Harumph

[michael]

Here is a reply I made to Tesral in a discussion we were having on the former Level Up Thread that summarizes how I feel about the missing experience points.

As you know Farcaster took all the "trash" to the Off-Topic section, which made them irrelevant for XP purposes. And those same trash threads are without a doubt, the most popular and creative threads on this entire forum.

And frankly, I don't give a crap if people see it as a contest or not. I really freaken love the XP thing, with titles and levels and all of that. In fact I specifically waited until I was a Champion to become a community supporter. It was a goal that I set and achieved. And a week or two after I get there, that stuff is gone. It pisses me off.

I love role playing games because your character develops and grows. That is why I loved the XP thing here.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

I never had a problem with it, either. If folks want to earn xp and titles, why not let them. Why let a loud few (very few) folks ruin it for the rest of us. Personally, when the attacks began from about 4 members (one of them being a super high level hipocrit that gained many an xp on these very junk threads he claimed having nothing to do with), out of nearly 10,000 members at the time, i wondered why these four weren't checked by Farcaster, & the mods, immediately. To this day, i am amazed that this behavior was tolerated.

Heck, even i was attacked and accused of accumulating xp and titles, eventually leading me to have Farcaster to remove my xp and title from the site - just to stop these loudmouths from continuing. Then these loudmouths explained it away by stating that i got in trouble with Farcaster - such pathetic liars they are! All this negative behavior discouraged others from enjoying the camaraderie of other gamers.

Truth be told, i finally admitted why i gained so much experience in just a few years, and it was because i was disabled and chairbound. So, you see, by letting these loudmouth fools ruin it for everyone else - with their own jealousies, they were harassing disabled folks - like myself. Funny thing is, i never participated for xp and titles, i did it for escapism of my situation and for genuinely bringing enjoyment and activity to this site with fellow gamers.

If a vote were taken, i believe we would find that near 99% of this site would either want to keep it or be indifferent to the xp and titles given on pnpg. Something to think about.

BTW, i asked Farcaster to put "Cursed by the Gods" under my name. It was NOT put there because i got in trouble, as one of these four had stated. My Avatar is an Undead Lich, which only makes sense to be cursed by the gods. So does "Undead Abomination," when looking at it from the viewpoint of the living.

[Soft Serve]

I never had a problem with it, either. If folks want to earn xp and titles, why not let them. Why let a loud few (very few) folks ruin it for the rest of us. Personally, when the attacks began from about 4 members (one of them being a super high level hipocrit that gained many an xp on these very junk threads he claimed having nothing to do with), out of nearly 10,000 members at the time, i wondered why these four weren't checked by Farcaster, & the mods, immediately. To this day, i am amazed that this behavior was tolerated.

Heck, even i was attacked and accused of accumulating xp and titles, eventually leading me to have Farcaster to remove my xp and title from the site - just to stop these loudmouths from continuing. Then these loudmouths explained it away by stating that i got in trouble with Farcaster - such pathetic liars they are! All this negative behavior discouraged others from enjoying the camaraderie of other gamers.

Truth be told, i finally admitted why i gained so much experience in just a few years, and it was because i was disabled and chairbound. So, you see, by letting these loudmouth fools ruin it for everyone else - with their own jealousies, they were harassing disabled folks - like myself. Funny thing is, i never participated for xp and titles, i did it for escapism of my situation and for genuinely bringing enjoyment and activity to this site with fellow gamers.

If a vote were taken, i believe we would find that near 99% of this site would either want to keep it or be indifferent to the xp and titles given on pnpg. Something to think about.

BTW, i asked Farcaster to put "Cursed by the Gods" under my name. It was NOT put there because i got in trouble, as one of these four had stated. My Avatar is an Undead Lich, which only makes sense to be cursed by the gods. So does "Undead Abomination," when looking at it from the viewpoint of the living.

I would still like the activity bar.

[tesral]

Count me as one of the indifferent. Like Thoth I'm disabled. I spend the majority of my day in front of the computer blowing time. PnP is a handy and enjoyable place to do it.

I don't put much value in forum titles or experience. All you need to get them is no life. However I will note that when the stakes are the lowest, the rewards the least and most fleeting, such as high school popularity or forum titles, the fighting and back stabbing for said goods of little worth is the most vicious and petty.

So, I would place anyone that would fight for said trinkets into the same category as magpies and pack rats. (And to anyone that finds that offensive...well, the shoe fits)

[yukonhorror]

yes, the activity bar shows who is active and not. This is important when trying to find people for a game to play. No use inviting someone who has visited the site once in the past 2 months.

