solidbatman's Mega Big Ultra Contest

[Norah_Crisis]

edit:
it really would be great if solidbat dropped another clue
at least something to give us some backup to know if we´re even on the right track
-> ahaha clue for confirmation found *facepalm*
~I´m so sorry~
oh and I would like to ask the same as Zodai:
how are we supposed to give the answer? through PM or on the board
->still stands...


 

[Guest Gurluas]

Honestly, I didn't find it very hard, and I am pretty new and not very familiar with Fuwanovel. 

I'd give a non-spoiler hint but I don't think that's allowed.

[Zodai]

Honestly, I didn't find it very hard, and I am pretty new and not very familiar with Fuwanovel. 

I'd give a non-spoiler hint but I don't think that's allowed.

 

Frankly it's the fact that if you aren't able to find the key mechanics, the game becomes impossible.  It's assumed that you'll have both the knowledge of that mechanic and that the game takes place entirely on the board, but it's very easy for someone to accidentally miss that, especially since the second clue seemingly directs you straight to Neptunia's steam page if you haven't figured out the extra set of text.  And once you start looking places other than Fuwa, you lead yourself down blind alleys where the hunt becomes far more complicated than its' original intentions, and it turns into an unsolvable puzzle.  It's fake difficulty on one hand, and a game of luck on the other.

[suikashoujo]

Well, of course it wasn't going to be outright stated what needed to be done. that would make it too easy.

I would have been surprised if this challenge HAD been as straightforward with its hints as you seem to want, honestly. Just look at the difficulty level of the previous daily challenges. Why would solidbatman start being generous now?

[Rose]

Well, of course it wasn't going to be outright stated what needed to be done. that would make it too easy.

I would have been surprised if this challenge HAD been as straightforward with its hints as you seem to want, honestly. Just look at the difficulty level of the previous daily challenges. Why would solidbatman start being generous now?

 

It's more like people who don't know about some stuff regarding him or how to go around the forums have no chance.

[Eclipsed]

Still, 

I'd say get your points and just let the others rot instead of trying to white knight and giving hints to everybody 

[Kimossab]

It's more like people who don't know about some stuff regarding him or how to go around the forums have no chance.

IDK anyhing about him and finally found out the end. It just takes alot of time and patience.

This challenge is really easy, you just need patience

[Stray Cat]

Still, 

I'd say get your points and just let the others rot instead of trying to white knight and giving hints to everybody 

100% agree. This is a competition, just let everyone try their hand at it.

[Zodai]

My apologies, I'm very tired at the moment and this is probably just going to be me rambling for a while ><;;

 

Please note that this has turned into a full-on examination of the challenge as a whole in accordance with basic design theory, so in addition to being a wall of text that will go in-depth with the choices made in its design, will also 'spoil', I should say, the two key components that make this unfairly difficult to begin with.  It's a flaw that honestly goes beyond what my designer side is willing to let pass, both in terms of being unreasonably unfair on a single moment of what may as well be random chance, and in terms of a design flaw that I think we can learn from in the future.

 

In-general I'm still of the point that the fundamental concepts are something that at least should have been alluded to at some point in the opening post.  It has to do with how the concept of difficulty is approached in this manner, in addition to the promises set in terms of those intended by Solidbatman as opposed to the perceived promises that the lack of fundamental concepts creates.  As with something such as the day three competition, sure it was difficult as fuck, but the goal was clear and it was something that could be achieved with hard work, a fair amount of skill and a lot of creative thinking.  The difficulty is done well in that regard because no matter how hard it is, we're doing something achievable and the player can at least recognize how to improve.  It's difficult, but it's fair difficulty, where the player understands that they can progress with some clever thinking and skill with the subject at hand.

