Wizard101 - I spend a lot of time decorating my castles, but every time I post on Castle Tours it goes nowhere. Maybe a hit or two. Even if I explore a boat load of castles, nada.
Suggestion: Tie in Castle Games with Castle Tours. When a player invites others to play a game at their castle, allow those players to rate the castle the game is in.
Check out any of my castles to see the level of details I put into my castles ... Wind Tower is my Seasonal castle, take a look and let me know your thoughts.
Wizard101 - I spend a lot of time decorating my castles, but every time I post on Castle Tours it goes nowhere. Maybe a hit or two. Even if I explore a boat load of castles, nada.
Suggestion: Tie in Castle Games with Castle Tours. When a player invites others to play a game at their castle, allow those players to rate the castle the game is in.
Check out any of my castles to see the level of details I put into my castles ... Wind Tower is my Seasonal castle, take a look and let me know your thoughts.
Cheers - Kyle Dunebreeze
I have had three of my castles make the top 100 on Castle Tours - both were in the "seasonal" category. If you successfully decorate to a theme your castles will get noticed; it shouldn't be necessary to combine Castle Tours with Castle Games.
From what I have noticed in the "failure" of some castles: 1. Blocking an entrance or any part of your castle. If you have a problem with strangers wandering through your castle - don't post them! 2. Pets & Mounts only, nothing else? That's not decorating, that's storage; no one wants to see a garage. 3. Everything you've ever collected ( furniture wise ) all in one house. This is just a mess, keep to a theme, MooShu furniture doesn't go with Krokotopian furniture, please choose one. I will be sure to try to find your house.
I think they should tweak it so that recently added castles are guaranteed a fair share of visits. When I've tried doing visits, I would sometimes come across the same castles three or four times, even if I had already given it a rating. Also making sure that the same castle isn't revisited more than once in ten visits (during the same playing session) would help matters. At any given time, there are dozens to visit that were recently added, and when the random picking isn't doing it evenly, then it needs to be fixed so that it has to meet certain criteria to help it out. I have a few houses that amaze people when they see them, so when I add to tours, it surprises me that they rarely get visits, much less ranked, but then there are houses that look near empty that are on the list.
Wizard101 - I spend a lot of time decorating my castles, but every time I post on Castle Tours it goes nowhere. Maybe a hit or two. Even if I explore a boat load of castles, nada.
Suggestion: Tie in Castle Games with Castle Tours. When a player invites others to play a game at their castle, allow those players to rate the castle the game is in.
Check out any of my castles to see the level of details I put into my castles ... Wind Tower is my Seasonal castle, take a look and let me know your thoughts.
Cheers - Kyle Dunebreeze
I spend quite a bit of time on my castles as well and have found that the tours are really hard to stay on top of.
For one it helps to put your castle on the tour a little after midnight central time on a Friday or a Saturday. This ensures that people who pick the what's new that day option for touring are likely to get your castle. Because it gets posted on a weekend instead of a weekday your are more likely to get visits because there are more people playing. Personally I prefer to post it on Saturday a little after midnight that way any all night players or people who play all day Saturday are more likely to see it.
It is just a fact that unless you are a person who does major glitching and probably spends crowns then your are not likely to get very high on the list. Most people take a 2 second look at the entrance of your castle and then rate from there. Thus you end up with castles that have literally nothing in all but one or two rooms of the actual house but are in the top 100 of a list because their entrance looks nice. The people who do major glitching dominate the lists year round and there isn't a way to get them off unless you are willing to figure out how to glitch like they do and spend real money.
Having more visitors is also not always your friend. I had a house in the top 50 of the seasonal list that then made the top rated list in the 80's. Two days later I had another 5 visits and suddenly my house was no longer on any list at all. I can only assume that for some reason those 5 people gave me one star ratings that then dropped my house despite having over 40 visits with good ratings in the month and a half my house had been on the tour.
In short whatever they do to track the rating system goes by the amount of good ratings versus the amount of visits. So having a small amount of visits with all really high ratings is better than 40 visits with good and bad ratings.
I disagree about the spending of crowns, glitching, and effort always getting good ratings or "dominating" the castle tours.
I've seen plenty of houses that look like nothing more than storage right from the start, yet they are ranked, while some others are marvelous and, if ranked, are lower ranked than the storage houses. I've seen houses that are nicely decorated with common (non crowns) stuff that beat out ones that have crowns items everywhere. I've seen major effort lose to those used for nothing more than storage.
The problem, from what I can figure out, is that the randomization is flawed. If 100 people are going through the tours, one castle might get 15 to 20 visits while some others are lucky to get 2 or 3. I've gone in, seen a really nice castle, given it a great rating, then a couple of castles later (never having exited the tours), I'm back at that same one.
