Size Coin System Seasons?

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1

Hi! Totally hypothetically speaking, would you be interested in having “seasons” for the size system? For seasons to work, I’m imagining that everyone’s size would reset to their chosen default every couple months (or that their character is archived). That way we’d all start fresh and roughly similar in height at the beginning of a new season.

I’m kinda neutral on this idea myself, but it came up during some chats we had yesterday, so I’m curious to see what everyone thinks!

Here are some pros and cons that I can think of:

Advantages:

  • A periodic reset could incentivize new people to interact more. Part of the fun for me with the system is growing alongside others, and I can see those interactions feeling less meaningful if one of the parties involved is already unfathomably huge/tiny. Similarly, I can understand not wanting to bother with the system at all or giving up on it if you feel FOMO like you can’t “catch up” no matter what you do just because you joined late. Having a seasonal reset could counteract these problems by leveling everyone’s height (more or less) every once in a while.
  • From a recruitment perspective, the start of a new season would be a perfect time to encourage more folks to join the forum. It’d be nice to have some regular newcomer pushes with a solid reason behind them!
  • Seasons would provide opportunities to get creative. Perhaps we could try out new quests or alter item effects within a particular season, see what happens as a result, and then iterate (or discard) on those changes in future seasons. Or maybe there’d be themes and items/quests to go along with those themes!

Disadvantages:

  • Obviously, the biggest disadvantage is that everyone’s size would be reset every so often. So if you like your size where it’s at, I can understand not wanting to lose it, and I can also understand if the impermanence would make you not want to participate as actively in the size coin system.
  • Seasons are something that’s done in competitive online games, whereas the intent with the size coin system is just that you have a unique way to interact with others. So I’d have some fear that resetting everyone’s size at the start of a season might encourage competitive behaviour in a way that’s potentially harmful. There’s no prize or accolades for being the biggest/smallest after all, nor do I think there should be.
  • Much less important to me, but resetting folks sizes does make it less likely we’d see the extremely huge/tiny measurements (like light years and universes)

Again, the idea is purely hypothetical. There are no plans to start a seasonal system, this has not been brought up with staff, it just represents my thoughts as a user of the system, and I don’t even know to what extent seasons would even be possible (so don’t pester Mid about it).

Hypothetically, what effect do you think the implementation of seasons would have on your participation in the size coin system?

  • I’d participate for the first time
  • I’d be more likely to participate
  • I’m neutral; I’d participate just as much as I am now
  • I’d be less likely to participate
  • I’d stop participating entirely
0 voters
2

[ Personally I'd like to see this be a *Opt-In* Game Mode. Id probably lose interest otherwise. ]

[ I'm definitely interested in it, but it's not something I'd willing give up my existing size to participate in. ]

3

I genuinely really enjoy this idea. I think it’d be fun to have this as an opt in experience, where you scale down, but are given some coins in return depending on how big they got!

This would result in the equivalent of a size water balloon battle at the beginning of each season that I think would be incredibly fun x3

4

I think it might work, but a full reset might be a bit much. After all, considering how difficult it is to just get up to miles in size if you start at feet, we won’t really much of the larger sizes if at all.

If you do a full reset, some kind of compensation would be required. Like, I spent a lot of time getting Reyna to her size, it’d suck if the effort me and anyone else put into growing was just taken away with nothing in return.

5

I think a seasonal reset would be a good idea. That way it’s not the “old guard” that’s always the biggest or smallest since they’ve had the most time to accumulate potions and whatnot.

Although one thing I’d like to add is possibly some sort of reward at the end of every reset. That way the ones spending the most time with the system still get some kind of reward for their dedication and don’t feel like they’ve wasted their time. Maybe a new starting size to give them a small headstart? A batch of size coins? Maybe some unique items? Something along those lines would be nice.

6

[ yeah. There's also the fact that we might they the same people on the top given enough time, so just having rewards for being the biggest would just go towards the most influential, I'm more in favor of the other things that give out rewards in a contest like manner, maybe a beta session that uses different size coins would suffice? IDK, I would want to see how it plays out first, and what exactly is for grabs, but it definitely should be more then just 1 leaderboard for the biggest. ]

7

Totally neutral about this.

