Nifflas' Support Forum
General => About Nifflas' Website and Forum => Topic started by: Miss Paula on May 18, 2009, 13:15:03
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Ok, I guess this is fairly easy to understand. Poll is open for one week.
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I know it's my fault, I ruined the arcade...
Even though I earned all highscores fair and square...
Even though Lightning Eagle's Tetris score is insane, the same with Dynamites Aussie X-Mas (before it got deleted)...
It must be that I had so many highscores... people stopped playing, stopped trying, they thought I would only beat their score anyway...
But that's why I liked the arcade so much. I loved getting a pretty crappy highscore on that new game, and I knew someone would beat it so I could try again and get an even better score, and everyone was competing, all the time improving their skills and score, for that first place...
And why did the mods stop adding new games btw? It must be the same reason everyone stopped playing...
But anyway, I don't think people would mind me having a bunch of champions if some new games were added every now and then... I know they said it's hard to find good compatible games and such...
But they have had Burger Time for testing over 4 weeks! They must be done testing it by now... (I am not complaining about the mods doing a bad job or anything btw...)
But the reason they don't add it must because they have given up. I already killed the arcade.
The reason they kept games long for testing in the first place must be because I complained about some games having bugs and requesting removal... though I didn't mean to complain. I just want to help. But everyone thinks so.
So I don't think I will vote in this poll. I will at least not vote for the "I wanna stay on top" thingy...
I'm sorry for killing the arcade. I was so excited about this the first week or something, and when I had calmed down it was already too late.
The arcade should be fun for everyone. I would really want everyone to vote in this poll, so we can do something about it!
Of course it wouldn't feel very fun for me if there were refreshes, I'm kinda proud of my scores... but this isn't about me. If refreshes can make the arcade more interesting and fun for everyone, let's do it. The arcade doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the whole forum, to all of us!
So please, cast your vote. Save the arcade!
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...That's a wonderful idea. :o This way, nobody can be permanent king of the arcade. I really like that idea. :)
Ans LimeLemon, you didn't "ruin" the arcade, you just dominated it. Think of it as a kingdom. When a new king comes to the throne, even if he is good, there will always be some people that don't like him.
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I voted "something else" btw.
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Us admins just don't have enough time to add new games that frequently.
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What about some kind of game finding/testing group?
I'm sure some people would like to help.
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Well, everyone who read the first arcade threads should by now know the requirements for games, so there's nothing stopping anybody from roaming the internet and making decent suggestions.
There are a few games in the testing category that don't really come out of it, which is mostly because they aren't that awesome, so at least I thought that nobody really would care anyways. :P2
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I voted something else.
I think that the scores should be deleted bi-weekly, but at the same time, keep the top ten all-time highest, greatest stores recorded in a log that can be accessed from the arcade menu. If for example, I get a high score on a game, but the scores are deleted bi-weekly, then it may still be seen from the top ten menu if it was good enough. I don't know, just a thought.
Well what if someone has a high score for both weeks, the highest time possible?
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Wait... Dib gave me an idea.
Or, it's pretty similar to his, so maybe I stole it?
Anyway, there could be separate highscore tables.
One for all time, one for this month, this week, and maybe today?
But then we also would need to remove or remake the champion thingy. Or have separate champions (All time, monthly, weekly, daily).
There should at least be one for all time, and one monthly/bi-weekly/weekly(daily?), and we could do so the monthly/weekly would only count (and be reset every month/whatever)... the champions would only last a [instert specific time thingy], the all time scoreboard would only be there for fun.
Something like this would be good, I think. This is only my opinion, please tell me yours.
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Mostly because I have the highest score in Pacman, a real classic to me, I think there ought to be some reference to previous high scores somewhere. But they don't have to be right there 'in your face'. It'd be more like a 'once upon a time, this guy got the highest score' thing.
The issue here is just that people are easily put off when things look hopeless (in this case, to their competitive sides)--and this is probably not helped by LimeLemon's apparent pride, which further lowers morale.
