Awards / Shop

[Cthulhu]

So I just took a look at vBExperience, probably the largest / most elaborate shop-like system out thar right now. In essence, it awards people 'points' for actions, such as posts, filling in his profile fields, friends, visitor messages, pictures, referrers, and a shitload of other factors, including one for another hack that (I think) allows people to 'thank' others for being helpful and one for PayPal donations.

Based on the amount of points, people are stuck into a ranking system, where they can reach 'levels' based on the above named points. The amount of points and levels and such can be configured rather precisely - I have a 'level 2' setting right now, but I think that would be a bit too low for us, considering Mumble is at level 56 with my database backup of right after the move on my local system, .

Next up is an Awards system, where people can be awarded awards for a certain action or statistic. Basically, if you're the highest in, say, 'Activity', you get the Activity award. Although I'm not quite sure how that works at the moment, can't really say I have a lot of examples right now. People can get awards for a wide range of factors, and all combinations thereof, including activity, uploaded pictures, reputation, visitor messages, and some others I cba to list.

Next feature is a shop of sorts, which can initially be used to buy stuff like plushies and other visual stuff that can be added to one's profile and (optionally) postbit. I'm not sure how easy it would be to add behaviour based on a user's purchased icons, I'd have to look into that. But people can purchase these items based on either their overall score ('experience', I assume) or a particular score in a particular area, say, Activity - so that for example we could add items that can only be bought by people who are very active. There's also a PayPal points category, which could - I think - be spent by people who have donated. Basically, that would allow people to buy points to spend in the shop.

I find the latter option a bit meh, but I dunno yet. It could, with some work, add quite a lot of functionality to the forums. But first though, I'd like to hear from you - do you really want a shop / awards? Points? Ranking? that kinda stuff?

We'll discuss which awards and items should / will be added in some other thread, imho. First though, do you want a shop / this hack to be installed?

 

[Pixel]

Is this a hack that would have to be fixed every time vB is updated? Thats one that annoyed me about ACF's, especially the plushies and stuff.

I think the shop is useful for things like name changes a stuff, so i think it'd be nice to have

 

[Cthulhu]

I think that it's at the very least a lot better supported than the one used by ACF. I looked at the code of that one, and it was rather horrid and far from professional. This particular one is very extensive and properly supported, it seems, also considering it's available for 3.8, which hasn't been out for that long yet.

As for name changes, I've asked in the topic on vb.org about that and similar features - the basic question being 'can you check if a user owns a certain item' in templates and such. At the very least, plushies and whatnot can be bought, which were quite popular back on ACF, and have been requested on here quite a few times. Seeing that I'm sure you and some others still have a load of the graphics for those, we'd have a pretty decent amount to start out with.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

If there can be extra points awarded for posting/discussion on the FF boards compared to the general boards, I'm all for it.

 

[Cthulhu]

I checked it out, and as far as I can tell, you can't award 'extra' points for specific forums (although that would be a feature worth adding). You can however indicate sections that should be ignored when calculating points - I'd certainly consider the welcome, clubs and general chat sections for exclusion.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Please do. Set it up so points are awarded for the FF sections only.

 

[Cthulhu]

Now you put it that way, that would work. Of course, I'd also give out points for stuff placed in Active Projects (due to frontpage / site improvements) and News Reports (for obvious reasons).

It would also be possible to add a hack that works with this system which allows people to say 'thank you' with an award of sorts, so that whilst nobody gets posts for posting in the Feedback & Suggestions section itself, they would get for posting helpful suggestions (to be awarded by staff) and for members that provide good solutions for problems - thus further encouraging good behavior.

Also, people will lose a load of points when they receive infractions, =D. Right now, it's set so they'll lose 100 points per infraction point, which is kinda a lot considering people only get 2 for posts.

 

[CK]

I checked it out, and as far as I can tell, you can't award 'extra' points for specific forums (although that would be a feature worth adding). You can however indicate sections that should be ignored when calculating points - I'd certainly consider the welcome, clubs and general chat sections for exclusion.