It kinda reminded me of idea of having “seasonal characters with nothing at the beginning, but having to grind from start” from couple games, and it’s just kinda gray area about it.

8

I like the idea of seasons, but as others have said, I think there needs to be some kind of silver lining to all the effort you put in (both for growing yourself and for growing others). If items (and potentially any passive perks, etc.) were tied to a season, and you could only access them by resetting, I would feel more inclined to reset to get access to those items.

It could also be interesting if all the size you’ve reset is somehow used for the whole community? Like, if a large character resets, everybody gets some extra coins in some ratio to the lost size? That way resetting could also help others. Maybe resetting could give you a temporary boost to your passive income on coins, so that you can get more easily out of the ordinary size range.

Maybe if there was a separate counter for the total size of a character (that doesn’t get reset) people would be more inclined to try it as well?

NOTE: I’m voting based on how the post is written now, not taking into consideration any of the suggestions in the replies. I actually think implementing an idea in this general direction could potentially make me more likely to want to engage with the system.

9

I think having some kind of reset at some point would be really good. The ability for new people to join and not feel like they cant keep up would be really helpful. I also personally really enjoy seeing the characters at sizes i can comprehend, so having a way to reset with some regularity would allow that to happen without needing to shrink my character.

However i do agree there is a balance to be struck as i do kinda like having enormous characters. Its almost a bit of a reward for the people who joined early to have the largest characters.

I think i really like the idea of a opt in/parallel systems. One for the current characters we have that just gets bigger and bigger, an one for characters with semi regularly resetting heights. That way we can experience the fun of outgrowing cars and houses and cities again and again, rather than just taking up more and more of the know universe but with no real comprehension of what that looks like or feels like. Though for those that do want to just watch the characters get infinitely bigger they can.

The resetting system can also be a bit more loose with the growth items since there will eventually be a reset. You can have more exlplosive growth and weirder effects with the growth without fearing possible super long lasting imbalances.

I do recognize its a lot of work to make though, so i understand if its not in scope for this forum. Though I am willing to try to pitch in a bit if it would help. I have some experience with coding and am actively working on making interesting and engaging growth based systems in vrchat.

10

Bit of an idea for if we DO do seasons, as since we have a size que for growth/shrinkage. I think on the last day of a season or so, all growth and shrinking that’s been qued up happens instantly. Could also add in such effects to actively used items as well, but it might also be a good idea to place a bit of a limit on how many items can be used on the final day as well, mainly to avoid spamming, say, 100 potions in one go.

11

This is something I thought about shortly after joining. I realized it would get really dull pretty quickly if I was always 5,000 feet tall, and I wished for some kind of reset button to start over and keep it fresh.

12

Hmmm. I’d be willing to make a whole document or demo, would like to flex my coding muscles again.

Maybe a daily usage cap on how many potions would be able to be used in a day?

Considering how the current Eco works I think it might be best to reconsider some of the quests as well. I’m not sure if Proto has felt this, but being tasked to post 2 content tagged posts isn’t something I could phesably do unless I have a back catalog, or want to churn out something lower effort then I’d usually do. Same with replies & standard posts, I don’t want to give low effort replies or posts just to to earn more coins. (I already struggle to make meanfully good ones as is.) It’s fine for this long term game we have now, but definitely would need a entire rework (and preferably a different currency) for the game itself.

(Also, not saying any names but I’ve noticed some people splitting up their reply over multiple replys, something id heavily like to discourage.)

Honestly, overall, without putting much thought into it. Here’s how id implement it, napkin style.

You got 4 modes. You got long term growth, Seasonal Growth, Roleplay mode, and just static.

Seasonal Growth Game would run for about 3 or 4 months, giving around that many seasons per year.

Despite the whole Seasonal Aspect, your encouraged to do anything you want, and this will manifest in 4 different leaderboards, either hidden or shown, depending on community feedback.

  • Growth Leaderboard
    See the biggest in the current Season
  • Shrink Leaderboard
    See the smallest in the current Season
  • Grower Leaderboard
    See who’s most responsible for all this growth
  • Shrinker Leaderboard
    See who’s been a micros worst nightmare all season.