Anyway, so yeah, go ahead and delete scores every now and then, but have old high scores referenced elsewhere. I suppose it could eventually be some kind of "high score gallery" for every highest high score when the scores were deleted. There is the chance the same problems might occur there too, so I'll just stop typing now.
On another note, that "Did you know?" thing is annoying--I did not know, but I also did not care!
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LimeLemon:
That would be a good idea, and probably the best way of doing it, but I'm not so sure it's possible.
As I understand it, the whole highscore and champion system is built in to SMF arcade and short of rewriting a lot of that it'd pretty much be undoable.
But I may be wrong. Hopefully wrong.
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I don't think having a seperate highscore of all time next to clearing the scores every once in a while. If you want to improve your score, you can do that now. That doesn't really matter if there still is a highscore of all times somewhere.
Its either delete the scores so we get a fresh start, or not. Besides, its not that easy to do this at all. I won't have time to implement such system to the arcade anyway.
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I voted something else. I think that there should be no refresh of scores, but instead games. I think a refresh of games would be better because it may prevent people from getting bored of the arcade.
What about some kind of game finding/testing group?
I'm sure some people would like to help.
I agree. Yes, I realize that the admins might not have that much time, but if there was a dedicated group of people who could do this then it might make it easier for them to add them to the list.
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This still wouldn't save the Arcade. I might go on every now and then..but it just gets boring.
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The refresh will only solve one problem, me and my scores (lol).
The other problem is that there aren't many games. I understand that it's hard to find compatible games and that the mods don't have so much time, but we should think of a way to solve that problem too.
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I don't think having a seperate highscore of all time next to clearing the scores every once in a while. If you want to improve your score, you can do that now. That doesn't really matter if there still is a highscore of all times somewhere.
Yes it does. If you cant beat the all time high score, you might have fun trying to become the champion of the week, while still keeping all your greatest achievements.
Whats the point of playing at all if you can't keep your best scores somewhere?
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I agree.
But it maybe doesn't have to be public, maybe you can have a "your personal bests" page or something?
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If you once had a personal best, you might not trying to attempt getting a score in the arcade anymore. If you once had a good score because you had luck or whatever, and someone is now the best player, you cannot say: well, I won't do this, because I already once had the best score.
Its just not gonna work having 2 scoreboards. It will demotivate more than what we now have.
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Could you explain that better? I didn't understand any of that.
Adapting the arcade to be more easily accessible for people who don't want to work for their high scores is definitely not the solution to anything at all.
And how does only having one score board make your scores less luck based?
If de-motivation is what you are worried about then clearing the scores is pretty much the worst thing you can do.
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I agree with Razzor.
What LP said is not very logical.
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If you keep track of what people now have as high score, resetting the score will not have much of value, because people are tempted to either not do their best, or if they just were lucky getting that hich score, and cannot do it again, they just will say: oh, but I don't mind. I already have a very high score, see other score table. Try beating that. Which basically is the same as not resetting the scores, with exception that in this case your score gets recorded.
But it gives way more trouble to create another score and maintaining it.
EDIT: I'll give an example:
On a game, I somehow managed to get a score of 482, while everyone else seems to have a score max of 479 because of some glitch I got a higher score. I now cannot get higher than 479 anymore, so I say: oh well... I still have the best score because I once got 482, see other score table.
Or another example: I once got a score of 539158315 and spent hours on getting that score. The scores are being reset, and the highest score now is 534246. I try but due to not being focussed enough, I just can't beat that score. I say: oh well, I once had this enormous score, so try and beat that!
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On a game, I somehow managed to get a score of 482, while everyone else seems to have a score max of 479 because of some glitch I got a higher score. I now cannot get higher than 479 anymore, so I say: oh well... I still have the best score because I once got 482, see other score table.
If you got the score because of a glitch in the game, the game should be removed. We already did that with avoider and ballo.
And yes, it is right that you got the highest score of all time, but that score might be completely unbeatable to some people, who might be happy getting the highest score that week.
If you keep track of what people now have as high score, resetting the score will not have much of value, because people are tempted to either not do their best, or if they just were lucky getting that hich score, and cannot do it again, they just will say: oh, but I don't mind. I already have a very high score, see other score table. Try beating that. Which basically is the same as not resetting the scores, with exception that in this case your score gets recorded.
