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Bdcoll
2 Jun 2015, 11:31am
This idea was bought up earlier on in the chatbox and was good enough for its own thread.

Perhaps we can have a skin that unlocks after you register on our forums and make 10 good quality posts. It will encourage people to sign up here and improve the forums, as well as advertise the further benefits of our community.

That is all :D

Unnamed Newbie
2 Jun 2015, 11:45am
I can get behind this. And if not skins, some other incentive for players to sign up. The raffle helps a lot, but this would bolster it even more and prompt people to post.

WickedZealot
2 Jun 2015, 11:50am
I liked the part that requires the user most post at least once per month (like a free subscription) in order to keep the skin in-game. I think it's a good idea but we got some technical hills to get over to make this work with forums and in-game without a major management issue in awarding / checking if active or not / removal. If that's 1,000 users or more - it's an manual nightmare in logistics. However it could be possible to run it semi-automated at least with some sexy coding but is not a fast mover until more are interested in this, etc, etc.

mapper
2 Jun 2015, 11:50am
Sounds good but some would just spam to ten posts. So even if you could make this work automatically, someone still need to look after every player.

Darnias
2 Jun 2015, 11:54am
Names as cool images unlock?

WickedZealot
2 Jun 2015, 12:00pm
Sounds good but some would just spam to ten posts. So even if you could make this work automatically, someone still need to look after every player.

Agreed but also making sure a user always does a post per month helps to keep them active on the forums / return to us for the lazy ones while making not so lazy ones more active on the forums. It's abit of a pain to get this right but if worked i think we all could agree it would be a good thing. :)

BoM
2 Jun 2015, 12:11pm
Good luck coding that

SpikedRocker
3 Jun 2015, 12:32pm
Part of the steam link system that I've been working on actually has a forum rewards program so where we can set it up to do stuff like this. Can this check the validity of 10 post? No, you can't really do that. You can set up a system of variables to check that they have done more than just spam post however.

Maxwelldon
8 Jun 2015, 12:02pm
Part of the steam link system that I've been working on actually has a forum rewards program so where we can set it up to do stuff like this. Can this check the validity of 10 post? No, you can't really do that. You can set up a system of variables to check that they have done more than just spam post however.

Not so basic but possible. ;)

I dig the looks of stuff on forum and ingame but could use just a bit of customization options. On forum nothing too fancy but couple different themes that doesn't mess the structure and ingame some skins to keep things more interesting. :)

Octa
8 Jun 2015, 12:25pm
Not to speak for Pan or anything here, but I know he wants to keep the download for the servers to a minimum, and I tend to agree with him. I'm not saying its a bad idea, but you have to keep in mind, if the download times get too long, it will hurt us instead of help us. Adding skins for everything we can think of isn't a good idea, so we have to consider: Is this something that will actually help?

In this case, I think it could bring people onto the forums, but with the post count at only 10, I think we would have a lot of people joining, spamming for 10 posts, then never coming back

WickedZealot
8 Jun 2015, 12:38pm
Part of the steam link system that I've been working on actually has a forum rewards program so where we can set it up to do stuff like this. Can this check the validity of 10 post? No, you can't really do that. You can set up a system of variables to check that they have done more than just spam post however.

If you got that part, I can do the variable (will work outside of the forum but pull what it needs from the database to do it and send it back) - right after the project i'm on here with, August likely can look at this.

Mudkip™
8 Jun 2015, 01:39pm
can we lower the quality post count down to like 1 or 2? i still haven't made 10


this sounds cool tho, could get a lot of people on here

floffypus
8 Jun 2015, 02:51pm
Not to speak for Pan or anything here, but I know he wants to keep the download for the servers to a minimum, and I tend to agree with him. I'm not saying its a bad idea, but you have to keep in mind, if the download times get too long, it will hurt us instead of help us. Adding skins for everything we can think of isn't a good idea, so we have to consider: Is this something that will actually help?

In this case, I think it could bring people onto the forums, but with the post count at only 10, I think we would have a lot of people joining, spamming for 10 posts, then never coming back

I agree with Octa on this, people dont want to wait forever to connect to a server. I dont know how many skins we currently have on our servers, but keeping everything to the most basic like: Registered Skin - Subscriber Skin - Admin Skin - And maybe one more. that leaves us with 6-8 skins in total maybe, if there is one version of the skin for each team. How much extra this is to download i have no idea, but im pretty sure the percentage of the players who would register to get a skin is VERY high!

Forgot about the store, where theres probably a few more skins :/

Tweezy
8 Jun 2015, 04:19pm
If you got that part, I can do the variable (will work outside of the forum but pull what it needs from the database to do it and send it back) - right after the project i'm on here with, August likely can look at this.

This could be done automatically using most of the database and functions that the forum already use.

