the following discussion took place in count to 100 just after i made this post:
camy999: 11. I kinda wish that I'd participated more [when the AP system was around]. I only ever got to Gold Serf rank. Also I just realized that my profiles sixth birthday passed by without my notice
armorplayergc: ne::two12) another thing, besides joining AG earlier, I wish I had also bought Minecraft earlier, I only started in 2012, I wish I had started like 3 years earlier, then I could be better on it too
Chryosten: 13. My laziness when it came to gaming is why I only managed to reach Gold Knight. There was the contributing factor of constantly posting in FG.
SirLegendary: 14. Wish I could be here more often, I'm trying.
as far as i understand from this, it was more fun to be active on ag when there were armor points. would this be a reason for bringing them back?
Spam according to AG's rules, can be short replies which are less than seven words. Why not configure the comments section to disallow users from posting until their comment is more than 7 words. Though, I'm not sure how that can be done because disqus is a third party comments system.
I forgot about the huge spamming days...(09/10)...but closer towards 11/12/13, there was moderate amount of Forum activity (Flash Games died down...), and less spam.
Of course, you'll now have to take into account Quests as well - Do we remove the heroboard, or integrate it in? I'm not really for removing the heroboard, and more for the latter.
I think Forum Quests might be a good start...something like post X times in X forums, etc. Might just be opening a can of worms for the rest of the mods, so I'm not too sure now....Hmmm.
But nothing seems to be happening at the moment. I guess the AG team is busy with PAX or something. Well, they've only pretty recently released the forum update (even though there are still some bugs to fix).
Right now we are working on something that will essentially distill Quests into a point system, which will eventually lead to ranks. If you guys have ideas on how you'd like this system to work, we can't promise we'll be able to do all of them, but feel free to discuss and I'll bookmark this thread.
Well, my general idea is that this point system should take both community activity and game stats into account. I know it is not something new alright, but all things considered this will not only promote community activity (which we sorely lack these days), but also allow users who spend time around the site, helping, making armatars and all of that, progress in rank . Of course, the major problem is that a way has to be figured out that the system does not promote spamming. But, in a 50-50% system of games and forums for example, the percentage of post numbers will be too low to actually make spam worthwhile I believe. Alternatively, the "number" of posts can simply be made inferior to other types of activity, like comments and Merits so as to combat it.
Discarding the quests is going to disappoint many users even around the community. An achievement system for games like this one can be very effective to make AG a popular gaming site. I've seen people praising Kongregate for it's effective achievement system, so obviously, they should not be discarded altogether. Maybe the easy quests can give the users less points and the harder the quest is, the more points the user gets from completing it like AP said.
Another issue is the legendary quests. How will these count in the scoring total? Users who weren't around since the old AG (to use the example of the most famous legendary quests) will simply not have the boost others enjoy. On the other hand, members since the old AG definitely deserve that sort of 'boost' in points just for being here for so long. The same goes for the April Fools' Day quests of 2014 and 2015 as well.
a thing that needs to be taken into consideration should be past comments and upvotes using disqus
i have ~8.4K comments and ~2.4K upvotes using disqus. it would be a shame to lose those....
I'm quite against upvotes being used as points....people have and will always beg for them, plus it's really easy to spam for them! D:
Comments....again I'm against them, because comments were the easiest way to spam for AP back in the day (And rating games). I'm not totally against them though, but I wouldn't want to see them go for 2 AP and Forum posts go for 1. Maybe a reversal.
Perhaps any form of posting should only reward a point. Though questing should award more points ranging from something like 10-25 depending on the difficulty. This shows users that the best solution for points is to just play games, the sole reason for the existence of AG.
Also glad to know the admins are working on something after all. Also that they listen to users opinions.
Well, with that formula I created, posts, comments and games rated count in it, but they increase slower and slower the number of AP, and each game rated is worth 10 posts in the forums...
Probably a better way to go would be to link AP amount with post length. The more words, the more AP. Not only would a good WEPR post be worth more than a three-word forum game post, a good RP post would be worth more than a three-word post. Also, it's self-moderating.
I like the idea of rewarding good posts more than bad posts, but even points-for-words is not foolproof as a spammer could just alternate letters and spaces to create lots of 1-letter words, which would score a lot of points but be completely useless. Then again, there are a few ways to prevent spam within the points-for-words system as follows:
Make short words worth fewer points without becoming pure points-for-characters. For example, 1-3 letter words could be worth half as much as anything longer. The measure could be extended to reward long words especially when combined with the other measures given below.
Count only real words, using a spell checker to determine if a word is real or not. This would have the added effect of rewarding proper spelling, but if this measure is implemented, it should be easy to find out that only real and properly spelled words count.
Let certain users, such as mods or even knights, modify a post's point value depending on whether it's useful or not. This would differentiate good long posts from bad long posts as long as a user with appropriate status sees the post. Of course, there should be an upper limit to how much a post's value can be modified, as quests should be a significant part of the point system.
Now that I think about it, a points-for-words system with the above measures would be better than making every post worth the same, as it would encourage higher posting quality.