Yep. If you have a very high score, you might not care that you weekly score is reset, but I'm not trying to make everyone care about the weekly scoreboard.
The point of having it is to make the arcade more lively by having what could be seen as a kind of weekly competition to see who can get the best score.
That way players wont always have to compete for the sometimes overwhelmingly high scores that are on a global scoreboard, but can instead have fun trying to beat the best score that week.
It might not be good enough for everyone, but it would definitely be enough for some, including me.
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Now I don't play the arcade games much, but if I did, I'd probably be pretty peeved if I'd only just got an amazing score only to see it wiped the following day because I'd achieved it late in the week. The same would be true of monthly deletions, I suppose, but it's less likely to happen because after a month, a high score that's pretty much impossible to beat will most likely have already been achieved (by Lime Lemon).
Then again, not wiping the scores at all will make people lose interest (which I assume has begun to happen..?)
Therefore, I'd vote for a simple monthly deletion. I'm still unlikely to play them much, though.
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I think the easiest solution would to just get rid of the arcade altogether. 9_9
I don't really care one way or the other about resets. If having resets would allow a greater number of users to enjoy the games, then there should be resets. If having resets is just seen as anti-competitive and motivation-killing, then there shouldn't be resets. But- either way, some people will be unhappy. If it's possible, the two-board system seems like a good idea to me. One board to allow major competition for the people who are really really intense on getting a high score, and a board for small-scale competition, for people who just want to have fun and maybe see how they compare against others. (A "personal best" thing, which is already there, also helps.)
Of course, if two boards is just too impractical, then I dunno.
Also, I find it ironic that a serious discussion about high scores is taking place on Nifflas's forum. None of Nifflas's major games are really competitive (except like WaDF and its speedrun thing, but that's not there anymore, and the focus on atmosphere in Nifflas's games doesn't reward a rushed game experience). Some of the lesser games are, but still. AtESE has a very real, noticeable score cap, which most people can probably obtain with enough practice. WaDF's minigames probably have theoretical score caps, but the games are so slight that WaDF itself just totally overshadows them. Pteranodon is more about the novelty of the music-gameplay relation than actual score. (At least, that's what I got from it.)
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Ok, ok, two score boards is a bad idea.
But you shouldn't delete the scores completely. As I said, there should be something like a "personal" board, that only you can view, that shows your highest scores for all games in all time. Then you can't go brag about it, and would still want to get the highest score of the week/month, and maybe also improving your own personal best.
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Ok, ok, two score boards is a bad idea.
But you shouldn't delete the scores completely. As I said, there should be something like a "personal" board, that only you can view, that shows your highest scores for all games in all time. Then you can't go brag about it, and would still want to get the highest score of the week/month, and maybe also improving your own personal best.
Although there really is no point in this, the only thing I can say is this: If you really want to save your score, write them down to a textfile that you store on your pc, and each time you beat your own score, update your textfile. That way you can keep the fun to yourself and we can just on a week/2 week/monthly basis clear the scores.
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I think whenever LimeLemon is playing no one will be able to say they are better than him at majority of the games.
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Ok, ok, two score boards is a bad idea.
But you shouldn't delete the scores completely. As I said, there should be something like a "personal" board, that only you can view, that shows your highest scores for all games in all time. Then you can't go brag about it, and would still want to get the highest score of the week/month, and maybe also improving your own personal best.
Although there really is no point in this, the only thing I can say is this: If you really want to save your score, write them down to a textfile that you store on your pc, and each time you beat your own score, update your textfile. That way you can keep the fun to yourself and we can just on a week/2 week/monthly basis clear the scores.
Ok, just reset it then. This discussion is leading nowhere.
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I think googoogjoob has the right idea with the two boards.
If you're going to try satisfying anyone (which is probably the only reason you'd do this thing), then try to satisfy everyone.
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Huh, I guess the voting week is over, without a really usable result.
Like said before, nobody here is able or can be bothered with making two seperate scoreboards, since we're using a sort of plugin and modifying just isn't a practicable option.
