Honestly, one of the most interesting aspects of the new forum to me is the sort of gamification of Facepunch. I unironically believe that incentivization concepts like levels and coins and stuff, when done in a non-malicious way (that is, not designed to get people to spend real money) can be incredibly enjoyable when it doesn't detract from focus forums have on conversation and community. Personally, I think that these elements could be expanded upon to elevate some of the personalization elements of Facepunch beyond what most communities employ, (Reddit, Stackoverflow, Wikis, etc.) considering just how long most of us have been here. Honestly, there's no reason not to be inspired by some of the "webspace game" ideas left behind by sites like Habbo Hotel or even Neopets, with all of the rebranding and focus on innovation, having a regular old forum with some interesting ways to spend coins for customization or content would really drive home our emphasis on quality posting, more so for new users, especially if coins and levels continue to be awarded on poster quality rather than post count, something quite unique among most forums.
Facepunch can be a place where people do more than just argue about politics or talk about memes or new game releases, there can be some "progression" as it were. Arguably, getting awarded gold or bought titles and stuff like that were pretty cool goals to have on Oldpunch, and drove a lot of people (even if it's silly) to be better posters or be more active in order to gain those "aesthetic roleplay benefits." It would be interesting then, to have profiles be more than just "this is my username and contact information", and rather be a representation of who a user is, as well as a home base for things like subscribed threads or feeds. That isn't to say it's completely necessary to include a whole "friends" backend system or anything like that per se, but it would be an interesting change of pace for Facepunch to have the option to customize a profile further, like with background images, for instance.
These are just shots in the dark, I'm interested as to what ideas people have for further uses of coins or levels, rather than as arbitrary markers for getting bigger avatars (something already potentially outdated with profile cards) or changing username. Fake economies have always been a weak spot of mine in games, and I for one appreciate the gamification of Facepunch with XP and levels and coins, and think the idea could be pushed further while benefiting the whole concept of a forum in a super unique way. Discord inspired things like custom forums or emotes or badges, inventories, or avatars, or, fuck, even "crafting." Random things, most of them outlandish, but with such a fresh start, there are no limits.
What are people's thoughts?
I think adding some extra stuff to buy with the Coins would be nice, extra profile customization would also be sweet.
I miss having my steam profile being on the side, made it useful if people needed to contact me or if I needed to contact someone else, just click their steam profile.
I don't know how I'd feel if it was locked behind Coins but ultimately it just depends on how much it would cost.
And just to add, I like this whole Coinconomy idea, it has me posting more and actually exploring other threads to post in rather than just alternating between 2 threads.
i still like my old idea of making negative insult ratings cost coins to give out. simple shit like 'baby' or 'child molester' costs a few coins, and then bring back dumb but it costs a whole 5 coins to give out. no more mindless negative rating spam to the point it doesn't mean anything anymore, no more gimmick accounts that join just to flood pages with them and derail threads, and best of all, if you rate someone something bad, they'll know you really fukin meant it.
plus the idea of paying to call someone dumb makes me laugh
I think it's a start but I believe there are more important features that a site like Facepunch needs to attract users. I don't really like the concept of karma and Reddit gold, but it certainly gets people to post content and spurs discussion. Over the last year I found myself heading to reddit more and more because I enjoy being able to switch between subreddits I'm interested in but also stuff on r/all. I hope popular threads makes a comeback. That's practically all I checked whenever I visited Facepunch over the last year.
I don't really see how you are going to emphasize quality posting vs quantity with an automated system any more than before.
Spamming posts/threads guarantees you coins. Yeah, we don't know the exact details behind how coins are generated at the moment, but it's only a mater of time until we have a pretty good idea of what the mechanics are. There's going to be plenty of people gaming the system for that.
I personally think XP/coins being awarded slightly more frequently, with costs being slightly higher, gives more leeway for more options for customization that are on the lower end of the spectrum. I don't know exactly what those additional options might be, like I said, that's really the point of the thread. I think browsing a variety of threads in general should be a big part of coin accumulation, if it's not an important element already; really, that is a major goal of the idea, support smaller threads and get views to spread out among the forums rather than consolidate in SH and LMAO pics. Even having some more posting statistics in our profile would be appreciated, like old school information on our ratings, something that I know people say "who cares about ratings," but they're undoubtedly important to Facepunch and something that made us stand out for a long time. Badges related to rating history, or what we rate, or being able to spend coins to show certain data publicly on the profile, or even stats like which subforums we participate in most; are we airsoft heads, maybe we post a lot in the programming WAYWO, or music; being able to show off who we are, to users who may not see us often because we are in different parts of the forum, would help bring us closer together.
like, some. there is a limit on it to discourage spam, and it's really based more on just you being online and active. Flooding the forum with posts won't get you a shit ton of coins.
I don't mind this idea so long as the disagree rating doesn't cost anything.
That's why I think coins should have a bigger role between users; you can't game the system if your primary way of getting coins is from users rating you or giving them to you because of posting quality. If you're a bad poster, people won't really want to rate you with coins, even if they're meaningless points. It may not keep everyone ethical, and you can still get many coins just being active, but a huge chunk of profit is eaten by being a not good person.
well yeah that's not an insult so it wouldn't. it's just about paying coins to insult people with ratings. it's such a goofy fucking idea but i love it anyways.
Honestly I think more "out-there" ratings being beyond a coin paywall would be lovely, especially if coins are slightly more common. Levels can be a way to block off cool forum features that aren't necessarily pivotal. Needing to be level, say, 5, before being able to rate molester for instance, would give them a bit more weight without being anything more than cosmetic. Like the gold member special ratings in the gold forum almost.
