User blog:Taldin/Challenges: A Shared Effort

One of the user-controlled things about Habits that we share with other people is the notion of Challenges. They're not free, which means that they can only be created by people who have gems. This is, I think, a pretty sound idea, since the proportion of folks who use the game as a free service are much greater than the proportion to paid members. This means that only folks who have some interest in supporting Habits have the added ability.

It's different than a 'pay to win' scenario, because having gems doesn't give you the ability to hit things any harder or level any faster -- it's a 'pay to enhance your experience' thing. But I digress.

A challenge is a way to share your personal goals with other people. It's not enough to do it alone, and having people to do it with is the backbone of the Habits experience -- otherwise this would be a solo application. It's a support group of sorts, with people who share your interests taking on a comptetive edge.

Over the past month, I've been running two challenges for the NaNoWriMo group, and I learned quite a few lessons in the process.


 * Keep the title of the challenge simple, but descriptive:  "Joe's Awesome Challenge" doesn't work, but "Reducing Household Clutter" will.


 * Put the description of what the challenge is in the challenge description.    This is the only way people find out what your challenge is before they join.


 * You have control of what the Dailies, Habits, and ToDos are, but not checklists.     Make sure you also set the days of the week properly for Dailies -- especially for dailies that start on a specific day.   (For example, the Camp NaNoWriMo challenge started on July 1 and ended on July 31, so the week before July 1 I left the days of the week as inactive up until July 2 (taking time zones into account) and turned off the days of the week after July 31.)


 * It's a two-step process. Edit, add/change things, and then Save.   If you don't click Save, you'll lose your changes.  There were days where I thought I'd edited/added something but it didn't save.


 * You might not get a lot of people to join.   Don't take it personally.     There are lots of reasons why someone might not notice your challenge, or understand it enough to join.   You can advertise in the Tavern for your challenge, but all challenges are opt-in, so your participation may vary wildly.


 * You probably won't get a lot of feedback on how the challenge is going for everyone.   Some people join challenges just to try and win gems.


 * You get to choose who wins, but you may wind up picking randomly from the people who are in the challenge, because you'll never know if people clicked just to click, or because they actually did the things they said they did.     (I tested this by having three To Dos that included leaving a note in the guild, but there were a few pople who clicked that they had done it and didn't do the 'public participation' part.)


 * Check to see if there's a similar challenge elsewhere before you put yours up.     Remember that under the hood, all challenges are some form of Habits, ToDos, and Dailies.   And some folks may just choose to stick with the challenge that they have rather than join a similar one.


 * If you're running the challenge as part of a guild, be sure to talk about how you're doing, good or bad.   You may drum up latecomers that way.


 * Last but not least: don't cancel a challenge without awarding a winner, even if it's you.  If you just cancel a challenge, you'll lose the gems you put up.

Hope this helps! Taldin (talk) 03:51, August 4, 2014 (UTC)