Lilael; the monthly discussions go in the Announcements because they make announcements every month through these boards; such as the additions to the team and the upcoming event. The monthly coat releases are ‘previews’ and as such not exactly announcements, so they get slotted into the MC Discussion. They aren’t exactly pertinent announcements as the monthly news discussion goes (they’re more like a gift to see them before the first of the month) so to me it makes sense that the boards are where they are.

Yeahhh, glitch just names them funky ‘cause he’s glitch. The thread is an announcement thread, even though he calls it a discussion one.

It’s an announcement thread that allows discussion oHo

I’m sorry to say this, but like a lot of other people here I’m not all that happy about the cave in nugget decrease, since it’s the only game I really play here. Although I like suduko and am/was pleased to see Mushroom Meals, I’ve never actually been able to finish a game of Mushroom Meals (because lack of time / out of practice / never that good to begin with), and thus have never made any nuggets from it, and I can’t even begin to understand echolocation (perhaps we could benefit for a ‘dummies guide’?) , so don’t play it. That leaves cave in as my only serious income on the site, and the change does increase the length of time to cap. That said, I think I also understand why you’ve made the change, and it’s still a far better payout than originally, so not a major drama.

Now I’ve got that out of the way:
Slightly belated congrats to Juney and Feyani for making the staff team. I’m sure you’ll both bring wonderful things to the site / staff team, and look forwards to seeing what you put together for the rest of us :3

I’m super excited for the site anniversary to roll around: it’s always great to see sites through to their next year, and the first year always strikes me as one of the major milestones. So an early congrats to the site / staff for getting this far this quickly. I’m sure it’ll only go from strength to strength.

Andyes. I’m also looking forwards to the event. Aren’t we all? XD

Aahh.. I always assumed new items or colorations were content updates/news (like on any other pet site I’ve ever seen in my life, they put new items and skin/colors/paintbrushes(mushrooms)/whatever in the news), thus announcement worthy.

And each monthly thread is a folder for the month’s news? I guess I understand now..

Hallo again everyone!

Yeah these threads kind of serve as an announcement platform, but where you can also discuss the announcements. I should probably come up with a better thread title or something ;) Anyway, on to responses:

First of all, anyone with a pending custom order who had left all artists selected has had Feyani added to their choices — if any of you would like to remove her from your artist choices, please reach out to me by echo and I’ll restore your order back to the way it was.

Next, the game rewards. Yeah, we knew this one would be unpopular :<. There were several reasons behind this decision. First of all, if you look back to the old announcement thread, when we increased the Cave In maximum from 40 to 100, it was (explicitly described as) a temporary stopgap to relieve the monotony while we only had one game that was viable for nugget earning. Second, we’re always keeping a close eye on the data and will adjust rewards accordingly. Last time it went up a bunch, this time it went down a little. Third, we think it makes sense to reward “thinky” games more than games that can be played mindlessly. Finally, in terms of impact: if you choose to only play Cave In, and used to max out in ~40 minutes (many of you take significantly less than that, although admittedly some of you take a little more), you will now max out in ~50 minutes — that is to say, this change is altogether not very big. I don’t expect these reasons to change your mind and make you think “yeah I LOVE only getting 80%!”, but hopefully it sheds light on where we were coming from and dispels any notion of “punishment” for playing Cave In.

@KeeperGreymuzzles: I made a youtube video on how to play it here. The video didn’t turn out to be as helpful as I had hoped, but then Ally stepped in and posted an illustrated walkthrough of one frame. You can find all of this in this thread. I hope that helps!

Aaaand @Oxton: I assume you have never been stung by a plate before ;)

EDIT: oh yah and mushroom meals — that’s taken a backseat for a little while, but we do intend on finishing it when we get the chance. It just always seems like there’s an event or semi-urgent thing that needs to get done first >> We haven’t forgotten about it though!

If anyone likes, I’d be happy to stream my playing of echolocation. When I’m on a roll, I can get about 500 nuggets in ten minutes, give or take. So if anyone’s still struggling and wants to just watch me play for a while, you can just echo me. <3

I don’t know if this is already a tip somebody handed out, but whenever I get an “A” I click on the box next to it to see if another…echo or whatever bounces off of it. I actually like to imagine that they are little moths that go in and when they see a wasp they take a right turn like “GOODBYE” and when they hit it the wasp is like “AHHH”. Or something. Like so:

Most of my correct guesses are actually just sheer luck(like in the puzzle above, I just randomly selected those squares and got useful clues). I lose just about as much as I win XD Sometimes when it’s a really difficult puzzle, I decide to start a new game rather than waste time/turns figuring it out.

