PKRS balance changes

Reason For Consideration: There are a number of ongoing balance changes including new ranks, the lab rework, new targets on the bonus counters so I would like to suggest some changes to PKRS to make it feel more equitable and balanced for the growing userbase. My understanding of how PKRS works is that it picks an interaction with the current host to determine the next host - and not an interactor - so you have a better chance of getting PKRS if you make more interactions instead of every person who interacts having an equal chance. My suggestions are written from that understanding and if it's wrong I can only apologise and amend. I have put the three suggestions into one thread for convenience and to reduce spam but I'm not trying to say that all three need to happen together - they're just suggestions and any or all or none of them might be fit for implementation. Suggestion Title: Extend PKRS immunity window. Suggestion Summary: PKRS immunity now lasts for 90 minutes. (increased from 60) Positive points: Reduces the number of times one user can catch PKRS in the same 24 hours, allowing it to spread across more people. Reduces the chance of getting PKRS multiple times while waiting for eggs to restock. Negative points: Would disincentivise mass clicking of people who have recently had PKRS. Would theoretically make it harder to complete PKRS related goals by increasing the amount of time between infections. Suggestion Title: 2RN PKRS Suggestion Summary: When choosing an interaction for the next host, PKRS has an X% chance to reroll it once, where X = the potential next host's current PKRS count ÷ 2. Positive points: Far more beneficial for newer users and users who are still working on the "Catch PKRS 100 times" goal. Spreads PKRS further among the playerbase by reducing the chance the same small group of very active people will get it while not making it impossible for them to benefit. Makes the benefits of PKRS more accessible for players who are unable to mass click every 15 minutes due to disability without making mass clicking hosts pointless. Reduces the frustration from seeing the same people get it every day while mass clicking unsuccessfully in the same windows. Overall significantly more equitable distribution without anyone who is interacting with the host being completely shut out of chances to get PKRS. Uses a stat that is already being tracked so wouldn't need new data collecting. Negative points: Negative impact disproportionately falls onto older users, more active users who are PKRS hunting or users who have had PKRS more times. I appreciate that this could be very frustrating for them. Could encourage attempts to manipulate PKRS via private/public field toggling to give certain users significantly more interaction chances. Increased number of calculations could delay the handover between hosts or cause server lag. Suggestion Title: PKRS likes online users Suggestion Summary: When choosing an interaction for the next host, PKRS looks if they have been online in the last 30 minutes and if they have not been online in the last 30 minutes, has a 50% chance to reroll once. PKRS can still choose the same user after rerolling. Positive points: Reduces the frustration of being asleep/AFK and coming back to find you missed a PKRS window. Extends the benefits of PKRS by making it more likely to land on people who are actively hunting it while not completely excluding people who are AFK for any reason. Benefits people in timezones or who are on schedules who cannot be online hunting PKRS at reset as they will have slightly less competition later in the day from people who were online at reset and are now offline. Negative points: The 30 minute window would not prevent people going AFK just before PKRS and missing it. Increased number of calculations could delay the handover between hosts or cause server lag. Thank you for reading. These suggestions are from my own experience as a player and not from the code of the game, and if any of these are already in place I apologise. The numbers in these suggestions are flexible and could be changed if people feel they are too harsh or too lenient. I've offered them as an example of what I feel would make PKRS hunting more equitable. Edited for autocorrect error I didn't spot while proofreading.

I'm pretty sure your third suggestion already exists, where you have to be recently online to get pokerus. I can't find it written anywhere though so I'm not 100% sure. I've never gotten pokerus overnight but I have gotten pokerus without deliberately clicking the host while I was online. The other suggestions I do not support. When thinking about Pokerus it's important to consider what makes it powerful. Simply having pokerus doesn't actually do much. There is an interaction point bonus, but no one gets pokerus to spend it mass clicking. The other bonus is that EXP from other players' interactions is doubled. This is powerful, but the key here is other players. What actually makes pokerus strong, rather than these two programmed bonuses, is that users who are trying to get it will be clicking you to get it. Any nerf to pokerus chances will reduce the amount of people that are trying to get it, which in turn reduces its actual power. This creates a negative feedback loop where pokerus being less powerful means less people try for it, which makes it even less powerful meaning even less people try for it. I think the mechanic is balanced just fine right now. People value pokerus enough that as the pokerus host you will be able to hatch several parties of eggs but it's not completely instant hatch (with the exception of like, Niet days at periods of high activity).

