- aku
- |
- Exalted Legendary Member
Mourne not your comrades who must dwell / too strong to strive -
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell, / Buried alive;
But rather mourne the apathetic throng / The cowed, and the meek -
Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong / And dare not speak.
[group]167741|Diner|Where's the food?[/group]
Alright, to be honest, I haven't fully read all the posts here. I currently lack the time and mental capacity to read that much. But I scanned most of it, so I don't think this will be much of a repeat.
One problem I notice with Recon's OP is the way the points are spent like a currency. Achronos has stated that the entire system will be invisible; that is, even the users will not know how many points they have, or how close they are to "leveling up". From what I have read, he is not going to change his mind on this - the users will never be able to know how many points they have.
But I think there is a fairly easy way around this, and it doesn't affect the over-all idea much. Instead of a user being able to "spend" points, they are (randomly, as far as the users can tell, though it would actually be at set points) offered chances to choose from certain gifts. I agree with Alex on this part. (That was Alex, right?) It should be made clear that these are priviges being offered, not an "award". So, take this example:
An idea of mine would be to allow at the cost of TC (trust credits) a member to customize their profile page more than the standard site layout allows. .... But each component is on a "shopping list" and each component has a price in TC.
Instead of showing a "shopping list" style of things that could be purchased, say they simply receive a PM from the Soul. "I noticed you've been being a productive member. As thanks, we'd like to offer you the chance the add some spice to your profile page. Go check out the cool new things you can choose from [url=thisisafakelinktoapagewithoptions]here[/url]." The user could be offered chunks of new things to use each time they are rewarded. Like I said, it doesn't really change the idea, it just takes away the visibilty of the points. I think that would fit well with the idea that you aren't earning something, but instead you are being rewarded.
I kind of like the idea of a special group where some Bungie employees would "hang out", so "good" members would have a chance to talk to them, without dealing with random spam. One problem, though, would be what exactly spam is. Judging from the examples we have of what Bungie humor is like (mancannon, "Are you nuts? We'd get sacked", Frankie's recent "i am not good at the internet" post, ect, ect...), I wouldn't be suprised to see crude humor being thrown around. But this wouldn't be too much of a problem in my opinion. The best way to handle it would be for it to be completely subjective. If the group admins think you're being a bad member, you're out. Of course there would be rules, so they couldn't kick arbitrarily, but I think that would be a good place where the "Play nice" rule could be exercised the way it was meant to be. After all, it is usually easy for a person to know the difference between humor and spam... and when spam is actually humor... you get the idea, I hope.
hmm... perhaps some other rewards could be things like increased thread per day limit, maybe allow the user to be in a few more groups?