Game jam badges

**Q-Nova** · 04-06-2021, 12:02 PM

I noticed that for the two recent minigame competitions (now called game jams), no badges were given. Is there a reason for this or did the staff forget about badges? Likewise, MTA3 didn't have any badges, when it could've been a good opportunity to use the special competition badges.

**Mors** · (This post was last modified: 04-07-2021, 10:33 AM by Mors.)

(04-06-2021, 12:02 PM)Q-Nova Wrote: I noticed that for the two recent minigame competitions (now called game jams), no badges were given. Is there a reason for this or did the staff forget about badges? Likewise, MTA3 didn't have any badges, when it could've been a good opportunity to use the special competition badges.

We have been sort of thinking about what to do with badges for a looong time by now, like I'm personally not really a fan of work anymore and have been thinking about revamping them in some way.

My main concern is that there are way too many badges now, to the point where they are pretty much meaningless. Oh look I have 17 different minigame comp top 5 badges, 12 of them are from minigame competitions with 5 entries. Wow, what an accomplishment! I feel like it would be far better if we just had far fewer badges that didn't stack up, but also carried more importance.

The issue is that though the forums are getting more and more "irrelevant" as time passes. Discord is where 90% of the activity has moved on to, so we never really felt motivated enough to actually go ahead and do the badge revamp. Heck, that's why never even handed out the badges for past events like the game jams, or the last MFGG Awards. In addition... would such badge revamp be even worth it? I mean considering people don't use the forums much anymore I don't really think so.

Here's what I'm thinking though... Would it make sense to tie badges to the main site instead of the forums? I mean the main site accounts are something everyone has, they are far more "permanent" than forum accounts, and badges there would be able to be carried to LumaSMS easily when happened.

I guess this is something we should think a bit more about.

(EDIT: To clarify, we aren't planning to kill the forums anytime soon as they still serve a purpose, just not as the main place for the community to come together)

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**Q-Nova**

@Mors I personally like badges -- they're a great way of showcasing how each user contributed to the community and what talents each user has. In fact, they motivated me to contribute to this place a lot! I can kind of see what you mean about too many badges. I sometimes wonder if it's really necessary to give a badge for posting on MFGG's anniversary at a specific year. Maybe those badges could be merged into one? I would leave the top 5 badges as they still require a bit of effort to obtain and show what skills you've at least tried out. I really like the idea of putting the badges to the main site -- after all, it appears to be the main gathering point of our community. I think the main site should have more ties with the other parts of MFGG anyway. For example, forum events seem to be rarely reported on the main site, although it seems that you staff members have been doing better at that lately. There isn't an update that says the SMB2 Isometric Collaboration has been finished and contains a link to the picture, however. That would be nice to have!

I remember you starting a discussion about badges: https://forums.mfgg.net/showthread.php?tid=1962

Some people suggested making it so that you can select only up to a few badges that would displayed next to every post you make. The rest would be viewed in your profile. I'm not sure if I like this idea or not, but maybe the majority of the community would be interested in this idea and it could eliminate the issue of too many badges!

P.S. Just noticed that this topic had 314 views before I posted this message! Talk about a Keen number! [Image: emotikeen-smile.gif]

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**VinnyVideo** · 04-20-2021, 09:13 PM

@Q-Nova Adding on to your comments... Back when the MyBB boards were new, we talked about creating a trophies system - basically, an extended badges system that would appear on your forum profile (but not on your badge list next to every post). That could be a good replacement for some of the easiest-to-obtain badges. We also found that such a thing would be difficult to implement, unfortunately.

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**Hyper** · 04-21-2021, 05:17 AM

I have considered it in the past. But MyBB doesn't have proper documentations and it's more trial and error. Plus I am not a fan working with PHP mostly which I scrapped that idea.

If you want to develop such system, be my guest.

Though, I wish MFGG is ran on Node JS environment.

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