Now that the 10th anniversary celebrations are behind us and we've all had a bit of time to interact with the new achievements and pursuits systems, we wanted to drop a quick Dev Update with some reflections.


As is common within game and software development, our team meets for a retrospective after we launch major features. The purpose of these exercises is to reflect on the development process itself, up to and including the launch rollout and the real time feedback we get from you. We open the floor for everyone to say what's on their mind about what went well, what could use improvement, and lessons we might learn to benefit the next project we embark on. Generally, we try to conduct these meetings not long after a feature has been deployed so that thoughts are fresh in our minds.

We wanted to share a few insights from our recent retrospective on the achievements system launch. This is an extremely pared down version (as much of a retrospective is internal), but there are a few things we thought it might be nice to share with you.

What Went Well

We saw this echoed in a lot of community discussions, but we feel like we made the right choices in communicating the launch date, progress, and intentions of this project. While the achievements themselves were a surprise, we felt that it was a step in the right direction to update you on the technical challenges, caveats, and goals we had for the feature. We hope to continue that as best we can.

We had meetings. A lot. Dozens of meetings. So many meetings. But this brought us together as a team, frequently, so that pivots or iterations in the development process came with less confusion. This was vital given how large the project was, and how long it took. Burnout was a real concern due to the massive nature of this feature (it truly was a marathon in every sense of the word), so we took every possible opportunity to keep everyone as in-the-know as possible.

We shot for the moon, and are elated to say that 99% of the achievements we scoped as far back as November made it into the final release. When you're talking about over 600 "things" to put in a feature, that is an absolutely smashing success in terms of planning, implementation, and testing. Collectively, we are very happy we were able to deliver nearly everything to you that we wanted to.

By necessity, our team became extremely familiar (or refamiliarized) with every single function and feature on the site. This not only is good for keeping ourselves fresh on the inner workings of the site, but will aid heavily in making quality of life and accessibility updates in the future.

Creating new achievements and pursuits also becomes fundamentally less challenging and risky now that the system is in place. We know exactly how to create all the technical hooks necessary and can proceed with coding future features with these systems fully in mind. This means far less "try really hard to make an old feature work with achievements" and far more "build the feature expressly with achievements factored in".

The "live ops" period for this feature, while tiring, went very well. We'd like to thank everyone who dove right into interacting with the systems and reporting any issues they experienced in the Bug Report Forums. That kind of feedback, right away, was integral for helping our engineering team turn around fixes much more quickly.

What Could Be Improved

There simply was no way real way for us to know what "launch day load" would look like until it got here. As described in one of our earlier updates, using live player data for testing was useful, but in the end, we couldn't truly emulate the server hugs we were going to eventually get, which is what led us to dial back (temporarily) how often achievement progress was calculated.

A double-edged sword if we ever saw one: in working hard to maximize the number of achievements all players could claim as complete on launch day, we did not adequately predict that it might be frustrating to claim them one-at-a-time. There were extremely important reasons why we didn't implement a "Claim All" button in the feature, but it still did end up being a temporary pain point for many of you.

There were a few integrations and "nice-to-haves" that didn't quite make it in (ideas for expanded Game Database tools, Which Waystone, etc.). In the end, we felt it was important on launch day to have more achievements and pursuits to interact with than tie-in or referential tools. We still want to create a lot of these.

For better or for worse, this project was a marathon. Aside from launching the website itself, this was the biggest and most challenging task our development has ever been through. While we still successfully navigated and avoided crunch, it was still easy to get exhausted with something that took as long to make as this. Thankfully, future feature work will have a narrower scope, but we feel there's something applicable we can still learn from this process.

Every game development studio utilizes retrospectives in different ways, but the ones who excel use them to guide their work and processes going into the future. Thankfully, we got a wealth of information, and it led to many changes just after launch. It also helped advise the following fixes and updates that have been rolled out most recently:

• The achievement formerly titled Diamond in the Stuff has been replaced by Battle Ready. The former achievement was not possible to achieve.
• The achievement Electrifying Result now requires a score of 700,000 rather than 1,000,000.
• A new achievement, Teacher's Pet, has been added.
• A new achievement, Know It All, has been added.
• A new achievement, Treasure for Trash, has been added.
• A cute "confetti" animation has been added behind the claim window to make completing an achievement a little more exciting.
• Achievements that involve collecting/possessing a list of items more clearly indicate which items in the criteria you've already obtained.

Work isn't done yet, and you can look forward to more achievements and pursuits as time goes on, but we wanted to thank everyone for engaging with them, enjoying them, and giving feedback on them. Congratulations on what you've already achieved, and best of luck going forward!

All sharkfather quests have been reset. If you decide to do the quest at this time, make sure you do not leave the page once you start the quest as it will get stuck until we get a chance to fix it properly.

Supreme Elite players can now have up to 40 mini slots again. Extreme Elite players can have up to 50 mini slots.

Mini Ad links have been fixed. Go to the ads manager and reassign what your ad links to if it was giving problems before.

Some issues were fixed with players whose fish were showing up in their aquarium even though they had already been removed.

Eurobank interest issues have been resolved. Eurobank will now hand out monthly interest again.

Fixed issues with players who returned after a long absence and were unable to post on forums.

Some problems with aquariums and dying fish were fixed.

Farnox fine tuning has been finished and everything except for Gardens should now be working.

The final Healthpedia has been restored, which means very soon we'll be reactivating quests that asked for Health and Petpedia questions again.


Unfortunately the past month and a bit, the regular day jobs have been very busy. This meant we were only able to fix ongoing issues. The good news is that we are finally getting through the backlog and will have more time to dedicate on fixing the remaining Powerpets issues once again.

More updates will be coming soon!

