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@Doombreed Silver Starter is Medium I believe?

Crap...I was so totally sure it was a hard one -_- Probably due to the time it took. I'm sorry. Anyway, if I actually come across this with a hard quest I'll let you know

So, I'd like to suggest something here: That Merits count as 100 stars each instead of 50. This will solve many of the problems we are facing now without negative effects:

The quest value does not get diminished, so those who earn quests still earn the same amount of stars, which they deserve for the achievements.
The ratio of stars between Merits and Quests is balanced however, which means that such a move can promote healthy community activity (keyword: healthy )
It is a great way to reward those who've spent years in the community without giving them an unfair advantage (like the legacy quests of the old website which give Gantic an impossible advantage for example)
Finally, it will definitely be a great first step in solving the problem of cheaters, those who manipulate the save files to earn quests and ascend through the leaderboard. As it stands now one needs to have a massive amount of merits to make a difference just with those. The quests still hold 90% of the value they had so cheaters can easily abuse the new system too. With that value for Merits however, quests hold less significance, yet the same value

I understand that such a move may be met with criticism because people like Gantic and ivan already have lots of merits. But such a reward for merits makes more sense than unobtainable quests just because they 'were around' before, like the legacy quests. It seems like a better way to promote activity while not giving the affected parties an unfair advantage. Just one that's not easy to cover without effort People who have earned those merits have been dumping that effort slowly and for a long time. People who want to catch up in stars, as such will have to accelerate.

RE: Doombreed's post:

Food for thought: I have earned 7 merits since 2009 and 0 in the last 12 months, and four of those were from community quests. I'm not going anywhere, especially since everyone tends to earn less merits the higher up the mod ladder you go (for various reasons, well, really, two big ones, and a couple tiny insignificant ones.)

I don't mind putting a higher weightage on merits since that might encourage people to be active in other areas of the site.

But it's not my opinion that carries any weight haha.

I see how making merits more significant can raise activity. I agree to doom's suggestion.

However, I think raising it's value even higher than the suggested will do even more good. Why? Because if the forums are seen as the best place to earn merits (via contests) with the perspective that merits are friking amazing (a huge boost in stars), then it will surely attract more users to join in on the community.

Fine, someone may disagree with me and say that a hundred is enough already, but if you look at how much stars are earned off of quests, compared to merits, then you can surely see how quests kind of make merits insignificant.

Food for thought: I have earned 7 merits since 2009 and 0 in the last 12 months, and four of those were from community quests. I'm not going anywhere, especially since everyone tends to earn less merits the higher up the mod ladder you go (for various reasons, well, really, two big ones, and a couple tiny insignificant ones.)

Because we all know that the best way to earn merits was game comments back then. Most of the mods checked every new game for good comments so if you wrote a good one, it was the best way to earn a merit. I assume that's the case with you too

Fine, someone may disagree with me and say that a hundred is enough already, but if you look at how much stars are earned off of quests, compared to merits, then you can surely see how quests kind of make merits insignificant.

There is the problem of giving an extreme value to Merits. If hard game quests are worth 50 stars and Insane ones 200 then a Merit giving a 100 seems a happy balanced medium. But let's face it, Merits are about as tough as some hard game quests. It takes about that amount of time to do something merit worthy, be it a poem, a simple armatar (though obviously better and more complicated artwork takes more time in most situations), write a good game comment, a review or some advice, etc. Giving them more value will make something easier than insane quests worth almost the same as them. In fact 50 stars from Merits is a balanced value, but they need more stars due to the significance they have, not how difficult they are. That's why Merits should also not be worth too many stars in my opinion

There is the problem of giving an extreme value to Merits. If hard game quests are worth 50 stars and Insane ones 200 then a Merit giving a 100 seems a happy balanced medium. But let's face it, Merits are about as tough as some hard game quests. It takes about that amount of time to do something merit worthy, be it a poem, a simple armatar (though obviously better and more complicated artwork takes more time in most situations), write a good game comment, a review or some advice, etc. Giving them more value will make something easier than insane quests worth almost the same as them. In fact 50 stars from Merits is a balanced value, but they need more stars due to the significance they have, not how difficult they are. That's why Merits should also not be worth too many stars in my opinion

An extreme value? Perhaps having them valued the same amount as an insane quest, isn't as insane as you think. They are pretty difficult to earn because of the insanely small amount of places you can earn them from. Plus the fact that in the forums, the easiest way to earn them is through the opportunity of taking part in an official contest, albeit some unofficial contests can reward merits too. Also, for great game comments, it's takes the chance of a moderator seeing your comment to be able to earn it, if in fact the good comment is merit worthy. If you think about it, you can't basically just earn a merit, you have to be seen doing something to be able to get it. Which is why they're so hard to earn. Also, this is what could balance out people who quest, and people who go to the forums. So instead of awarding posts directly with stars, good posts should be rewarded even higher.

HOWEVER I understand the point you're trying to make, so if my idea of having them valued higher than the suggested (perhaps 200 stars) is denied, I'll also totally understand. I just want to push for the idea that they should be valued higher, while sort of pushing for my idea at the same time.

Update. You've probably noticed that there were initial plans to have multiple armatar creator quests, so that every user could earn it, once per year. Due to some older armatar contest descriptions and the like, it seems this was the original way to go. Now, I've been thinking...This could tie in very well with the new star system. It is a great way to reward consistent community activity without relying just on quests and merits. If the armatar creator quest (and potentially other contest quests like the Poetry, Artist, etc.) receive yearly editions, it sufficiently rewards users who are continuously active in those places.

Unless the original "multiple quests" plan was scrapped due to a coding reason (if it was impossible to implement due to a bug in the system for example), I think this would be a good idea. And with a star leaderboard, it will hopefully put a stop to all the complaints about legendary quests.

is there a reason why the staff hasn't posted the point/star values of things?

No official reason. My guess is that things have remained a secret because nothing here is final, it is still a work in progress. I suppose minor alterations can happen even after the full implementation of this stat, so I hope that we will be able to give feedback about it even after everything is officially announced.

At least that's how I tend to see it

Update: as you can see we now have our ranks under our post count, not our accumulated stars

Now where do we see our stars? -_-

It'll be nice if we could see the amount of stars someone has by hovering over their rank.

On a side note, we can still see the Forum Mods star amount (although that's probably going to change).

CAN WE PLEASE BE INFORMED OF CHANGES. THANKS.

@SirLegendary And here we are thinking you guys liked pleasant surprises...

Also... TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK PLEASE! Thanx.