The R’s always give me some difficulty, I have a haRd time figuring out how in the heck they bounce back. I tend to default to the wasp being in a square just diagonal to them. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong faster than thinking too hard about it.

Glitch.. I don’t know anyone who maxes out cave in in 40 minutes. Most people I know don’t play it because it simply would take them hours to max. I think you’re taking the best of the best into consideration. I thought I was above average and I take an hour at best, you say is below average. And people acknowledge me as pretty fast. It just seems like discouraging people from doing the very thing you want to them to do: play the game. I don’t know how to explain how it is, but I think your data might be a little skewed.

We’re taking every single game that’s been played since March 20th into account. I understand that from a player’s perspective it can be difficult to see the whole picture, but our data set is not skewed (simply by nature of it being composed of every single game, separated by user so that players that frequently max out don’t outweigh players who only play a little bit). The point of the 40 -> 50 minute comment was not to say that I expect you to be able to max out in 40 minutes, but rather to illustrate the relatively small impact that this has. If it takes you an hour, it’d take you an extra fifteen minutes in a day (assuming you staunchly refused to pay Echolocation)

Is there ever going to be a way for us to see how many nuggets we’ve currently made from the games?

Yes there is ^^ soooon

EDIT: “soon” like coupla-days soon

Huzzah! Thanks!

Phage ..my lips wriggled and involuntarily curled up, and then I burst out laughing. Poor moths, bwahahaha xD

-screeches-
I don’t know how it happened but suddenly I actually understand how to play Echolocation and win and wow I have never felt so victorious.

And awww Mokitty that is cute and kinda scary?? but cute and a clever way to think about it!

And wow a way to see how much we’ve won so far will be wonderful!

Dakota, I am seriously envious of you. The more I play echolocation, the more I hate it. I just DON’T get it. How. HOOOW.

In other news….

We now have “Custom Credits”!

You can find it in the “Shops” menu, just above the “Custom Pets” entry. Basically the way it works is this: you can buy custom credit for yourself or any other user, and you can use any custom credit that you have towards paying for customs. So if three people gave me 10 custom credits each and I had a $39.99 custom in the queue, I could choose to apply as many of my 30 credits to the order as I would like, and only have to pay the remainder (e.g. apply 30 credits, pay $9.99).

Note that custom credits are not transferrable after they have been purchased. That means if you buy credits for someone, only that person can spend them. Also, custom credits can currently only be spent on customs.

I meant to come in here and give my thoughts a few days ago already, but I only now got the time to write this up!

First off, congrats to Feyfey and Junebug! <33 8D *hugs’n'snugs* So happy for you guys, and hope to see great things from the both of you!

While I’m not necessarily happy about the decrease in nugget payout for Cave In, I’m not too upset about it, either. That being said, I prolly still won’t be playing the other games, as I’m simply not a fan of either game. ^^;; They could pay out 5x the amount of Cave In, and I still wouldn’t want to play them. They’re just not my style of game, y’know? I’m glad that they got a pay increase for the people who do play/enjoy them, though! 8D And even though I’m not crazy about the drop in Cave In, it’s a LOT better than it going back down to 40. That was nightmarish, trying to slog through that! It felt less like a game and more like a job back then. It took me 2+ hours to finish Cave In when the top score was 40! So, I’m relieved that it only dropped a little bit.

I’m one of the people who can finish up Cave In in around 40-50 minutes/under an hour (when focusing XD), and I haven’t really noticed a difference in the amount of time it takes me to play. I don’t even consider myself good at it. Just… better than when I first started? I guess. XD I’ve played it nearly every day for almost a year now. Bound to see improvement. XD But I can see why people who aren’t as good at would be upset with the decrease, because while it may take the good players only a few more minutes to finish up, it would take the not-so-good players way longer. I sympathize with those who aren’t very good at the game! But I promise that if you keep up playing it, you will see yourself getting better and finishing faster! It feels like a slog, I know, but you’ll get better with time and practice. c’:

Super excited about MC’s anniversary! I feel like this place has grown so much in such a short amount of time. I feel an odd sense of pride, too. I know I’m not staff, just someone who sat on the sidelines and pretty much just watched, but I feel like it’s my baby somehow… Do you know what I mean? ^^;; And just… *blubbers* I love this place and the people here so much! ; A ;

Eeee, also super excited about the event! Don’t have much to say here, just…. Eeeee! 8D Part of me hopes for an event that caps you each day, so you don’t have to spend every waking moment working towards getting as much as possible (because we Mycenians be a crazy obsessed bunch). But we’ll see. XD