Congratulations to SpecialT for winning PLAYER OF THE DAY!
Just for being active on Powerpets, they won a free one month account upgrade which comes complete with a free item that is handed out once a month and all other upgraded account benefits.

Today's winning Mega Money Madness number is: 2665

There were NO winners.

If you want to be a winner next time, check out the Mega Money Madness under the GAMES icon.

Whew!
It sure is hot today!

Guess I will head to the beach and go catch some gnarly waves.


I was having a blast, the swells were fantastic for surfing, when suddenly.....
a most massive and totally radical wave came out of no where and I lost control and
landed head first in the sand of misty-dreamer's beachscape!

Congrats! You have won a free month account upgrade and a trophy for your profile!


Don't forget to sign up here daily for your chance to win!

Raffle Result

This weeks raffle was won by AceRabbit.

They received 2,123,100 IP!

Trivia Result

Trivvy has a new question for you! Click here to try question #206. Trivia #205 was answered correctly by 14 people!

Game Trophies

The latest trophies have been awarded, and the leaders are as follows:

First Place, with a score of 349:

Cowpro
Second Place, with a score of 245:

Sirk
Third Place, with a score of 158:

DragonMoon

First Place, with a score of 28150:

CLC
Second Place, with a score of 22520:

Sevsev
Third Place, with a score of 10760:

DragonMoon

First Place, with a score of 46495:

Snowmaster
Second Place, with a score of 14680:

Kit
Third Place, with a score of 12320:

Kamisheru14

First Place, with a score of 120:

Kamisheru14
Second Place, with a score of 85:

CLC

First Place, with a score of 1153:

Kamisheru14
Second Place, with a score of 1073:

Tetsam
Third Place, with a score of 1040:

Mitsy, Hope

First Place, with a score of 83:

emanresu
Second Place, with a score of 79:

Kamisheru14
Third Place, with a score of 19:

DragonMoon

First Place, with a score of 5060:

Tetsam, Asukachan
Second Place, with a score of 3850:

Sirk
Third Place, with a score of 2040:

Kamisheru14

First Place, with a score of 188:

Cowpro
Second Place, with a score of 179:

Sirk
Third Place, with a score of 126:

DragonMoon

Miyura won last week's Battle Royale with a time of 54 seconds! All who completed the Battle Royale have been awarded their cP prize and first, second, and third place have also won trophies for their profiles.

Sign up your Ichumon in this week's Battle Royale Contest!

You will need to kill 17 Pink Wandering Ghost in the Battle Royale Map as fast as you can. The quickest user to complete the battles will receive the top prize of 25,000 cP!

Congratulations to the following Card Game Trophy Winners:
First Place Card Player: StoneDragon
Runner Up Card Player: -tiger-tiger-

If you want to be a winner, play the card games bonus games!

Dicey Mice Badges

Dicey Mice Diamond Badge: -tiger-tiger-

Dicey Mice Titanium Badge: TheMetal

Dicey Mice Leather Badge: lynxcat

Mini Match Badges

Mini Match Diamond Badge: goodwitchev64

Mini Match Titanium Badge: SweetFire

Mini Match Leather Badge: Naruto-Numa

Crash Extreme Badges

Crash Extreme Diamond Badge: chiquitabonita8

Crash Extreme Titanium Badge: Selene33

Crash Extreme Leather Badge: crys_4now

Mini Bubbles Badges

Mini Bubbles Diamond Badge: -tiger-tiger-

Mini Bubbles Titanium Badge: digimon_tamer_

Mini Bubbles Leather Badge: lynxcat

Bubbas Blocks Badges

Bubbas Blocks Diamond Badge: AnitaCupaCoffee

Bubbas Blocks Titanium Badge: Selene33

Bubbas Blocks Leather Badge: Abbyss

Congratulations to HRAW2 for winning PLAYER OF THE DAY!
Just for being active on Powerpets, they won a free one month account upgrade which comes complete with a free item that is handed out once a month and all other upgraded account benefits.

Whew!
It sure is hot today!

Guess I will head to the beach and go catch some gnarly waves.


I was having a blast, the swells were fantastic for surfing, when suddenly.....
a most massive and totally radical wave came out of no where and I lost control and
landed head first in the sand of crys_4now's beachscape!

Congrats! You have won a free month account upgrade and a trophy for your profile!


Don't forget to sign up here daily for your chance to win!

1st: whiteice won a Brown Crystal.
2nd: fdmms110 won a Rarity 94 IchuCard.
3rd: Natsu
They have each also won 18,417 iP and trophies for their profile!


A new Restock Race has begun!
You will need to purchase 12 Cream Loket Plushie from the Mushroom Shops before next Saturday. The Ichuan with the fastest time wins. Remember your timer starts with your first purchase of the item, Good luck!

Congratulations to the following people for handing out the most treats and toys this month:
First Place: huameifan
Second Place: Wyasp

If you want to win, hand out as many treats and toys to other pets as you can! The next draw will be on the 15th of next month.

Congratulations to lynxcat for winning PLAYER OF THE DAY!
Just for being active on Powerpets, they won a free one month account upgrade which comes complete with a free item that is handed out once a month and all other upgraded account benefits.

Whew!
It sure is hot today!

Guess I will head to the beach and go catch some gnarly waves.


I was having a blast, the swells were fantastic for surfing, when suddenly.....
a most massive and totally radical wave came out of no where and I lost control and
landed head first in the sand of Taurusangel2000's beachscape!

Congrats! You have won a free month account upgrade and a trophy for your profile!


Don't forget to sign up here daily for your chance to win!

The Persona of the Week Contest has been judged! Congratulations to raptor_mama on winning this week's competition.

This week's theme: BBQ