Ranks After Green

[MT_Hairy_Hindu]

So, in my recent arrival back to the server, I really like some of the changes, and how the server works as a whole. It took me roughly a year and a half to come back properly, and I must say, I enjoy once again. Making maps, talking to very old friends, and gaining points are what keeps me going on this server. Of course, that is kind of what you do at green now eh? My point being, is ranks after green.

Being green for almost over 2 years has been great, and I remember when I first got it, I had this weird adrenaline rush, now I feel like a good player In daily sittings on the server, I have come to notice the lack of blues, but the increase of greens. Now, I am not sure about others, but the old greens, when you got green, I bet you felt great right? I have been hearing that the HC right now is dramatically easier than what it was, but that does not make it easy. If we add in one more rank after green, maybe with X number of maps, testing puzzle, parkour and maze, we may feel like we have things to achieve now. I am not saying it is boring one bit, as I am back to how I used to be in this server, 16 and still bloody love it, but if we add this rank, maybe we have that one extra time of feeling "special" if you like on the server.

Please post your opinions down here, even if you don't regularly join the server, and tell me and others how you feel! Purple may be a cool colour, I am not sure.

Thanks for reading,

TheRealEminemm, formerly MT)Hairy_Hindu, to be CountSuku.

 

[MT_Hairy_Hindu]

I would love to talk this through with some Ops and Mod through skype or teamspeak, to really justify my views on this!

 

[Jkjkelly1]

I'm not sure we need another rank. What you proposed is that greens get a new rank after creating a certain number of maps. I'm really quite against this, as I feel as a server we need to focus on having good quality maps, not just a lot of them.

However, instead of creating a new rank (and this is something that'll have to be worked out quite a bit), greens get some sort of reward for having a map put into FFA+? Perhaps a purple star next to you name in chat, but I don't think a whole new rank is required. We want greens to make excellent quality maps, and something like that will accomplish that and what you were proposing.

 

[MT_Hairy_Hindu]

No that is not what I meant. I mean after completitn HC and getting green, there should be a rank just for aesthetic purposes. They do not need any number of maps. I mean completing maps such as the 1-0 HC ones but different ones.

 

[Zatharel]

Just to clarify, when I said the idea was nice, I didn't mean the post green ranks, I meant the green challenges. I'll come back to this post in a minute to explain in detail.

(EDIT):

Alright. What I thought was nice about a part of this idea was that greens (and up) could have more things to do than create maps, farm points & speedrun things (obviously the amount of things to do increases for mods/ops due to rule enforcement, but we're not discussing that today).

My suggestion was that we *could* have "special" courses/events/challenges for green and higher. Whities and blues have goals, but it all stops when you reach glorious green. First, you're going for 20 points, then you're challenging HC. Obviously, some of you are going to say "but we have TAR and NW" - sure we do, but those are getting less and less frequent. No one is to blame for that, everyone I hope has a life outside of MINR and it is silly to ask someone to do things here if they're busy. However, having things that don't rely on manpower would be nice.

In line with the current set of events we've got (Races, TGR Tournaments, TAR, NW), it would be interesting to have challenges that don't depend on players being on at the same time, don't need organization etc. This can go anywhere from Green+ maps to well, anything really, the idea is open to suggestions.

Should such courses for Greens+ be made, they don't even have to give any special rewards really, although that could be a bonus. The point of it all is to have more things to do. I know people who have completed 95%-100% of all FFA, FFA+ and Valley maps and aren't the building type, and they've got nothing to do anymore but speedrun maps.

***​

Of course, this is all just a thought. Feel free to add to it and criticize it.

 

[MT_Hairy_Hindu]

This is much clearer than what I said, and alot better as an idea

Cheers Zath

 

[MeisterXehanort]

The only rank after green I'd want is mod or admin.

 

[Ajdj]

Going back to the start of the thread, extra ranks past green has the potential to make the chat confusing. I've seen servers with 10-25+ different ranks, and it makes the chat ugly and difficult to follow. Over my time here I remember discussions on whether or not to merge admins back into the green color, as well as whether or not to give mods their own color.

There have been discussions (Not sure where anymore, it could have been the older forums) on extra prefixes (similar to TAR/NW stars) based on FFA points, but the similar issue of a cluttered chat arises. To a certain extent, the stars have the potential to make the chat look unorganized. Full titles like the "Ninja_Warrior" from the most recent tournament made this even worse.

