The Difficulties of Discovering Parkour, Adventure, Puzzle and Story Realms

*MMS

TL;DR at the bottom.

Hello, I’m *MMS! I’ve recently come back to Cubic Castles after leaving in 2017 (the last update I remember was the cars one).

After spending a little over two weeks back in the game, I’ve noticed that it’s much harder to find parkour, adventure, puzzle and story (I’m going to abbreviate this at PAPS for the remainder of this post) realms than it was previously.

These realms were what I loved most about Cubic Castles, so I wanted to give my two cents on the situation that I’ve observed and provide some possible suggestions on improving the situation surrounding PAPS realms :)

Disclaimers

- This is not meant to be a personal attack on the devs or the community.
- I’ve been back to the game for two weeks (i.e. my knowledge is likely incomplete.)
- I understand I came back at a weird time (right after Easter) so there are no ongoing events. I’ve scrolled through the Events/Contests category to familiarize myself a bit with what I’ve missed.
- I apologize if what I wrote is repetitive from what someone else wrote (haven't had time to search through many forum posts)
- I think part of the lack of popularity of PAPS realms is due to most activity in Cubic Castles revolving around the economy, which I’ve garnered from watching the Hollas. However, this post isn’t about bringing the economic element of CC down (there’s nothing wrong with trading!) Rather, it’s about raising the PAPS realms up :D
- I think a lot of this post can be applied to all realms, but I wanted to specifically focus on PAPS since they are what I love the most and seem to have fallen out more than shops have.

The Greatness of PAPS Realms

What makes PAPS realms different from shops/visual realms (nothing wrong with those types of realms, they just have a different purpose) is that they have a clear goal.

There’s a parkour to beat.
There’s an adventure to be had.
There’s a puzzle to be solved.
There’s a story you follow.

I loved the satisfaction of hitting that guestbook bumper after and marking my place at the end of that journey, and I also loved bringing friends along with me.

Back when I played CC in 2016/2017, I loved seeing the creativity of various PAPS realms and the stories their creators chose to share. The diverse item sets in Cubic Castles meant that all sorts of themed PAPS realms could be made, from desert adventures to dungeons to so many more that I can’t remember off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many new PAPS realms that I haven’t played before as well.

You don’t need anything special to complete a PAPS realm - just your Qbee and time.

The Difficulties

After coming back to the game, I felt like PAPS realms had fallen out since I last played. I found it difficult to find new PAPS realms to explore, and I think a large reason for this is the new overworld system.

Before the Overworlds update, there used to be a few overworlds where QBee’s could place their realms without cost, with the realm decaying after a certain amount of time. You could filter by realm types, the number of players currently in the realm, star ratings and more. And, given the vast nature of each Overworld, you could teleport directly to realms via the Sky Map.

Most of my time on Cubic Castles would be spent looking for or doing PAPS realms with friends. I would jump to the overworld and filter for PAPS realms, then spend hours invested in PAPS.

The new overworld system is tough (for me, at least) to find PAPS realms, for several reasons:

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Searching

- Searching doesn’t have intelligence behind it. For example, searching for “superx” will not yield any of “superxtreme” ’s realms. This makes things incredibly difficult to search because the exact spelling of the realm name is needed to find it.
- Hyphens aren’t allowed to be searched for, but there are realms with hyphens in their name. One of my friends and I wanted to tackle a realm he remembered being called “Co-op Course” but we can’t find this realm since we can’t search for hyphens. And as mentioned in the previous point, we can’t search “op Course” either.
- Searching (both realms and overworlds) will sometimes yield a blank page. I’ve been met with a blank white screen several times after searching. From a UX standpoint, this is pretty bad since I don’t know what went wrong - did my Internet connection fail? is there a problem with the servers? or did my search yield no results? (This is less about PAPS and just a general improvement.)
- There’s no easy way to filter PAPS realms apart from searching keywords like “Parkour” or “Course”, and even then I know that not all PAPS realms use these terms.

I’m not sure if the searching algorithm changed between the time I left and now - but splitting realms into purchasable Overworlds has made the searching feature more important for realm discovery than it was with the Sky Map.

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General Overworld Comments

- Realms are now split into Overworlds and the Sky Map is gone altogether, making it difficult to search for realms in Overworlds. There’s no way to tell whether there’s a good PAPS in an Overworld unless you jump in and walk around to check all the realms. I’d also wager many good PAPS realms are not placed in any Overworld, meaning they’re even harder to find.
- Overworlds feel too big without quick ways to traverse them. Whereas previously you could teleport to any realm/mine via the Sky Map, without that feature it feels too time-consuming to walk around to each realm spot to see what it is.

