For the "TL;DR" people among you: everyone will essentially have their Armor Points reset to zero. AG3 will likely not migrate any points from AG2 with our current setup and direction.
Unless something drastic happens, or there's enough people who vocalize their unhappiness about this to Dan, this is how AG3 will start out.
After our meeting about Achievements yesterday, I was brought in the loop on how "oints" will work on AG3.
In a nutshell...
AG3 "Armor Points" as a sum total will calculate your "AG Score". We will still refer to them as "oints", but the site will show them as your "score".
AG3 points will be awarded primarily through the winning of game-related Achievements, and each achievement will have different amounts of points attached (easier achievements will give fewer points, for example).
The achievements we award for AG2 legacy features (previous rank, forum post count, etc) will not award AG3 points.
I do NOT believe we will award points for rating games, or if we do, it will be a minimal amount like the 2 points we give you now. If this is the case, we WILL migrate some points.
The examples Larry gave yesterday about Achievements showed some being worth as many as 15 or 30 points EACH.
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I will re-open this topic when I have more information to answer questions.
Things we as a company want to see in this thread: - ideas about where you want us to show your AG Score (the total of your points) - ideas about where to show the leaderboard - how we could display the leaderboard - whether we should keep the current rank system (serf, knight, prince, king, etc) and WHY - whether we need to come up with a new rank system, and what you think the ranks should be
Things I will delete from this thread: - messages that talk about this being a good/bad idea - messages that are off-topic - messages that discuss someone else's rank idea
Duplicated questions/ideas will be deleted, as will responses to them by other users.
- ideas about where you want us to show your AG Score (the total of your points)
Ideally not too far from our username. Given the current set-up there doesn't seem to be too many ideal locations other than maybe a box under our username on our profiles or as a different box at the top of our profiles that is connected to the Achievements.
- whether we should keep the current rank system (serf, knight, prince, king, etc) and WHY - whether we need to come up with a new rank system, and what you think the ranks should be
I like our rank system. It's unique. It's certainly a fun way of displaying approximately how many points a user has on the forums. It'd look better than displaying the actual amount of points along with forum posts because it looks less like a clutter of numbers.
I think it'd be fun if we could also choose an allegiance/element/class/factions. It'd be purely cosmetic, but it could tie into the community, if only for the faction-related social aspect of it. Gantic the Apprentice of Water Gantic the Prince of Fire Gantic the Bandit King of Air Gantic the Bowmaster of Earth
- whether we should keep the current rank system (serf, knight, prince, king, etc) and WHY
I agree with gantic saying that it's unique but i also love how the current rank system gives you a sense of drive. The different ranks/'levels' as such make you want to be more involved in the site.
I think that, in addition to the current rank system, we should expand the content more as other people have said in the past. Off the top of my head, the ranks should include "age", "captain", "general", "baron", "earl", "hero", etc. Baron and Earl may be the same 'strength' or 'ower' back when those titles were still given out, but AG isn't exactly realistic.
I would like the leaderboard to show off-hand statistics, like "who has the most/best X for Y", X being reputation and posts, while Y is rank. It could add some more-specific touches to the general "who has the most points".
[quote]ideas about where you want us to show your AG Score (the total of your points)
Ideally not too far from our username[/quote]
One idea we had was to make everyone's armatar a hover pop-up that would show some basic stats like how long they've been a member, AG Score, etc., and controls to add them as a friend, follow them, etc.
I think it'd be fun if we could also choose an allegiance/element/class/factions. It'd be purely cosmetic,
... and would probably kill the layout of the site if the username and title were long, but I'll mention it. As above, we'd probably put their rank in the hover pop-up.
The different ranks/'levels' as such make you want to be more involved in the site.
Well, we didn't say we were removing it. So if you have suggestions, that would be handy.
we should expand the content more as other people have said in the past
I like the idea too, but we need both genders included, so we'd need equivalent female ranks. "Hero" sounds too generic, dunno.
It could add some more-specific touches to the general "who has the most points".
Agreed. We'd probably show a leaderboard of top AG Scores, then have others available like Reputation score, number of Achievements, maybe average points awarded per achievement, forum posts, etc.
I doubt we'd do number of comments though, since we're tracking that stuff quite differently. So we'd probably need a strict list of "the most/best X for Y" ideas from users.
Patrick2011, for brevity, please don't duplicate ideas I've just stated ) (member since, AG score, controls to friend/follow, rank) ... it clutters up the discussion.
[quote=Patrick2011]I think the current rank system would be compatible but some values may need to be changed depending on the value of achievements.[/quote]
Again, vague references to "it should change" need to include examples.