Could possibly setup two different tables that house two different things about the user:

table1
UserID | Username | MonthlyPass |

table2 (Post lookup table / membership table - what ever people call them these days)
UserID | Post |


The UserID on table1 is a primary key - this is the uniqueID the user on the forum gets setup with when they register
Username - Just the username of the person, might not even need this really
MonthlyPass - Bool value that gets set to true / false is the user has met the monthly post count - this can get searched for in the server

UserID on table2 - This is a Foreign key that links to the UserID in table 1
Post - House one post the user has done (Can use the autospam thing to make sure the post is worthwhile before entering into the database)

Each time the user does a successful post, this gets added as a new field in table2. Could have an automatic script running which checks the postcount of the user when they next visit the forums - if it is equal or greater then 10, then tick that monthlyPass to yes.

Do able...

WickedZealot
8 Jun 2015, 04:32pm
This could be done automatically using most of the database and functions that the forum already use.

Could possibly setup two different tables that house two different things about the user:

table1
UserID | Username | MonthlyPass |

table2 (Post lookup table / membership table - what ever people call them these days)
UserID | Post |


The UserID on table1 is a primary key - this is the uniqueID the user on the forum gets setup with when they register
Username - Just the username of the person, might not even need this really
MonthlyPass - Bool value that gets set to true / false is the user has met the monthly post count - this can get searched for in the server

UserID on table2 - This is a Foreign key that links to the UserID in table 1
Post - House one post the user has done (Can use the autospam thing to make sure the post is worthwhile before entering into the database)

Each time the user does a successful post, this gets added as a new field in table2. Could have an automatic script running which checks the postcount of the user when they next visit the forums - if it is equal or greater then 10, then tick that monthlyPass to yes.

Do able...

Yes with Spiked part that can shoot to the Steam so skins become active based on that :)

Turtlefiish
8 Jun 2015, 05:54pm
If you really want to keep downloads low, could just allow them to use any CT/T skin instead of just being locked the map's current skin. Not a great incentive, but it's something.

Maxwelldon
9 Jun 2015, 01:35am
I agree with Octa on this, people dont want to wait forever to connect to a server. I dont know how many skins we currently have on our servers, but keeping everything to the most basic like: Registered Skin - Subscriber Skin - Admin Skin - And maybe one more. that leaves us with 6-8 skins in total maybe, if there is one version of the skin for each team. How much extra this is to download i have no idea, but im pretty sure the percentage of the players who would register to get a skin is VERY high!

Forgot about the store, where theres probably a few more skins :/
Well it's always nice to have downloads to a bare minimum with the load that it gives to bandwidth and loading times, some people prefer to it over everything.
I wouldn't leave the requirements too low for anything that's "bonus" or similar, just would have spammers come in indeed. Registering, posting a few times and then going inactive just won't do and that should be self-explanatory reason enough.


If you really want to keep downloads low, could just allow them to use any CT/T skin instead of just being locked the map's current skin. Not a great incentive, but it's something.
I second this, having the games original skins would make a small difference, but a difference which could drag in some attention. Myself for one, i would enjoy having the choice to select different looks at times.. Same skins sort of start to bore you quite quickly too. :P

Tweezy
9 Jun 2015, 04:23am
Yes with Spiked part that can shoot to the Steam so skins become active based on that :)

Just been thinking about it, don't even need the first table, just add another column on the user table that has MonthyPass, then at the start of each month cycle run through each user and set it to false!

Zaraki
9 Jun 2015, 02:45pm
Just been thinking about it, don't even need the first table, just add another column on the user table that has MonthyPass, then at the start of each month cycle run through each user and set it to false!

Can we make this Brit TA now?

Drox
9 Jun 2015, 03:25pm
The idea of "Get people more involved on the forums by giving them something" was what multiple forum ranks was for. Since people used to have our SG ranks in the game servers. Now it seems that isn't as big a deal as it used to be, however I don't think offering different skins for registering on the forums would do any good. Plus it overloads when we have too many.

Maxwelldon
9 Jun 2015, 05:01pm
The idea of "Get people more involved on the forums by giving them something" was what multiple forum ranks was for. Since people used to have our SG ranks in the game servers. Now it seems that isn't as big a deal as it used to be, however I don't think offering different skins for registering on the forums would do any good. Plus it overloads when we have too many.

Valid points indeed.
There is the load-friendly option of just enabling already existing skins, like each teams own skins, if that is possible without causing too much extra load to servers - and it's only a suggestion. Also, little off topic there since we're discussing about having skin for being on forums. It's not really necessarily a "necessity," but it would be cool. :)

SpikedRocker
9 Jun 2015, 07:33pm
I guess I'll need to be a bit more specific in this as we really wasn't ready to publicly talk about it. I have a few plugins that have been in the works for a while now while we were working on the store. Everything is integrated and we are waiting on a few things to still fall in place. In the coming weeks we will slowly be releasing bits and pieces of it. I just ask for your patience as a few things were talked on here are planned but we just haven't talked about as its not quite ready for release yet.

I just don't want you guys to take my vague answer previously as something that we'll just start working on now because of this discussion. This has been in the works for a very long time, we are close to actually giving details on its particulars but we still need to do some testing and a bit more building to get it setup. We just don't want to promise you guys something that we cannot deliver or even leave you guys hanging waiting forever for it actually show up.