I think having some unlockable sections such as the gold members forum makes sense, but I believe that features like popular threads/read threads/the ticker make the site more appealing to a new member who might not have a clue what the forum has to offer.
What if there was a way to reward Quality posts with coins?
Or even just a brief maybe 5-10 minutes increase of "XP" for the next coin.
That way while there may still be shit posts, those who practice good etiquette and posts quality content get rewarded.
yea that was sorta like something we had on oldpunch since we kept having brand new gimmick accounts that just spammed dumb ratings on everyone. bringing something like that back for the negative ratings would also be nice, and more so if it came with a notification along the lines of "WELCOME TO LEVEL 5, YOU CAN NOW CALL PEOPLE CHILD MOLESTERS!" which would just about be the single greatest unlock reward message ever.
I find it to be the exact opposite.
Karma encourages hivemind behavior. Yeah, it's a great way to automatically curate shitty content, but it also buries a lot of legitimate material as well. Part of what makes facepunch apealing (at least to me at any rate), is that the content isn't curated. A lot of the discussions on here are a lot more in depth and thought provoking than you ever see outside of the tiny subreddits. All of the big ones are brigade fests where opinions that don't toe the party line are buried.
The only way to learn anything about a politically charge or contested topic on reddit is to sort by controversial. If you don't you will never see anything that doesn't agree with the majority rule.
If that's what you want, power to you. I don't.
top right corner. Roadmap
That's what the coin rating is for; though other ways of doing this would be interesting. I loved the pixel custom art system from labpunch, and while it shouldn't make a return for avatars specifically, that idea of user economy is really interesting to me. Users being creative and exchanging coins for good posting or creativity would be wonderful, and seeing the amazing art people made just to be on the highest rated pixel art page was fantastic. Bring that further without limiting it to avatars, though as to what specifically, I am not sure.
Quality content is kind of subjective.
Also I don't like the idea of posts being tied to coin earnage as it encourages point-whoring and the like.
I dont think coins will ever grow beyond anything other than a gimmick. As soon as you actually start putting "important" stuff behind a coinwall you will severly cripple enjoyment of the site. If we have to have this "feature" it should stick to relatively unrelevant shit, like changing your nickname or gold username.
I mean, coins are arbitrary and "worthless" anyway. I don't think the FP community cares as much about points as say reddit, after all, we have some awfully opinionated users that continue to post their very unique views despite their harsh ratings. They wouldn't lose out on coins per se, they just wouldn't get as many as say, someone who makes a quality post that people agree with. I don't tend to see people get rated well on FP unless they actually say something meaningful, which is one of the nice parts about our community. I think of all the places I've been a part of, FP is one of the few that can handle a points system without conversations devolving to circlejerking for fake points. Ratings never did that and coins wouldn't either.
Me mis-reading this gave me an idea that could fix the "Quantity over Quality" posts.
What if after having enough Bad Reading/Spelling rates, you go down a level?
Sure it might not do anything amazing, you could make it so you get coins less often, but for those who give a shit about their levels (like me) I would deff be upset if I went down a level due to my shit posts.
This way there will be a certain amount of Quality control, it will bring back the Bad Reading/Spelling ratings without including Bans, and it will push people to not make shitty posts.
IMO coins as-is is pretty decent. Keeping it to basically just vanity stuff rewards the users who stick around, while not feeling unfair
"User Bans - Allow users to nominate other users to be banned, and to crowdfund that. Likely to be high coin amounts, short durations."
man i can't wait to nominate mezzokoko repeatedly
I genuinely detest this as an idea.
Site functionality should never be locked away unless those functions are particularly heavy on server resources and/or frequently abused by spambots.
How do you even quantify this? I can post dumb memes and pictures of people doing amazing tricks in LMAO pics for days and get drowned in funnies and winners. Are those somehow better than a thought out post explaining something to someone? Again, how does that encourage anything other than spam?
As long as coins don't prevent regular forum functions, anything they allow for would be vanity content. You wouldn't say, have post limit or timers tied to coins, just aesethic customization, like profile backgrounds, or badges, or titles, just like we currently have; the idea is seeing just how much customization those coins could bring, including say, less-useful-but-still-interesting ratings, like child molester
It wasn't my best idea, I think I was too focused on rewarding Quality posts than punishing shit quality posts.
Refer to my previous post about Bad Reading/Spelling and deducting Levels based on that.
Tbh, I would already draw the line at locked-away ratings. Disregarding the sub-par set of ratings we currently have, I don't see any reason why anyone should be restricted from expressing any certain reaction. Would you invent this sorta arbitrary restriction if coins weren't a thing? It seems to me that in the pursuit of finding "useful" ways of spendings coins we will come up with a bunch of bullshit ones, merely to justify their existence, not because they have any merit.
I mean, it's like custom discord emotes in other discord chats really. Is child molester a valid expression in most contexts? Probably not, and being locked away from it really doesn't detract from your user experience, because the rating is practically a meme and nothing more. It's like saying blue members on oldpunch were locked-away from stuff like OIFY or gold member forums and our custom ratings, for arbitrary reasons like the constantly unfairly changing gold member requirements. At least this is a stable and tangible way to acquire a meaningless cosmetic icon for the same bragging rights and self satisfaction that we all felt when we got gold or custom titles. Ideally too, it would be gained by being a good poster and being active.
i mean it literally was on oldpunch lol
I forgot new members couldn't rate posts, lmao. I mean, it worked, rating spam was curbed, and people making "agree with me" alts in Rust/Gmod declined. Having it tied to being level 1 or greater would be no different imo.
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