Aquamentis12

Yes, rotten sun-dried fish! Those lopsided stats are really suspicious!

I always save a screenshot at the end of the staff tourney for the following year so I can see all rounds I chose and who did well, and stunk out loud. My week 1 line-up turned out to be the same as my Week 1 line-up for last year. I always choose Ehlo Froyo as my Goalie though, Go Maraqua! lol Fortunately, she's a really decent goalie! I'm HOPING to select the right Star player, hasn't happened yet though. lol Good luck everyone with your picks!

Cool. I've been mashing the spacebar with little to no success, so lots of releasing as well as pressing. I wish TNT could fix it, but since the AC is now underway, I highly doubt that will happen before the AC is over. Oh yes! I hate that when everyone is crowded and the game kept/keeps switching with whichever one is a tiny bit closest to the yooyu. True, plus it's harder to know when to use a power-up if you can get to one, because there is no longer any order for the yooyus. Like, normal, random, normal random, now it's a random yooyu every time. So it's a bit pointless to power-up save. I still try to, and I decide when the yooyu pops up if I can or need to try for a power-up, but still.... If you can score faster with a power-up, it seems more worth it to do that instead of saving. Especially since multiple power-ups can be on the field at once. In the old version, the first power-up to appear, would flicker and vanish before a 3rd power-up would appear. Yeah, my theory was more pertaining to the previous version of YYB. I should try shooting straight... Force of habit to try ricochet shot my aiming down and right when I want it to go left. That hasn't been working well for me this year. ^^; Ah ok. I don't quite get it, but what ever works for you. Cool! It certainly seems more difficult to get to 13 than in the previous version. No, not bad at all! I decided to look at my PPG average, and I'm surprised that it's at 9.625! I thought it would be quite a bit lower for sure! 154 goals in 16 games though. So I guess. lol As much as I'd LIKE to compare my stats this year to my stats for most of the previous ACs I've participated in. I'm trying to view this year's AC like starting over from scratch, because YYB just IS so darn glitchy and unpolished this year! Still, when I look at previous years' stats, it still stings that I am currently unable to match those numbers with this new version. So yeah, starting over from the beginning I guess. lol Good luck with your matches today!

Best to go after the yooyu first, since the stealing doesn't work well. The 8 seconds still comes off the timer, but INSTANTLY when you score, which is different from the old version. You have to be watching the timer basically, if you want to see it. And the timer starts more quickly at the beginning of each round than it did in the old version. In the old version, scoring with only 2 or 3 seconds coming off the timer was fairly easy, especially starting a new game. But, in this one, the timer has counted down about 2-3 seconds before you can even make a move toward the yooyu. As I just said in the Maraqua support thread, it's best to try and avoid the other team's players as much as possible, since it's hard to steal the yooyu back. I've done it a couple of times, but it's VERY unreliable. So, try to go around them instead of through them. One thing I will say I LIKE, is when the opposing player is about to shoot, they DO show the power meter for them now! That gives you a little time to TRY an steal, or at least try to get in front of their shot. Shift-key doesn't work for sending all your players back into formation, and I can't seem to control the goalie to save the net, unless he, by some feat of great luck, manages to stop a shot. THEN I can move him and fire the yooyu back out. Oh yeah, and I can't tackle the other teams goalie anymore. Maybe because the tackle/stealing function isn't hardly working? In the old version, if I mashed the spacebar, you know, if I got to close to the goalie and he stole the yooyu away, mashing the spacebar sometimes would steal the yooyu back and fire it into the net. Haven't been able to do that yet in this new version.