New good games, wohoo, like also mentioned before, are just not all that widespread over the net or findable or I currently can't get them to work.
Oh well.
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~50% voted for a refresh, and no one voted against it.
We can haz refresh nao?
Also, the games don't have to be good (just they aren't too crappy), it's the competing that's fun.
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Okay, four said they didn't care, so ignore those votes. 6+5=11 said they want a refresh of some sort, 8 said something else. So, more people said refresh. More voted for a monthly refresh rather than bi-weekly, so go with monthly refresh! Perfectly usable result!
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But 8 voted something else, which puts that group on top. The thread is also still open for debate.
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11 said yes, 8 said something else. If I check what they say, no one says no. So this looks like a clear yes to me.
I urge for a monthly refresh.
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I think monthly refresh is stupid and wrong. I mean just... monthly refresh? How you thought that out?
Records are meant to be breaked, not deleted. That is so wrong. I can see why people would want a montly refresh but they are noobs and they are weak. If you cant beat the highscore then play it until you do. If you dont get it then you are a noob.
srsly, dont delete the highscores. Its a bad choice.
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If I check what they say, no one says no. So this looks like a clear yes to me.
If having two boards isn't actually an option, I'd've voted for no refreshes. (But I can't now since I already voted for the "other" option.)
As far as I know, every game in the arcade is made in such a way that getting a high score is the motivation. What other objective does Asteroids have, other than getting a high score? Or Tetris, or Pac-Man? You can't win these games, so a high score is an objective measure of how well you did.
Refreshes would get rid of the point of high scores for the people who play for them. People who merely play for fun rather than scores really shouldn't care about high scores. The only people refreshes would help are people who aren't very good at the games, but want to see their name on/near the top of the high score board. It's anticompetitive. It's like breaking the fastest runners' legs before a marathon so the race is "fair" for everyone. Someone who gets a high score shouldn't be forced to get the same score every month to keep their position on the board.
I really can't see any reason for having score purges that doesn't involve putting a pointless handicap (records-wise) on the best players in the interest of a misguided sense of fairness.
(Incidentally- I'm not against refreshes because I have high scores that I want to keep. I've only ever submitted like one score to the arcade.)
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If having two boards isn't actually an option, I'd've voted for no refreshes. (But I can't now since I already voted for the "other" option.)
As far as I know, every game in the arcade is made in such a way that getting a high score is the motivation. What other objective does Asteroids have, other than getting a high score? Or Tetris, or Pac-Man? You can't win these games, so a high score is an objective measure of how well you did.
Refreshes would get rid of the point of high scores for the people who play for them. People who merely play for fun rather than scores really shouldn't care about high scores. The only people refreshes would help are people who aren't very good at the games, but want to see their name on/near the top of the high score board. It's anticompetitive. It's like breaking the fastest runners' legs before a marathon so the race is "fair" for everyone. Someone who gets a high score shouldn't be forced to get the same score every month to keep their position on the board.
I really can't see any reason for having score purges that doesn't involve putting a pointless handicap (records-wise) on the best players in the interest of a misguided sense of fairness.
(Incidentally- I'm not against refreshes because I have high scores that I want to keep. I've only ever submitted like one score to the arcade.)
+1 :O
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I can see where you're coming from Goog, but that doesn't explain why people are no longer playing the games as it is now.
If we do nothing, nothing happens. So we must do something. Adding games isn't really an option here because there aren't that much good games, and we simply don't have the time too look through all the available games to find that one good game.
Besides, the sole purpose of the arcade is not to play a game, but to have the best score. If you want to play a game, you go through the "Free Game Downloads" forum. So yes, this arcade's only reason is to have the best score. I entirelly understand: if you didn't win, but want to be on the top, you must try harder, or live with the fact that you're not that good. This however doesn't change the fact that people stopped playing the arcade because they gave up.
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Even if other people besides LimeLemon got high scores, it wouldn't change anything--and inevitably SOMEONE will get a high score. The only reason they stop is because they're bored with the same thing. Of course they do the same thing because they want to get a high score, but if there were more options they wouldn't get bored so quickly.
