I'd thought about this a pretty long time ago, but it wasn't until the recent announcement where region chat blew up with several players who would be unable to make it for the Pick a Door game that I remembered it.


Since so many players are unable to be on at all hours of the day (work, school, living on the other side of the planet where afternoon is the middle of the night, and so on) wouldn't it be possible to make a way for players to pick their path IMMEDIATELY, regardless of the game's progression..?


Like say... the game starts in two hours. But I have to leave in one hour.

I go through the list of doors and pick a random set of numbers:

Round1: door 2.
Round2: door 3.
Round3: door 3.
Round4: door 1.
Round5: door 4.

I leave home, and following the timing of the rounds, the game plays out like normal.

Round1: I moved on.
Round2: I moved on.
Round3: I won a prize.
Round4: nothing happened since I already hit a prize.
Round5: nothing happened since I already hit a prize.

I finally get home, and rather than having to miss out on the game entirely, tadah! I actually got to 'play' since I was able to input my selections before leaving. They may have all been complete guesses rather than calculated decisions, but it's much better than straight-up nothing.

Best set-up I can think of is having the selections 'LOCK' at the end of the countdown, which would allow people to make changes to their randomized selections if they wanted to. Like if Door1 had 'move on' for three doors in a row, and when they return home and can actually see the game they didn't want to have Door1 chosen since the probability of the fourth being yet another 'move on' would be unlikely.



This would also curb the numerous instances of "I got to move on to the next round, but I couldn't pick another door because I had to leave."

I'd love this! i missed todays door due to the lovely descision to nap and my alarm didn't wake me up. (which also has ruined my schedule...) Not everyone can grab a tablet with free roaming wifi....and the people that would play pick a door would be on at that time anyways if RL didn't interfere.

I'd love to see something like this as the game is usually when I'm sleeping (same with the eggling auctions).

But I think one of the reasons for the game is to reward people who are actively playing. I'm also curious of how many more people would play, if a lot more prizes are handed out it could effect the economy.

Since the Pick a Door game was originally a Forum game with a timed schedule, we wanted it to maintain that same type of feel only in a format that didn't require an unrealistic effort from us to handle. In yesterday's game, almost 400 players participated lol. That would be 100% unrealistic to manage manually.

With the automatic system, yes, we could make it where you can just pre-select all of the doors but we feel that it would take away from the excitement and anticipation that the game offers. If it were just one and done, it'd basically just be a prize dispenser.

So I think for now, we'd like to keep it on a timed schedule to keep that suspense and excitement.

I hope that makes sense.

Can the rounds be a lot longer so more people can play?

They were initially and people complained about them being too long lol.

Yeah that was me. xD When they were longer, it meant people had to be online longer for a consecutive amount of time. So instead of coming on Sylestia for 1 hour for the door game you ended up having to devote 5 hours+ straight, which was very painful. It basically wasted the whole night. v_v

Hmm...

How about having multiple rounds that last only an hour. But you can only participate in one? Like one round of Pick a Door in the morning. One around the afternoon. And one in the evening.

For example...


Pick a Door 1:
6:00 am - 7:00 am
(round 1: 6:00 - 6:30)
(round 2: 6:30 - 6:45)
(round 3: 6:45 - 6:50)
(round 4: 6:50 - 6:55)
(round 5: 6:55 - 7:00)

Pick a Door 2:
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
(same basic timing format)

Pick a Door 3:
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
(same basic timing format)


Say I can't make it in the morning of afternoon, I can still tag the evening one.

And if I do participate in the first one, I would then be unable to enter in the other two.


Keeps the suspense. Allows players a brief 1-hour window of time required to be online. And there are THREE chances to join in rather than having to get lucky enough that the standard ONE chance coincides with a player's real life needs. (work, school, sleep, etc.)

Naturally the 'door' picks would be different for prizes and chances to move on... But I would hope that the prizes themselves would be equal all the way around.




Haha, and I definitely agreed that the extremely long rounds were the hardest! Having to be on for sooo many straight hours, or find a way to pop on every hour just to see if you moved on or not was extremely difficult! I can imagine for those living on the other side of planet, it would require a dozen alarms set and would ultimately lead up to a very restless night.

I mean like each round lasts a day, so that as long as you're on sometime that day you'd be able to play that round.

oAo 1-hr long pick-a-doors seem easier to miss, even if there's 3 of them in the day.

I personally prefer having additional notice (like a 1-2 day notice, or a prior schedule of all the forum events and games happening like the first summer fest). That's just me, so I can set alarms and be as ready as I can be.