Congrats on maxing out. I only managed about 16 games. But I was busy with other things, and TBH, I wasn't really looking forward to playing with how glitchy YYB is. On your points of frustration.... Yes, the steal is pretty broken, I find I have to move more defensively, trying to avoid them altogether instead of going through them then sometimes, the other team's steal will miss when they attempt it. The player switching IS still annoying. Definitely in part moreso because of the lack of a consistently working steal-function. but also, couples with another one of your points, the one about ANY player picking up the power-ups. For the most part, I've had better luck I guess with them doing that. In the OLD version of YYB, When you would shoot the yooyu the player-switch would also activate, to a player other than the one doing the shooting. If that newly switched to player touched a power-up before the goal screen game up, then it would activate and waste that power-up. I was a real careful saver of power-ups in the old version. And It'd ALWAYS irritate me when the next ball would be a faerie, darigan, mutant or Ice yooyu, and the power up had been something I was saving to help off-set the particular traits of those yooyus. I haven't noticed the robot yooyu's explosion not removing time yet. It does seem that he explodes much more QUICKLY for the most part though. I've had trouble watching the clock due to the glitches of not being able to steal and such, makes me focus more on the players than the timer. The 8 second run-off after each goal happens super fast immediately after the goal is scored now. In the old version the run-off would only be visible on the timer after the goal and post-goal photo-shoot or reaction shot. For the lag on the goal screens, it might be lag due to your computer or network I haven't had any noticeable problem with skipping the cutscenes. LOL The ball going through the goalie, yeah. I've had that complaint for a long time. Maraqua's goalie stinks. Like rotten fish. lol That being said, the opponent's goalie has gotten much "smarter" imho. Though if you shoot close enough with a full-powered shot, there seems like it's a better chance to go in than for him to catch the yooyu. Oh yes, I haven't kept count to average, but I'm getting a number of Darigan, Faerie and Mutant yooyus, way more than in the old version! it seems a LOT harder to figure out the Darigan's patterns. As to which way it might be likely to go the way I want it to. So maybe they randomized it even more? Normally I get a few shots off angling the darigan down and right (I play from right to left on-screen). But in most of my games where I've done that, it ended up going to the left, or downward left Instead. I never could truly figure the darigan's patterns out. I theorized though, that there were several patterns it could follow, and that each darigan's appearance followed a different one of these patterns. The forced fullscreen is definitely annoying! After each game, I take a screenshot of the score, and have to shrink the game so I can paste the screenshot into my graphics program to save it. I've got 2 more to add to your complaints. 1, The scores at the end are displayed on the wrong side. My score is over by Kreludor's flag, and their score is by Maraqua's. Still counts my scores correctly though. The other complaint, is definitely, the bounceback and ball getting stuck in/to the walls. Instead of ricocheting properly like it did in the old version. It's hard this year, saving the scores. I decided I'll save ALL the game results this year, instead of just the ones with 10+ goals. I managed to send a few games scored at 10+. But I'm averaging closer to 6-8 goals per game thanks to the glitches. It's not really that different, since the vast majority of my game-scores in previous ACs were almost ALL 10+ goals. Still, it's disheartening saving a 5-1 game, knowing I fought pretty hard to get those 5 points. The game still seems to take about 2 minutes to play, which given the increased pace, is something I was a little surprised to notice. So far, my BEST game was a 13-0 victory. But only one of those.

lol If that were possible! TBH With the glitches and getting used to the new physics, my best score has only been 9. Though I haven't been able to play much the last couple of practice days to get more familiarized with it. lol

Interesting Secre. To me, it doesn't seem like it'd be possible with just support games, but I know people do it, as you've done it, and more. Thanks for posting your stats. Nice going! I tried several practice games of YYB, it's pretty darn glitchy. I gotta wonder just what TNT spent the whole last year since the end of the last AC doing.... Plus that new power-up that seems to slow everyone down, I haven't seen that one before. It seems more annoying so far. More power-ups showing up is ok, the opponent-goalie seems more on the ball when it comes to stopping my shots, pardon the pun. Tackling/stealing is spotty, at best, and it takes very little effort now for ANY player, even the opposing goalies, to send the yooyu flying more than 3/4 of the way across the field, if nobody intercepts it that is. In the old flash version, for the goalie to do that, or score a goal, you'd need a Fire Yooyu AND the Enlargement power-up. Now just a Fire Yooyu would be enough. I do like that the movements are a bit more articlulated and smooth. But really, that's about all. Even the clock seems a little glitchy. I hit the goal with time left, and the whistle blows. Or, I hit the goal with no time left, and I still get the goal, and the game ends normally. Though when I send my scores, they've got the scores reversed graphically. It says the Practice team scored, x and I scored y, when it should be the other way around. Fortunately, score-sending still gives me the goals I actually scored. Overall, with the glitches, YYB is definitely more difficult than the flash version! Oh right, almost forgot to mention the walls. You can't hug the wall and bounce the yooyu off and have it go forward anymore. If I hug the wall tightly, and fire a ricochet shot, it bounces off the wall and back behind me, toward my own goal! Another glitch to have to try and adjust for! I should probably mention that I'm playing on a PC, Windows 10, with the game forced into Fullscreen as it says it will be for Practice week.