 

Now, I'm not meaning to bemoan Solidbatman's effort here - I understand he's busy and that therefore the challenges aren't perfect by any means, but there's are some core assumptions made about the players and how much they would be able to understand that isn't directly stated that, depending on a factor of luck, leaves the hunt as an impossible challenge without outside assistance.  This leads to a major degree of fake difficulty, whereas the players end up scouring the entirety of the net not only able to understand the rules of the game, but also without a vector of understanding for them to try to iterate on what the rules could be to begin with.  Obscure rules can be workable if the player has a vector to try and test and iterate on their theories on what the rules could be, but outside of asking another player for help the only vector someone has of understanding the rules of the game correctly is whether or not they picked up on the fact that the actual clues are whited out as opposed to message itself being the clue, or that they happened to highlight the post upon reaching the clue.  I understand that these are meant to be difficult, however such a way of going about things reduces it to a game of chance and a frankly unfairly difficult mess that fails to be both engaging as a game and competitive as a challenge.

 

The assumptions made that make the game impossible, in some figurative but near-accurate statement, would be as follows - one, the white-out mechanic, >as shown here<, and two, the player's knowledge that the scavenger hunt is limited to Fuwanovel's forums.  When players have zero information about the white-out mechanic, in addition to coming to the conclusion that the hunt takes place outside of Fuwa, the challenge becomes an impossible grasp at straws, because the conclusions that these lead people to are a place without any possible mechanic to understand the logic of the game.

 

 

Personally I believe that the purpose of the white-out was to keep people from skipping clues, or even jumping right to the answer (as anyone who wanders Fuwa enough would be able to find the final component without going through the preceding questions) but this has the after-effect of locking out anyone who doesn't pick up on the mechanic the moment it's introduced, which for something based around hiding information, is frankly a fatal flaw that leaves people who draw poorly with nearly zero chance of succeeding, except perhaps asking someone for assistance.

 

Let's run through the typical player experience for a moment, and see where things begin to fall apart.

 

The first clue is relatively straightforward.  Midweek Madness, CPUs, etc etc.  Some genre savvy players might skip straight to Neptunia's steam page, before backtracking to the rest, but most will probably end up using the forum's search function.

 

Now, here is where we come to the point of divergence.  Once you hit the second clue, there's one key fundamental flaw in the player's knowledge of the rules, that leaves the puzzle impossible to solve.

 

Let's go through what the player knows at this point.

 

--The player has not encountered the white-out mechanic yet.  Its first reveal is in the second clue, and the player is about to come to the point where they could possibly see it, but it is not there in the first place.

 

--The player still reasonably believes the game could take place in Fuwanovel, in that the entirety of the clues can be found without leaving the site.  Perhaps they believe that maybe there's some ploy with Zakamutt and there's a clue hidden in the Fuwazette, but chances are that the players (especially those who visited Neptunia's steam page earlier) still also believe in the possibility of clues existing outside of Fuwanovel.

This is where the divergence occurs - either you doom yourself to failure, or you find out about the white-out mechanic and move forward with relatively small concern.  I'd put the rate at 30% to 70%, the smaller scale being those who find out about the white-out mechanic at this moment, with maybe 5% of the larger pool going back and finding the white-out without assistance or extra hints, as even with what should be theoretically impossible there's always a few people who manage to get the better of random chance.  These numbers are of course, not to be taken as truth, but from what I've seen between the people I've interacted with this is the general ratio that I've come across.

 

The second clue reads as follows, "Re;Birth 1 is half off on Steam right now as part of the midweek madness sales.", with a white-outed clue underneath that explains the next step in the puzzle.

 

The cornerstone of the hunt being successful is that the game assumes the player is able to pick up on the white-out mechanic at this moment, regardless of whether or not it's part of the designer's plan for the player's progression.  If they pick up on it, fine - the player gets the next clue and the progression proceeds as normal.  There's bound to be quite a few of them - the faint conspicuous empty space at the edge of the post serves as the only hint that something might even be there.  There are a few people who might pick up on that, as is described by the first wave of people who were able to complete the challenge, but more often than not the player seems to have completely missed that cue, and ends up going onto a path where the road disappears under our feet.

 

For now, let's go through the promises set by the two worlds.

 

 

For the path where the player finds the white-out mechanic, the clue is as follows.  "Now now, the next clue is hidden where? Form a club to find it perhaps?"