Iiiii have a question about these Custom Credits! I’m assuming we can use nothing but custom credits to get a custom, correct? So, my question is: would I be allowed to sell my artwork for this custom credit? Kinda like an IRL commission, only I’d be getting money towards getting a custom instead? Because if I can do this… omg, hallelujah to the people who can’t afford to buy customs! ; 7 ; Not that I’m gonna be rushing off to start an art shop any time soon, but still! 8DD

Tamako I would assume that if people are willing to pay custom credit for artwork then yes, you could do that, but at the same time you’ll want to be careful with that. I think the major reason this custom credit has been put into effect is that we’ve stumbled into people paying for other’s customs multiple times now where they have had a custom being worked on themself. It basically turns into a huge mess to try and get those customs paid for. (: So custom credits eliminates a lot of that mess! I think it’s a wonderful idea and it will help a lot of people!!

Also, in relation to Cave-In, I am also one of those people who maxed out in under an hour. Normally around 40-50 minutes. I haven’t played Cave-In recently because I’m very busy. ):

Would it be alright to buy custom credits with nuggets?

You people who can max out cave in in 40 minutes are not of this earth.

Also, out of curiosity, why IS custom credit not available for OotS? Was it too different to make it work? Or did you guys feel it wasn’t right.

I asked glitch the same thing, Shima, and I’ll note that it was 3am when he was implementing it — he said it was, for now, out of scope, as other things of more priority preceed making Custom Credit usable for gems. Maybe in the future, however :)

Edit: Just in addition, I am one of those aliens, apparently, as I capped cave in in 30 minutes on average :) It has now gone up to 35-40 minutes.

Gabriel, I would presume so ;D Custom credit is usually used when people sell a coat, or nuggets, for USD value that may be used on the site. The issue, as Plasma pointed out, was that there were people selling things to different players, occasionally ending up in one custom being paid for by 3+ people. This had to happen manually, so to relieve glitch & free him up for EVENT CODING OMG more desirable features >> he added this feature :)

One more addition: Tamako; How did you envision selling art for custom credit? I mean, how would it be any different than offering your art directly for USD? Custom credit, as glitch said & is noted on the page, is not transferrable, so someone buying your art would have to directly pay the site. It would be no different than selling your art for USD on deviantArt or Etsy. What am I overlooking that makes it so attractive to you :D?

I’m really happy to see the custom credits being an option now. Is there a page where you can see how much custom credit you have? Like Tamako said, I’m happy since it’ll give me another way to earn customs (assuming you can offer gems/nuggets) for it.

If anyone needs help with echolocation, I can offer my help, too. :) I understand how frustrating it is, I didn’t get it until I watched Glitch play it. I won’t be able to stream it, but I can show you completed boards as I did in the thread that Glitch mentioned.

Ally You can view your current Custom Credit balance at the custom shop. <3

glitch Anonymous check box, you forgot it. ;)

Oh that makes sense Tidda, I must not be able to see it since I don’t have any custom credit. :p Thank you very much <3.

Custom credits & a way to see how much you’ve earned in a game seem like awesome features – especially the custom credits part. I suspect a lot of people will have a fair amount of fun with that one, and certainly helps for those who have to save over an extended period to get customs :D

I’m surprised some people used to max at Cave In in about 40mins, but then, I was never the best player at it. Think my average score is around the 20-30 mark, and my minimum capping time a little over an hour, if I’m having a good day. Something tells me I might need to hunt down a mentor on…well…all of Mycena’s games XD

Those Echolocation guides look like they could be a world of help, so thanks for linking to them, Glitch. And thanks, Mokitty, for posting that tip of yours. It confuses the heck out of me, but maybe I’ll get it once I’ve looked the other bits over. Here’s hoping those more clueless of us (aka: me XD) can start working out what’s going on with this game now XD

And on the note of Mushroom Meals:
I made another attempt at it yesterday (still haven’t finished one, even though I’ve only tried simple / east. Really not sure why XP), and it strikes me that 9-square grid formats Mycena’s using are often replaced by 6-square grids for the easy games (at least in the Sudoku books I’ve seen / used). That, and most of my games had one number completely missing from them, which makes a nine-square more than a little awkward to work with, and I swear I’ve not come across any non-Mycena games that do this - at least not in the easy-medium I usually stick to. At first I thought it was just me being daft, but I figured I’d look it up, and found this guide:
• In Easy sudoku, each digit from 1–9 appears as a given at least 3 times
• In Medium sudoku, some digits may only appear twice as a given, the rest will appear at least 3 times each
• In Hard sudoku, three or four digits may only appear 2 times as givens, and one digit may only appear once
• In Very Hard sudoku, most digits appear only 2 or 3 times, as well as several single occurrences
Source: http://alwayspuzzling.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/how-to-judge-difficulty-of-sudoku.html

