Alright, time to admit something. Challenges have gotten crazy at Desert Bus. Last year it was nearly impossible to get a challenge in, so this year we’re changing things up a little. Here’s how the new challenge system will work:
To recap, here are the main points of our new challenge system:
- Challenges are now free, no donations required! If you enjoy our performance of a challenge, you can donate what you feel is appropriate afterwards. We like to think of this as “busquing style” challenges.
- Challenges will be open at all times.
- Challenges appear randomly: our system will pull up 5-10 random challenges out of those recently submitted, we’ll do the ones we can, then hit refresh to see a new randomly selected set of challenges.
- Challenges that have been submitted but not completed will be cleared on a regular basis. You can resubmit your challenge if it did not get done.
- A small number of especially big, especially awesome challenges will be crowd-sourced, like before. You’ll be able to mark a donation as counting towards that particular challenge. We’ll do these challenges once they accumulate enough donations.
- Greased underpants*
*Confused? You must not have watched the video. This is why you always watch the video! Go watch the video.
I think you guys have done a great job coming up with a solution to a difficult situation, I hope this works well for everyone. I do have a suggestion, if it’s doable and you haven’t thought of it already: can we have a way to see whether our challenges have been completed or erased? Just a log on the Donor page that displays each challenge you’ve made, whether it’s been done, and whether it’s been purged from the system. That way you can tell whether you’ve missed the challenge or need to resubmit, without trying to ask the chat or the crew about it. If you were also able to note WHEN a challenge was completed, we’d be able to look back through the archives for it if we missed it, but that’s a tiny awesome bonus that might be too much trouble, so it’s all good.
Umm, I’m wordy. Anyway, good job guys! I know this is a really difficult thing to manage.
I think this is a great idea. Thanks for the update. Good job and I hope the challenges are easier to manage this year.
Flood protection is probably also a good idea, to prevent someone from submitting a lot of challenges in a short time in order to have a better chance at having their challenge be randomly picked.
I too would like to see a list of completed challenges, or something along those lines. Something to make sure there aren’t 187 requests for Gangnam Style, which I could see easily happen. Though if it’s popular enough, just crowdsource it I suppose…..
I’m sure it will all work out in the end! Looking forward to it!
Did you ever consider making all of the challenges public and have like a public vote for what challenges should be completed?
Something like that would be a good solution in my opinion.
I agree with Sarah. If it would be possible to log the *time* when it was completed then people will be able to find it later for YouTube uploading fby the Crew later on.
This sounds like a great idea — it definitely seems like it would lower the crazy level for you guys! It’ll make for an interesting experiment this year.
I totally echo about flood protection, since there’ll DEFINITELY be some people spamming their challenge(s) to up the odds. Maybe a limit to how many challenges each person can have in the system at any given time, resetting when challenges get cleared?
And I also agree it would be great if challenges could get marked as ‘completed’, with a vague timestamp. Being able to hunt it down if someone misses their submitted challenge would be so greatly appreciated, and it’ll cut down on a lot of confusion of people knowing whether to resubmit after a purge.
What a FANTASTIC idea. I can hear the people screaming with glee already. I’m definitely interested in seeing how this affects people’s donation motivation. I think the community will respond positively though, since they are pretty awesome.
Although, knowing us, just have permanent crowd sourcing challenges for sending Matt to Twilight, Gungnam Style dancing and CaramellDansen…
Are joke challenges allowed? Like, challenges that are submitted with the purpose of eliciting a chuckle from those that read it? Or would that be opening Pandora’s Box, so to speak?
The idea is fantastic but, 9pm PST?! What have you got against us in Europe? That’s 5am for GMT
I mentioned this last year, so I’m just wondering if anyone remembered – Will there be ending sale prices listed for Live Auctions this year? I’m always curious what things went for if I missed an auction.
Reply to G-cat501:
Being in Victoria myself, I can testify it will certainly be easier for everyone to start DBHF 6 (!!!!!) at 9pm Pacific because some of the support staff have jobs to go to, and this makes it much easier for them to go home, eat, shower/bathe/groom and THEN go to the Moonbase rather than just show up in stinky work clothes. It does suck, yes, I’m sorry but it’s their way or you can simply walk to Las Vegas. 😛 (Well because they’re taking a highway anyways sooo yeah.)
And Graham:
Greased underpants? Why in the world do you need those? (Yes I watched the video, system is a much better idea, especially the purging.)
Ohhhh I remember the days where we were able to pick out challenges from the chat and do them that way.
/back-in-the-day comment
Kirsten:
I know that, I’m just bitter and still waiting for the “irony punctuation mark” to be invented so I look like I’m making a joke (as intended).Worst comes to worse I’ll just watch the opening using the replay system on Twitch or J.tv (whichever the streams comes through on)
Wait no longer, G-cat. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
I have full faith in Dr LRR’s decisions on the matter. Whatever makes it easier.
public reddit style upvote system for random selection bias
Hmm. i can see people taking advantage of -free- challenges and not paying anything. Which i think will loose money for the kids in the long run. (just my oppinion.)
I do however quite like the idea of having the randomly selected 5-10 from the recently submitted thing and purging occasionally to keep things fresh. That sounds like it’ll make it easier to keep up with instead of trying to go through all that you did last year. Mind you, it’ll be a pain to resubmit things all the time, but i hope it works out for you guys! This is i think my fourth year watching Desert Bus and i know my roommates and I will be watching as much as we can! 😀 (It’ll be nice to watch something entertaining and fun while i do my work :3 )
~Temrin
Just a suggestion, maybe allow people to tag who their challenge is for. Then you can tell the system to only randomly pick challenges that are either tagged for whoever is present or that are open for anyone to do. This way people can still submit challenges for individuals without them coming up randomly when they’re not around.
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