Hello everyone!
I just started playing Pikmin Bloom about three weeks ago, and I absolutely love it. It has been a fantastic tool for motivating my friends and me to walk together, plant flowers, and complete quests. My favorite part of the game by far is tackling the weekly challenges as a group.
However, because the flower planting challenge currently only offers a single option of 30,000 flowers, it is extremely easy to achieve. With an active group of five, we almost always finish the challenge by Tuesday. Since the goal is capped so low and ends so early in the week, we lose a bit of that shared momentum and drive to push ourselves for the remaining days.
I would love to suggest an expansion to the weekly challenge system to keep active groups engaged all week long:
1. Uncapped Flower Counting
Instead of the challenge simply stopping once the goal is reached, please allow the flower count to continue accumulating until the end of the week.
2. Regional and Global Leaderboards
To make this continuous counting meaningful, it would be amazing to have a regional (per city/country) and global leaderboard showing the total flower count of different teams. This would give active groups a reason to keep pushing harder and continue planting together all week.
3. Tiered Rewards
The rewards for placing on the leaderboard wouldn’t need to be massive at first. Small incentives like a few extra coins, petals, or nectar would be a great start. If the competitive aspect proves popular and increases game engagement, you could eventually introduce higher-tier rewards for placing first globally or regionally, such as special titles or exclusive Decor Pikmin.
4. Addressing the Anti-Cheat Hurdle
I understand that Pikmin Bloom currently lacks a highly competitive element, likely because introducing competition requires a strong cheat detection system. I also realize that step-counting is incredibly difficult to moderate (since people can use phone shakers).
Because of this, I suggest basing the competition entirely on flower planting rather than steps. Since flower planting relies on actual GPS movement and location data, Niantic could potentially utilize the existing location-based anti-cheat systems already present in your other games to make a fair flower-planting contest feasible.
Thank you for making such a great game, and I hope you consider giving active groups a way to keep the momentum going all week!