 

The tone of this message is, at the end of the day, fairly straightforward.  "Something about a club, go find a club."

 

Now, let's run over the two assumptions again.

 

--The player has encountered the white-out mechanic.  They just used it to find the clue, after all.  They can readily assume that the second clue will contain something similar - it ends up being the same trick throughout the entire hunt, of course, but it could also be an anagram of sorts at the bottom of the next post.  But, the message is clear - you will undoubtedly know when you find the clues.  Because they're things out of place - they're either deliberately hidden, or perhaps there's a possibility there's some form of a code to be cracked in the harder stages.

 

--The player slightly more reasonably believes that the entirety of the game takes place inside of Fuwanovel.  The Form a Club hint, if not located in Fuwanovel, is far too broad to serve as anything useful.  Therefore, it's only reasonable that the player expect to find it somewhere on Fuwa.  So the player, reasonably, searches around the clubs on Fuwa.  If they also picked up on the fact that the answer, under normal circumstances, must be a place that Solidbatman can edit clues into, the answer becomes clear as day as soon as you check his recently posted topics.  Again, it's not a difficult assumption to make.

 

This would be the train of logic followed by the people who managed to pick up on the white-out mechanic.  It more or less paints a basic picture of what the logic path looks like - pay attention to Batman's Fuwanovel posts, and keep an eye out for anything that matches the description of the clue.  Check for white-outs as you go on, then scour through the text itself in the event that there's a code somewhere in there (there isn't.)

 

That said, we then have to focus on the logical conclusions made by those who don't catch onto the white-out mechanic.  While the logical consistency and learning curve of those who are able to roll well on finding out about the white-out is more or less sound, the issue lies in the logical conclusions and what they're being taught about the hunt by what the clues seem to be.

 

"Re;Birth 1 is half off on Steam right now as part of the midweek madness sales."

 

If we assume the player does not get the white-out mechanic upon viewing the second clue as shown here, the direction that the puzzle seems to go is, at first, clear.  "Go to Neptunia's Steam Page.'

 

It's a simple enough observation, to be sure.  Despite the fact that it's not overtly stating that it's the next clue, you can be almost 100% sure that the first clue is leading you to this post.  The most powerful evidence of this would be that searching midweek madness only gives four results to begin with on Fuwa - this contest thread, the post being directed to, and two threads that haven't been posted in since mid-2014.

 

Therefore, this is the correct post.  This is the route that most people end up on.  Perhaps this is when most of those in the white-out section took a longer look at it, and thus got into the 30% that figured it out, but from what we can tell a majority of the playerbase, sadly, was not able to pick up on it.

 

Let's go back to the base assumptions for a moment.

 

--The player does not believe that the game takes place in Fuwanovel.  The clue is clearly mentioning that the next piece of the puzzle is on Neptunia's steam page.  Therefore, the puzzle as a whole does not take place in Fuwanovel, as the fact that the clue is placed outside of Fuwanovel to begin with negates this fact.

 

--The player has not encountered the white-out system yet.  If they had known about the white-out system, they would have used it to find the real clue and avoided this whole mess.  So the player in this case is unaware of the existence of the white-out system.

 

Furthermore, we have the tone created by the 'clue' in the message.  The player believes that the clue presented in the post in genuine - there are no other alternatives that fit the requirements in the first clue.  Thus, he goes to steam.  But pay attention to the tone - the clue blends into the environment it is in, with no guarantee that it's an actual clue from the designer.

 

This, is the second fundamental reasoning for why it makes the game unwinnable.  By giving the player information that leads to the logical conclusion that the clues will be like a trail of breadcrumbs in a forest, with a single thread connecting them all together (Most likely they would deduce that the post was by Solidbatman, and that it was created sometime within the week for the sake of narrowing down their search options) using terminology that would both give clues and make sense in a non-Fuwa environment.  They go off searching through Neptunia's community hub, the discussions, then the screenshots, then maybe the artwork section as well, searching for something that gives them the next clue.

