Club Penguin Discussion – What's Wrong With Recent Parties?

Recently on Twitter, Spike Hike asked what parties we would like to see on Club Penguin in the Future. As I looked through answers from the community, I figured it is a perfect time to make a Club Penguin Discussion, titled "What's Wrong With Recent Parties?".

Parties are a major part of Club Penguin. While visuals of the parties are improving a lot, recent parties are a lot more different than how it used to be. So, what's so different about it?

As you probably know, the Team has always been using a same party format every time. They give you very simple tasks to complete, mascots to meet and items to collect. Then when you're finished, there's nothing left to do. This has started since mid 2013. Some tasks may be simple, but from time-to-time there are also some really time consuming ones. Such as the Hollywood Party 2013, where you had to take hundreds of pictures over the span of at least an hour or two just to get the free items. During the Fair in 2014, players had to accumulate 53,450 to collect at least one of every item. These tasks may be simple, taking photos, playing games to earn tickets, but they are all really time consuming. Not everyone has that much time in their busy lives to spend just to collect items. As Trainman1405 said: "...we may not have time for Club Penguin each and every day. We might have a lot of homework some nights, we might be busy playing with friends on the weekends, maybe you have after school sports, maybe your parents limit your time spent on the computer, or maybe you have a family night or other hobbies outside of the computer."

List of prizes during The Fair in February 2014

Transformations made everyone amazed when it first released. During the Holiday Party 2012, everyone could transform into Road Racers while only members could transform into Reindeer Puffles and Frost Bites. Everyone was having so much fun with them. Soon, Club Penguin is reusing transformations a lot. While I'm not complaining since they tend to release many different transformations from time to time, as Riyita said "...those things only really provide you with a few minutes worth of content at the most".

A homepage slide from the Holiday Party 2012 which features the Road Racer, Reindeer 
Puffle and Frost Bite transformations.

It seems like the system of parties is stuck in a frame, and the team is reusing it: collecting item, meeting characters, watching performance and transforming. So, what can the Team do to revive parties?

One straight-forward method suggested by the community is to create original and unique parties. A School & Skate Party may be an original party, but why would someone want a school-related party in a game? It's like Club Penguin is being humanized to Club Human, mascots now need clothes, puffles are now related to animals, dinosaurs etc. What happened to the unique ideas from the Team?

The Orange Tabby Cat and the Blue Border Collie

Club Penguin parties also need content that attracts players to login again, such as features or interactivity which players think are cool. Who doesn't like travelling on a Hot Air Balloon again and again to the never-before-seen Tallest Mountain during the Festival Of Flight 2009? How cool was it when you break through Herbert's Fortress as an Elite Penguin Force agent during Operation: Blackout? Don't you like it during the Great Snow Race when a sled racing competition was used as a disguise for a secret PSA mission behind it? 

The Hot Air Balloon Ride to the Tallest Mountain during the Festival of Flight 2009

Different mazes or other challenging puzzles attract players too. But the difficulty of the challenges shouldn't be too easy nor too hard. During the Frozen Party 2014, players had to collect snowflakes to earn items. But the snowflakes all stood out in the rooms. Players took little time to find all snowflakes and were left nothing to do. Yes, this is not as time consuming as previous party tasks but then players have nothing to do, and there isn't other interactive features left in the parties than there used to.

The oversized snowflakes during the Frozen Party 2014

So that pretty wraps up my opinion on what's wrong with recent parties. The whole system of "Completing Tasks, Meeting Mascots and Collecting Items" needs to be replaced. That can be hard, but I hope you guys can figure something out and try something different. Think out of the box, We Believe In You!

What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

P.S. How many times can you find the word "time" in this post? :P