biglanky14
(?)Community Member
- Posted: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:30:22 +0000
Hi everyone,
I’m hoping you’ll take a few minutes to post your thoughts here. We’re going over some projects we could potentially do in the future, and would love to get your take. What we’re looking for is generally how useful and fun these types of features would be for you. These are really high-level descriptions of the projects, as the exact details haven’t been fleshed out yet (and could be influenced by your comments), so while you’re free to suggest details, we won’t really be able to answer questions about any of them right now. Same thing with the mocks we provided below - they're really just the very initial concepts, and are just to try to help show you what we're thinking of. It's almost certain they'd go through a bunch of changes before we actually implemented anything (if we even do).
One very important note: by considering new projects, it does not mean that we’re dropping everything else. We’ll still be working on existing features (such as Alchemy, and on fixing bugs and such), as well as anything new.
Ok, without further ado, here’s a description of three of our possible projects.
Forum Titles
This would be tied into the Achievements system, and allow you to earn a Title based on your actions on Gaia. For example, if you post X number of times, you could earn a title such as “Forum Master” that you could choose to display underneath (or somewhere) on your avatar. Or if you catch Y number of fish in the Fishing game, you could get “Crazy Fisherman.” Another possibility is for you to earn a certain number of adjectives and nouns for each action, and then put them together however you want, like in Mad Libs. For example, let’s say you catch X bugs in Towns. That could earn you “Awesome,” “Nuts,” and “Determined” as adjectives, and “Net Pro,” “Hunter,” and “Insectivore” as nouns. You could then stitch those together however you want. The more Titles you earn, the more possibilities you’d have.
Art/Writing/Whatever Directory and Contract System
A lot of our users run Shops selling their Art, Writing, or other creative works, using threads as their home base. We want to try to make this easier by creating a Seller Directory where buyers could look up sellers by category (ranging from everything from Art to services such as coding Profiles or simply Bumping threads). Sellers could have a personal store/page to show off their stuff and give some info about themselves, from which the buyer can talk to them about making an order. We’d likely also implement some sort of Feedback system to inform each party about potential sellers/buyers, and use that to help good sellers stand out in the Directory.
We’d also look at creating an official Contract system that would make it easier to have official agreements on what’s being bought/sold. It would likely be based on an escrow system, with each side agreeing to terms (e.g. “You will make me avatar art and I’ll pay 10000 gold”) and a certain timeframe. The gold would be held by the system until the deal is completed and agreed upon by both parties, or the agreed-upon timeline expires (at which point it’d be refunded). Once the art/writing/whatever is done, the link is shared within the Contract system, both sides agree that the deal is completed, and the gold is paid to the seller. It’s possible that you’d also be able to communicate about that deal (such as any feedback on the product mid-way through, renegotations for additions or changes, etc.) within the Contract system as well. Any disputes and such will be handled by mods, like now. Basically, it’s a more formal way of doing things than the current setup, which should be easier for both parties, and easier for us to intervene when we need to settle a dispute.
Here are a couple of mockups (again - totally conceptual):
Forum Wars
IThink of Forum Wars as competitive posting. Participants in a thread take a side - Team Blue or Team Red - and compete with each other for votes from other users. The users with the most blue and red votes become the Blue Leader and Red Leader. The leaders get a special spot at the top of each thread page where they can fill in a post. The different teams will represent whatever you guys can think up. It could be a simple debate, but it could also be used in RPing, avatar contests, etc.
Here's a quick conceptual mock:
Let us know what you think!
I’m hoping you’ll take a few minutes to post your thoughts here. We’re going over some projects we could potentially do in the future, and would love to get your take. What we’re looking for is generally how useful and fun these types of features would be for you. These are really high-level descriptions of the projects, as the exact details haven’t been fleshed out yet (and could be influenced by your comments), so while you’re free to suggest details, we won’t really be able to answer questions about any of them right now. Same thing with the mocks we provided below - they're really just the very initial concepts, and are just to try to help show you what we're thinking of. It's almost certain they'd go through a bunch of changes before we actually implemented anything (if we even do).
One very important note: by considering new projects, it does not mean that we’re dropping everything else. We’ll still be working on existing features (such as Alchemy, and on fixing bugs and such), as well as anything new.
Ok, without further ado, here’s a description of three of our possible projects.
Forum Titles
This would be tied into the Achievements system, and allow you to earn a Title based on your actions on Gaia. For example, if you post X number of times, you could earn a title such as “Forum Master” that you could choose to display underneath (or somewhere) on your avatar. Or if you catch Y number of fish in the Fishing game, you could get “Crazy Fisherman.” Another possibility is for you to earn a certain number of adjectives and nouns for each action, and then put them together however you want, like in Mad Libs. For example, let’s say you catch X bugs in Towns. That could earn you “Awesome,” “Nuts,” and “Determined” as adjectives, and “Net Pro,” “Hunter,” and “Insectivore” as nouns. You could then stitch those together however you want. The more Titles you earn, the more possibilities you’d have.
Art/Writing/Whatever Directory and Contract System
A lot of our users run Shops selling their Art, Writing, or other creative works, using threads as their home base. We want to try to make this easier by creating a Seller Directory where buyers could look up sellers by category (ranging from everything from Art to services such as coding Profiles or simply Bumping threads). Sellers could have a personal store/page to show off their stuff and give some info about themselves, from which the buyer can talk to them about making an order. We’d likely also implement some sort of Feedback system to inform each party about potential sellers/buyers, and use that to help good sellers stand out in the Directory.
We’d also look at creating an official Contract system that would make it easier to have official agreements on what’s being bought/sold. It would likely be based on an escrow system, with each side agreeing to terms (e.g. “You will make me avatar art and I’ll pay 10000 gold”) and a certain timeframe. The gold would be held by the system until the deal is completed and agreed upon by both parties, or the agreed-upon timeline expires (at which point it’d be refunded). Once the art/writing/whatever is done, the link is shared within the Contract system, both sides agree that the deal is completed, and the gold is paid to the seller. It’s possible that you’d also be able to communicate about that deal (such as any feedback on the product mid-way through, renegotations for additions or changes, etc.) within the Contract system as well. Any disputes and such will be handled by mods, like now. Basically, it’s a more formal way of doing things than the current setup, which should be easier for both parties, and easier for us to intervene when we need to settle a dispute.
Here are a couple of mockups (again - totally conceptual):
Forum Wars
IThink of Forum Wars as competitive posting. Participants in a thread take a side - Team Blue or Team Red - and compete with each other for votes from other users. The users with the most blue and red votes become the Blue Leader and Red Leader. The leaders get a special spot at the top of each thread page where they can fill in a post. The different teams will represent whatever you guys can think up. It could be a simple debate, but it could also be used in RPing, avatar contests, etc.
Here's a quick conceptual mock:
Let us know what you think!