How should Secret Songs be handled?

[MarcusHawkins]

For years, obtaining a certain amount of credits has been used to unlock Secret Songs. I want to make this thread, and say that I think this is not the way to do it, and here's why...

1. Gambling Hall
This is the major thing that alters the way in how you gain, and lose credits. Let's say someone who's been in this site for a long time has 250k credits, and decides to make a 250k credit bet. Well, if he loses, all of the hard work he/she put into this game to unlock and play the secret songs are now GONE! He then has to rack these credits back up to play these songs again!
In the opposite side, let's say we have a new person coming into FFR. Someone game him/her a certain amount of credits to Gamble with, so he/she gambles. Moments later, he/she just won 150k credits, and has all of the secret songs, meaning he/she put in little to no effort to unlock such songs. Of course, this will happen if you're lucky, but that's besides the point.
Do you see the problem in this scenario? Let's move on.

2. Credit Transfer Log
I used an example where someone took this feature to the advantage and gambled to get 150k, but there is another scenario. Another new person comes in to FFR, because his/her friend has an account. His/her friend is very rich in credits, and decides to gives the new person 150k credits, just so he can have the songs early on. Again, that new person required little to no effort to get the secret songs unlocked, therefore, can play such songs.
On the other hand, some user for no reason has 150k, and decides to give it all away. All of the hard work he put into for these secret songs are now gone, and that user regrets giving away all of his credits. Again, he has to rack them back up to get these songs back.

So here's a possible solution to this problem. Maybe, instead of credits to play secret songs, you can use that player's GT, or member length, and secret songs will unlock as you play more and more, and have been a member longer and longer. The main purpose of credits for secret songs anyway, is a representation to show your membership in FFR, so I think this would go very well! Hopefully, this way, no one will have to worry about gaining or losing credits anymore when wanting to play secret songs. They'll just play, and unlock as they go, without any cheats or alternatives!

So what do YOU think? Should credits unlocking secret songs stay the way it is, or can there be a more alternative method? I want to hear YOUR opinion!

-Marcus Hawkins

P.S. - If this offends any player in any way, I want to apologize, as it is not my intention to be mean, rude, or disrespectful. I just hope you'll understand, that's all!

[_Zenith_]

As currency dependant genre, Secret should stay where it is. Credits have for lack of a better term insufficient purpose and its own meaning. Credits are Purchased/Secret Genres, though, increasing the amount of songs in each genre would be nice to see.

[Red Blaster]

I think it should stay how it is, except if you lose all of your credits the secret songs stay unlocked.
Like once you unlock them it's pretty stupid to have them become locked again.

[MarcusHawkins]

Originally Posted by Red Blaster

I think it should stay how it is, except if you lose all of your credits the secret songs stay unlocked.
Like once you unlock them it's pretty stupid to have them become locked again.

Totally agree with you on that one! You have the credits, only to lose them AND the songs with it?
I should also mention that Secret songs can unlock Tier Points, Skill Tokens, and improve your FFR rank! Without these songs, how are you supposed to achieve such things?

[Sorie]

I think it should stay the same, it gives a value to credits. Just be more cautious if you like gambling. Keep a 150k credits in bank and gamble the rest if you feel like it.

[MarcusHawkins]

Originally Posted by Sorie

I think it should stay the same, it gives a value to credits. Just be more cautious if you like gambling. Keep a 150k credits in bank and gamble the rest if you feel like it.

and how exactly would you keep them "in a bank"?
I'd sure wish that option were available, but it's not, so there's a problem.

[PhantomPuppy]

Originally Posted by Sorie

I think it should stay the same, it gives a value to credits. Just be more cautious if you like gambling. Keep a 150k credits in bank and gamble the rest if you feel like it.

lol this. i think ive gone up to about 250k, and have given away 100k of it to friends of mine, but always made sure to keep 150k no matter what on my acc. currently at 150,913 xD. yea, just... once u have it unlocked, its up to you really to make sure to be smart with your credits. otherwise, DO YOU REALLY DESERVE THAT SECRET SONG?!?! DUM DUM DUM.

[Gradiant]

Secret songs should be changed to purchased, having to keep a certain credit limit just to be able to play songs is kind of lame.