But I don't post in the ff sections. D:

 

[Max Payne]

But I don't post in the ff sections. D:

sounds like a personal problem dood

 

[Ⓐaron]

I think just giving moar points for poasting in certain sections would be a better idea than disabling them in General Chat entirely; there are several substantive discussions in thar as well as spammy stuff like Chit Chat and whatnot. If we implement this we'll probably also start having to enforce moar substantive posts, like requiring at least a brief description of/reaction to music in the now playing thread as was done on ACF or some such

 

[CK]

sounds like a personal problem dood

*cutcut* lol

 

[Cat Rage Room]

I think just giving moar points for poasting in certain sections would be a better idea than disabling them in General Chat entirely; there are several substantive discussions in thar as well as spammy stuff like Chit Chat and whatnot. If we implement this we'll probably also start having to enforce moar substantive posts, like requiring at least a brief description of/reaction to music in the now playing thread as was done on ACF or some such

I'm not saying that there's no such thing as substantial discussion on the General Chat boards, but that's not what this site is about, this site is about Final Fantasy, so people should only be 'awarded' for discussing just that, Final Fantasy. Why sugar coat it?

Besides, giving more points in one section than another doesn't seem possible anyway.

 

[Ⓐaron]

That's absurd. Activity is activity. If the only activity encouraged is Final Fantasy activity, then people who get bored of Final Fantasy will get bored of the site. I definitely wouldn't have stuck around ACF so long if there had been less non-Final Fantasy-related discussion.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

So basically you're saying that the only incentive to posting at all is to receive some 'award'? That's the entire point of the award system, getting some sort of 'bonus' for doing certain things, in this instance, contributing discussing Final Fantasy. Not getting such a bonus for General Chat shouldn't impede discussion in General Chat.

 

[Ⓐaron]

of course it's not the only incentive, but people who continually provide quality discussion outside the Final Fantasy forums should still be rewarded. Saying people should only be rewarded for participating in Final Fantasy discussion is, quite frankly, elitist.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Based on what logic, considering that this is a Final Fantasy site? Why should there be a bonus for that?

Keep in mind the vernacular we're using, 'reward', and 'bonus'.

 

[Tetsujin]

Well, the way it seems, you can only either allow or not allow award points for a section.

And tbh, it makes sense to give extra points for contributing to the main subject of this site.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

That's already understood, though.

And tbh, it makes sense to give extra points for contributing to the main subject of this site.

Thank you.

 

[Alex]

Oh get off your high horse you elitist prick.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

But it feels so good.

But seriously, that's my stance. Any word on the progress of this implementation?

 

[Cthulhu]

I think just giving moar points for poasting in certain sections would be a better idea than disabling them in General Chat entirely; there are several substantive discussions in thar as well as spammy stuff like Chit Chat and whatnot. If we implement this we'll probably also start having to enforce moar substantive posts, like requiring at least a brief description of/reaction to music in the now playing thread as was done on ACF or some such

Besides, giving more points in one section than another doesn't seem possible anyway.

^this. Well, it would be possible, but it would require a load of custom coding - and having to dive into the (shit) code of vB just to add that... I'll pass, kthx.

Also, I'm far more elitist than you bastards will ever be, .

Note that I can get V's opinion on the matter - topics in General Chat, Entertainment, Arts, and what-have-you certainly do constitute awarding in the form of, in this case, points to spend on pixels, but it wouldn't technically be proper to implement it as intended.

Off course, it would be possible to just add the spam section. But remind me again, why didn't we have a spam section in the first place?

(I know the answer, just testing you lot here)

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Note that I can get V's opinion on the matter - topics in General Chat, Entertainment, Arts, and what-have-you certainly do constitute awarding in the form of, in this case, points to spend on pixels, but it wouldn't technically be proper to implement it as intended.

Wait huh? Can you rephrase this?

 

[CK]

@ yop draws activity away from the point of the forum, drama lama, etc etc.

 

[Alex]

Your stance is a ridiculous attempt to make the vast population of the forum who can't tell you all 222 shades of black of Sephiroth's coat shown in the latest ACC trailer feel inferior. Not a shocker given that it's you driving this proposal home but still it's a kind of asinine stance for a member of staff to be in.

 

[Alex]

Wait huh? Can you rephrase this?

He means they justify rewards too, not just your precious FF boards. Too bad, cry moar.