 

And then, frankly, they never find it.  They've checked their logic twice, thrice, ten times if need be, and the clue is certainly leading them to Neptunia's steam page - there seems to be no alternate conclusion with the information given.

 

The player, despite all their effort, has not yet discovered the white-out mechanic.  This is still a crucial piece of data, as it means that the player still believes the information is hidden in the format in the second clue - instead of a basic-level logic challenge with three or four steps until a conclusion, with maybe 15, 30 minutes tops required to finish it, the player is thrown into what looks like a multi-step game of hide and seek where the clues are hidden in plain sight in the forest known as the internet, where the only possible hint that it could be related the fact that it's posted by Solidbatman.  When the Neptunia page fails, the next step is to go to Solidbatman's page on steam, check out the games linked on his profile (two of which are visual novels, which are likely to be important places to look.)  When that fails, you assume he means Neptunia itself, and the correct move is to run to Google and ask the almighty gods for everything Neptunia-related he's ever mentioned until you find something.

Remember, in addition to the white-out mechanic, the player does not believe that the game is limited to Fuwanovel.  The entire internet is the grounding for the story, therefore the data must be there somewhere.  Eventually they just go searching for Solidbatman on google because everything else has failed, because the tone of the second clue takes them in a specific direction - 'The clue is hidden somewhere.  If you haven't found it, look harder.  The clue is hidden amongst this pile of conversation messes somewhere, and if, and ONLY IF you are able to find it, you shall succeed.'

 

Now, frankly, the promise itself isn't something too bad - it has the full-on detective fantasy that the master-level scavenger hunts really deliver on.  Sifting through the documents, searching for that one thread of information that leads you to the next piece of the puzzle, it's a riveting challenge, and one that certainly has a ton of potential.  It's a fantasy that a lot of people, myself included, associate with internet scavenger hunts - the information is all there, but the challenge is in finding which piece of the puzzle leads you to the next path.  I must say that the concept of that is quite engaging, which may very well be why people stick with it in the first place - the promise is so engaging that it causes people to run down dark, blind alleys.  Then they feel disappointed and cheated when they realize all they did was miss a piece of whited-out text under the message.

 

Frankly, the challenge itself was actually quite simple if you ignore the severe divergence over finding the whited-out text, the puzzles are actually reasonably straightforward.  Figure out the white-out mechanic, and don't get it into your head that the hunt takes you anywhere outside of Fuwanovel, and we've actually got ourselves something calming enough to give people a breather after the grueling challenge that was the day three and four challenges, while still having a reasonable amount of concentration that needed to be put into it.

 

That said, for those of us who miss the white-out mechanic, the hunt is a slog down dark alleyways that promises the moon but delivers nothing at all.  It's a symptom of assuming the player can pick up on something, where in actuality it wasn't even hinted at to begin with, and so it turns into a slog through the entirety of the net wandering through dark alleys and trying to convince yourself you're making progress.

 

And so, the hunt becomes a less engaging game as a result, as the non-whiteout players crawl through an unfair hunt where a flaw that hadn't been thought through well enough breaks the game to an unwinnable state, especially for something so logic heavy like a scavenger hunt on the internet.

 

This is why the hints exist - they're things meant to supplement the discovery of the white-out system to prevent people from falling into the same trap, and to give the people on-board with that path already a higher chance of finding a piece of evidence that tells them what to do.  It's something that should have been included in the clues to begin with, and frankly when the assumption that the player will pick up on it breaks down as a result of it not being implied, the game becomes an unsolvable mess for anyone who was expecting a reasonable challenge.

 

I'll admit they may have gone a bit too far - the main hints are whited out, and while the first one was basically some whited-out text complaining, with a white space between the quote and the rest of the message to make it more noticeable and tell people 'this can happen!', the second one was more a rant about what I felt the main assumptions were at the time that caused the hunt to be unsolvable to begin with.

For future reference, what other solutions could have been there?  Perhaps you put a smaller scale of puzzles in Neptunia's steam page so they link back to the main route, or perhaps more implying that the whiteout mechanic exists in the first/second clues - I still believe it was intended as a way to keep the answers hidden, as if it were intended for difficulty having a different system for each round would have worked better, though setting up a 'turn back' message at Neptunia's discussion hub would have helped as well.