[Kagome]

Moved this to General Talk

[Red Blaster]

Originally Posted by PhantomPuppy

lol this. i think ive gone up to about 250k, and have given away 100k of it to friends of mine, but always made sure to keep 150k no matter what on my acc. currently at 150,913 xD. yea, just... once u have it unlocked, its up to you really to make sure to be smart with your credits. otherwise, DO YOU REALLY DESERVE THAT SECRET SONG?!?! DUM DUM DUM.

As an occasional tournament host this really doesn't sit well with me.
The more credits I can offer myself the more the individual credit payouts will be, I can rely less on donations and there would be that much more player hype. Given that you have to keep 150k of that specifically/only to have secret songs rather than put it all into a tournament pot it's just extremely annoying from that aspect.

If you're an idiot and lose your ass gambling, that's on you. Too bad.

[Destroy2777]

I would rather see credits as something that one worked and earned to obtain, and unlocking the secret songs should be part of that effort. Just the same, it's rather offsetting to lose access to something that you earned your way towards (well, hopefully) through play and events.

Because of this, I have to agree with Red Blaster. Once someone passes the threshold, that player deserves to keep the songs, for the credits one earns are credits one should be able to use to his or her own wishes.

I suppose, as an alternative, if the secret songs were to be unlocked based on one's effort within the game, that the secret songs focus themselves only on credits earned through one's play; however, this contains various consequences in its own right.

On the one hand, people could not attain the credit amounts needed for the secret songs via gambling hall luck or mass credit transfer from other players. On the other is the fact that alternative accounts could not play the secret songs immediately without spending as much time as they did on their main account playing, event participation could not be considered, and, due to the level of effort needed to actually explore certain secret songs, some newer players might not get the opportunity to ever play them (not to mention some system would have to be placed to track all of this). It is a possible idea, but it would also craft multiple complications within itself.

[emulord]

I like secret songs how they are.

However, there should probably be a Achievement genre that unlocks a song every N AAAs or FCs or Grand total. That would be an additional avenue to reward playtime. Right now with how the ranking system is only your highest AAAs count. AAAing Story of snowman and sunshine girl should always mean something. :P

[PhantomPuppy]

@red and destroy, i can see some ppl just handing over 150k to some of their newer friends to unlock the song, then they just give the credits back to them, and both of them have it permanently unlocked. maybe if it were to go down that road, they'd have to meet the minimum requirements to be able to start unlocking secret songs? i mean the whole play some odd number of different songs, etc, like for being able to play in OT's. maybe that might work?

[sickufully]

In response to what RB said, how about a new badge/user icon (like the blue circular veteran status icon under user title) that is handed out to the host/s of tournaments at the end of their successfully completed tournament that gives them the ability to have secret songs permanently unlocked (once they have reached the required credit amount).

That way, hosts can enjoy running tourneys without worrying about losing their secret songs. It also gives a cool new user icon that shows the community that this user can host a successful tourney. And maybe it might generate more tourneys cause I'm sure that the large credit donation that hosts have to contribute is usually what keeps people from hosting one (along with a little time and effort).

And if your tourney is incomplete, you don't get the user icon.

And another suggestion to combat the unlimited trading of credits between accounts could be to limit a daily trading amount based on the amount of FC's you have (or based off the division you're in), maxed at maybe 250k credits a day? Basing it off AAA's or Tier Points would restrict it to higher leveled players only. I dunno where I'm going with this, I'm just throwing idea's out there.

And I agree with Emulord about the playtime achievements genre, that would be a cool addition

[MinaciousGrace]

i am offented

[ItsOnlyDanO]

if your complaining about losing credits via the gambling hall, then your forgetting the first rule of gambling, don't stake what you can't afford to lose

although the idea of secret songs being permanently unlocked once you get 150k sounds ok, I don't know if this will affect the value of credits (because there be practically no point to having any once you have all the secret songs/purchased all songs in purchased)

[icontrolyourworld]

How about this:
keep it the way it is right now but add a veteran bonus that IF you have 150k (or x amount credits/gt) AND you're a vet you keep all the songs unlocked.

This makes it so:
If a new player borrows credits and returns them they don't keep the songs.
If you're a vet and you've gotten the required credits you won't lose the songs and you can still save them or if you want gamble/donate them

it doesn't change how things are currently but adds a nice vet bonus for those that worked for it

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

As currency dependant genre, Secret should stay where it is. Credits have for lack of a better term insufficient purpose and its own meaning. Credits are Purchased/Secret Genres, though, increasing the amount of songs in each genre would be nice to see.

