Challenges

Challenges are community events in which players compete and earn prizes by completing a group of related tasks (e.g. "Get Fit Challenge", "Stop Smoking", etc.). Challenges can be found under the Social tab (direct link).

Challenges can be site-wide (Tavern group) or exclusive to a guild or party. Guild- or party-exclusive challenges are not available to non-members.

Anyone can create or join a challenge for the Tavern, their parties, and/or guilds to which they belong. Players can create any type of challenge consisting of whatever tasks best suit their needs. The creator decides when the challenge ends, and must choose a winner upon closing the challenge.

Obvious uses
 * Public competitions
 * Topical guild competitions (reading, writing, health, etc.)

Less obvious uses
 * Syllabus of homework and reading assignments for classrooms
 * Progress-monitoring by leaders of local groups
 * Addiction cessation groups



Join and Participate in a Challenge
To participate in a challenge, you must first join one. Challenges are located under the Social tab, located on the top left corner beside the User and Inventory tabs.

This will bring up a list of challenges that you can participate in (see image below). The challenges are ordered so that those created by staff and tier 7 contributors show up first, with the newest on the top, and then after all of those, all other challenges appear, newest at the top of that group. While you cannot sort by date directly, you might wish to look at the top of the page first, then when you start to find challenges that are too old, skip down a bit until you find the next set of new ones in order to find the most current challenges.

The filter box to the left of the challenge list allows you to sort the list in three ways.
 * To see challenges specific to the Tavern, one of your guilds, or your party, select the desired group under the "Groups" filter.
 * Use the "Membership" filter to view all your current challenges, or to find a new challenge you haven't yet joined.
 * The "Ownership" filter will let you show the challenges that you have created or those where you are not the owner.

To see more information about individual challenges, click on the blue challenge title. Details of the challenge will appear, including the description of the challenge, and the Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and Rewards involved. It also shows the HabitRPG members that have already joined the challenge in the "How's Everyone Doing?" section.

You can see other participants' current progress by clicking on a participant's username. This brings up a pop-up box with the status of their challenge tasks, but will not display any of their personal tasks outside of the challenge. This pop-up box can be closed by clicking the grey "x" in the upper right hand corner.

To collapse the displayed challenge details, click on any challenge title.

If you decide to join a challenge, click the green "Join" button. The Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and Rewards of that challenge will be automatically added to your own lists. Challenge tasks will have a megaphone icon beside them to distinguish them from your personal tasks, and will be flagged with a specific tag as defined by the creator of the challenge (see challenge tags below). To participate in the challenges that you have joined, all you have to do is complete the tasks with the megaphone icon beside them. Should you join a challenge in error, or wish to leave the challenge, return to the challenges page and click the red "Leave" button that has replaced the "Join" button.

If a challenge requires participants to add extra notes to a task, you must edit those tasks in your own tasks tab. Any edits made to a challenge through the "How's Everyone Doing?" by selecting your username and then opening the task editor will not be saved, despite the presence of a "Save & Close" button. This is to prevent users editing each other's tasks.

If you need a day of rest and don't want to take damage for unchecked Dailies during a challenge, you can add a checklist to a challenge Daily with one item and tick that item on days when you don't want to do the Daily but don't deserve punishment for it. Streaks are lost, no XP and GP are gained, but no health is lost.

Challenge Participant's Permissions
When participating in a challenge, a player has a limited amount of options for the tasks in the challenge. A challenge is meant to be accepted "as is" from the creator.

The participant can:
 * Add/edit checklists for a challenge (this only changes that one player's task)
 * Add/edit notes on a challenge task (this only changes that one player's task)
 * Assign personal tags to the challenge tasks (this only makes changes to that one player)

The participant cannot make any other changes.

Filter Challenges
When you are on the Challenges tab, note the grey box to the left hand side of the list of challenges titled "Filter". Click the "All" button to see all of the available challenges. The Tavern box will be automatically checked. To see only those challenges to which you belong, check the “Tavern” box and select the "Participating" radio button under "Membership". If you have not joined any challenges, you will not see anything listed when "Participating" is selected.

The filter box allows you to filter on challenges that are available for a particular group (either the Tavern – open to all, or a guild, or a "members-only" party). The party and guild(s) that you belong to will be listed under "Groups". If a check box is ticked next to a party or guild name, then the challenges from that party or guild will be displayed. If all check boxes are ticked, then the challenges from all those parties and guilds will be displayed, in addition to the Tavern challenges. By clicking "All", you will select all the boxes under Groups, whereby clicking "None" will deselect (or un-tick) all the boxes.

