1000 equal 100?

@geary

Did you start the challenge late? See the “Challenge in C Minor Contest” thread where people are reporting only 100 tokens awarded for starting the contest late…

I played around 5 PM EST…3 hours before the end of the game…came in 4th and got 30 tokens instead of 300. So… what do we do about it??? Anything? It stinks.

Here’s the official answer, posted in the main Challenge in C Minor thread:

There was a growing trend during the holiday event of players deliberately joining a challenge leaderboard as late as possible in an attempt to end up in first place with minimal effort. This has a number of undesirable consequences – it leads to higher strain on our servers as many new leaderboards are created at once, it exacerbates the existing issues of players relying on out-of-date leaderboard information in the last few minutes of the challenge, and it trivialises the effort put in by players who join earlier in the challenge.

As such, we have added some scaling to the rewards dependent on how much time is left in the challenge when a player joins, and we will continue to refine this for future events.

Okay, this seems highly unfair to those of use who have jobs and do not get an opportunity to start playing until we finish with our work day. For me, that is 6 PM EST, giving me a whopping one hour to play before the start of the next challenge. I DO NOT spend gems, so what I get when I play 4 times during the challenge is what I get. If I place, great…if not, oh well. So, what this tells me is that it does not even make sense to play the challenge because I will penalized for only having one hour to play it. Even if I were to buy gems to get more “plays,” I would still be penalized…because…I work??? We should get what we earn. Period.

If people are trying to strategize by purposely playing at the last minute and are using gems, so they can play like crazy to place at the end, then those are the people who she be penalized…if anyone should be penalized. But, quite honestly, I am not even sure it makes sense to penalize those people who do use that strategy. If they are putting money into a game to BUY gems and lining rovio’s pockets…why on earth would Rovio care if those people pour gems into a challenge to have a better shot at placing? Those people who spend their gems doing it are going to run out of gems sooner than if they did not. That would mean they’d have to play more or spend more to get more gems.

This makes absolutely no sense for those of who have a long work day with a 30 minute lunch break in a hospital and cannot play video games on our cell phones. It just makes me sad…I have only enjoyed this game since Christmas and it was a great stress relief for me. But, now, with nothing really to do past level 175 and being penalized for playing a game at the last minute with what little free time I actually have…it kinda makes me think there is really no point at all in even playing. :( *Rant.* I used to really enjoy this game. Now, I just feel sad and defeated. Honestly, if you are being set up to lose, then it’s really no fun to even try. It’s the competition of the you know, competition, which makes it a competition in the first place? If you literally have no chance at doing well, then it’s purposeless. It certainly doesn’t make me want to buy gems!

@ WeeNaoise (not sure if this will work, since I am new to this forum). I truly do only have 1 hour to play (if that). I have a 6 year old child. I am a full-time student in nursing school. When I am in my clinical rotations on Thursdays and Fridays, I get up at 4:30 AM and I am on the floor until 5:00 PM. We have a 30 minute lunch break in which we use the restroom, take a slow-as-molasses elevator down to the cafeteria, order food, wait for said food to be prepared, pay for food, scarf it down and then try to get back up on the floor in time to resume our shift. The hospital has a strict no-cell-phone policy while we are working. We then have post-conference with the instructor. I get home about 6pm. I spend time with my partner and my son, have dinner, use the restroom and then take about 30-60 minutes to play my game before I start my homework. I enjoy the game, but it’s far from a priority for me. It’s just fun and relaxing. I am not dedicated to spending hours playing the game like others might be. I play 4 times in a row (because you get 4 energy bars) and I call it done for the night. I think if I happen to get lucky and place high enough to get some tokens, I should get to keep the tokens I earn and not be penalized because I don’t have time to play all day and the time I do have is right before the challenge ends. If I lived in another time zone, it may not have even have been an issue for me. The workload we have is insane and I literally spend all of my free moments studying (which, quite honestly, I should be doing now, but saw your message and wanted to respond). I do understand people probably abuse the system by trying to exclusively play at the last minute to rack up their rank in the challenge, but *I* don’t do that. Like I said, I don’t have the time, don’t spend the gems or buy them and I am not dedicated enough to the game or trying to cheat it. I just think that if I play, I should be able to collect what I earn if I somehow manage to do well. I usually don’t. I think the highest I’ve placed is 3rd. Usually I fall in around 8th-10th and even lower. Likewise, if I play my 4 times and come in 30th place, I wouldn’t expect to receive anymore than what I should. It’s sad that people who are trying to abuse the game, ruin it for people who just play once a day to take a load off and want to have fun in a competition and actually stand a chance to be able to get a cool reward for participating.