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To summarize, I think that the fall of PAPS realms can partially be attributed to the lack of realm visibility caused by the Overworld update.
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Solutions/Suggestions

Here are a couple of ideas I brainstormed to bring PAPS realms up again.
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Overworld Suggestions

- Add some official global overworlds that work the same as the old system: realm decay, a few mines and all. This would allow people to advertise their realms (PAPS and other), while also making it easier for players to find these realms. However, the spots should still be relatively competitive so that custom overworlds still have value. If necessary, put the spots behind a cheap paywall similar to rentals.
- Allow users to add tags to their overworlds. Something like a small icon on the overworld search that would indicate to players, “Hey, this Overworld has a shop and a parkour, so you should check it out!” I grabbed some store assets and mocked this up:



- Create a skymap for every Overworld with the ability to filter by tags and by the current number of players for each Overworld’s realms.
- Allow players to teleport around said Skymap. This would help them explore the realms in the Overworld faster and reduce the time it takes to walk around.
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Search Suggestions

- Have some way to search for tagged popular realms (parkour, adventure, puzzle, story, shop, etc.) This makes it easier to find new realms. (I couldn’t think of a way to easily design this into the UI).
- Show number of active users in a realm. Maybe as a column next to the realm’s search results - I think something like this used to be there, but here's another concept:



- Make searches smarter: If you search for part of a word, it should show all realms that have part of that word (see “superx” example above)
- Have a message for when no results matched that search instead of a white screen.
- I don’t know if this is a programming issue or not, but being able to search with hyphens would be stellar (or when considering search inputs and results, don’t consider them. i.e. “coop” would show realms with “co-op”)

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Conclusion

(TL;DR) PAPS (parkour, adventure, puzzles and story) realms are a fantastic part of the game, but unfortunately, seem to have fallen out of popularity. I think that a major part of this is due to the lack of visibility these PAPS realms get due to the Overworld update, and I think that adding tags for realms/overworlds and improving search would help to boost the popularity of PAPS realms.

Thank you for reading my post on PAPS realms - please feel free to share your thoughts :)

MEEPYZ

+1, all of this is very needed, I remember popular realms used to show how many players were there, I don't know why that was removed, and bringing back the skymap is great idea, also love the visual aids.

melting

+1

i am larrys

+1

Lychee the Fruit

+1, definitely needed this

Lanlieli

+1 , i miss the skymap everything was easier and better from my point and i love the new ideas you wrote

DjCatHD

+1

lukgossss

Not really becouse if you have daily hollas in your shop or parkour you don't need this what you wrote, exactly we got this overworld update for not use anymore skymap.

*MMS

lukgossss said:

Not really becouse if you have daily hollas in your shop or parkour you don't need this what you wrote, exactly we got this overworld update for not use anymore skymap.

(Speaking as a parkour owner) I agree that hollas can be used to occasionally advertise parkours, but using hollas as a consistent way to promote parkours just doesn't work the same way it does for shops. When you set up parkour holla, you have to spend cubits on the holla, organize prizes and prize machines, and be in the realm while people complete the parkour (which takes at least 30 minutes and can last over an hour, from my experience). I've personally never seen a parkour holla without a prize promise. A parkour holla is always going to result in a cubit loss unless you somehow get enough donations to compensate (which has never happened to me. Sometimes because people don't donate, but mostly because the cost of running one of these events is expensive). Furthermore, the parkour doesn't change as shop items do - and I don't want the same people coming to my parkour to get a prize day in and day out.

This post is speaking more to when I just want to do parkour for the sake of doing the parkour and racing/challenging my friends. I did notice there was a parkour overworld (Kewbin's "Parkourlandia") which I plan on tackling, but I know there are dozens more that aren't in an overworld and that don't have owners that are constantly making hollas for their realm.

For the other three (adventure, puzzle and story), I haven't seen any hollas relating to these and have been playing several hours per day for the past few weeks. If I were to guess, I'd say it was because hollas for these realms would be difficult to monitor (they usually span multiple rooms and depending on the realm, can take over an hour to complete) and because their prize setup would be similar to the parkour one I mentioned above. Also as a player, I also wouldn't want to drop everything I was doing whenever I saw a PAPS (-parkour) holla and dedicate the next hour to it. I'd want to explore and schedule it in my own time. However, since there are no consistent naming schemes for these kinds of realms, they're near impossible to find in the new Overworld system.

TL;DR I disagree that hollas enable the promotion of PAPS realms since a) they aren't sustainable for their owners to maintain and b) PAPS (-parkour) clash with the nature of hollas. PAPS (-parkour) realms aren't always about the race, they're more often about the journey through the realms and rooms that someone has carefully crafted together.

Using hollas as the only means of realm discovery also doesn't... sound right. It should be the best/fastest way, but having no other workable alternatives in-game for sharing and finding creations (IMO, due to the issues the Overworld update caused ^) feels a bit odd.

Lucas The Spider

Here's an idea, make some :')

*MMS

Lucas The Spider said:

Here's an idea, make some :')

That's not the root problem I'm talking about here... The root problem is lack of exposure of these PAPS realms from the Overworld update, which then discourages people from building more PAPS realms. Why would someone spend hours planning, building and testing something when no one is going to see it? This is a barrier for me now as well - some of my friends and I want to build a neat story realm but are worried it won't get enough exposure and thus, won't be worth building.

Also, I realized I was only replying to disagreeing posts - thanks to everyone who gave their +1. I felt like I was taking a shot in the dark while writing this but it makes me glad to know others feel the same and want to improve the game <3

I'm open to discussing with anyone who disagrees or doesn't like these ideas too - it's an interesting discussion and brings in more points of view to see what players want :)