My turn.
AP, Good: It basically encouraged users and gave a reason to talk to each other and post on the forums.
AP was a great motivator to get people to talk to each other because comments were worth 2. But as for posting, I doubt it. 1 point to put twice as much effort into something was a huge discouraging device. And not to mention that activity started declining towards the end of the cormyn era anyway...
Bad: It encouraged spam.(Although spam is STILL going on just not as much since the removal of AP)
I don't think there was much forum spam, but comment spam was terrible. I remember people would have conversations with one-worded comments. I don't know if they were doing it because they wanted the AP or because they were downright lazy, but I'm pretty sure it was a bit of both. And who remembers that obnoxious AP farmer who would rate a hundred games in a day?
Quests: Good: Encouraged users to play games and gave them rewards for it.
No argument here.
Bad: Actually there doesn't seem to be anything bad with them that comes to mind.
I know a few people whined because there wasn't much notice before they came, and it caused a big shock. With an update as big as Quests, the methodology undertaken is understandable, but I don't understand why they didn't allude to it
a little. Keep in mind that this was happening during a time when we were craving a big update, and we would've thrived from getting this knowledge.
Another small drawback with Quests is that they're limited to games, and because AP encouraged game playing (or at least rating) and profile-to-profile conversation, comments slowed a bit. But you could say that this yielded spam rating and spam commenting so whatever.
Maybe under the quest pages there could be 2 buttons. One leading to your quests and one leading to your AP, that way we could have both.
Having both systems could help. But I think some people would choose the AP route while others would choose the Quest route. Plus something like this is terribly confusing and would push away a lot of possible newcomers. That's why Community Quests would serve so much more, because diehard questers would force themselves into the community. But then again, they might just spam anyway.
AP was great, I loved the little hats under our names that instantly showed how active we were. I still calculate my AP every week just so I can know how many I would've had.
*Checks join date*
10/29/2012.
How much did you really know about AP? I'm not intending any offense, but weren't you pretty much constrained during the Forum games during that time? And don't forget, those little hats also showed how much you spammed.
I can see where this is headed, and I must say that I agree with you. I do believe that if AP were to be brought back for some strange and mysterious reason, activity in this site would increase. Not very much at first, but it would nevertheless...
Why would it provide more quality activity? Why wouldn't it just be spam?
Because Sal apparently cannot use the internet to get what he wants, I was nice enough to go and link the player ranking when AP was still around. Yes that is right, your very own was at 7.
Outdated. I took these hours before the leaderboards were deleted:
http://imgur.com/a/Lvi0j
Gracias muchachos.
On a more serious note, I'll ask that you all remember way back when to a time where you were all blasting the AP system as nothing more than a system which perpetuated spamming and AP Farming, which was declared worthless in the face of the upcoming Quest System, and lambasted by the general population. Now that we hav the Quest System, the very people who most championedthe areival of Quests are now longing back for the good ole days, when apparently AP was good.
You all disgust me.
Not a hypocrite.
i feel the same way. AP was a desire i had to become in the top, and made me want to play and rate more games then i do now. i still remember silver knight...that was a really good concept.
But why would people play games as opposed to simply rating them? Quests actually MAKE people play games.
Translation: I was creeping in on Nilo and Nurv's conversation...
Actually Nilo asked me personally in the FGA chat.
AP was something that gave me incentive to participate on the site; not because it pushed me up the rankings or made me feel better than anyone else, but because it made me feel like I'd been rewarded for participating on the site. It gave me not only recognition but personal satisfaction.
Understandable, and with the current Quest system you don't have that same satisfaction from posting and commenting. You do, however, get more satisfaction out of playing games. But then there's the point of the post count system: why aren't we posting more to get satisfaction out of foruming? Why isn't there a post count leaderboard yet? Would it even be a good idea?
Looking at it objectively, however, recognition for users is still possible in many ways, not only through the character of your actions, but also the date you joined, and the number of games you've rated and comments you made displayed on your profile. I mean for goodness sakes, your forum posts are displayed underneath you every time you post.
Yeah, I agree. But I think users craved that public, universal attention, which is prevalent in the leaderboard. It was far easier to get noticed on that thing as opposed to hoping someone would come to your profile and say "Wow, this person is active! Maybe I should do that too!". Plus the little cosmetic icons that went with your rank were attractive and iconic.
I wasn't around when AP was abolished, or when quests became a thing. But for me I think it would be neat to re-install armor points and just assign enough points to quests that they become a valid way to gain AP, but not so many points that great gamers have sixty or seventy thousand armor points by sweeping the site.
Like the karma system that was supposed to be installed?
Oh, that.
Heh.
