Deep Dive into Quest Log Design & Maintenance on Neopets.com

TNT Luna: We understand that the past few days have been frustrating for many of you, and we deeply appreciate your patience as we worked through these issues. The Neopets Team’s goal has always been to foster an engaging and balanced gameplay experience, but we recognize that unexpected downtime, communication lapses, and changes to long-standing features have led to disappointment and confusion. We hear you. Many of us on the team are players ourselves—we love this game just as much as you do, and we are committed to building a long-lasting, thriving version of it. We know that trust is built through transparency, accountability, and thoughtful dialogue, which is why the team has put together an AMA we hope to use as an opportunity to openly address your concerns, explain the decisions we’ve made, and most importantly, show that we are committed to both learning from these experiences and the community. 
 

TNT Luna: What happened with the maintenance on Sunday, February 23, 2025? Why weren’t we notified?

TNT Sunpotato: Our development team encountered an issue with one of our servers not working properly and we had to do emergency maintenance. The emergency maintenance happened over the weekend and at odd hours so the rest of our team wasn’t online to properly communicate this to players. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused! We will learn from this and account for these situations in the future.

TNT Luna: What was the maintenance for? Was it for any of the premium perks?

TNT Dingo: The maintenance performed on February 23, 2025 was to solve an issue with inconsistent data that affected multiple pre-existing areas of the site and was not related to any new features or premium perks. The features released the following week had already been in development and were scheduled to be released before we were aware that the emergency maintenance would be performed. Additionally, because this maintenance was not planned, we did not have time to take into consideration how it might affect our scheduled releases, and unfortunately, our Streak Save Ticket launch suffered as a result.

In general, if we have to bring the site down for maintenance, it is for changes that will be invisible to the user once the site is back online. There have been rare occasions where the downtime is directly related to an update that is being launched, but it is usually safer to assume that any downtime, planned or unplanned, will not result in immediate visible changes. We don’t always talk about what is undergoing maintenance during these periods of downtime because it is usually either very mundane and/or difficult to explain or it may reveal too much information about our systems that could open us up to unwanted attacks.

TNT Luna: Why did our Quest Log and Trudy’s Surprise progress get reset?

TNT Dingo: Due to complications involving the unplanned maintenance period, many Premium users were forced to use their newly granted Streak Save Tickets immediately upon launch after being unable to log in during downtime. We had not predicted the downtime before scheduling the release date of this feature, we felt it was unfair that most users were starting out with a deficit in tickets right from the beginning. In addition, there were also issues with users being unable to claim their Weekly Reward after the Streak Save Ticket launch. Because of this, we wanted to ensure that anyone who used a Streak Save Ticket would be able to claim their reward, as well as gain back any Streak Save Tickets used as a result of the downtime.

We noted that it would not be right to fix streaks and grant prizes only to Premium members, so we made the decision to just grant rewards to everyone who had an active Weekly Streak and reset streaks so that all users could be on the same page. Because the maintenance period affected Trudy’s as well, we extended this same grant to Trudy’s Surprise.

TNT Luna: Why did the prize grants take so long?

TNT Dingo: For these kinds of things we have to sit there and press a button over and over to run a script that performs the grants. It is more effective to do this in chunks of about 4,000 usernames at a time because there is less risk for failure, and setting it up with failsafes to run without human interaction takes a lot longer. There were over 100,000 usernames to go through for both Quest Log and Trudy’s and it took about 10 minutes to run each batch. This one took even longer than expected, though, because we started late at night and after a couple of hours we were only a quarter of the way through with Quest Log and hadn’t even started the Trudy’s grants and we realized we needed sleep before continuing. ♡

The Trudy’s grant was a bit more difficult to work out and took some more careful consideration, which was why it did not end up starting until much later in the day. We wanted to make sure that it was done properly and with minimal possible errors. We were able to bring Quest Log back online early so that users could continue earning daily rewards, but we chose to keep Trudy’s offline until we were sure that everything was going to work properly.

TNT Luna: Why did some people get Quest Log prizes even if they hadn’t done any quests?

TNT Dingo: To gather data for the prize grants, we looked at anyone who had started a weekly streak in the last 7 days. Because there was some ambiguity about who had lost their streak due to maintenance and who hadn’t, we decided not to try to discern between who meant to lose their streak and who didn’t, which included anyone who might have had their streak reset due to maintenance and then decided not to start a new one. Technically any time you visit the Quest Log page, it updates your weekly streak data, so even if you did not complete any quests, it still shows that a streak was started on the day that you visited the Quest Log page. It would have been possible to use a cut off date to tell whether someone had not completed any quests before February 23, 2025 and excluded them from the grant, but there would still have been some cases of users who did not intend to start their weekly quests receiving prizes anyway. Some users in this group may not have had their prizes changed after the reset, but we hope that the expedited release of the re-roll feature will compensate for this!

TNT Luna: Why did some people get the wrong Quest Log item? Why didn’t my streak reset?

TNT Dingo: After reviewing some of these cases, we were able to determine that some users had instances of duplicate weekly streak entries on certain days, likely caused by some unintentional glitch, and sometimes with different prizes for each entry. Due to the way that we were ordering the data in our query, we ended up granting the first entry we saw rather than the entry that the user had been seeing. In these cases, users should have been able to continue progress on the item that they had been working towards, and we did not elect to attempt a second item grant as it may have been difficult to determine who all was affected by this. In some cases, users had duplicate entries with the same reward, so it may have appeared as though you got the correct item and your progress was still not reset. No one will be penalized for receiving an extra item, either. If you were not able to continue progress on the item that you think you should have gotten, you can submit a ticket to our Support team and we can resolve the issue for you!

TNT Luna: Will our streaks always be reset if there is maintenance downtime?

TNT Dingo: We are currently looking into ways to implement streak freezes whenever site downtime occurs. This has been an ongoing issue for years and it is not fair to penalize your hard work when we are the reason that your progress was lost. We currently have a rudimentary system in place for freezing dates for Quest Log, but it involves more human interaction than we would like, so we will be looking into additional solutions that can trigger streak freezes in the event of future unplanned downtime. We are not currently able to offer a timeline on when a permanent solution will be implemented, but in the meantime we intend to improve our internal communication regarding site downtime so we can act fast to preserve streaks and strive to schedule maintenance periods during our least active hours so that we can reduce impact.

TNT Luna: Why was the Weekly Reward re-roll removed from Quest Log?

TNT Dingo: When the Quest Log feature first launched in 2023, we received a lot of feedback from users in the first few days regarding the fact that the weekly prizes changed if the user did not start or complete their weekly streak. After consideration, we made the decision to have weekly prizes stay the same until a user completes their streak, both in an effort to reduce impact on the NP economy of the time and as a means for users who were not able to log in every day to keep their same weekly reward if they did not want it to change. At the end of October 2023, we implemented an update that was meant to prevent prizes from “re-rolling”, however there was a bug in the code that prevented the update from working as intended.

We were aware at the time that some users had taken notice of the fact that they could still “re-roll” their prize if they did it in a specific way, but we had to move on to other priorities and we did not have the bandwidth to take a second look at the bug. We knew that there was a small group of users who had found a way around our attempts at blocking weekly reward re-rolling, but we did not anticipate that it would take us almost a year and a half to revisit the Quest Log feature, nor did we anticipate that the knowledge on how to re-roll weekly rewards would become so widespread that our original attempt to remove it seemed nonexistent.

Admittedly, we now wish that we had reconvened on the importance of this change, since a lot of time had passed since the initial feedback and user sentiment has greatly shifted. We recognize that this change is just as impactful to the current NP economy as the original update, which is why we worked quickly to implement a proper Weekly Reward Re-Roll feature.

TNT Luna: Why was the ability to skip Daily Quests removed from Quest Log?

TNT Dingo: During a scheduled maintenance period on February 06, 2025, we made updates to the Quest Log feature that immediately impacted user experience. The site-wide downtime was originally planned to perform maintenance on our servers unrelated to Quest Log, but we decided to use this already scheduled period to perform some necessary updates to the Quest Log feature in preparation for new updates coming later next Month.

Part of this update required us to purge old quest data, and because of this we decided it was best to pre-emptively remove the ‘Completed’ tab from the Quest Log page. Showing every quest a user has ever completed puts strain on our servers and was not feasible long-term, so the removal of this tab had already been planned for some time. With this, we decided to also remove the ‘Skip Quest’ button from Daily Quests, because we didn’t want to incur situations in which users may accidentally skip quests and then have no way to track whether a quest was completed or skipped. We had received feedback from users that the Skip Quest button was more confusing than helpful, and with this in mind, it didn’t seem necessary to keep anymore.

When these code changes were deployed, it also included a fix for the long-standing bug that allowed for weekly rewards to be reset. While it was not technically necessary that the bug fix be deployed at the same time as removing the Completed tab and Skip Quest button, it was an issue that had been on our radar for some time and we felt it would be fine to deploy it along with the other updates.

TNT Luna: Why was the Weekly Reward re-roll called an “exploit”?

TNT Dingo: After the update on February 6, 2025, we learned that many users were employing the Skip Quest button to aid in ensuring that their weekly reward would be different when logging in the next day, and it gave the appearance that it was programmed that way intentionally. We would like to assure you all that the Skip Quest button was not programmed in a way that would cause weekly rewards to reset, even with the bug, and it was only ever intended as a way to clear quests from the feed if the user did not wish to complete them. In actuality, using the Skip Quest button was not necessary for triggering the weekly reward reset bug, it was merely caused by failing to finish at least one quest. We now understand that the phrasing on the Skip Quest confirmation popup gave the implication that by giving up your weekly reward, you would be given a new reward, but it was merely meant to convey that any *progress* toward that reward would be lost.

When we originally referred to the weekly reward resetting as an “exploit”, it was in reference to the fact that we had already attempted to prevent item-rerolling in the past and there was previous evidence that some users were aware of this and were purposefully getting around it. For us, the term “exploit” is value neutral and simply a technical term for bugs that involve workarounds to trigger. We had incorrectly estimated just how many people had become accustomed to letting their weekly rewards reset after purposefully failing quests, and we apologize for making the implication that anyone doing so was guilty of cheating. While the functionality was not intentional, we do not fault anyone for naturally assuming that the feature was working as expected.

TNT Luna: Why did it take so long to fix?

TNT Sunpotato: The team is always working on multiple things at a time, which means we need to prioritize tasks accordingly. We tried to set aside time for the fix but we had many priorities during that time, events, advent, plot, etc. that we had to prioritize first. Unfortunately, it meant not having the time to fix it until most recently with the other updates we had planned for the Quest Log.

TNT Luna: Will we ever get a Weekly Reward reroll feature?

TNT Sunpotato: Yes, the team already had plans for a reroll but with the reaction we have received from the community with the recent changes, we have decided to expedite the development for this and release sooner. We hope the community enjoys the new feature.

TNT Luna: How does the new Weekly Reward reroll work?

TNT Cookie: We have now built a proper reroll feature that reinstates the ability to reroll your weekly quest reward with some balancing and quality of life changes. The feature works by clicking a button located above the weekly reward image, which will open a popup that explains how the reroll works (more info can be found in the FAQs) and allows you to confirm your decision from there.

Starting off with the quality of life changes, players will no longer need to sacrifice any quests in order to reroll their prize, and you can do it multiple times on the same day. Additionally, you can reroll your reward at any time during your streak progression, and your progress will not be reset! The only time that you will not be able to reroll your prize is if you have already completed 7 days worth of quests, at which point you would need to wait until the next day to see your new prize. Another benefit we have added is that any prizes you reroll will not appear again until a new streak is started. The only time an item will show up again is if you have gone through the entire prize pool, at which point the prizes reset and you will be able to reroll through them all again. This is a hefty amount of changes that should make rerolling much easier for everyone, especially those trying to find specific items in the loot pool.

Now let’s get to the balancing of this feature. Because we are making it much easier to find the incredibly valuable items in the pool, we are introducing an NP cost. The initial reroll cost is set at 10,000 NP and doubles each time you reroll. There is a cap to how high this cost gets at 1 Million NP, but you can continue to reroll at 1 Million NP as many times as you wish. Do not fret though! To reset the reroll price, all you have to do is complete the weekly streak, at which point the NP cost will reset to 10,000 NP.

We understand that the new feature may not work exactly as what everyone was already used to, and may be less accessible with the added NP cost, but we would also like to assure everyone that we have more future plans to improve the Quest Log, including new types of quests that may make it more manageable to complete an entire streak!

TNT Luna: Is Weekly Reward reroll going to be put under premium?

TNT Sunpotato: There are currently no plans to lock the Weekly Reward reroll feature under premium. Sometimes it's hard to balance F2P and P2P. We are constantly working to bring the best experience to both sides. Please rest assured that we’d like to avoid locking the entirety of this feature behind a paywall. 

TNT Luna: Will we be getting our Neopies streaks fixed as well?

TNT Dingo: This is something we want to account for, but still need some time to look into whether it is technically feasible. We will share more information once we have made final decisions on how to handle it.

TNT Luna: We want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to read through our responses and share your feedback with us. Your voices matter, and while every decision we make is based on what we believe is best for the game’s long-term health, we recognize the importance of clearer communication and a more proactive approach to addressing concerns. We may not get everything right the first time, but the team has always been committed to refining our processes and improving how we handle unexpected challenges. We appreciate your passion, your patience, and your dedication to this community.

For additional information about Quest Log, please contact our customer support team or consult our FAQ section.