Something that K.I. could do is add an option to tours where someone can visit castles that they have already rated (pick from a list). Then when going to random castles to rate them, they never get offered up one that they already rated. Also make it so that they don't return to one they've been to before (even if not rated) unless they've been to at least 20 others first, and that will help a lot.
Another thing would be to make it so that there is a "castle time to visits" ratio, where new castles (within 24 hours) under a certain threshold get higher priority. After the first day, though, then it goes to how it is already. So one that was just added wouldn't get a sudden surge of visitors, but over time would definitely get plenty.
I am at the point, I see no reason to list any of my castles, they get viewed many 10 times. No point, the views are random and with so many castles listed what are the chances. you have five selections to list your castle under, each of these listings have one hundred castles on the leader board, and who knows how many more. In total that is over 500 castles to choose from ANY to view. One major problem is the crown dungeons. These dungeon increase the visits to the houses and are usually on the top of the boards. What happen to the decorating a castle the way you like and others can appreciate it. I would like to see a team of wizards the view the houses and rate them. Mostly for the ideas we have come up with to glitch things in. I have a red barn decorated for Christmas, with Christmas lights on it and Santa sleigh on the roof, these items took time and patience to place in those places, But to the amateur decorator they look natural. Only an experience decorator would see the work put in to these castles. To me season houses mean the season we are in, not a winter house in the summer, so maybe a sub title to list under seasonal, winter, spring, summer and fall. As well as the others could use a sub title, like maze can add classic or magical. Crazy to me is just that, a lot of porting and placing in different areas. Decorated to me is more like the Classic decorated castle, where a wizard would live. Just my thoughts!
Thank you all for your replies! Like all of you, I've put in a lot of time coming up with a beautiful castle.
1) Not a warehouse drop off, with no effort to try decorating 2) Not a dungeon jump off, for the sake of playing dungeons... I do have one dungeon, but it is artfully located and blends in with my design. 3) Not a frantic pet zone (never understood the use of a 100 pets running around). I use Mounts and Pets to fit a particular setting. 4) I use a theme in each area, and design around it.
5) Use rare and hard to find items to make my castle standout 6) Run games (find 10) to make sure people can get around and not get stuck.
I truly want to see all the awesome designs out there, but it is pure crude most castles have to offer. Of the ones I have visited, most get a 1 star ... very rarely do I ever give out a 3 star, much less a 4 star rating.
I wish KI would find a much better way so people can visit and truly rate the "best" castle out there. With that in mind, I challange KI to visit all of my castles and dorm rooms for Kyle Dunebreeze ... to see what we are capable of doing. In hopes they can start wiping out the crude that stays listed in the Top Rated Castles.
Being able to add castles to the tour on a long-term basis (but not to get ranked) would be a great benefit. People find a castle they like, then they can "favorite it" and revisit later, so long as it's still in the tours. Long-term being like six months or a year (at most).
Have an option for long-term castles, visit random ones or favorites. When visiting random ones, can choose type of castle from the list of possible castles, and then while at a castle, choose it as a favorite (up to 10 favorite max?) with ability to remove one at any time.
So I recently finished crafting my Watchtower Hall, and went nuts decorating it. However, no matter when I post it in Castle Tours, what time of day or what day of the week, I've only even gotten maximum of 7 hits. And thats' after a couple of weeks. What gives? What's the trick to get something higher on the ratings? My friends who visit tell me "you should put this on the tours." Well, it already is. How do I get more people to see my Castle?
So I recently finished crafting my Watchtower Hall, and went nuts decorating it. However, no matter when I post it in Castle Tours, what time of day or what day of the week, I've only even gotten maximum of 7 hits. And thats' after a couple of weeks. What gives? What's the trick to get something higher on the ratings? My friends who visit tell me "you should put this on the tours." Well, it already is. How do I get more people to see my Castle?
There are so many castles in the tours that getting a rating high enough to appear seemingly takes a powerful wizard to accomplish. What I find upsetting is that some of those ranked are more or less junk (stuff just tossed everywhere with no sort of planning to it) or might be somewhat bare (sometimes not having enough items to qualify for the tours).
When someone suggests that you put your castle(s) in the tours, let them know that you did and then ask them to go visit random castles to try to come to yours. In all fairness, ask that they don't give bad ratings to others just for the sake of trying to help you. Either give an honest rating, or don't rate it. Something that can help is to have some friends who will do that early on, within the first few hours, because then they can narrow it down to houses added in the last day or something.
However, no matter when I post it in Castle Tours, what time of day or what day of the week, I've only even gotten maximum of 7 hits. And thats' after a couple of weeks. What gives? What's the trick to get something higher on the ratings? My friends who visit tell me "you should put this on the tours." Well, it already is. How do I get more people to see my Castle?
