Hey everybody!
Disclaimer: I have no inside info on DB6While I would love to be neutral about this, I really can't. I invested way too much time into the DB5 back-end to not be hurt by "nothing about this new challenge system works. The entire thing needs to be scrapped, and someone else needs to build an entirely new system for next year.".
However, that was the "problem" in the first place. This was all new technology and nobody quite knew how to best use it, or what would happen until the event started. A lot of the issues early in the run were due to the immense load that you can only truly get during the actual event. But now that we have tested all this new tech, we can improve it. Throwing it out would just cause DB6 to be another crazy mess of figuring everything out yet again.
So yes, allowing donors to modify their challenges is a great idea. That would add some of the interactivity back in, as it is incredibly hard to talk to users individually on the chat. This year, it was either accept or deny, there was no easy way to negotiate. Near the end, we were also doing dedicated "challenge time", much like there was "auction time" and "call-in time". That seemed to work pretty well.
For those wondering about pricing,
as far as I know there is no guidelines on challenge prices. It is really up to "do we feel like doing this?", with higher prices making the crew more likely to say yes to something they don't really feel like doing, either because it is a lot of effort or is slightly inconvenient.
And one final note, if you EVER have a concern about anything during Desert Bus, PLEASE PM ME. I had no time to read this thread until I got back home, but had a single person PM'd me with their issue there MAY have been a chance to do something to help. I read every PM I got all of desert bus, and the majority of what was said in the chat.
tl;dr - Don't hate the challenge system - think of ways to make it better, offer as much money for your challenge as you think it is worth, PM ME
PS. While I did read the whole thread, it was kind of hard to get a feel for all the issues people brought up, so if you have anything else you want me to answer, just ask.