HoF and xOTM awards

[Seraiel]

Hi

My last proposal is not even finished, so still under construction, but I had another idea I wanted to share with the CFC staff and players:

It'd be really nice, if the most dedicated players on this site could be somehow made “stand out“ , .maybe similar to the staff-members with certain badges or differently (read later ideas) . The reasoning behind this, is, that we have players on this site that basically “have studied civ“ , and that dedicate a big part of their life to achieve achievements, that are sometimes so hard, that it takes years of hardcore playing and that there sometimes are less than 10 players who inhabit these achievements.

I'm talking mainly on the 2 Quattromaster Challenges in HoF and the players inhabiting the “Ephtalon“ award from xOTM. Just to give you an impression of how hard it is to finish these achievements: It took me 4y of playing civ in at least half of my free time, I'm a student, so that's a lot. I needed to have played with every single civ, on every map, achieve every type of victory, win every speed, play all later era starts and compete against the other top players in at least one major and one minor Gauntlet to be awarded with the Elite Qattromaster achievement! Those were over 50 games of CIV, all played on the highest possible difficulty, where one game alone sometimes can take 200h.
I'm ranking on 3rd place of exactly 8 people who had the endurance and skill for this:

And there, we have the problem: It would benefit this site and its players greatly, if more players took part in the competitions! In SGOTM, there are i. e. only

Spoiler :

two

teams atm., that are so competitive, that it's not clear who will earn the #1. Many lurkers are following this battle with great interest, but how great would it be, i there were 10 teams on that niveau? Same with the Quattromaster competition or the battles for the Ephtalon, simply too few players participate!

Therefore I propose something is done, to make these players stand out. Give them a badge like the staff has but that's completely different, give them a custom user title only they can have, allow their avatars to be larger or anything, so these player are recognized. This would be great to promote CFC's competitions, and it would make the players more likely to try these competitions, because they can really win something!
I'm not talking from anything that's over the top, the idea is just to lure more players in the competitions because they have that thought “That's cool what UserXY has, I want that too!“

How far to take this, should be resolved by arguing about it. I definitely don't want everybody who has ever won a GOTM to recieve these award, but i. e. when looking at the last Ephtalon winner: He calls himself lymond, he has over 10k of posts of which most are high quality post that help new players, and he works for the HoF without getting anything for it. Players like him deserve to stand out in any kind you could accept, so not too much, but their efforts should be recognizable by others, and more competition is always good.

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Sry that this post is so long.

Seraiel

P. S.: Someone made me aware that this article has a Civ4 bias. This is not the case! Ofc, I'd want all those hard-playing Civ1, 2, 3 or 5 players to be rewarded aswell.

P. P. S.: When I think about it, some modders should be awarded too.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I agree with this, something simple that rewards people for some of the great achievements on here would be excellent.

 

[Pangaea]

First of all, I just want to say that I detest the trend in gaming where you get achievements just for the utter genius of putting your pants on the right way. But this is different, it would be a recognition of showing great skill with the game we all love, and some form of award for that would be nice, to encourage more players to play for the HoF and other competitions.

If doing this in the forum profile itself is too tricky - I can understand that as I've been a forum admin myself years ago - maybe a dedicated page would be better. I noticed they have this for the GOTM for instance, so something similar for the HoF could be an idea.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I like it as an idea. Coming up with consistent criteria that can be employed as objectively as possible would be helpful though. For SGOTM or even XOTM it wouldn't be hard to place badges/small icons I'd guess. I'm not sure what else could qualify though. There are of "deity players" out there that are not regulars to the competition but have been very beneficial to the community as a whole. Some of them did participate in the competitions but were not regulars.

 

[Seraiel]

I know what you mean TMIT. I was in a big musicians forum about a month ago, there, some users had the badge “friendly and helpful user“ .

I'd find it ok, but want to say, that playing competetive is something completely different to plying normal, because competitive games are controlled for non-cheating, so if somebody is overly helpful, give him the badge that I suggested, but don't make any “Deity Player“ badges or similar, because many players can win that level with infinite amounts of reloading or even worldbuildering. What we want is to steer users to taking part in the competitions mainly, because those are the big features of CFC.
Ofc, helping the community is also great and should also be awarded (like i.e. certain modders, whose mods are sometimes as famous as the base game, and who have been contributing for Years) .

 

[shakabrade]

I don't like achievements and such.

Anyone is doing with his/hers time what they want. If the path itself isn't rewarding enough, than you shouldn't do that and no badge should make a difference. Also, from lack of competition in such time-consuming formats, I see nothing but lack of interest, definitely not lack of ability.

I think that all the people who have contributed already have a reputation.


Inability to stop obsessing about civ should not be glorified. From personal experience, my life is much better without addictions (civ included). I'd rather have a thread dedicated to finding a balance between life and civving than bigger avatars.

Also, civ gaming is nowhere nearly as developed as other competitive games, like Starcraft. If there was a way to normalize, civ best wouldn't be near Starcraft's 500. All of this very IMO, obviously.