 

Anyway, this is my examination of the hunt, and why I feel that the hints are necessary, though I probably did give a bit too much information than was necessary.  With that, I'm feeling very sleepy, so I shall head to bed in the near future.

[solidbatman]

tl;dr "Bats your competition for $200+ worth of prizes is too hard wah wah wah."

 

             

 

Zodai, I'm quite upset with you and depending on what I decide tonight, you may either be disqualified, or suffer a penalty, or nothing at all. While I did not explicitly state to not give out hints, it certainly was implied, and this is not meant to be easy. The first few weeks may have fooled you into thinking it would, but we must weed out the uninspired and only have the ones who truly want this prize standing at the end. 

[Zodai]

Fair enough, I suppose.  I considered the possibility of things just not trying hard enough on my end, though after its conclusion I had still come to the conclusion that the task was near-impossible after going through the logical sequence of events (which you can see in my previous post), though I suppose I should have asked first before going for the hint route.  I await your conclusion.

[kyrt]

Well I just spent way too long looking in the wrong spot for the right reasons.

Regardless I'm probably going to be paranoid for the rest of my life now. Thx Bats.

[SuperOreman]

Are day 5 and day 6 different things?

[vibrantblade]

Are day 5 and day 6 different things?

yup. Day 6 just about done though. better hurry if you havent finished it yet.

[SuperOreman]

yup. Day 6 just about done though. better hurry if you havent finished it yet.

IDK if I did day 5 or day 6...Which one is the scavenger hunt?....Nevermind

[solidbatman]

WEEK 6

There is no day 7. I screwed up the timing and was a day behind. A fact I did not realize until today. Oh well, that gave me more time to plan an even more evil challenge than the Day 6 challenge that was so popular. Congrats to suikashoujo or whatever your name is for winning the 10 bonus points. Day 5 was worth 5, and Day 6 5. 
 
Now then, on to week 6. Week 6 is another scavenger hunt! Except this time, you will searching my posts on Fuwanovel for 22 red letters. Once you gather all 22 red letters, organize them into a specific phrase that I have picked. Once one person gets the correct answer, the week will end. This week is a winner take all week for the points, 20 of them. Except with a catch.
 
​You all may work together and provide hints and directions as you wish. Be mindful though, only the first person to get the correct solution will receive the 20 points for the week. On top of that, if the person who gets the correct answer first sits outside of the top point totals on my score sheet, then the top contest scorers will lose 20 points. If the person who wins is in the top scorers, then they will simply get 20 points and have a large lead going into Week 7. 

 

The top scorers currently are:

Suika

flutterz

vibrantblade

kata

rose

ivanlegato

 

Godspeed ladies and gentlemen

 

PS: Seriously, stop complaining and asking questions. Zodai, you will receive your verdict tomorrow. Also awaiting a possible judgement; Noah_Crises for simply replacing banned letters with x's and other letters while leaving a key. 

 

Note: If this is solved within 48 hours, I will add another one this week. 

 

Solved. Next one goes up in 12 hours

[Katatsumuri]

So... basically you are hosting the hunger games?

Ah well, Let the games begin!

[suikashoujo]

Noooo! I have to keep my spot at the top!

[solidbatman]

Note: If this is solved within 48 hours, there will be another one this week. Gotta keep the fun up right? 

[Katatsumuri]

-old not viable answer-

[solidbatman]

"You are not idiots for real"

Incorrect

[SuperOreman]

Do the letters repeat themselves? Can you guess the statement as many times as you want?

[solidbatman]

 

 

 

Congratulations to Kata! The stupid idiot Swede figured out the phrase.

 

Seriously, you idiots are not for real doing this are you? 

 

The top point scorers are safe for the next 12 hours. Next hidden letters post goes up in ~12 hours

[Katatsumuri]

I dun goofed

[suikashoujo]

I was so close... I had the letters and everything. Why, anagrams, why?