Single post in Site-wide Goal Adjustments

Many site-wide goals have sat unchanged for at least a year, some haven't changed in several years, and still others have never been changed. But as PFQ continues to grow, and activity continues to increase, balance is necessary to keep things reasonable!
Update May 2nd: As planned, the next adjustment is being made to the bonus counters. See below for updated values. Fabulous Friday The site-wide goal is 7.5 million interactions, with a stretch goal of 15M. The Bonus Counter that gets activated on Saturday does so with a power level corresponding to how close to the stretch goal the community managed to get. But on a typical day the community usually gets more than 15M interactions anyway, and often makes more than 20M, going up to 60M or even higher when good bonuses are active. All of which makes this whole Fabulous Friday bonus kind of irrelevant. I therefore intend to change the community goal for Fabulous Friday to 12.5M, with a stretch goal of 25M. This will mean that many Fridays will still get the standard goal, but will actually need to make an effort to convert that into the stretch goal and extract the maximum benefit from the event. Personal goals will not change at this time. While this is a "nerf", it's more a case that currently the goal is being obliterated, this will shift it to just being beaten. Further adjustments may follow, but this should be sufficient for now. Type Race The team goal of 100,000 points has basically never changed. In 2017 when the Type Race started, the target was a massive 2M points with the specific aim that it was basically impossible to achieve, because at the time we wanted Z-Crystals to be very rare items. This was ridiculous. In 2018 we promptly changed that to make them more accessible, drastically lowering the target all the way down to 100k, and there it has stood ever since. In recent years, and especially with the recent Type Race updates, participation has never been higher. Even the lowest-scoring team gets over 150% of the target more often than not, and there is not really any reward for the teams scoring 300%+. To address this, I will be adding a second set of 7 targets, covering the range from 100k to 300k points as an additional challenge. Each target yields an additional Z-Fragment, so teams managing to clear the 300k goal will earn enough Fragments to make an entire additional Z-Crystal! Bonus Counters These have not been updated in some time. The last update was December 2022 and was only a minor tweak. The last significant rebalance was in 2018. Site-wide activity has basically doubled since then, and the Counters are activating far more often than they are intended to. They are long overdue for a rebalance. As a result of this, a significant rebalance is necessary, however doing it all at once would be far too drastic of a measure. While it is true that the 2024 Update plans, once done, will also affect the balance and I cannot possibly predict what the end state will be, I can definitely say that the current balance won't be it. With new updates making it easier than ever to interact and breed eggs, direct buffs to Scour missions, Shelter adoptions and S/A/M hatches... Activity is only gonna get higher as time goes on, so the time to start fixing the Counters balance is now. I will therefore be gradually balancing the Counters every month or so, until the appropriate balance is reached. For the first "step", then, the adjustments will be: April adjustment: You all rose up to the challenge, so I'll be taking a slightly bigger step this time. May adjustment: We're approaching balance on some of these! - Niet: 75M => 80M => 100M => 120M - Garthic: 400M => 450M => 600M => 650M - Suríya: 325k => 400k => 500k => 600k - Ravyne: 500k => 600k => 800k => 900k** - Novan-chan: 250M => 300M => 350M => 450M - Shazi: 300k => 400k => 500k => 500k - Eltafez: 1M => 1.2M => 1.25M => 1.5M - Sei: 3777 => 4777 => 5277 => 5777*** ** Ravyne's minimum boost has been raised to 2x (was 1.5x). The max boost will be raised at a later date. *** Sei's minimum boost has been raised to 10 SP (was 5 SP). Apparently it already was 10 SP minimum. I... honestly thought it was 5. Sorry for any confusion! Six years is far too much time between updates. As balance begins to be restored, I would re-examine the Bonus Counters every three months on a set schedule, and adjust according to how the community did over the last three months. I am also considering the idea of adjusting Sei's bonus to also affect Albino Pokémon. This will indirectly double-buff Melanistic Pokémon. However, if I am to do this, the bonus counter would likely also need to count Albino hatches to make sense - in that case the target would jump up accordingly, but the reward should be worth it!

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I intend to make these adjustments on March 1st.