Welcome to Maraqua Secre! I hope we do well this year!

Haven't tried any of the converted games yet. TNT should partner with one of those independent groups/people making flash emulators that play flash content, like Ruffle for example. I have the nightly build downloaded for a couple of games some old friends made ages ago. Non-neopets stuff. Can't use it for everything because it's still in development, but I can view some of my old friends' works, which rocks because I lost touch with them awhile back. I always have a sense of DREAD about the AC. The prize points awarded are so LOW, imho. I mean sure, some people can get Multiple All-Star, somehow. I usually only get a little over halfway there, but have a very nice average of about 11-12 points per game of YYB. And the points I get are rarely enough to barely get the stamp! My YYB stats from last year. Rank 13 Goals Scored 4,996 Goals by Elon "The Black Hole" Hughlis 4,286 Goals by Oten Runeu 224 Goals by Lamelle Turow 227 Goals by Barit Jowes 259 Saves by Tonie Plessix 307 Number of Wins 390 Number of Draws 0 Number of Losses 0 A PPG average of 12.8 goals per game and I only got around 4400 prize points! I Couldn't even get the books from last year's AC! I wish we at least got something for higher point games, not just wins. I only got 390 games in last year, but things were busy, despite there being a pandemic and I couldn't play as much as I would've liked. Plus the stupid rule removing games on the weekends from counting toward our personal records still ticks me off! What's the point of playing against the practice team? 3 games for 3k? Not worth it! >( I relied on those off-days to shore up my game numbers because they fit into my schedule! I'm still angry with TNT about nixing them from counting! >( Playing YYB does take a fair bit of time. But, MSN, I can only play for a bit before my wrists get super tired and sore. SS, Starts off slow and the "sweet spot" for playing doesn't last too long, plus it takes too long, imho to get to that part of the game where the speed is not too slow. SOSD, Meh. Gets old/boring too quickly. Plus it has the least best conversion toward rank points. I prefer playing YYB because it's more consistently active from start to finish. Maybe this year I see if a "perfect score" of 18 is legitimately achievable. 17-0 is still my best score for YYB. The more you score in YYB the faster the game can go too, if you skip the between goal cutscenes.

Ah, I didn't know he was a former Art Director for Neopets! That's cool!

While I haven't signed up quite yet, as usual, I plan on supporting Maraqua! So, who's joining up with Maraqua?! Any thoughts on the team members? We've seen a couple of newbies replace players from Mystery Island and Faerieland, are there Maraqua team members you'd like to see traded/replaced? Share your victories, foibles and close calls or weird happenings during your games! What are your goals, (pardon the pun), for this year's AC? Most importantly.... Let's have fun!!

Cool vandagyre player! Good luck to Faerieland! JellySundae, that guy had some cool art, thanks for posting his link!

Interesting, I wonder what she'll bring to her team? Good luck to Mystery Island. They usually put up a good competition!

Definitely would prefer The Sway wins, but I'm still considering which faction I'm gonna join. As much as I like a good battle, I really don't like the boons that the Brutes were given by TNT. Just, not too much that's very useful except in certain circumstances or conditions. Edit: Went with The Sway, just because I'd prefer their boons.

Just joined The Awakened and added my vote to the count. And I'm NOT talking about Count Von Roo.

