A lot of new players dont last long. Maybe a seperate scoring category for players that have played for less than a year might help to keep them.
(Scoring only computed on the basis of the new players scores)
This next to the normal scoring. And maybe a question when people create a new account if they have played before and for how long.
Is this just to cater to the ADHD kids who leave if they can't "win" the game in a couple of tries, or leave because they haven't risen to the top of the leaderboard in their first week? Part of the movement that everyone has to be a winner, and there are no losers, creating new generations of the entitlement class.
Thanks for the suggestion, Timo. I see where you're coming from and I agree that inspiring new folders to continue playing is a valid area to investigate. We'll explore this further.
We already have the <150 and <50 for the beginners. Now we need more????
Those categories only last for a couple of puzzles before someone has collected more points. The gap with the other play kinds is too big in my opinion.
So maybe change it from <15 and <150 to <50 and <500 . Just keep it separated as it is now.
I agree with increasing the time folderers can play in the "beginner" and "intermediate" classes. Raising those thresholds to fifty and five hundred points would allow new players, if they want, to refine their skills a bit more before they have to go head-to-head with we veterans.
Another suggestion, one I made directly to Dr. Baker, was to further modify the global/evolver scoring formula. Not too long ago, the score used a seventh power to calculate the points awarded per game. The exponent was lowered so that now, the score uses a sixth power, and consequently awards more points to players finishing in the lower half of the ranks. Reducing the exponent to four would award still more points to those lower-ranking players without greatly affecting the scoring of players finishing in the upper quartile or so.
Being able to accumulate more points, faster, can spark a greater desire to rise through the ranks, and could tip the balance in favor of moving a "meh!" player towards being a "rawr!" player.
This is partly the intent of the "Beginner" category. We hope to improve on how this category works soon.
It might be possible (and simple to implement) to take the Overall list and just select the players that have been playing for less than a year and make a ranking on that list.
So no new puzzle category is needed.
That might work.
The issue, though, is that while that solves the site-wide points and rankings, these players are still competing on the same puzzles as the experienced players, so when they see their rank in game (which is what a new player is probably going to be paying the most attention to), they will see themselves doing poorly.