But then like you said you can't just add more games, but that really probably is what the problem is.
Edit: If you do implement this, many people will eventually just get bored of playing the same games and not even having permanent high scores. It will probably not solve the problem.
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I really don't think the problem is people gave up- I think it's that people got bored. When it was added, the arcade was totally new and the forum had never had anything like it before. But then everyone realized that none of the games were particularly original or varied, so people just drifted away.
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I really don't think the problem is people gave up- I think it's that people got bored. When it was added, the arcade was totally new and the forum had never had anything like it before. But then everyone realized that none of the games were particularly original or varied, so people just drifted away.
...yeah!
That's sort of like what I said googoogjoob. ._.
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Some people still play the games. It's just that no one breaks a highscore.
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It would be nice if the arcade was based around games the community created, but that would depend on how many people who have, and know, Flash enough to make games suitable for the arcade.
There's some code that you can put in to make the games compatible with the submission system, which is available here:
http://www.smfarcade.info/forum/index.php/topic,714.0.html
It seems like you could also ask some known Flash game developers if they want to make compatible versions of their games for the arcade.
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if you didn't win, but want to be on the top, you must try harder, or live with the fact that you're not that good.
Or cheat. :P Apparently I was one of the four people who understood that these arcades are ripe for cheating, and thus voted that highscores are meaningless.
Well, the public highscores, that is. There is still a "personal best" score for each game, which should give enough incentive for people who play these games for achievements. This leaves only those who want their achievements to be gawked at publicly: fierce competitors and showoffs. X-P
It would be nice if the arcade was based around games the community created, but that would depend on how many people who have, and know, Flash enough to make games suitable for the arcade.
Good idea. I have the Flash authoring app, but I use it for work only, not for game development. The modding seems to be simple enough however. If anyone wants to have their games modded, I could give it a try. ;)
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REFRESH !!!, please.
LimeLemon is champion of most of the games (10/18)
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It's actually 10/15, since 3 of them are mod only.
Oh, and btw, I don't think a refresh would prevent me from highscoring that 10 games again.
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Really? Waste my time? I got most of the scores I have in about 5 attempts.
EDIT: This post was a response to Dynamite, but he apparently deleted his post? Also, HELLO MODS! Are we getting a refresh or not?
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Oh, and btw, I don't think a refresh would prevent me from highscoring that 10 games again.
What about gunslinger?
Since people seems to wonder how I got this score, here's the secret: KEEP CLICKING FOR HOURS!!! (I could do it again, and get an even better score, but then I would die out of boredom...)
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I guess I would just play until I had a high enough score so no one could beat me anyway and then die on purpose.
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I guess I would just play until I had a high enough score so no one could beat me anyway and then die on purpose.
And the "(I could do it again, and get an even better score, but then I would die out of boredom...)?"
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if you didn't win, but want to be on the top, you must try harder, or live with the fact that you're not that good.
Or cheat. :P Apparently I was one of the four people who understood that these arcades are ripe for cheating, and thus voted that highscores are meaningless.
I agree. I said this before but I made like 3 different cheats for these games. There so easy. Like with the yeti one I made a timer to hit the yeti in the exact position.
But the only cheat I used was the one for the X-mas Santa game and I got the highscore. Then it got deleted lol XD
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I've quickly looked in the arcade settings, and couldn't find the reset scores button. I've seen it once, so I know its there, but just couldn't find it.
I've changed a setting though, just for the purpose of testing a theory of yours.
You're now allowed to have 2 scores for each game. You'll have your personal best, and the second score will be eh... your second best. :P To prove that you really are that good in a game. I'll look into resetting the score if this doesn't revive the arcade or it died after it was revived.
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There's not much of a point of having 2 scores really...
Like, if we get a higher score in our second score, it would've just updated our original score.
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Hum. Well, I think I'll just disable having two scores, since it really doesn't make much sense.
But, behold! I finally got some games to work that are (at least in my opinion) quite neat. Or something. They'll be public soon, when I finished writing the descriptions. And I guess the other games that were in testing can get out too now.
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Yay, SEVEN more champions to get! X)
Also, YAY REFRESH!!! :^^: