We’ve been hard at work improving the NPC site to bring you a whole bunch of new and exciting features that I’ve been wanting to work on for a long time. Let’s cover all of what’s available to you now:
Leaders
We used to send e-mails every week to anyone subscribed giving a heads up view around the league. Most weeks there wasn’t much to talk about outside of “who did awesome” around the league, so we thought: why not surface that?
We now have on the Stats page (available from the heading nav) and the homepage a listing of who “won” their league every night. This (and other features) pull data from matchplay nightly, so you should appear here the next day after league. If you got a perfect week, we even highlight you with a fun border!
In addition to that, people have also asked since Season One “where am I in the overall NPC standings”. While there’s really no concept of “overall standings” because we are all unique leagues, I admit it was fun to try to figure out how we all “matched up” points wise season to season. So, now we have a combined leaderboard on the Stats page, and the top 25 overall on the homepage.
In addition, we’ve shaded the top 4 players at each location in gold, silver, bronze, or purple – so you know those people are doing well in their local competition, too!
Clicking on a player’s name in either of those lists brings you to our next new feature…
Player Profiles
Player profiles are a great way to see how you’ve done in your NPC journey. You can easily see all leagues and seasons you’ve played in, what your best seasons were, and where you are currently or ended up in the past. We even show you a week by week tracker of your scores, what weeks you missed, and where you dropped weeks. For past seasons, you can see where you finished points wise in the league and the overall NPC point totals!
From there, the last new feature is something I’ve wanted ever since I’ve started playing competitive pinball…
Achievements
Video game players are already familiar with the concept, but achievements are fun little awards that celebrate participation, achievement, failure, and our community and our place in it. Achievements celebrate the weird and wacky things that happen when playing pinball and in a league, and they’re meant to be fun little things that give you a smile or an encouragement to keep playing! Application of this concept to pinball was pioneered by PAPA and FSPA, and I knew I wanted that fun little metagame aspect for NPC as well, so we built it.
Achievements show on the league leaderboard, but really shine on your player profile. There, you’ll see all the achievements you’ve earned, when you earned them, and special achievements (either obscure or ones to be celebrated) will be shown at the top of your player profile! Rare achievements will have a gold shine on them, so you know you’ve done something that most of the league hasn’t! And tapping on an achievement will show you who else has done it, or sort by awards to see how many times a player has done it! Click view all achievements in your profile to see what percentage of the league has done what. We hope you enjoy earning and exploring these
As of this writing, NPC is launching with over 68 achievements to find, earn, and collect.
Privacy
We understand that not all players will want to be visible on the site, or participate in achievements. In addition to asking crawlers not to index this content, we have built foundational tools to remove achievements if you don’t want to participate, and to remove your name and information from appearing in profiles at all. While all of this data is already public on Matchplay, we respect and understand if you don’t want to participate. Simply e-mail profile@npcpinball.org with a request to be hidden or to remove your achievements and we will comply as quickly as we can. Additionally, just let your site admin know your preference and they will pass it along to staff.
We hope you enjoy these new fun features on the site, and look forward to sharing Grand Finals information in the next few weeks. Until then, enjoy the last few sessions of Season Three, and good luck at your location finals!
Derek Correia, Vice Dictator, NPC