystal shop, monthly collection, battle loot, prize shops, cash shop, melody item, game prizes, holiday item... I'm probably forgetting some. Most books on site are actually not restockable.

I'm not understanding the Alexander quest at all. I've done a handful of his quests and haven't gotten anything indicating that I got points. I restocked at the Clothing place but am not sure what to do with the quiz. I can't go visit the Ambassador of Shadowglen that I know of and I can't like circle any of the answers or anything.

Edit:
And found a thread on the forums with the steps to solve the scavenger hunt: http://subeta.net/forums/view/911806

Yeah, I'm not sold on this new format. I'm not sure I understand what was wrong with the old reading drive. I'm also curious how the point system is going to work out, and if it's going to be possible to buy any of the old stuff in the shop with these new points.

I'm hesitating over doing too many Alexander quests because I can't tell if it's giving me points or how many points I'm earning. Is it one point per quest? Points according to cost or difficulty?

Keith didn't like it that people would just hoard for months or years and then dump all their books into the RD on day one and not do anything for the rest of the week, so this format is a compromise -- all non-restockable books (which are actually the majority of books on site) can be turned in the old way, with library quests covering the restockable ones. The book shop and the vending machines have also been changed to give out more books to make quests easier (quests for now only ask for books below r60, as well). The scavenger hunt is the third, free/cheap component that can get you another 10 points (I believe) per day.

Alexander is giving one point per library quest.

As for the shop, we're discussing that, but will probably open it up this week so that people can spend all their old points, and we'll wipe old points at the end of the week (with lots of warning, including a newsletter mailed out). After that, new items will be added and the prices on old ones will be adjusted to fit with the new possible point totals. That's not set in stone, so if you have a better idea, post and I'll pass it along to Keith.

Edit: Haha, he went and did it right after we were talking about it. Anyway, that's the fairest way we could think of. Some people had thousands of old points left, and we have to adjust the prices of old items down for the new scoring format, so we couldn't leave everything as-is and add new items as well... and we didn't want to do separate prize shops because we know that a lot of the old items are in demand.

I think it's pretty ridiculous that even though it's clear a fair amount of consideration went into revamping the RD system, no one thought it would be a good idea to add a line to Alexander's rewards page that says "You have been given 1 Reading Drive point!" or whatever. According to the news comments (painful reading, as always, but there are a couple helpful staff replies in there) that's something they're working on, though. That's good, because it's pretty iffy doing quests and hoping you're getting mystery points for them, but it really should have been live from the start. Seems like a bit of a no-brainer, especially right after everyone asked for a points tracker during Epicon.

Edit: Wait, now the quests are only asking for r60 and lower? I was tentatively on-board with the changes until hearing that. Like a lot of other people, I spent a fair amount of time going through all the books on the site and buying one of each (with certain price limits, of course). Obviously I wound up spending more sp on the restockable books with a higher rarity. Now all books r61-99 are entirely useless for this event? ...what? I know there was never a guarantee that even some parts of the old system would be used again, but still. Pretty lame. I don't think it was unfair of me to assume collecting a wide variety of books would be helpful in some way.

Ierosbats, it's only under r60 for the first day or so here, until people can get to rsing and vending (Keith just wants things to settle a bit), so your higher-rarity books will be useful. We wanted to make it so that every book on site is useful in some way!

Between the books I turned in, the quest, and Library quests, I have about 60 points. And I'm highly considering just quitting there. The books Library quests ask for were already inflated and it's gotten so much worse. I don't see a reason to bother doing them.

I'm making a nice profit though on the books I had saved up. Some books jumped from like 20k to over 400k. Score!

This is sounding discouraging. I was on vacation for the holiday weekend but I really liked the Reading Drive and from these comments it's sounding like it might be a rich person's game this year. Perhaps selling books will be the way to go? Too tired tonight after a busy day of shopping followed by a 3.5 hour drive, but I'll check it out tomorrow and see. Figuring out which books count and which don't is going to be fun... I think the only way to do it will be to dump every book I have into my inventory, see what he'll take, figure out if I'd rather turn it in or sell it -- or keep it, probably the most common outcome as like Goldenchaos I tend not to like to get rid of things I only have one of -- then dump everything back again.

Question: I have 361 old Reading Drive points left. Truth Serum or Reviver of the Lion? (I have a Phoenix Quill for healing already.)

Reviver of the Lion. You can equip it along with the Pquill for two heals.

And to be honest, the RD has always been a rich person's game. The scavenger hunt is cheap/free, though, and gets you 10 points a day! And vending right now is highly profitable -- I got a bunch of r98s-99s earlier.

Cool. I was sort of thinking that might be the case. Thanks!

There's some real promise here, especially with having multiple ways to earn points this time around. Including Alexander so much is a wonderful idea. Of course I expect some inflationary issues for a while, but that always happens during a Reading Drive, anyway.

However, it is at least partially predicated on a very flawed concept--

Cranberry wrote:Keith didn't like it that people would just hoard for months or years and then dump all their books into the RD on day one and not do anything for the rest of the week

"Just"? Oh man, I did not "just" hoard. I worked at that. Over and over for months. A ridiculous amount of work for a free game. Price all the books I don't have, buy duplicates of some I do have. Work extra hard during site events because there are usually book prizes and I need those. Restocking holiday items that go into the actual Holiday Shop. Carefully buying up every single zombie book with that supremely irritating timer Skitters has (not to mention seeing the ridiculous way he spells "sky" every time, geez, my head). And then doing exactly the same thing all over again for my battle pet. So many hours. All those spreadsheets and custom lists on subetalodge and managing my own wishlist and double checking and triple checking and quadruple checking. Has it been a month? I'd better price these borderline books again and see what the prices of new ones are. I went through the entire list of every book ever released on Subeta. More than once.

That shit ain't easy. Just because I did it over the course of months instead of a week doesn't mean I worked any less. Actually, it was a lot more work, cumulatively. Of course, my work will serve me well here, I hope--but oh man, it was not a simple process at all.

However, like I said, there's some great innovation here, as long as some of the awkward start keeps getting smoothed out. I hope it will be more fun than previous drives because there's more to do. But ouch, man. "Just hoard"? Ouch!

I really hope Alexander get updated soon with his new mini quest. It's not good to have plot steps that can only be done in a 24hr time span then not have them updated as close to midnight as possible. Time zones and busy schedules and all that.

I want to agree with Ty about the work it takes to collect books between events. All the steps she listed are the same steps I did to insure I had enough copies of books for my battle pets, gallery, and reading drive hoard. I don't think people should be "punished' for working hard all year long in hopes of doing well on one event.

I am really excited to see what the prize shop brings this year, as the Reading Drive usually has some of my favorite items.

I don't mean to downplay the amount of work involved! I, too, hoarded books, bought all the event/plot prize books I could, and read a ton to my battlepet (I think she needs to read less than 150 now to have read every book on site). Keith's problem wasn't so much with hoarding as it was with the old format not encouraging people to participate more during the event itself. The new concept is still meant to reward people who worked to hoard books -- it's just meant to give them more to do once they've submitted all of those books to the RD.

And I'm glad that people seem generally happy with the format! A group of us debated for several staff forum pages about the best way to do a book drive without making it either too easy or too hard or ruining the book economy, and I think we came up with a pretty good plan. We're keeping track of feedback so we can tweak the next one, though.