Discussions about Neighborhood Chains Contest

[Tiger]

Originally Posted by Tractor Man

I am curious to see if anyone else has encountered this.

90-95% of the time our neighborhood chains group has the same person leading every Saturday morning when the group is revealed. No one has a chance to catch them as they come in with a massive amount of points. This really take the fun out of competing and I wonder if this is due to whatever algorithm Farm Town uses to select the groups, if so I think it may need tweaked a little to even the playing field.

Thanks for a great game, been with you from the start.

Hi Tractor Man,

I have moved your post to General Feedback, Discussions about Neighborhood Chains Contest, as you do not have a error with the NCC but are asking for responses from those experiencing something similar to yourself. In this area members are able to discuss the NCC in general, leaving the Help and Support area free for posting errors with the feature.

Now, I am not sure if you are referring to one of your Neighbours in your Neighbourhood having a considerable amount of points compared to your own points, or a Competing Neighbourhood having considerable more points than your neighbourhood so I will just try to explain what is possible to happen. The method of gaining a lot of points is basically the same.


This what developers said about how the Neighbourhoods are picked for the NCC when it was released:

"The fact that you may have less advanced neighbours in lower levels or with less facilities doesn't diminish your neighbourhood chances to do well in the contest because we group the competing neighbourhoods based on their strength.

In other words, less advanced neighbourhoods will be competing with other less advanced neighbourhoods. More advanced neighbourhoods will be competing with other more advanced neighbourhoods."

How many similar Neighbourhoods there are for each scenario or exactly what is criteria needs to be met for any scenario, is unknown to us, but if you find you are competing against the same neighbourhoods week after week then it may be that there aren't that many to choose from, that have a similar strength as your neighbourhood, which is why you keep seeing the same ones.

The NCC is all about how much XP (points) each Neighbourhood can earn by loading/starting products in the facilities in the contest throughout the week. In the simplest terms, if your neighbourhood is getting beat by another, that just means that they are, and are able to, refill their facilities more often than your neighbourhood does, thereby gaining themselves more points.

How it is possible to get a lot of points, is by doing the following:

• There is no rule that says to you can't add more facilites to the contest during the week, either before the Competing Neighbourhoods are picked or after they are picked. There is no limit to the amount of facilites that can be added to the contest other than the cost and being limited to putting only one of each facility on every farm (and there is a limit as to how many facilites, in total, can be placed on a farm, so even if they wanted to and could afford to, that might not be possible for some). However this isn't going to help much IF you don't have a lot of friends to be able to work them, you don't keep refilling them, or don't have the products needed to fill them repeatedly.
  
  
• Each friend that works your facilities gets/works 20% of what is pending in them. So, if the facility is full, the 1st person gets/works 20% of 100%, the 2nd gets/works 20% of the 80% that is left, and the next person 20% of what is left after that and so on until there is nothing left.
  
  Now, to get the most points out of the facilities you and your neighbourhood has, can be labour intensive and not everyone is able or willing to do this. You would need to keep topping them back up to 100% every time someone worked them so the bigger amount was worked each time. To be able to do that you would not only need a lot of friends to work them so that you could refill them over and over again, you also need to have the the time to be able to refill all day long AND the products to be able to keep the contest facilities full.
  

Now, if all or even just some of the Neighbours in a Competing Neighbourhood does just something like the latter, and you and your Neighbourhood are not able to do that, it is possible for a Competing Neighbourhood with less facilities than Your Neighbourhood to get many more points than yours. The difference, particularly in advanced neighbourhoods, could run into millions of points.

Although the game makes selections so you will be competing against similar neighbourhoods, it doesn't mean those neighbourhoods will be exactly the same and there is no way the game can predict what anyone is going to do with their NCC at any time after that.

[jeemersmom]

Increasing the farm cash prizes in the Neighborhood Chains Contest would make everyone happy. Devs want us to buy more facilities and we would like to do so if we had the $$$. Making the top prize $5 farm cash and down to $1 for fifth prize would allow many to build bank accounts to the point where we could purchase new facilities more qujickly...making us happy and making the devs happy because their pockets would be better lined.