I agree that right now credits have like no value. There's a really easy way to change that.

HOWEVER. Leaving Secret the way it is, actually hinders their value.

What should be done is that the Secret genre as a whole needs to be removed.

What I'd do:

1. Restructure the purchased genre to actually make sense. (I'd do this with tokens too, but entirely different conversation.)

- The way it is now is a textbook joke. Prices have literally zero meaning and is usually a seemingly random number. Joke prices aside of course. (Though I'd get rid of those.)

- Step one, remove the rest of legacy out of there. Permanently. You should not be spending credits on objectively mediocre files.

- Step two, I'd hold a vote for a set of maybe 100 songs (maybe more or less? Idea crafting here sorry.) That the community thinks are worth purchasing. (Obviously would have to divide this into difficulty ranges to structure it so there's some for everyone.) (Also note that currently "secret" songs would be eligible.)

- Step three, have the difficulty consultants pick about 50 - 75 files they think would be files worth their weight. This keeps a community and practical set of files in purchased.

- Step four, amend prices to be based on difficulty. The higher level a file, the more you can pay for it because you're earning more based on other files around the same difficulty range. This won't ever be an exact science though and I strongly advise against using some whack formula.

- The big issue I foresee with this is that by doing this you're gonna end up with a lot of songs un-purchased, and a lot of ones that were, not there anymore. The real struggle will be figuring out how to balance this. There's gonna be a lot of happy people, and a lot of really unhappy people. I don't think there's a way to please more than 25% of the community through this. Maybe give players the choice to select a current set of files equal to what they've already paid in with some inflation added maybe? I'm really stuck on this part, and it's really the biggest flaw to what I think needs to be done.

- Step five, roll out the revamped genre. gauge reactions, adjust prices a little if need be. I'm sure when it rolls out it won't be perfect by any means.

2. Remove secret from the game as a whole.

- There's a few reasons for this. The main one being secret as a whole lost it's real purpose when forum tokens were introduced back in the day. The other one being the idea of credits isn't to save them, but to have something to spend them on. This seems like the more correct way to go about this.

- Any left over files go into the public game, or tokens I guess if that's what the community wants. I'm really fine with both tbh. (But if they become tokens, I have ideas for fixing that mess too. And yes, it's a mess if you're like me and like things super simple.)

Other notes:

1. I don't think by obliterating secret, and changing the prices in purchased, that it should come out to the same price as the current two combined. I think that if it comes out less, oh well that sucks, but if it comes out more you shouldn't be shelling out extra credits for files you've already bought. It in a sense will balance out. Eventually.

2. This reads like I think it's really the only way about this. And truth be told, in my mind it really is. I think Secret genre now days is conceptually bad.

- Also note that "nostalgia" is not a valid reason for being completely counter productive.

- There's a few files like the little mermaid I'd probably suggest not putting in purchased, but this is super opinionated and would be worth discussing should anything like this happen.

- Also wanna add at the end that if there's a better solution to this than what I just said I'm not completely closed off to other ideas, just tbh I think keeping secret in the game is a hindrance to the overall game due to being arguably counter productive. Also I can't come up with a better way to phrase any of this, so it probably comes off really blunt and rude, and I can't help that, I did my best to phrase it as best possible. Spoilered a chunk because otherwise this post is a wall.

Edit: @Icy, I think a better thing might be that if my idea got done reformat secret to veteran? Something like that? (I didn't even think about trying to tie in being a vet into this till I saw your post after making mine. But there's a potential idea there...)

[Rapta]

Credits can still be bought to change name color. Remember when that used to be a thing people did?

Leave it alone plz....I've been saving substantial credits for all songs for years and don't want this to be abolished by these gambling addicts and overly friendly or quitting donators. Your loss guys earn your stripes and quit trying to take an easy way around over a decade old requirements with admins shitting out credits and ongoing ways to fasten the process to earn currency. There's lots of people sitting around with way too many. Use this url to help find out who to beg to by replacing <usernamehere> with an ffr username.
http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/profile/ffrsiggy/<usernamehere>/0125.png