The next heading is "Membership". This section allows you to focus in on only the challenges that you are participating in, not participating in or both. Hence if you select "participating" then the list of challenges to the right of the page would only show those challenges that you have already joined.

The "Groups" and "Membership" filters work in conjunction with each other. Therefore, if you only want to see Tavern challenges that you have not joined yet, then you would un-tick all other boxes under "groups" except for "Tavern" and tick the "Not participating" box under "Membership."

The third filter is "Ownership". This section allows you to see only those challenges that you have created. It also works with the other two filters to further refine your search.

Challenge Tags
Most challenges have a tag specific to that challenge. These challenge tags have a megaphone icon beside them so you can differentiate between your own tags and those of accepted challenges. By clicking on these tags, you'll see which tasks are related to a particular challenge.

You can also add Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, or Rewards to these challenge tags if you have personal tasks that are related to that challenge's allocated tag. Adding your own tasks to a challenge tag does not make them part of the challenge that others can use or see. For example, if you join the challenge highlighted in the image, you could add an extra task under this challenge tag called "complete the challenge". However, no one else participating in this challenge would see your added task nor would this task count as being part of the official challenge.

When a challenge is over the megaphone icon switches to a broken megaphone with a line through it. Clicking on it reveals the winner of the challenge and gives you the option to keep or remove any Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and Rewards associated with it.

Challenge Tags Remaining after Leaving a Challenge
After a player leaves a challenge, the challenge tag that was associated with it is not deleted and will remain alongside other existing tags. This is deliberately done to allow players who might want to use the challenge tag for their own tasks or who want to leave the challenge tasks in their task lists after they have left the challenge, to be able to do so if they wish. For either case, automatically deleting the challenge tag after leaving a challenge would be inconvenient for the players involved.

If you wish to delete a challenge tag or any other tag, you can do so by clicking "edit" next to your tags and then clicking the trash can icon on the tag.

Collecting a Challenge Prize
Once the creator ends the challenge, they'll be asked to designate the winner. Challenges can have only one winner. If the challenge creator would like to award a second prize, you can create a second challenge with the same name after the first one closes, invite the second place winner to join, and then end the challenge in favor of that person.

If you are lucky or talented enough to win a challenge, two things will happen. First, if the challenge awards gems as a prize, these will automatically be added to your gem count. Then, even if no gem prize was given, you'll still receive a beautiful achievement badge! All challenge achievements, even those from private guilds or parties, can be proudly seen on your profile.

Creating a Challenge
To create a challenge, click the "Create Challenge" button and then specify which one of your groups can access it. Only members in the specified group will be able to view or join the challenge. Please note that you cannot change this after the challenge is created, so doublecheck that you have selected the correct group.

After selecting the group, enter the challenge title, a tag name (which will be applied to all tasks in the challenge) and a description for your challenge.

Specify how many gems the winner will receive. Tavern challenges require a prize of at least one gem. You must have at least one gem in your inventory to create a Tavern challenge. Prizes for private (Guild or Party) challenges are optional.

'Please note: you won't be able to change the prize after the challenge is posted. The amount of gems you specify as a prize is taken from your account when the challenge is saved and those gems won't be refunded if you decide to close the challenge with no winner. To reclaim the gems if you want to cancel the challenge, you must declare yourself the winner.'

Next, create the Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and/or Rewards you want to include in your challenge; these will be shared with everyone who joins.

Click "Save" to add your challenge.

Challenge Creator's Permissions
When creating a challenge, there are some things that the creator can and can't do.

The creator can:
 * Add the tasks for the challenge
 * Set the title of a task
 * Set the extra notes of a task (the participants can edit this text)
 * Define the difficulty of a task
 * Define a habit as a negative, positive, or negative-positive habit
 * Set the days of the week a daily task is to be active on
 * Define a Due date for a To-Do
 * Add and remove tasks at will

The creator cannot:
 * Set/Edit the progress of the participant's tasks
 * Set a checklist for a task (the participants can)

Tip: When a challenge creator wants there to be a specific checklist on a task, they can create a To-Do that describes the checklist, and then each participant follows the instructions.

Editing A Challenge
Once you have created a challenge, you may want to change the title, description, tag, or tasks. To edit the challenge, click on its title. Two buttons will appear under the challenge; the white Edit and the orange End Challenge buttons.

Clicking the Edit button will open fields where you can change the challenge's title, tag, or description. Type in the new values that you want.

You can also modify any tasks associated with the challenge.

