Potential New Usergroup Banners

[seaturtle]

Since Smash Camp, something I've wanted to brainstorm and think about is the addition of other aesthetic roles that give people banners like the Cabin 2 ones we have right now from the Smash Camp winners. The main idea I have right now is to give a banner to official tournament winners, something like a gold banner reading "League Champion" would be cool. I'd also love to hear other potential suggestions, although we don't want to suddenly release a bajillion different banners so we'll probably keep the additions to a minimum. I have two main questions right now, though:

Should these banners stack? Right now the only "stacked" banners we'd have are staff banners + Smash Camp, but if we introduced more there's the potential for someone to keep collecting them until they have a bunch. Would that look too bloated on the member sidebar? An idea I've had is to limit users to one non-staff related banner and let them decide which they want to display. For instance, if someone from Cabin 2 in Smash Camp won a tournament, they would have the option to display either the Tournament one or the Cabin 2 one, etc.

My second question is, should these be permanent things? Or when the event happens again, should the old banner be removed and given to the new winner instead? An example of this is the Cabin 2 banner, which will only be lasting until the next Smash Camp, and then the new winning cabin will display instead. Should that be how it is for all banners? Or should it be a more case-by-case basis? With regards specifically to tournaments, we could cycle it every tournament or just let tourney winners get it and hold onto it forever?

 

[Varhii]

I think what we should do when it comes to banners for events is that you get a badge showing that you have won the event and you get a banner that shows you have won the most recent one.

 

[theDINOsaurus]

I love the idea of banners. I do think it'd be really easy for them to turn into clutter, so I agree that it should probably be limited to one non-staff banner at a time or at least limiting them in some capacity. I don't think the two for the staff looks bad, but having too many would just start to look icky I think.

I'm a little torn on what I think for permanent vs temporary, though. I actually wouldn't mind the Smash Camp banners staying IF a year was added onto them, though I think having them taken away with the next Smash Camp is fine as well. I think tournaments are a little dicier though. On one hand, I feel like the most recent tournament winner being the only one with the banner seems more special and it could be a little source of pride for a bit. But on the other, the increments between tournaments may not always be the same, so someone could have it for half a year when someone else has it for two months, and I could see how that might be a little frustrating. Would it be possible to label the banner somehow to indicate what tournament the person won? I think that could be a neat solution, and it would be fine for it to be left permanently if the banners are limited as mentioned above. I think that would be my personal preference, but I admittedly don't know how the actual implementation of these banners works.

 

[Bossvelt]

amazing idea that gives a cute incentive for peoples efforts in events and such

im all for it

srry its not a detailed response but thats all i gotta say!!!

 

[~Kilza~]

I'm alright with non-staff banners stacking, but I think it'd be worth investigating to what extent the banners should stack since a user having, like, 20 banners would for sure look bloated. I imagine it's easy enough to just keep adding banners to a test user and see at what point there could be considered too many banners on them. It's easy enough to have an arbitrary limit (i.e. 5) before non-staff banners start getting replaced. In the event a user has multiple non-staff banners, I think by default it should be the latest banner earned that's displayed and the oldest one that's replaced, but the user has the right to override it if they choose to.

As for permanency, I don't think they should be permanent. The Smash Camp example is the best way to go about things IMO. That way, if somebody really wants to have a banner from an event again, they have to earn the right to keep it by winning the event again. In the event an event with a banner is never run again, the banner should only last a year before it gets removed. To put it another way, my line of thinking is basically that badges are and should be permanent. Non-staff banners should not be. That way, winning a banner and wearing it feels more special.

 

[seaturtle]

I think what we should do when it comes to banners for events is that you get a badge showing that you have won the event and you get a banner that shows you have won the most recent one.

I voiced my opinion in the badges thread already, but when we have another badge for how many events you've won I feel like it's redundant to have a badge for every individual event. At that point why have the badge saying you've won x amount of forum events if they already display on your profile anyways?

I love the idea of banners. I do think it'd be really easy for them to turn into clutter, so I agree that it should probably be limited to one non-staff banner at a time or at least limiting them in some capacity. I don't think the two for the staff looks bad, but having too many would just start to look icky I think.