Anyhow, the idea of a pop-up is only an idea, and we don't want to elaborate on it at this time, so discussion about the hover pop-up needs to close. Feel free to start another thread about it, so we can stay on topic in this thread.
I like the current medieval-style ranks. A modern army-style rank, for one, wouldn't work with "Armor Games" and the shield logo. The leaderboard could be pretty much the same as now, but work better.
ideas about where you want us to show your AG Score (the total of your points)
Perhaps the score could be positioned to the far right, over the biography. So all the information about an user (friends, biography, followers etc.) is grouped. If you want to know something about an user you just look to the right. Everything, would be easy to find. Anyway, in my opinion a single solitary stat on the left or the center would look somewhat awkward.
- ideas about where to show the leaderboard
On the bottom of every page there is an "About Armor Games", right? Under the misc games there is an empty slot, maybe the leaderboard could be positioned there.
- whether we should keep the current rank system (serf, knight, prince, king, etc) and WHY
In my opinion, we should keep the current rank system. Its quite unusual and simple, yet rather attractive. Plus, I think that the medieval/noble ranks are an important incentive to keep on playing/being active for many users. I think that many users like -a lot- becoming from low-level serves to lords and dukes. The Cinderella story is an instant hit. You could add a couple of new ranks though, because many literally love ranks.
Where to show the AG score: On the top of the page, next to the armatar. So everybody could see the popularity and activity of the user.
Where to show the leaderboard: A link would be create especially for the leaderboard (next to "Community", "News", "Store", "Blog"...).
How we could display the leaderboard: Current system is effective, but we can see only the top 100 of users. Loading more with a button (as in certain games) would be nice. But only up to the top 1000.
whether we should keep the current rank system (serf, knight, prince, king, etc) and WHY For me, we must keep it. I think it shows immediatly the popularity and the activity of the user. For example, if we see that an user is King, we know he is very active and sounds serious on AG. New ranks which can be added: count, courtjester, royal guard...
- ideas about where you want us to show your AG Score (the total of your points)
Probably under username on our profiles. There's a lot of gray space there.
- ideas about where to show the leaderboard
I say on the homepage, just like how it is now. I don't see wheres else that you could put it where everyone would see it. Unless you create a page for the leaderboards that says "Leaderboards".
- how we could display the leaderboard
Hmm, interesting question. I'd say that you could display the top one hundred people with the most armor points, reputation, forum posts, comments, merits, game ratings, things of the such. It would have a section for each. Like: Armor Points | Reputation | Forum posts | etc..
- whether we should keep the current rank system (serf, knight, prince, king, etc) and WHY
I like this current rank system because this is the only site that I've seen this rank system on. And it matches the site, since it's supposed to have a medieval theme, this is the perfect ranking system. But maybe you could add more medieval rankings to so that there are more rankings on the site.
And what Gantic suggested sounds interesting.
- whether we need to come up with a new rank system, and what you think the ranks should be
I prefer this ranking system. However, I'd like more medieval rankings. If you want me to name them, then I'll have to do that later since I'm not familiar with them all.
LOL, GoM, that'll certainly give us a hefty list to consider.
Here's a sub-link on that page which summarizes the titles, and even offers translations into other languages, which will come in handy down the road too.
Hmm, wonder if Dan would go for a "only one player can be Emperor/Empress" idea. If someone beats your points as Emperor, *they* gain the title and you get knocked back to King status.
I like it because it would add more ranks which will result in it being more difficult to get ranks. Well, if you guys raise how many armor points are required for each rank, that is. Also, I really like the names of the ranks and titles on that page which makes it more classy, I think.
About the Emperor/Empress idea, I rather like it. Since it'll match with the ranks on that page well and make the site look somewhat neater. I think only one person should be able to hold that title rather than having anything who reaches that amount of armor points holding it. Example: Firetail would be the Emperor right now, but if someone gained more armor points than him, then he would lose his Emperor rank.
Are the hats still going to be kept? If so, then I think there's going to have to be more room added to the profiles or a page on our profiles solely for the ranks. Like there's: Profile Achievements Favorite Games & History. Ranks and Titles(Or it could be just "Ranks".)
I don't know where the ranks would fit on the profiles how they look now. But if there is a page for all the ranks, then when you are a certain rank the title will be somewhere under your name or armatar, and you'll have the little hat/crown for that rank.
I've also been wondering if we'll be able to change our hats in AG3. If so, then I could guess that would be rather confusing since the hat wouldn't match their current rank on the site. Then again, I like the Iron Lord and Iron Prince hats, so I've always wanted to switch to them. However, it would be confusing to people if your hat doesn't match your rank. Well, if we aren't able to, then I guess I'll just leave it at that.