I know Mushroom Meals isn’t a priority right now, but figured I’d make mention of this, since it might be of some vague help when there is time to finish the thing up. Who knows, might also help make simple actually simple XD

(….How in the heck do people keep turning random user names in linky things, and why? Is it just to highlight who the comment’s for, or is there some notification thing attached that I’ve not found, or?
/Clueless)

KeeperGreymuzzles, about the usernames, if you make a post, at the bottom it says BBCode:, the first one, [ @ # ] (without spaces) turns into a username clicky thing if you replace the # with the user’s number :) I hope one day it’ll turn into a notification system (e.g. “This user named you in their post!”) ..which would of course need an opt-in checkbox. For now it’s just a highlight to easily see which users a person is replying to, in my opinion :) E.g. If I’m replying to three people including you in one post, you can easily see where I’m addressing you ^^

With regards to Mushroom Meals, there are many ways of defining difficulties, and there are MANY levels of difficulty. On a scale of difficulties from 1-9, the difficulties of the games on Mycena (simple, easy, medium, hard) are 4, 5, 6, 7. Most Sudoku people are used to in newspaper or puzzle books are difficulties 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I’ve tested Mushroom Meals extensively personally & I know a fair bit about how Sudoku are generated, and yes, it is completely true that these are generally among the harder of difficulties for the ‘average player’.

The issue with getting it released, however, is twofold;
a) It needs a -lot- of work to be comfortable to play. (E.g. interface, difficulty levels and others)
b) The issue of solvers will persist. There are Sudoku solvers, and it is pretty hard to find culprits. If the payout is increased, it would become very hard to track who’s actually good at the game and who’s cheating to get nuggets fast. I’ve brainstormed alternative solutions, some of which are promising, but they all require more work on glitch’s part & ..well, as he said, there are consistently other things that have more priority. Such as OMG EVENT CODING SQUEE~ I’M SO EXCITED

The custom credits is a great implement. Takes out the hassle of having to wait in the custom queue conga with deals floating in limbo. :)

And to join the train, I’m one of those people who used to finish Cave In in about 40 min to an hour. Now it takes me about an hour if I’m focused. XD; But now I have an excuse to dabble in Echolocation if I’m not strapped for time or my brain isn’t too scattered to think. :D;

Plasma: Ahh, I see. I have seen that happening a lot lately. XD It’s not like I think my art is actually even worth actual money. I was just curious. c’:  And who knows, maybe my art is worth at least 5 bucks. XD

Juney: Yep, I know it’s not transferable; I’d want it for myself, and this way, my conscience can’t be like: “NO, YOU NEED TO SPEND THAT MONEY ON SOMETHING YOU NEED, NOT SOMETHING YOU WANT, TAMA. D:< ” Because I can’t transfer it! It’s stuck here! 8D Think of it as a way of saving up for one, I suppose~ A savings account I can’t take the money out of! XD If I want a custom (and I do want another one, very badly), but have no way to buy one myself (as much as I’d like to spend money here, it is needed in IRL land), would it not be a good way to get money towards one? I could do 10 $5CC commissions and have 50 bucks towards a custom! 8D And this cuts out the middle man of my commissioner having to pay me so I can pay Mycena (but knowing me, I’d end up using it on something in IRL land). XD Again though, I was just curious. I dunno if anyone would pay USD for my artwork. ^^;; But maybe!

Custom credit seems pretty nifty to smooth out transactions between players (so thank you), but now it seems USD is even more of a major currency on site now (since we also have our gems you can buy with USD)... that’s a little unsettling.

Going through some trade threads, I see a handful of shops already pricing and asking for things at USD equivalents. I’m not at a mall, I’m on a virtual pet site to have fun and partake in the great features of the site (the major part, for me, being collecting pets and playing games to earn things) and I kind of expect to see nuggets and gems, but all that becomes increasingly difficult when an emphasis on USD appears. (And yes, I do remember you can get gems the easy way by shelling out cash; however, at least it is not exclusively USD.) Not everyone has an expendable income and a huge wall appears between people with USD to spend and those without; why should anyone trade to people without USD to offer when you can easily get USD custom credit or gems from those with money?

I guess it may not be a big deal to some, but I think there’s a slight problem when USD is more apparent then the site’s currency.. Heck, maybe it isn’t a big deal right now as everything is still new. As someone who wants to see MC succeed and just your simple, one-of-many users of the site, I just ask that an eye is kept on this because seeing a trade/market forum dealing in primarily cash can and probably will scare away some people. I know when I first saw it here (and frequently saw it on Digis), I thought, “What the hell? I don’t have cash. I just have what site currency I can scrape up,” and started turning the other way.