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.

Cool!Cant wait to see the updates!

these look like some exciting changes! i especially like the addition of albino boost to sei. curious to see them happen :3

Exciting stuff, and much more "healthy" for the site at large than it is currently imo. In regards to albinos being counted towards Sei's counter - would implementing this add a way for users to use something like [inventory=albinoalbino] the way we can use [inventory=shinyshiny] now?

oooh i really like the idea of sei's bonus affecting albino (and by result melanistic) odds! i hope that one will get implimented. and the additional type race bonuses sound very nice too.

phew, i was a little worried when you first said you were gonna look at the bonuses again (i love having fun and hatching pretties!) but this looks like a good plan. i really like the idea of slowly increasing them until a good balance is found. I'm also glad for the bigger goals for type race, that sounds really fun! i think the idea of sei buffing and including albinos is interesting, not quite sure how i feel about it yet but im willing to give it a go! sound fun, and thats what i'm most interested in xD also quick q, what will happen if a counter is hit before the update is pushed? will it just have to keep going until full at the new amount after the update until its filled, or will it still be 'hit' per se? looking forward to seeing these changes!

No, because Albinos aren't part of any chaining system, so every one is "random chance" (just with odds that depend on how strongly you charge the Albino Radar)

exciting to see even more changes, especially in the counters! making sei count albinos will be nice, but will that mean that melans count twice?

I... actually don't know how my code will respond in that case XD Perhaps we can find out together!

Long time needed, for sure. I really like the Fabu Friday goal, but I do think it should be eyeballed over time after the change. I remember when I joined there were (seemingly - i dont have statistics, but i never witnessed it myself) no days with the 200% until years later, and then all of the sudden (late 2023/early 2024) it's happening constantly. It's very possible that the overall activity could dwindle again and make the increase to the bonus super difficult to achieve. I always like more oppertunities to get z-crystals/shards for the type race. Win for me! I feel like z-crystals are harder to get right now then intended, but that's kind of an entirelly different topic that could require a lot more changes then just the type race goals, so for now this seems good to me. Regarding bonus counters... I think taking it slow will be a good way to do this one, like you've outlined. We have been hitting a lot of bonus' lately, and I know that wasn't super intended for how the system works.

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Overall, I have a question. Why are most site-wide counters based on a static number? Many of these counters are based on the entire site's activity level, which flucuates depending on many factors. Would it be possible to do some math to auto-set the counters goals? This could be for FabFriday, Bonus Counters, Type Race, or only one or two of these. This is a very loose idea with little framework, but it's something I've always wondered. While I feel like this concept could be applied to all three, I think FabFriday is the easiest example: Take the average ammount of interactions in the past week per day and add a small percentage of that to be the first goal. Then add another larger percentage of that to be the second goal. Average Interactions Per Day (from past week) + (5% of Average Interactions Per Day (from past week)) = bonus level. This would take some time to figure out what a good percentage would be as well as how to set this up for the counters, but once it's set up you won't have to edit it. If the game's playerbase booms, it will still be fine. If the game's playerbase seriously dwindles, it will still be fine. Just wanted to know if it was an idea that was plausable at all !