[Taz D]

Originally Posted by jeemersmom

Increasing the farm cash prizes in the Neighborhood Chains Contest would make everyone happy. Devs want us to buy more facilities and we would like to do so if we had the $$$. Making the top prize $5 farm cash and down to $1 for fifth prize would allow many to build bank accounts to the point where we could purchase new facilities more qujickly...making us happy and making the devs happy because their pockets would be better lined.

Hi jeemersmom,
To make a suggestion the developers will see, you need to post it in the Suggestions section where we organize the suggestions by subject for the developers to view and not in the feedback section. In the Suggestions section you can not start a new thread but you can reply to one that fits your suggestion.

[Kaytutt]

I participate in the NCC avidly, most weeks buying a facility I am missing then posting my facs at least daily, sometimes twice a day as well as helping my neighbours with their facs. Most weeks I end up at around 7th place in the contest, occasionally I will be 6th or 8th and only once in the many months of participating have I managed to come top of the leaderboard and achieve a farmcash prize. On checking today I’m in 10th place with 584k, top of the leaderboard is over 1 million. After much effort and expense I’ve decided that participating is pointless. I’m out

[NJones277]

I really hate posting another complaint about this contest, however, the definition of a contest is to compete against others, not yourself. When this particular contest started, I was in 2nd place. But I'm in the neighborhood of the 4 that are ahead of me now thanks to my score. I will finish in 5th. I don't want to stop competing, but there has to be a way to make this contest more fair.

[Taz D]

Originally Posted by NJones277

I really hate posting another complaint about this contest, however, the definition of a contest is to compete against others, not yourself. When this particular contest started, I was in 2nd place. But I'm in the neighborhood of the 4 that are ahead of me now thanks to my score. I will finish in 5th. I don't want to stop competing, but there has to be a way to make this contest more fair.

Hi NJones,

I moved your post to the General Feedback thread about the NCC as you are not asking for help about a problem you have or asking a question about the contest.
Even though you may be competing against 4 of your neighbors, you don't all have the same group of neighbors. Even though your points are applied to all of their totals, their points they add are also added to your total. Any additional points come from your other neighbors and their additional points come from their other neighbors.
Though competing against your own neighbors is not common, it does happen if there are not enough others that have nearly the same amount of facilities to start with.
If you have a suggestion on how to make the contest fairer then please post it in the Suggestions section.

[Conjetta]

In February 2018, we were told the NCC would be changed to be more fair. Every week, I work my facilities dry trying to do well in the contest. This week, I again placed in the bottom half. Every week, I receive gifts from neighbors saying I helped them in get into the top 3 positions. These are from people who never work my facilities and never post theirs. They are being rewarded for my work. I've turned off the NCC. I have had enough.

[Taz D]

Originally Posted by Conjetta

In February 2018, we were told the NCC would be changed to be more fair. Every week, I work my facilities dry trying to do well in the contest. This week, I again placed in the bottom half. Every week, I receive gifts from neighbors saying I helped them in get into the top 3 positions. These are from people who never work my facilities and never post theirs. They are being rewarded for my work. I've turned off the NCC. I have had enough.

Hi Conjetta,
I moved your post to the General Feedback subject thread about the NCC as you are not asking a question or posting about a problem we can help with.

[leighwj1960]

Originally Posted by Conjetta

In February 2018, we were told the NCC would be changed to be more fair. Every week, I work my facilities dry trying to do well in the contest. This week, I again placed in the bottom half. Every week, I receive gifts from neighbors saying I helped them in get into the top 3 positions. These are from people who never work my facilities and never post theirs. They are being rewarded for my work. I've turned off the NCC. I have had enough.

This is why I really don't try to "win" this part of the game. I will post my production facilities about once a day and my service ones a couple of times a week but that's about all I'm doing. I would rather put my effort into the regular or co-op quests where I can actually have a chance at winning something

[Vivienne57]

FT why, suddenly do we have our own neighbours pitted against us in the NCC, it's not fair. The reason I add friends as neighbours is because they play the NCC and are great contributors. I have two very good neighbours in my NCC but I am also pitted against them in the competing neighborhoods. It's not right