Suggestions

I know suggesting a whole feature seems like too much these days, but I wanted to get my idea out in case I forgot it! So my idea is an activity under the Trading Post, where it functions like the Dragon Share Theme Week, but dragons are pitted against each other and users vote for the dragon they think fits the theme better! A more in depth explanation, let's say the new theme is picked every Wednesday from a pool of premade themes that it chooses randomly (after a certain amount of time it can repeat themes, or be updated with new themes). From Wednesday until the following Tuesday, you can enter one dragon into the week's contest. When you enter a dragon into the contest, it will retain whatever apparel or appearance it had when it was entered, so if you change it after that, it won't affect your entry. The second part of the activity is voting! Users get a certain amount of votes a day (which can give a small amount of treasure per vote as incentive), and users are faces with two dragons entered that week. They decide between the two, and the voted dragon receives a point. At the end of the week, whichever dragons place the highest (top 3, 10, 50 maybe? 3 like the Dragon Share Theme Week always felt very limiting) will receive a prize, decided at the beginning of the week with the theme (maybe the theme and prize can be related, ex. Merdragons and the prize is a past Wave Saturnia apparel item)! Some extra things can be being able to see the status of your dragon and how many points it has/what percentile it's in, an extra menu button in the activity screen that leads to a showcase of some kind where you can see the past week's theme and winners, and maybe a dedicated forum thread under the Dragon Share forums to discuss the current theme and share additional dragons! I think it could be both a weekly and daily activity players can participate in, and be a supplement to the already existing Dragon Share Theme Week (or maybe replace it entirely, so the FR team doesn't need to manually create a new thread each week(ish)). Of course, the con would be that it's reliant on players to vote AND enter a dragon each week, which I personally wouldn't be sure how many people would be interested and participate. And the biggest con being, it's not really a feature that needs to exist, which would probably put it very far down on the priority list, especially since we just received a new activity feature in the form of Digsites. Another con might also be users trying to organize votes for specific dragons, which would depend on how the system pits two dragons together (randomly, similar vote amount/percentile, etc), but can result in a contest being rigged, so there'd have to be some way to combat that. It's 1am right now so I'll definitely revisit this and add to or edit it if I need to clarify anything, and like my past suggestions, I'll make a mock-up design of what I'd imagine the voting screen to look like! And maybe there can be a new NPC that keeps the show running, idk! Anyway, goodnight for now haha EDIT (5/24/22): Just drew a quick mock-up of the voting screen, which I'm just calling the voting stage! [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/420755864904007711/978778743894065222/voting_stage_mockup.png[/img]

Omg I was actually thinking of something similar to this some time ago, I totally support this, it would be very exciting! But of course as you said there needs to be a way to prevent unfairness and the contests and votes being rigged.Also I think the prizes shouldn't be very valuable like the prizes in Roundsey, maybe they should be worth around 100-200k treasure or something so users wouldn't be inclined to cheat in some way for big prizes, but so far, I really love this idea![emoji=imperial star size=1]

@paradeyes oh true, I agree the prizes shouldn't be as valuable as Roundsey, that's a good point! I felt that it shouldn't be as many prizes as the Raffle, but at the time I couldn't think of a more appropriate prize pool! Will come back if I have some more ideas for prizes!

im sure theres a lot of users who this would not appeal to, but something entirely opt-in shoudnt be an issue. because its a cosmetic just-for-kicks thing, maybe the prize would be like, a little ribbon icon displayed somewhere in the dragon's profile info, and thats it. just a bragging rights trophy. then the dragon wouldn't be allowed to enter a second time.
but yeah i really like this idea! silly contests scratch my neopets itch

@hisseefit oo I really enjoy the idea of a little icon for winners, that'd be super cute! That definitely scratches my Pokemon Contest itch haha

EDIT

Added a mock-up image!

I would actually love this, it’s sorta like Lorwolf’s pageant! It’s be cool to even have exclusive apparel for winning, medals, crowns etc awarded to different placings alongside a treasure reward

As a heads-up, a dragon who put in a moderate amount of effort who faces up against a plain dragon is going to receive more votes than two mind-bogglingly amazing dragons who are pitted against each other. It's an interesting idea, but it won't accurately reflect which dragon is actually more popular

You see it all the time in the app games Love Nikki and Shining Nikki.

@Ridara it would definitely require some balancing to make sure that dragons in near percentiles to each other would face off, but I think with the proper systems, it shouldn't feel too unbalanced?

For instance, the moderate dragon gets voted, and then gets put in a higher percentile and faces another moderate dragon who may have been voted the same way, against a plain dragon. I think with enough movement in percentiles, it shouldn't feel too stale but should give chances to dragons who got unfairly matched, to climb up again!

And I played Love Nikki for soo many years, I totally know what you mean (and that felt VERY pay to win when it came to their contests), so while it is a prominent problem in this kind of minigame, I think with enough consideration it will work as intended.

I don't think I'd want to see this.

Harkening back to the hayday of Neopets, they had very similar contests and they were absolute hotbeds for drama. Not only were they usually popularity contests (ie. players with large friend groups and/or the ability to promote themselves off-site nearly always won) but the same popular species or looks would always win.

So I can easily see a similar contest on FR not only becoming popularity contests on the user side but they'd also probably be dominated by the same popular breeds (Imp, Skydancer, etc.).

I just don't think the inevitable (and very visible) drama is going to be worth the time and effort of the Devs to set up an official thing like this. Especially not when user-run contests already work just fine.

And I definitely don't support such a feature giving away exclusive prizes short of treasure/gems and maybe a vista like previous site contests have. Imagine having a very highly requested or desirable piece of apparel or familiar locked behind your dragon winning one of these contests. It'd be awful.