As for the exp pts and the level and rank, I always thought it was a fun thing to have. For newbies, it encourages them to go through threads and resurrect them. Add their piece of mind to a thread that was created and last added to long before they started. For more seasoned people, (like me, thoth, and tesral) I think most of us don't care. Also, because we are so high level, when it does happen it is like "Whoa I leveled up. No way!..... moving on."

Man, all of these disabled people. Am I the only non-disabled person who wastes his life here? Maybe I should go for a hike.... Naaah.

For me, it is a nice 5 min escape from work to keep my brain fresh.

But I think the point of this thread being in suggestions isn't to complain (although that might have been the originator's point), but to suggest putting it back in and ask why did it go away??

I am curious, why did it go away? Choice of Farcaster, or does the new server thingy not have that feature.

[Soft Serve]

I am curious, why did it go away? Choice of Farcaster, or does the new server thingy not have that feature.

Probably a combination I think.

[Arkhemedes]

yes, the activity bar shows who is active and not. This is important when trying to find people for a game to play. No use inviting someone who has visited the site once in the past 2 months.

As for the exp pts and the level and rank, I always thought it was a fun thing to have. For newbies, it encourages them to go through threads and resurrect them. Add their piece of mind to a thread that was created and last added to long before they started. For more seasoned people, (like me, thoth, and tesral) I think most of us don't care. Also, because we are so high level, when it does happen it is like "Whoa I leveled up. No way!..... moving on."

Man, all of these disabled people. Am I the only non-disabled person who wastes his life here? Maybe I should go for a hike.... Naaah.

For me, it is a nice 5 min escape from work to keep my brain fresh.

But I think the point of this thread being in suggestions isn't to complain (although that might have been the originator's point), but to suggest putting it back in and ask why did it go away??

I am curious, why did it go away? Choice of Farcaster, or does the new server thingy not have that feature.

I would pretty much agree with Yukon on everything here. And no, you're not the only one, Yukon.

[Farcaster]

yes, the activity bar shows who is active and not. This is important when trying to find people for a game to play. No use inviting someone who has visited the site once in the past 2 months ... I am curious, why did it go away? Choice of Farcaster, or does the new server thingy not have that feature.

The activity bar reflects how often someone posts in comparison with everyone else on the site during a certain period. It did not indicate how often someone visits the site.

As to the demise of the experience ranking system, the reasons are myriad. The developer who created that plugin for vBulletin has not chosen to create a new version for vBulletin 4, which is what the forums have been updated to now. This exposes a problem with using plugins that are developed as freeware and not actively supported. Most of the custom work on this site was developed in-house. That plugin is one of the exceptions. So, in the future, I plan to avoid using freeware extensions such as that one.

[yukonhorror]

that stinks... Ahh well.

There was a forum I was part of (a technical one concerning an open source molecular dynamics code) and I was the top poster (they had a ranking in the corner). I actually felt self-conscious about being so high (because I had about double that of the admins). But even that had somewhat of rankings (old hand, journeyman, etc...), so you could know who to trust and who might not know what they were talking about.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Now that there's room, i still believe that Threads Initiated should be implemented. Work that sorcerous programming, Farcaster! BTW, thanks for the Traveller rpg, but, where's WFRP? The weekends a commin' and i have gamer-related threads to initiate!

[Farcaster]

But even that had somewhat of rankings (old hand, journeyman, etc...), so you could know who to trust and who might not know what they were talking about.

Perhaps there are other ways we could solve this. There is a built in reputation system in vBulletin that I haven't tinkered with much. I could check it out and see how it works.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Let us know if you feel it worthy of implementation.

---------- Post added at 11:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:29 AM ----------

[QUOTE=yukonhorror;136436]yes, the activity bar shows who is active and not. This is important when trying to find people for a game to play. No use inviting someone who has visited the site once in the past 2 months.

As for the exp pts and the level and rank, I always thought it was a fun thing to have. For newbies, it encourages them to go through threads and resurrect them. Add their piece of mind to a thread that was created and last added to long before they started. For more seasoned people, (like me, thoth, and tesral) I think most of us don't care. Also, because we are so high level, when it does happen it is like "Whoa I leveled up. No way!..... moving on."QUOTE]

True, the longer gamers have been on this site/higher the level they are, the less they care about XP and Titles.

[Soft Serve]

Perhaps there are other ways we could solve this. There is a built in reputation system in vBulletin that I haven't tinkered with much. I could check it out and see how it works.

Reputation in this case not meaning how well received you are by other people?

[Farcaster]

Reputation in this case not meaning how well received you are by other people?

It would be reputation in the online community. I'm not all that familiar with the system though, so I'll have to read more on it before I could give you a better idea of how it works.

[tesral]

From what I have seen of reputation systems they make the XP bar look fair and reasoned. They are a high school popularity contest.

Let it go. If someone want so see how active someone is here, look at the number of posts and the "posts per visit"