Oxbridge786 Has a decent number, 50% chance, of The Sway winning, so I'll probably go with them as well.

Thanks Duma! I was pretty sure it was from The Art of War, so I'm glad you can (kind of) confirm it! I didn't know it was an audio book too. LOL But yeah, let's fight hard and win this time! Depending on the poll here, I tend to spread my attacks out based upon the 2nd and 3rd placer factions according to the poll, or if there is minimal or the same votes for both the other factions that I didn't join, then I'll go by who I would think would be the greatest faction "threat" and target the boss of that faction for attack. If it's like a tie in the polls or close, then I split my attacks. Usually 1 battle for every 2 battles against the primary faction I'm targeting. So, for this skirmish for example... If I battled The Awakened 20 times, then I'd do 10 against the Thieves, and keep going with that ratio. Just to hedge my bets a bit in case there are more thieves this time than Awakened. I think the Awakened would be the Seekers' top competition because of the chance of randomized boons, vs the Thieves who have some decent boons, but not quite as good, imho as The Seekers or the random chance of boons that the Awakened has.

Yes, it certainly does! lol It's too bad though, it's not good for those players who are not connected to these possibly giant Obelisk guilds though. Well, right now all we can do is vote and fight fight fight! XD

It could even be that the guild that Mario has the contact in, might not know until even closer to the sign-up deadline than he finds out. What was that saying.... 'To deceive your enemies it is sometimes necessary to deceive your friends/allies.' I THINK that's from Sun Tsu's, "The Art of War". I've never actually read it, but I've seen quotes from it in other games I've played where war and diplomatic strategies were heavily involved. I've signed up with The Seekers now too. I prefer the boon selection they have, tbh. I too am getting tired of the factions I join not winning. I don't know if I agree with you entirely on the significance of the boons now. If that alone were the case, then would not the Seekers, Sway, and Awakened, probably be the only 3 that would be most likely to win each time? But the Brutes have won several times very recently, The Order and Thieves too, even though they were up against the Seekers, Sway and/or Awakened. This feels more, coordinated than that. I mean, the Seekers haven't won for 14 rounds now according to Oxbridge's petpage. For a faction with a decent boon selection that seems like an unusually long dry spell. The guild, or guilds that might be coordinating this could be really big, especially if it's more than one. That way, they could theoretically game the system and if anyone else happens to be fighting for the same faction as they are, they would win out of luck, not so much out of their own contributions. Again theoretically speaking, they may even rotate victories if the leaders are more part of a council across guilds. So one round, perhaps x-number of guilds choose one faction, while a guild leader among the other guild leader collective tells his/her guild the wrong faction, so that the wrong info gets out, and the leader can just chalk it up to dumb luck that the faction the other guilds under the council win easily. NOTE: This is ALL SPECULATION. But if you think about how much some people like to play other people or skirt the rules in online games. Really, just about anything SEEMS possible. I go by Oxbridge and the vote trend here before I usually make my call on a faction. There might be some threads on the Neopets forums about factions, but I can't imagine anyone from these Obelisk-busting guild(s) would be on there telling people who to go with, unless deception was part of the game. But by keeping things secret, they ensure their guild members will get whatever boon set is up that round. Or perhaps they will choose a faction to help members get the faction avatars and site-themes like we've done here for other TDNers? Just too many unknown variables and facts here so far.

I'm holding my vote for now. But according to Oxbridge, the Seekers are due for a win. They give the Seekers a 61% chance of winning this round, as it's been 14 round since they last won a skirmish. So I am leaning that way, but I don't usually decide until the last minute. lol

Thank you! I've just recently started working on a new project, should take me close to a year, given past projects similar in scale. Plus it's a personal project, so I'm soloing it, as usual. lol It's a great way to learn though, and challenge myself to think, try, and hopefully discover new things I haven't thought of, or done, before.