In a similar line of thinking, I have toyed around with the idea of additional perks/activities unlocked after earning X amount of FFA points, but the ability to implement that would require a plugin update to the checkpoint signs to check for points, and only allow a teleport when a player's points is greater than a threshold, which is something that I never have had the opportunity to look into as an update until the switch (@rickyboy320 , something to consider for 1.9?). If we were to follow this route though, I'm not sure what all we could offer as perks (without taking away things that greens already have).

Other misc Ideas I have considered but never worked on:
--Mini-TAR style hunts that would lead to the location of a rare material's resource parkour (Too easy to share solutions).
--Cosmetic stars based on 100x points, or if you held the #1/2/3 spot on a map's speedrun (Clutter issue again).

Edit- Fixed typos.

 

[henniboy321]

I like the idea of prefixes and if we are gonna use them I'd say we could a prefix to the players whose map is in FFA+, it motivates others to build good maps and try to get their map in FFA+ and it rewards players who did a good job on making a map.

 

[rickyboy320]

The problem is: what does this new rank offer, what makes it "worth" getting towards this "point".
It's true that sometimes things get a little dull. Back when I was green, and eventually mod, I had many moments MINR didn't really "interest" me anymore, and it was tough to come up with (doable&enjoyable) projects. Obviously many community members have suggested "community builds", or other things to do together, but that never seems to actually get pulled off.

Events require quite a lot of work, and planning. And obviously, as we've seen with MinrMafia, the more such event gets done in a short amount of time, the less 'hype' and appeal it has. Thus, if we would implement something that's new and fresh, it would get dull in a few months.

A few months ago I was toying around with some type of HC+ for greens, which pretty much is a super-hard-hardcore with a special way of progression (don't want to spoil too much ). However I threw that idea in the garbage bin as I had no idea what it would give the players.

Also, coming back to the "Challenges" that CreepahShadowz suggested, http://forums.minr.org/threads/challenges.1602/. I have never actually started this yet, because:
A) I had no idea what to do with rewards
B) How to exactly implement it into our current FFA system
C) It would require a lot of work

However, Aj's post has given me a new idea.

Say, we limit the entrance to the "Challenge" center to players that have at least 100 (as a random amount, could be more, 400? ) points, the challenges open for them. This allows them to play the challenges as described in the thread above. After completing such challenge, they would be awarded with a star in their FFA history, indicating they've played that map in a 'challenge'. Color of the star then clarifies which type of challenge. (yellow = no food, red = no cp's or something similar)

While that gives some extra replayability to some maps, it might not give the exact 'victory' MT described. And I'd preferably have these things open for everyone, because why would we only limit such thing to people with X+ points.

Stars, or more colors in chat would indeed clutter it up a little bit (stars being less cluttery than colors), so at most I'd give a player a temporary star. (Because say player "A" has a star from beating HC+, a star for getting 100 points, and a star for TAR & NW, this player A will be shown in chat as:
****A
With names like "rickyboy320":
****rickyboy320
So, that will make our chat very rainbowy, and unclear for many players on what that player actually accomplished.

I think that having the top time on a map already gives enough acknowledgement when entering a map.

I wouldn't mind giving you guys more features, and more things to do, but the hard thing is WHAT.

 

[Srentiln]

Personally, I don't see the need for arbitrary ranks. If it weren't for HC requiring aquireing ffa points to enter, blue would be a rediculous addition to have.

Time for the old-man-sren story

Back when I gained green, zero was a survival server with an innovative way to keep griefers out. There were three distinguishable ranks: white, green, and red. Now, we have added ffa and ffa+, we have added blue to the list of ranks, and the focus has shifted from survival to the courses that were originally a way to agoid having to use a white-list. At the current time, we have no real reason to be adding a new rank.

If a player isn't interested in building, then gaining green is about as useful to them as gaining that "opened 1 million containers" achievement while saving the world from whatever threat the latest game revolves around. Sure, you completed a difficult task, but it is purely aesthetic and loses its appeal quickly. For these players, a new rank to achieve is just anouther completionist thing that won't change the fact that they've done it all and are just checking in for new challenges (kind of like me with quests in runescape).

For those who are builders, unless that rank has some significant meaning to it, it doesn't change how interested in building they are.

