Get Rid of Puzzle Points

We don’t need points for puzzles. Just create a ranking system based on the total number of puzzles solved. And then open up the possibility for alternative ranking systems with other parts of the website that have cool ranks and stuff. All website activity doesn’t need to be hyper-focused on an arbitrary points system. And for those of you who really like points, why don’t we just take all the current points accumulated and turn that into a level system. In fact, I’ll just make a new forum post about it right now.

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I’m unclear about what the problem is that this intends to fix. This reads like something that is exaggerated for effect, but I’m not really sure what that something is: “All website activity doesn’t need to be hyper-focused on an arbitrary points system”

We talked about it a few times over the years in chat, but maybe you could explain in more detail for the folks at home?

I also think that it might be a good idea to phase out puzzle points, because I feel like as people progress in Eterna and become pretty decent at it, the points start becoming arbitrarily high and start to not mean as much as it probably should. I tried to talk about this when I talked about “aesthetics”, which ppl might have mistaken for “merch”, but what I was kind of wondering about was like “skins” but for Eterna. Like, what if we used our points to buy stuff at a “shop” to make the nucleotides look like idk, christmas cookies or star wars or something instead of the classic colours. Of course it might be a good idea to still incorporate the classic colors in the skins but you know… imagine the puzzle structures with skins, the pallet with skins, different bubbles, different shiny explody stuff when you beat a puzzle, idk, we can probably go pretty crazy with a skin idea. That way we can phase out the point system while keeping everyone happy, and add some sort of ranking thing to replace it…

another option may be something like what clash royale did. When phasing out the previous trophy system to what is now “legendary leagues”, they replaced what ppl earned in the previous system with what’s called “legend trophies”, which is unobtainable by new players. So the point system in Eterna might also have a possibility of being immortalised and unobtainable, while a new ranking system is created. Perhaps a new ranking system can be based off of puzzle difficulty instead, who knows? In any case, right now the points in Eterna really only tell people how old a player is, not exactly how difficult was the hardest puzzle they created, which I think might be a good idea to start making more incentives for. In other words, it might be better to make more incentives for hard puzzles rather than grinding easy ones, which a new ranking system might help with.

Hi @hoglahoo. Thank you for your question.

The serious answer is that an individuals aggregate rank in this game should not be determined by how many points they have. Currently, the game has too many ways that a player may earn points, with some being based on arbitrary activities. There is NOTHING wrong with this. But, it downplays contributions from other parts of the site. My proposal for removing points is that we do two things.

First, we transition the points to a leveling system. It’s more reasonable, and we can begin to do things like “Daily EXP rewards” and other gameplay mechanics that reward people for logging in and participating in Eterna. It doesn’t require changing points for puzzles, or altering mechanics, and we can begin to put interesting tools, and gameplay options behind leveling up.

Second, this frees up the opportunity to develop ranking systems that focus solely on an activity. Puzzle solving, lab designs, etc. will have their own distinct ranks that players who participate in those activities are recognized for. This allows for the Eli Fiskers, Astromons, and other who may not get recognition for being high ranking puzzle solving players to get their recognition for lab designs and activities.