All 4 categories will reward out more the higher you are in the leaderboard, but the rewards aren’t that special, maybe just extra things for the long term game, like coins or items. We should incentivise people to play, and grow many different users over the course of the game.

I’d also like to discourage something I saw in RoE, something I’m coming the Circle Of Growth. You shouldn’t be able to only focus on one user, you’ll need to be at least doing a few different users. My rational behind this was it made it felt like you had to be “in” those groups to get bigger in a meaningful way, even with buying patreon to get more growth energy. (I know that whole ideology is discouraged in RoE, but it’s still worth bringing up.)

Overall I’d emphasize the grower & shrinker Leaderboards over the overall height ones, since the whole point is to keep playing for fun, not for size.

I’m still not sure how the economy will work at this current moment, but I do know that it should be redone for the seasonal structure.

13

To be honest we’d like it if the limited items were per person per restock and not a fixed stock per restock for the entire forum. To prevent someone from stocking up coins due to never using potions and just buying out the entire stock before anyone else can.

14

This. Please stop Prototype-1 from passively influencing me to buy half the size stealing stock before it happens again I beg you all

This is not me joking this is a cry for help this damn PiLOT fucking scares me with how growth pilled they are /srs /sat

15

I’d definitely be interested in this! Both being a size switch and really enjoying the initial shrinking experience where things start getting less and less manageable, having a reset every once in a while would be quite fun to me.

16

A reset potion would be nice to have. Make it a potion instead of a button in your settings to decrease the chance anyone does it by accident, make it work like the other potions just for fun. It returns you to your base size in 3 hours. Also would be prudent if it was non-transferable and only usable on yourself.

17

Now that folks have had some time to think this over and share their opinions, I’ll give my response. I do think that a periodic refresh would be good once in a while and am glad that most people seem open to the idea of seasons! Like I said, the biggest challenge is trying to make nothing feel “lost” in the process.

I would push back on the idea of some kind of benefit like extra starting size/size coins persisting between seasons. To me, that runs contrary to the idea of a full reset. The intention of the reset is to give everyone a clean slate, so that regardless of how active you were or weren’t in the previous season, you have as much opportunity to grow, shrink, and earn coins as anyone else. If some people start out with an extra perk that others just starting out don’t have the ability to obtain, in my opinion, that kinda loses independence between seasons and undermines the benefits of refreshing.

Let me elaborate a bit more on my idea about archiving, bearing in mind that I don’t know how feasible or sustainable this would be to actually implement. Imagine that on your character page, there’s a toggle that allows you change the view of your character between seasons. You would only be able to use items on a character in the current season, but, by using the toggle, you can always see someone’s character in an earlier season. With archiving, the clean reset between seasons would be preserved, but so would the history of each earlier season. It could be fun especially for size switches to see how your character’s size may have evolved from season-to-season. Also, if we get to the end of a season and your character still has items in their queue, the start of a new season wouldn’t affect their ability to finish out your queue.

Archiving Mockup:

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The A Link to the Past Randomizer League does something along these lines. If you click on a team or player, you can toggle through tabs to see how that team/player did in previous seasons, what matches they had, even trace the history if teams changed members/names or if a player hopped around from team to team.

Of course, that ALttPR League website exists specifically for that specific purpose, whereas here the Size Coin System is an extra add-on. There’s an entire forum that exists outside of the Size Coin System, after all!

18

Actually, I’d put the data into a selectable drop down.

I’m not done fully with my implementation of this at all but this is how I would do it:

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Obviously this ins’t anywhere near done either but I needed to build this out anyways soooooooo

I’m also not sure how this would be implemented, but in the background, I have a Table specifically for archiving Past Season Size data, so I can Query that database any time someone want’s to check a Character’s Seasonal Data.

This would also apply to Past Seasons Leaderboards as well, since it would be from the same database.

Also, Volt, reach out to me VIA Messages (NOT DM’s, Messages), I’d like your input on things once I start getting stuff ready for testing.

19

Added an identifier tag to make sure this feedback will be considered for the rework.