I'm a little torn on what I think for permanent vs temporary, though. I actually wouldn't mind the Smash Camp banners staying IF a year was added onto them, though I think having them taken away with the next Smash Camp is fine as well. I think tournaments are a little dicier though. On one hand, I feel like the most recent tournament winner being the only one with the banner seems more special and it could be a little source of pride for a bit. But on the other, the increments between tournaments may not always be the same, so someone could have it for half a year when someone else has it for two months, and I could see how that might be a little frustrating. Would it be possible to label the banner somehow to indicate what tournament the person won? I think that could be a neat solution, and it would be fine for it to be left permanently if the banners are limited as mentioned above. I think that would be my personal preference, but I admittedly don't know how the actual implementation of these banners works.

Adding dates is technically possible, but would require a different usergroup for every year which would get annoying after a while. This is actually part of the reason why we made the committee forums public for MarriProm- stacking up usergroups for everything gets really messy and hard to navigate in the CP when you keep adding groups that have no purpose anymore. It would get particularly messy for tournaments if we had a new usergroup for each one. I would prefer to either have one banner that's either given to everyone who wins it or is cycled between the most recent winners over making individual banners for every tournament.

I'm alright with non-staff banners stacking, but I think it'd be worth investigating to what extent the banners should stack since a user having, like, 20 banners would for sure look bloated. I imagine it's easy enough to just keep adding banners to a test user and see at what point there could be considered too many banners on them. It's easy enough to have an arbitrary limit (i.e. 5) before non-staff banners start getting replaced. In the event a user has multiple non-staff banners, I think by default it should be the latest banner earned that's displayed and the oldest one that's replaced, but the user has the right to override it if they choose to.

As for permanency, I don't think they should be permanent. The Smash Camp example is the best way to go about things IMO. That way, if somebody really wants to have a banner from an event again, they have to earn the right to keep it by winning the event again. In the event an event with a banner is never run again, the banner should only last a year before it gets removed. To put it another way, my line of thinking is basically that badges are and should be permanent. Non-staff banners should not be. That way, winning a banner and wearing it feels more special.

As far as banner stacking goes, the most non-staff banners I think we could have before clutter is probably like.... 3ish. We can do test ones to see how it looks, but anything over 3 banners (which would become 4 for members on staff) would feel like a little much. If we have allow for more than one banner though, I do think it would be best to have them be temporary. I think that it provides an incentive for people to consistently participate, and also prevents someone from getting a buttload of banners and then kinda just hogging them. Exact timeframes would need to be worked out (a year is probably a good standard), but having a time limit seems fair to me.

As far as display order goes, that's something that is set up per usergroup and not on a user per user basis so it would have to be the same order for everyone and isn't able to be customized.

 

[Felly]

I like the idea of non-staff banners! I think it's a nice little achievement that you can show off for a lil while.

That said, I think the limit on them should be 2 or 3. Any more than that and it kinda starts looking a little tacky imo. Even with the smaller ones that we have here, I've seen more than 3 in use and it's just... not nice. If a person gets more than 3, then the oldest one can be swapped out for the newest one, or we can let them choose which one goes; either way works. It'd probably be best if it was 2 for non-staff and 3 for staff (their staff banner + the 2 award banners), just because 4 would probably look tacky.

In terms of permanence, I 100% think they should be temporary. A year sounds reasonable imo. That's the standard for the Smash Camp banner, and I feel like it's best to keep it the same for all other temp banners just to avoid confusion. I don't think badges necessarily need to replace the banners since theoretically, they're also getting a badge with the banner, and it doesn't sound like any of these banners wouldn't be obtainable again. It seems redundant to get a participant badge + a banner + another badge once you lose the temp banner, and it would probably make the badges look a lot messier than necessary.

EDIT: Also, probably irrelevant, but couldn't y'all create temp user groups in the ACP for stuff like Marriprom and just delete them when it's all said and done? (Or just make user groups for regular events like Marriprom and keep them, but remove them from users at the end of the event and give them back the next year and then make temp user groups to delete later for big one time events?)

