Achievements & Experience System

[Touzen]

So, we now have achievements and an experience system. Both of these will still get refined in the upcoming days, but the gist is that the more active you are, the more achievements and experience you will get. See it as another way to motivate our users - soon I also plan to develop systems that will automatically based on your activity define the maximum extend of what you can RP in terms of power (stress, CAN, not must). Basically I want to encourage activity and don't believe in inactive superpowers. Inactive nations will naturally fade from the spotlight as their more active peers rise to prominence. Even then, if you play a city state, you are not expected to suddenly be a superpower, nor will you be able to suddenly convert your nation to one, as normal RP common sense still applies. See it as the maximum you will be able to RP, while opening up all opportunities below that treshhold.

As for the achievements, many of them are based on post count and whatnot and will be given automatically. For the RP ones, they can't be handed out automatically obviously, as a machine can't read your posts. I will open a thread where you will be able to apply for an achievement or suggest somebody else for one. You can access a list of current achievements from the navbar at the top, where you can also see other activities and statistics related to the experience system. If you gain an award or an achievement, they will show up in your profile and under your avatar in threads, and we are planning to give unique pictures to all achievements, making them a worthwhile and fun thing to collect.

Have fun!

 

[Warre]

This might help things, but I suppose it depends largely on how things go, and even then it doesn't answer 'how many' posts are required to be active, or how the 'leveling up' system even accounts into things, as it apparently does.

 

[Twente]

I'm not going to argue as I don't feel it's my place, I'm not active enough for that ic and ooc. But I did expect some opposition, criticism or proposals to alter and/or improve this new feature. I personally expect it to get out of control(achievement hogs posting and being overactive for the sake of getting a shiny batch) or it to become gimmicky.

Can a couple of members please tell me why I shouldn't be worried? Why will this be good and why do you like it? Thanks.

 

[Ivernia]

Can a couple of members please tell me why I shouldn't be worried? Why will this be good and why do you like it? Thanks.

I think the forum in it's current position has so little RP that the chance of ''achievement hogging'' seems difficult. If people want achievements they have to RP. So the forum gets RP. This forum is very small, if it looks like blatant achievement hogging then it'll be obvious to all the ten other people who regularly actually RP here.

Why do I like it? It's only been here a day. I don't think anyone will form a solid opinion on whether it's working or not for at least a little while.

I will say that I think it has good potential to be a boon for RP. Rewarding people for writing stories with little useless trinkets is just meant to be good fun. I also personally think it'll help new people get to grips with RP. maybe if we have some ''getting started'' style achievements.

 

[Thaumantica]

I'm not going to argue as I don't feel it's my place, I'm not active enough for that ic and ooc.

You're here now, that's a place - so your opinion is valued.

Can a couple of members please tell me why I shouldn't be worried? Why will this be good and why do you like it? Thanks.

You shouldn't be worried because achievements do not translate to in world advantages, they are a recognition of activity for the sake of activity. I too would be against this if sheer spamming of posts meant nuclear bomb technology or aircraft carriers, but all it is is a lazy way of recognizing forum achievements objectively. An admin or a popular vote doesn't have to decide who is worthy of recognition because it happens automatically (save for the event based achievements), it's built in to the forum. If someone started abusing the event based achievements it'd be quite obvious when you see what they are, it's primarily dramatic nation changing events with consequences.

I'm not sure I really like it, but I don't dislike it either. It could attract people to ACHIEVE through posting, and sharing words is the name of the game.