I agree with you about the value of PKRS and why people want to be the host but I don't understand why it would create a negative feedback loop if the chance of becoming the host was slightly lower for less than two hundred and fifty out of the 282,830 registered users? I also don't understand why it would make PKRS less powerful - nothing about the host window would change, there already is an immunity period. It would just be slightly more likely for one of the 282,599 registered users with less than 200 times hosting PKRS to be the next host. If anything more people would be motivated to click parties and fields because there is a slight disadvantage placed on those who have had the most benefit in the past in order for more people to benefit.

While less than 250 people would have a 100% chance to reroll under your rule, the number of people with a >50% chance is nearly 600*. Comparing that number to the number of registered users is a useless metric because the vast majority of registered members are completely inactive. The reality is that a significant portion of the people who would be clicking for pokerus are in the list. *FWIW, this is also a pretty useless number given that many of these users are inactive as well. But just by looking, a big portion of these users do have hypermode so a lot of them are active. "Slightly less likely" is a pretty big understatement. If we do some rough math with a bunch of assumptions, assuming that every pokerus hunter clicks the host equally, those pokerus hunters are the only ones clicking the host, and about 50% of the pokerus hunters will result in a reroll, this halves the chance of those rerolling users getting pokerus. If, to your point, less than 50% of users result in a reroll, their chances are reduced even more. If my chances of getting Pokerus were halved, I don't think I would be as likely to be clicking for it. Lastly, this creates a mechanic that gets weaker as you play more. People will be less likely to click for Pokerus constantly because they don't want to "waste" their shot at making use of Pokerus. Overall, it just seems like an unfair mechanic. Why should we punish users with more activity for being active?

For each of your suggestions:

• The first I don't support. I know this is against what you're suggesting but I personally feel like the cooldown should be even shorter, to 15 minutes to prevent the same user from getting Pokerus twice in a row. Unpopular opinion maybe, but if a user wants to put in the effort getting it again immediately, then sure, let them. As Kahuna said, Pokerus itself doesn't do much on it's own, and people already get it multiple times in one day. Maybe it would incentivize people to finish all their interactions for a specific user and increase their Pokerus chances if the same user appears in a short amount of time, while the clicker is still online.
• The second I also don't support, even though yeah, I'm in that position (only 10 Pokerus hosts). It's a raffle, and I feel the draw chances should be equal across the board. If you want to raise your chances, you put in more entries.
• The third I'm on the fence about, only because personally I see people who are clearly AFK get Pokerus when I'm trying for it and my feelings intervere and I feel like it's kind of a waste of my 15 minutes when I could have been using the time instead. Plus, for most raffles you show up to at events, if you win the draw you have to be there in person to claim it, or it goes to the next draw. On the other hand, if you're trying to get the Pokerus task and you get it while you're not online, that still benefits you. Again, so/so on this one.

The first suggestion wouldn't even have any real impact. In the 330396 total infections since PKRS was added to PFQ, the number of re-infections within 90 minutes is 7065. That's less than 2.15% across all infections ever. It wouldn't make any realistic difference, it would just feel worse for the hunters. Second is kinda interesting, but I also don't think it would make that much difference overall, because statistics. Long-term it won't have the effect you want it to have. Third is already true.

I don't support the first 2 of these suggestions. The last one is already a thing so I don't need to say about that As someone who has been a rus hunter for about 3 years now and has had pkrs over 1000. I don't see why I should disadvantge because I activaly want to do rus in my time here. I have barely ever got rus straight after my immutiny period ended. I have a couple of times but I belive thye were when very few users online about 300 maybe less. So not many people making rus basically useless to get though eggs. I don't want a reroll. Why should have to get double lucky to get rus just because I have spent longer on site going for rus than someone.