Basically, it's best to focus on the question of "is there something significant we can add to zero?" rather than the question of "should we add a new rank for greens to go after?"

 

[blie4]

My thoughts on this:

Our community is very closely knit largely due to the fact that we all share the similar rank of greenie, and we've all gone through the same ordeals of Hardcore. I have to admit, I don't have many friends on the server that are blues, and none (off the top of my head) that are whities. It's easier to get along with someone who shares your rank, and you have the same level of authority and privilege as that person. I found that when I got mod, a lot of conversations with friends shifted from casual talks or hyping about new games, to questions like "So how are the mod powers?" or "Can you help me out with this thing on the server?". Further ranks will, in my opinion, just give a stronger sense of competition and superiority between players.

I also agree with the thoughts that a new rank is simply unnecessary. Whities can experience the maps and games of the server, blues can attempt hardcore, and greens get building privileges in the open world. There really isn't anything next that could contribute to whether or not you deserve more power, besides trusting the player with the power to moderate the community, which is almost more of a job than a "power" to use in order to enhance your experience on the server.

 

[nahfackler]

Here's my thought,
Over the time I was active on the server people seemed to be content with their ranks and I also noticed quite a few Blues dropped out because of the difficulty of the HardCore system. I haven't been on the server due to some real life issues, but I have seen quite a few people on the server during the School year.

My question is

Why create new ranks when people are content and If we were to create a new rank, could it be optional?

I think we should do a site poll and see what other people think.

 

[SleeknFoxy]

As a green who isn't very fond of building maps, I do think that some kind of set of maps available to greens would be a good idea. The only problem is that it wouldn't feel as rewarding as trying to beat HC and getting green. Mimic HC in itself is an example of what value one of these sets would be. A reward of points would probably suffice, yet I think a colored name would feel much better after clearing an even more difficult HC if that were the case. But like Aj said, the chat would get confusing and ugly. So I'd say including sets of maps or one set of hard maps that are worth lots of points are the only way to go if everyone wanted to be pleased.

 

[Alphaesia]

I think having

Here's my thought,
Over the time I was active on the server people seemed to be content with their ranks and I also noticed quite a few Blues dropped out because of the difficulty of the HardCore system. I haven't been on the server due to some real life issues, but I have seen quite a few people on the server during the School year.

My question is

Why create new ranks when people are content and If we were to create a new rank, could it be optional?

I think we should do a site poll and see what other people think.

You can't create an "optional" rank and an "unoptinal" rank. All ranks are "optional".

 

[Zatharel]

As a green who isn't very fond of building maps, I do think that some kind of set of maps available to greens would be a good idea. The only problem is that it wouldn't feel as rewarding as trying to beat HC and getting green. Mimic HC in itself is an example of what value one of these sets would be. A reward of points would probably suffice, yet I think a colored name would feel much better after clearing an even more difficult HC if that were the case. But like Aj said, the chat would get confusing and ugly. So I'd say including sets of maps or one set of hard maps that are worth lots of points are the only way to go if everyone wanted to be pleased.

As I said, this was my main suggestion.

Even a set of courses that give no reward at all would still be a start.

 

[MT_Hairy_Hindu]

Sorry for the unclear post. Zath put it into simple terms, in which me and him had spoken about.

Thanks for the contributions and ideas though guys!

 

[rmanimal]

This is just something to add, but it isn't necessary.
I've heard quite a few times that while some people at minimum want some recognition for a challenge, colors and stars in the chat would get confusing and ugly. I've been there: There's a server which thought it was a great idea to have 24 Roman numeral ranks. This was a typical convo:
[XIII]Bleh: So how are you guys?
[XXIV]Bleh2: Good
[IV]Bleh3: Very good
[CO-OWNER] [Finished]Bleh4: meh.
I wish I was joking.
Anyways, I though it would be a good idea to have an /awards command, so you could have a list of challenges and their completion status. While it isn't perfect, it wouldn't chunk up chat. Also, this puts strain on our already hardworking mods and admins.

 

[Srentiln]

an awards command would be a good idea. We would need to have it as a server-side coding rather than a bukkit coding probably, but it has significant potential.

 

[blie4]

Bleh4

What's up?

Jokes aside, I think the award command is a great idea. It provides additional challenges without a clear cosmetic award, but also a nice objective for any bored completionists.