The top-helper voting setup doesnt make any sense. the suggestion i made, which u as admin responded well to may have been misunderstood. what i was suggesting was that brand new players have the option of voting for the people who helped them once a week for their first month of play. this would encourage old players to put serious effort into helping new players in exchange for Swag in terms of credits or whatever. this would encourage new player retention.

what was set-up doesnt encourage this. since any player can vote for any other player, what you've actually set up is a rigged lottery. the player with the most Obedient entourage/followers will win automatically. most of the guilds here do not participate in pyramid scheme play styles, as a result sincere help will be discouraged... keep in mind how few players stick around in comparison with how many people sign up to the game. higher up in this chat Sparrow mentioned he found one, i've found a couple, so have a few other players... this is what should be encouraged. however, until players really get a hang of how to convince brand newbies to stick around, the number of players retained by a weekly winner will be rather low. a blanket popularity contest like this, where everyone can vote for everyone doesn't encourage helping new players, it encourages manipulating people into voting for you.

obviously its ur game, but the idea i suggested was something guaranteed to encourage player retention. the new system does the opposite, so u should expect no gains in player retention, while also benefiting the most manipulative play styles.

I agree about the Top Helper currently being a popularity/bribing contest. I like the idea of limiting it to <1 or 2 month old players: that way you have an incentive to get new players into your guild and help them out rather than convince your long-time friends/guildmates to vote for you.

Should there be a separate topic about the Top Helpers feature?

-Captain D

Each player gets to vote up to 4 times. Have you got this in your considerations when you wrote your posts about top helper being a popularity contest?

Is what I said seriously not making sense... Giving every player in the game one vote, or 4 votes, or 8 votes wouldn't make any difference at all. The only players which will ever win this contest would be either most popular, or most manipulative. Even if the player uses their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th votes on different players, the contest winner would always be whoever has the most obedient followers, and never the most helpful player. at least not the person who helped the most brand new players.

if this system is designed to be a lottery type sub-game to give free resources to an established player, by all means.

however, this will not help retain new players at all, and it seems obvious that that should be your goal in rewarding helpful players.

the reason my original suggestion would work is that it encourages old players to take a several week commitment to helping new players out, in exchange for in game rewards. this frees your hands to do other admin-stuff, while ur old players improve your new player retention numbers.

this group of people, brand new players, will Always be outnumbered by active players, as a result the person, or people helping these brand noobies would have to bring an enormous number of players into the game before they could compete with people who just beg/demand votes from their friends lists.... and since whoever has the most obedient friends list can get the most votes.. they'll end up winning the contest every time... that's what makes this a popularity contest instead of a reason to encourage helping new players.

even if the subject wasn't "most helpful" as long as there's a reward at the other end, people are going to work around the system to get the reward... and this makes the idea of rewarding the helpful pointless...

Hmm.. No. You are wrong. You do not know how it will work. You are assuming in the wrong direction. Just wait till we publish the help file, then you can complain.

Zombie jesus wrote:-Content removed/ Administration Baiting + Trolling-

1 week forum ban has been issued

We have no time to respond to continuous inflammatory messages by you, Zombie. Keep your insulting remarks about my person in private. ~Captain Jack

I will miss zombie being on the forums. He is the best forum person pirate's glory has.

Now that the system has been running for some time, it would be good to get some feedback from all regarding this feature and if we need to change anything or not.

since this system is intended for players to help new comers why not make a newb's vote have more power than everyone else's e.g. a player less than 1 week old give 2 points to the player he/she votes for

as for feedback i do hear a few people comment on how the hell some people get on the list(and get 20 votes). I do think some people get on there because of how many friends they have rather than actually helping anyone and some of the people that deserve to win have at best have half a dozen votes. I think if voodoo was tracked then the system could be very effective at awarding those that deserve it. I know that not all vote for who helped them or offered to help, but i dont think they are the minority.