When finished with your changes, click the blue Save button. You will need to refresh the page to see your changes. Any modifications you've made to the challenge will propagate through the tags and task lists of the participants. (However, if a task had notes to start with, and the challenge creator removes them, anyone who signed up when the notes existed will still have the notes.)

Sharing a Challenge
Each challenge has a unique identifier which is a string of letters and numbers. The challenge identifier is found by clicking on the challenge. In your browser bar, there will be a link that looks like https://habitrpg.com/#/options/groups/challenges/c6839e9a-6e2d-419a-b009-f4466c486647. This is the link that can be used to share your challenge. You can post this link in the Tavern or other public places on HabitRPG to invite other players to join. (If it is a guild challenge, they will need to join your guild first before joining the challenge).

When a player clicks the challenge link, they will see the description and tasks for that challenge only. If they want to return to view all available challenges, click the blue "Back to all challenges" button.

Closing a Challenge
Currently there is no interface for end dates in challenge creation. The challenge deadline is at the creator's discretion and a challenge can continue indefinitely. Only the creator can end the challenge.

To end your challenge, click the "End Challenge" button under your challenge's name. You will be given the option to delete the challenge without choosing a winner (if you do this to a challenge that has a gem prize, the gems will be permanently lost). Otherwise, select a winner (which can be yourself) from the drop-down menu.

Deleting a Challenge Task
To delete tasks from a challenge that has not yet finished, you need to leave the challenge.

To delete tasks when a challenge has finished, click on the broken megaphone that says "Broken Challenge Link" and it will ask if you want to keep the task or not. If you click "Remove Tasks" and the tasks remain, reload the page and they will then disappear.

If the challenge appears to no longer exist but you don't have a broken megaphone yet, try checking off any Habit, Daily, or To-Do that belongs to the challenge, then reload HabitRPG. That should sync your task list with the server and turn the megaphone into the broken megaphone icon.

In some cases, you might need to repeat those actions a few times, possibly over several hours, before the broken megaphone icon appears (e.g., if your first attempt doesn't work, wait a few hours and try again, then if necessary, try again the next morning, and then a few hours after that).

You might find that you can delete challenge tasks using the Mobile app even if you can't delete them on the website.

If the broken megaphone icon has still not appeared after trying these suggestions for two days, report the problem.

Communicating with Challenge Creator
A player can communicate with the challenge creator by private message. Go to the Challenges page, find the challenge, and click on the creator's name to view their profile, which will have a private message icon at the bottom.

Public messages can also be sent to the challenge creator in the guild that the challenge is associated with, however it is not guaranteed that the creator will see them.

Leaving a Challenge
To leave a challenge, click the red "Leave" button. A pop-up window will open giving you the options to remove the associated tasks, keep them, or cancel.

You can rejoin the challenge again if you choose.

If you leave a challenge but forget to click the option for removing tasks, or if you did select that option but the tasks remain, rejoin the challenge and then leave it again, being careful to select the desired option.

Spread the Word Challenges
During the Winter Wonderland 2013-2014 event, HabitRPG released its first official challenge, known as the Spread the Word Challenge. For a first-place prize of 100 gems, and a second-place prize of 80 gems, the challenge included only 1 To-Do: post about HabitRPG on your blog or social media page. The winner, chosen on January 31, 2014, was determined by who received the highest number of likes, comments, retweets, etc., on each post. A second edition of this challenge, titled Spread the World Challenge 2015, ran from December 31st, 2014 to January 31st, 2015, with the same rules.

Back-to-School Advice Challenge
On September 12, 2014, HabitRPG launched a second official challenge, the Back-to-School Advice Challenge: use social media to tell how you use HabitRPG to improve study habits, share stories of scholarly success with the app, or just give your advice on using HabitRPG to be the best you can be. The contest ended on September 30th, and 20 randomly selected winners each received 60 Gems.

Community Costume Challenge
The Community Costume Challenge ran throughout the month of October 2014. In this challenge, any participants who dressed up as their HabitRPG Avatars in real life and posted a picture on social media received a "2014 Costume Challenge" badge.

Inappropriate Challenges
If you see a challenge that you believe contains inappropriate material (e.g., offensive content), please email leslie@habitrpg.com (Lemoness) to report it to her. Moderators cannot assist with this, so it is necessary to email Lemoness rather than mentioning it in the Tavern.

Tasks Created by a Challenge Can't Be Removed after It's Been Closed
If the challenge has too many participants, they may be unable to delete the tasks linked with the challenge after it has ended, as no "broken challenge link" alert is shown.

Solutions: Please see the Deleting a Challenge Task section on this page.

Défis