About a month ago, we announced the creation of our customized notification system. The first thing on the menu was to notify you when an update landed on your primary platform. We had a few snags even after launching the system (who doesn’t?!), but we think it’s all ironed out now and the feature is a neat one (you can opt in via your profile BTW). So of course, the only direction we’re willing to go is onward and upward.
The newest custom notification just went live late last night and we hope that it will be beneficial to both individual users and the community as a whole. The goal of this particular notification is to increase competition and fun across the leaderboards and challenge.
So what’s the feature you ask?
You can now receive a notification when your “Top Score” gets beaten on our leaderboards! This feature has been requested for a very long time, and we’re glad to announce that it’s now a reality. Notice how we emphasize, “Top Score”. You won’t be notified of every score that gets beat — that would just be too much. You only receive a notification if a score on a level you hold the #1 spot on — the “Top Score” — gets beat.
A few notes:
- By default, all users are opted-in to this notification. If you don’t want to be included, select “Notifications” from the drop-down menu that descends from your username in the top-right corner of the site, then change “Someone Beat Your Top Score” to “No”.
- The alert applies only to the top scorer on any given level. So if, say, @birdleader held the top score on Poached Eggs Level 1-1 and I ended up passing his score by 50 points, BirdLeader alone would get a the notification — not every person whose score I beat.
- The alert is sent via email and also on-site, just like private messages (PMs) and “@mentions”. The on-site notification will bring you to the specific level’s leaderboard so you can see what happened (and the notification should be cleared out by clicking it).
- Since the notification is sent via email make sure your email is correct. Also, the subject of the email is, “Heads up! Your Top Score has been beaten!”, so if you have some fancy filters or rules you might want to create one for that.
I assume people will ask: “I’m not even sure if I HAVE any Top Scores! Am I supposed to look through all these leaderboards looking?!” Well, we’re half-a-step ahead of you. We’re working on a way to display all of your Top Scores in one simple list. For some users, this may be depressing; for others, extensive. But it should be good for all.
So why is this such a good feature? For one, you get to keep an eye on your precious Top Scores without popping any blood vessels. But perhaps more importantly, it should cut down on the longevity of fraudulent scores on our leaderboards. We have plenty of guardians who keep an eye out for trolls, but they appear on very random levels sometimes and can be difficult to notice. Feel free to quietly flag if your Top Score gets beaten by some absolutely ridiculous, insanely unattainable score.
Lastly, as with any new system, bugs are expected. We are aware of some minor issues with how the on-site notification is working, but we plan to iron them out soon and they only apply to a small number of unlucky circumstances. But if YOU notice anything funky, please let us know. It’s hard for us to discover these issues since we aren’t elite flingers.
Now for the fun part. What do YOU all think?
Superb. However, I hope too quickly or too often I do not receive such a message :). Some notification about loss achieved total episode position will be welcome.
ah yeah, good idea
i just got my first “you now in 2nd” message, tourneys you know…. One one hand , I am happy…. j.k. :)
seriously tho, it is a nice addition. Good Work
This is a great great idea! I only have 2 top scores, so hopefully I won’t get a message for a while :-). You guys work so hard making this site the wonderful place that it is. Thank you!
While it may very well be a bit depressing, as you say, since I only have one Top Score at least I’ll know when I’m back to having none! LOL
That’s a fantastic idea and a great addition to the site, keep up the excellent work!
Another notification alert I’d like to get is when a new article is posted on the main page.
That’s already sort of done. If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, we announce such posts there.
@Amslimfordy, I think it’s a brilliant addition ! (have been thinking about it, but didn’t want to ask, must be lots of work)
@AMslimfordy, Great work on the “Your number two notification system”. Is it possible to put a 5 minute delay on the generation of the alerts. I’ve received two alerts already and both were gone by the time I went to look at them. At least one of them, I know what happened. The score I was notified about was entered in the wrong level and immediately changed. I’m not complaining, just curious if a delay is even possible without extensive head scratching. Keep up the good work. Where is/will the list be located?
I wanted to ask about the same thing. A few days ago I entered a score in the wrong place. I had two browser windows open with levels for two totally different episodes, and thinking I was entering my score for level A mistakenly entered it for level B where it was unreasonably high and became a top score. I realized my mistake and corrected things right away, but the system probably sent the notification to the person who has the top score on level B, and when he/she went to see who beat his/her top score, the new score was already gone. Things like this happen from time to time, so a 5 min delay would be great to prevent this.
@rat9 @annach I’m not sure about a time delay, but I have a plan that may be even better. I hope you don’t mind me taking your ideas and twisting them. But given what the system already does, I think I have a solution…
@AMslimfordy Twist away!