And there would be money.

 

[Seraiel]

You didn't understand my main point of my post, shaka. It's not about reputation but about promoting CFC competitions.

And this site doesn't consist purely out of addicts, just because you had problems with that. There are actually also competitive players that still have a life.

 

[Seraiel]

If you need help in diverting time but not too much time in CIV, you can always write me a PM, friend. Sry for being very direct in the post before.

 

[Mesix]

I like this idea. I think it would be cool if there were titles similar to the way MODERATORS or STAFF titles appear under a person's name. Perhaps under the avatar to differentiate game playing titles from site administration titles.

 

[Maniacal]

Official banners under people's names or something just seems more like ego stroking than promoting competitive civ. I'd far rather see people get rewarding for contributing well written content to the site or organizing stuff than for how good they are at a game.

 

[Seraiel]

To create good content, often a lot of knowledge about the game is needed. It's no accident, that the best helping posts often come from the best players.

And I guarantee you, getting attention for 3 or 4y of playing Civ competitively has nothing to do with ego stroking. It's morely a sign of respect to the players accomplishments, and as everybody has the same chance to accomplish those achievements, there is nothing wrong with making the others aware of them.

 

[Maniacal]

Yeah that still sounds mostly like ego stroking. EDIT: This really is what your signature is for.

 

[Seraiel]

Why does raising the awareness for the competitions CFC offers sound like egostroking for you? Players are used to promote playing, the first players get their achievements acknowledged while the other players get more fun through competing against others? It's win / win, + CFC wins too, because of more active players.

 

[Seraiel]

EDIT: This really is what your signature is for.

My signature is for providing helpful content to others.

 

[Seraiel]

I'd far rather see people get rewarding for contributing well written content to the site or organizing stuff than for how good they are at a game.

Btw., badges for friendly ans helpful users were already suggested and accepted.

 

[Pangaea]

Yeah that still sounds mostly like ego stroking. EDIT: This really is what your signature is for.

It really isn't. Have you read those pieces? Civ Illustrated #1 for instance was a multi-user project that took many, many weeks to write. The intent was to provide good information to other players. Oh, and ourselves. I use it all the time.

Anyway, I'm sort of neither here nor there on badges. But I think it would be positive with a page for the HoF with similar 'medals' that the GOTM have. If people for instance got gold, silver or bronze medals for doing well in the gauntlets and challenges, maybe more people would feel the incentive to play in them.

 

[Seraiel]

How about this:

Players having an Ephtalon get a minipicture of that shown somewhere near their name.

Quattromaster and Elite Quattromaster have no pictures, but the difficulty on which those got achieved is of major importance, therefor, 3 types of badges are needed, Quattromaster, Elite Quattromaster and Dual Quattromaster. Right above this, the difficulty level needs to be added, so it i.e. reads “Prince Elite Quattromaster“ .

GOTMs and Gauntlets get small medals, like they already are used on the GOTM page (saves time) . Display of those is:
# * <type of medal>
This shouldn't be too difficult, as the staff already awarda those achievements in a post, so all they had to is add the medals on both, the specific page + the user profile.

SGOTMs imo need to be seperate, because they're muvh larger and longer games than standard GOTMs, therefor I'd propose the same system as for GOTM, only that stars are shown instead of Medals.

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Non competition awards:

Friendly and helpful user: Type: Badge

Can be aquired by: Needs to be discussed about as finding objective criteria for this is quite difficult. Maybe a poll would be the right thing for this, though I'm not sure if those would get enough votes. Maybe, the inholder such a title could make suggestions for other people who get that title. The objective thing then would be, that every case would need evaluated in single. Maybe, it should also simply lie in the hands of the mods of certain forums, to fiend users that exceptionally often help others.

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I could very well see, that a system like that would make players much more aware of CFCs competitions. It also could improve players being generally more friendly and helpful, because they want that title.

Maybe an Admin could tell how difficult something like that would be to implement, and maybe the other Staff could say if thos would be simply too much work. I think the positive effects of this are quite clear.

 

[Seraiel]

I thought about it again, and I think this would also contribute to the feeling of being a community, because more players share the same interests. Also, the old quarrel between HoFers and GOTMers would finally find an end, maybe even luring some players to play for both.

 

[Mitchum]

This sounds like an interesting idea. I agree that not everyone cares about public attention for their accomplishments (as mentioned by shakabrade) but many people do. Doing this may give some people incentive to finally finish off an accomplishment that is nearly complete (i.e. Quatromaster, Eptathlete, etc.). In the end, the whole community wins if more people are engaged, right?

I'm for it as long as you can tweak the requirements to allow me a special badge!

 

[Seraiel]

I wanted to this and hope that that's allowed.

It's imo a good suggestion and the majority of people who've answered have been pro to it, though I agree, that that were not so many, but that also may be related to the number of users that visit this specific forum, when looking at the amount of feedback other proposals got.