Wonder Society question

[Momonar]

One more question I haven't seen addressed anywhere: What do you do when someone upgrades a wonder without it being recorded first? I figure it's bound to happen eventually, and I "wonder" if folks who've been running this system for a while have any good way to handle that unfortunate situation that I may not have thought of.

I figure I'd just have to message around the group and ask folks to remember approximately what they contributed and hope to get the results "close enough" to not screw things up too badly. But if there's a better way or some secret feature I don't know about to find out the contribution history I'd love to hear about it.

When this unfortunate event happens, and it is too late for the member to cancel to retrieve the donations, then there are a number of things you can do which have varying degrees of "unfairness".

Option 1: Record all KP as if donated by an external player. Impact: Player who didn't report is charged with the KP received (reduces their balance), and no bonus chest credit is awarded anywhere. Any player who donated to this player doesn't get credit for their donations, but if they won a bonus chest, then they get to keep the bonus KP as compensation. If they didn't receive a bonus chest, they were hosed.

Option 2: Split the total KP donated to the wonder among all fellowship members (except the player who didn't report). This gives everyone else some compensation. You can zero out the bonus chest awards (treat as if no bonus chests were awarded). This might average out to less "hosement" at the cost of greater error (people getting credit that didn't donate).

Option 3: Someone posted that on the US servers a super generous support person might look up the donations for you if you submit the request really nicely in a support ticket. Never thought of that, but awesome!

Option 4: Periodically record interim donations for players who perhaps are routinely more forgetful. Always remind them to report, but it they are antagonistic and won't "opt out" of the society (thereby letting anyone know that donations to their wonders won't be counted), then this is one way to try to make sure no other fellowship member is shorted on their donations. I have found that most of the people who don't report are usually self-donaters (90+% of the kp was theirs), and since self-donating tends to take a lot longer between upgrades, then there is more time to stumble across their wonders with KP and record the interim donation status.

Remember, this case is supposed to be unusual, so in the long run, the error should not amount to anything significant. It is only persistent non-reporting across many participants that would lead to trouble. And if anyone does forget, try not to flog them too badly if it is infrequent (or hopefully only once!). We all are capable of forgetting in the excitement of the upgrade.

 

[Augrim]

When this unfortunate event happens, and it is too late for the member to cancel to retrieve the donations, then there are a number of things you can do which have varying degrees of "unfairness".

Option 1: Record all KP as if donated by an external player. Impact: Player who didn't report is charged with the KP received (reduces their balance), and no bonus chest credit is awarded anywhere. Any player who donated to this player doesn't get credit for their donations, but if they won a bonus chest, then they get to keep the bonus KP as compensation. If they didn't receive a bonus chest, they were hosed.

Option 2: Split the total KP donated to the wonder among all fellowship members (except the player who didn't report). This gives everyone else some compensation. You can zero out the bonus chest awards (treat as if no bonus chests were awarded). This might average out to less "hosement" at the cost of greater error (people getting credit that didn't donate).

Option 3: Someone posted that on the US servers a super generous support person might look up the donations for you if you submit the request really nicely in a support ticket. Never thought of that, but awesome!

Option 4: Periodically record interim donations for players who perhaps are routinely more forgetful. Always remind them to report, but it they are antagonistic and won't "opt out" of the society (thereby letting anyone know that donations to their wonders won't be counted), then this is one way to try to make sure no other fellowship member is shorted on their donations. I have found that most of the people who don't report are usually self-donaters (90+% of the kp was theirs), and since self-donating tends to take a lot longer between upgrades, then there is more time to stumble across their wonders with KP and record the interim donation status.

Remember, this case is supposed to be unusual, so in the long run, the error should not amount to anything significant. It is only persistent non-reporting across many participants that would lead to trouble. And if anyone does forget, try not to flog them too badly if it is infrequent (or hopefully only once!). We all are capable of forgetting in the excitement of the upgrade.

It's happened IIRC 4 times now out of 150+ wonders upgraded. Three of those times I was able to simply ask the owner to cancel the upgrade so we could see the donations. One time the owner immediately upgraded with instants, and I gave everyone else credit for an equal donation to that wonder (amounting to about 2x the total KP actually spent - with the idea of discouraging such mistakes) but the owner was able to get the donation info from support in the end so we could record it correctly.

I agree so long as it happens only very rarely it wouldn't be a big deal, but it was a major point of worry when I first started running the Society, in case it might happen several times early on and undermine people's confidence in the fairness of the system. Thankfully it hasn't been a problem in practice!