Duma's post is an awesome place to start out if you're not familiar with how to prep and battle. And Gypsyknees has some great tips! Jaydeed has a good point too. If you are looking for certain prizes, like stamps or books, etc. TDN's pages on the 1p challengers has prize data too! And boy did it take a long time to collect! lol If you post your battle pet stats, and available equipment if you have some already, people can also help you out with different builds (ways to train your pet) for a style that works for you. Just don't go into battle with nothing equipped! LOL When I first joined Neopets, many years ago, I figured there would be a default action to attack without any equipment. there wasn't. lol This was in the old battledome of course, but still, go in with something, even against Punchbag Bob, or you'll have to withdraw, which will count as a loss. That was my experience anyway. lol As for opponents. Before the prices dropped so much, I liked to battle the Jelly Chia. He drops some stamps and a book. Jelly Pop Stamp, Jelly World Stamp, and Jelly Mysteries which is a book. Made some nice NP on the stamps back when I was trying to figure out all of Jelly Chia's prizes. Not sure what they sell for now, but the last time i checked they were both still very much under 100k np on the shop wiz. Different domes lend to different prize types too. If you take place in the Obelisk Skirmishes, those are all in the Ugga Ugga Dome. The prizes as I recall from there are so common in the user market because of this. There might be a few decent rare prizes there. I usually battle some other opponent in a different dome before I do the battles for the skirmishes. Rattling Cauldron Dome, basically the Haunted Woods Arena, you'll get lots of spooky foods. A lot of which is not as valuable as it once was because they are common prizes in that arena now. Neopia Central Dome has a lot of regular food items. If you're lucky you might get Chocolate Ice Cream, worth about 40k the last time I won any. lol Again each opponent also has some pretty unique stuff, as well as codestones of course. Shadow Usul, for example, has a plushie that sometimes drops, and sells for around 15k-20k. Anyway, depending on your budget, stats, and the opponent(s) you'd like to battle, post that info either here or in a new thread, and I'm sure you'll get lots of tips. I spent my time budget battling for as long as I've been on Neopets. I'd say that my battle set is still in the low-intermediate to regular intermediate range. I've a few weapons from plots I earned. The majority of my NP spent for battle gear was on my healer, and a Ghostkerbomb. So I consider budget-battling my specialty. I recommend training over expensive weaponry. I mean, I've got my Strength and Defense stats maxed, but my weaponry is not terribly great, as I said above. If you read about "Boosts", those are basically the multipliers for the amount of icons a weapon attacks or defends. If you have a 10 icon weapon, and you've got the highest strength boost, 16, which you get when your strength is 750. Then that attack, if nothing is blocked by your opponent, will do 160 damage. I also recommend balanced training between Strength and Defense. But that's my training style. lol Movement/Agility is pretty useless except for a couple of items. If you have agility of 201 and an intelligence of... I believe it was 37+, you could consider a Heavy Robe of Thievery to steal a random item once per battle, but stealing is not working right now, so the point is moot right now. Though it might be a good time to buy a Heavy Robe of Thievery for the future, because when stealing gets fixed, the price will probably go back up a bit. Intelligence, it's useful for some higher-end tunics from the Brightvale Armory. But reading books and visiting Coltzan's Shrine should yield you some decent INT increases. I think the most Intelligence you need for a pet in the BD would be 1000 for one of the tunics. Again though, not something to worry about if you're just starting out. The USEFUL tunics sell for some millions mostly. Phew! I haven't pulled a post this long in awhile. Sorry, i hope it all makes sense and wasn't too much at one time. Happy battling!

Wow, what a dismal faction choice, boon-wise at least.

I'm thinking about The Seekers, since I like their boon selection. Not really wild about the Brute's boons, nor the randomness of the boons from The Awakened. I mean they may or may not have boons worth using, kind of a carp-shoot. And we all know it's not nice to shoot carp in a barrel. LOL Not sporting at all.

I was JUST about to try Kass Basher after reading through this thread, but the space for it in the games room just stays grayed out when I click to open the game. I wonder if they are working on issues with the game now? I'm on a PC using Firefox. I haven't tried any (formerly flash) games since Flash died and Adobe decided to be dumb and block Flash everywhere after the death of Flash. I'll try it later.