Skarlath
11-13-2005, 06:57 PM
Please note that this is just an idea. This is not the system Sigil uses, and I am not proposing Sigil should take this on. I was just wondering how you all might feel if any games company did put a system like this in place.
I used to visit a particular forum that had a 'smite/exalt' feature. Every forum member had a Karma rating. Each day every member could smite (reduce by one) or exalt (increase by one) another member's karma.
It was only a small board used by a few friends chat a little, and so the feature was only for fun.
When it comes to selection of testers for beta, people have very mixed views on the crieria. If I was to be cynical I would say that everyone simply wants to maximise their chances of being picked. The longterm forum members want their enduring dedication to mean something, the high posters want their enthusiasm to pay off, and the casual posters don't want to be left out because they type slowly. Often the casual posters claim that longterm members or high posters aren't more deserving because high postcounts can often mean spam, or a long term member could have remained dormant for a long time.
So what if a company implemented a karma system early on. If someone spammed, you would smite them. If someone made a particularly good post, you would exalt them. Over time members would rack up their points - the 'truly deserving' separated from the rude and abusive.
This of course would only be one of the multiple criteria for selection, but I think it might allow those long serving, thoughtful members to be thanked by the devs, who otherwise may not be able to select out such people. It would be impossibly hard for the devs to keep tabs on the quality of every single member, but would it be plausible to allow the other members to keep track of things for them?
What do you all think - would you like it if the game you troll the forums in anticipation of in 6 or 7 years time used such as system? :)
I used to visit a particular forum that had a 'smite/exalt' feature. Every forum member had a Karma rating. Each day every member could smite (reduce by one) or exalt (increase by one) another member's karma.
It was only a small board used by a few friends chat a little, and so the feature was only for fun.
When it comes to selection of testers for beta, people have very mixed views on the crieria. If I was to be cynical I would say that everyone simply wants to maximise their chances of being picked. The longterm forum members want their enduring dedication to mean something, the high posters want their enthusiasm to pay off, and the casual posters don't want to be left out because they type slowly. Often the casual posters claim that longterm members or high posters aren't more deserving because high postcounts can often mean spam, or a long term member could have remained dormant for a long time.
So what if a company implemented a karma system early on. If someone spammed, you would smite them. If someone made a particularly good post, you would exalt them. Over time members would rack up their points - the 'truly deserving' separated from the rude and abusive.
This of course would only be one of the multiple criteria for selection, but I think it might allow those long serving, thoughtful members to be thanked by the devs, who otherwise may not be able to select out such people. It would be impossibly hard for the devs to keep tabs on the quality of every single member, but would it be plausible to allow the other members to keep track of things for them?
What do you all think - would you like it if the game you troll the forums in anticipation of in 6 or 7 years time used such as system? :)