Maybe I am not the first one to write about the topic, but it always seemed quite a incomprehensible Concept for me. Im talking about the points distribution regarding “new clozes learned” and “repeated clozes”. When facing a new cloze you gain 4 points, each further repetition gets you 4 more. In my opinion the problem is, that it pays much more for doing the easier part (repeating) and therefore much less for the hard and stressfull part (seeing a new sentence and not understanding 1-2 words). This also leads to the tendency, that many seasonal leaderboards are getting dominated by advanced learners, who only want to keep their language skills and dont put as much effort into the grind, as newer learners. In my opinion this seems kind of contrary to how it should be. Nevertheless there maybe are some reasons, for why its that way, they honestly didnt come into my mind yet. What do you guys think? (Besides that the whole topic obviously doesnt affect the actual learning and therefore isnt that important.)
To be precise, you get 4, then 8, then 12, then 16 points if you’re playing in multiple choice mode, double that if you’re playing in text input mode.
As your skill in the language increases so do (1) the time between repetitions, and (2) what you expect from yourself. When you encounter a word that you’ve seen several times before, you have a higher expectation from yourself that you should know it. This is true even though it has been longer since you last saw it. So if higher points are a reward for successfully dealing with greater difficulty, arguably it makes sense that you should receive more points for having to get a word right half a year after you’ve last seen it, even though you know you’ve seen it a number of times before (which may only serve to increase the stress you place on yourself).
Another way to look at it is that review may be less inherently compelling than learning new words, but is also important. Granting more points for successful answers for successive reviews helps encourage people to review, something they should be doing anyway, but might otherwise neglect.
I think that dividing people into beginning and advanced learners is not the most accurate way to look at things. Ideally, advanced learners will play at a higher level (for example, Fast Track 10 instead of Fast Track 1) to challenge themselves, so some of their advantage will be counteracted. Dividing players into novices and veterans makes more sense when looking at how points are granted; novices earn fewer points per correct answer than veterans do (provided those veterans don’t do so badly at remembering words that their advantage is cancelled out). But in any case, Clozemaster players do not belong to two permanently separate groups. Someone who is a novice now will be a veteran later. So if you’re bothered by a slower accumulation of points now, your reward is the chance to earn points faster in the future.
I must admit that because I discovered the site a relatively long time ago and have been playing ever since, I benefit from the “veteran advantage”. However, I think it’s reasonable for Clozemaster to encourage people to stay around for the long term in this way. Since I believe this coincides with what’s better for us as language learners, I don’t have a problem with it.