Serious Feedback for ARCADE

[Abhishek213]

Hello Team, @Yugali  @Lauren_vdv @carrie 

This recent arcade cohort was incredibly challenging, unlike any previous experience. Most significantly, key prizes were consistently out of stock, which was unprecedented. The program managers altered rules frequently—invalid skill badges and sudden additions like the monsoon challenge resulted in substantial point deductions, approximately 10-15 points. Many participants, including myself, faced this issue after completing badges early.

It felt like this time, there were extensive experiments, making participants feel like test subjects. It's crucial to establish and maintain consistent rules from the start rather than changing them frequently. The inclusion of skill badges beyond g-ames was particularly problematic; it might be better to limit them to g--ames only. Additionally, there's room for improvement in the chat support as they often use templated responses.

Several members of my community experienced unexplained point deductions, despite meeting requirements. It's frustrating when mistakes aren't acknowledged, and rules keep changing abruptly.

IMPORTANT POINTS TO BE NOTED-

• Large traffic of participants are INDIAN and mostly prize counters open at late morning or afternoon 5pm to 10Pm but this time you guys sent at 5am also the swags abruptly went out of stocks people coun't even read mail nicely
• You sent voucher code instead of claim emails due to which desk collective went out of stock many people were waiting for it (I know its First come firstserve butwhose fault is this for sending voucher code)
• You took extra time still you provide inacccurate points you are saying your calculator is wrong event a kid can count and tell the points are correct and not duplicate (from public profile)
• Regarding duplicate badge - While you were posting a lot of swags images you could have posted regarding this why sudden changes 
• No proper acknowledgement of faults Last time when Learn to earn data challenge failed @emily927  Publicly apologized and provided higher tier prizes but you are not doing so (NOTE that time also there was public holiday still she posted us and calmed the community) But none of the people looked here
• This type of  behaviour many lead to loss of old participants although it won't affect google cloud  much 
• But  we were a part of qwiklabs since it has 1k subscribers only and 50 followers on twitter .

If you guyz are planning for 2024 some tips for you

• make rules fixed no change at middle or end of g---ame
• Remove skill badges just add g   ame  points

This was not what we were waiting for you ruined new year of many and I am taking on behalf of 100K+ people out there .

A request to all do share your genuine  experience in linkedin too