 

[theDINOsaurus]

Adding dates is technically possible, but would require a different usergroup for every year which would get annoying after a while. This is actually part of the reason why we made the committee forums public for MarriProm- stacking up usergroups for everything gets really messy and hard to navigate in the CP when you keep adding groups that have no purpose anymore. It would get particularly messy for tournaments if we had a new usergroup for each one. I would prefer to either have one banner that's either given to everyone who wins it or is cycled between the most recent winners over making individual banners for every tournament.

That's about what I was expecting, in which case I think we basically need to choose between temporary or permanent on a fairly consistent basis. Kilza's idea of non-repeated banners going away after a year sounds reasonable, but I assume that this would have to be managed by staff manually, in which case it could be a bit of a pain to keep up with. If there was a way to make them automatically drop off after a period of time, though, it could work well. I think it's nice for it to be a temporary thing to honor the most recent winner because if it's permanent eventually everyone would be running around with the Tournament Winner banner, which would make it much less exciting. It'd be a little neater to have it change after the next event than a period of a year unless the time can be automated as mentioned, because then it's just a matter of taking it away from whoever has it and moving it to the new winner.

 

[seaturtle]

That's about what I was expecting, in which case I think we basically need to choose between temporary or permanent on a fairly consistent basis. Kilza's idea of non-repeated banners going away after a year sounds reasonable, but I assume that this would have to be managed by staff manually, in which case it could be a bit of a pain to keep up with. If there was a way to make them automatically drop off after a period of time, though, it could work well. I think it's nice for it to be a temporary thing to honor the most recent winner because if it's permanent eventually everyone would be running around with the Tournament Winner banner, which would make it much less exciting.

Assuming the limit is either one year or whenever it's given to a new person (whichever is shorter), I don't think that would be too bad. We'd be giving it to a new person anyways so removing it from the old person isn't hard. There is also a way to set up events for groups to be removed/added so I think that an automatic removal at one year is theoretically possible (but would need to be tested with a shorter timeframe first to be sure it works).

 

[Varhii]

I think what we should do when it comes to banners for events is that you get a badge showing that you have won the event and you get a banner that shows you have won the most recent one.

I voiced my opinion in the badges thread already, but when we have another badge for how many events you've won I feel like it's redundant to have a badge for every individual event. At that point why have the badge saying you've won x amount of forum events if they already display on your profile anyways?

I honestly feel like the badge for events in general is a pretty bad idea. Sure it may reduce clutter or the amount of badges most people don't have, but it takes away how special they can be.

 

[seaturtle]

I honestly feel like the badge for events in general is a pretty bad idea. Sure it may reduce clutter or the amount of badges most people don't have, but it takes away how special they can be.

The issue I see here is that a lot of events are one-time things or have no certainty that they will be done again in the future. Even a lot of our old events (e.g. Coconut Beach) might not be repeated just because of lack of interest or time on the host's part. For consistent events that happen every year (Secret Santa, MarriProm, Smash Camp) I think it's fine, but for smaller/less regular ones that may not return, having a badge that can no longer be earned falls back into the "retired badge" category. That's why I think having the broader badge works better. If an event continues to do well and can consistently be expected to return, creating a badge specifically for it is something I think we can discuss then.

I also think that making badges focus on participation and then having banners revolve around actually winning is a decent idea too, considering that if an event tends to happen only once a year that means only one person would be able to get that badge per year. Making the banner more special and the badge less exclusive is something I think would work well. Maybe some of the old retired ones (like the song showdown badge) can be re-purposed to focus on participation instead of winning, and we can implement a banner for the winner(s) instead.

 

[shhmew]

i definitely like the idea of making badges a little less exclusive/hard to obtain, and banners more for the Top Winners. Having temporary banners for winning the last event of something sounds so cute and special. also imo you could stack 3 (4 for staff) before getting a bit ridiculous, but i doubt any one person would really reach beyond that point anyway.

overall just like this idea if it can be managed well. sounds like a more flashy and fun version of badges tbh.

 

[seaturtle]

After the discussion we've had here, we've released two new banners: "League Champion" and "Creative Soul"! These banners are for winning a tournament and art contest, respectively. Since our most recent tournament/contest happened in February for MarriProm, we've given the titles to those winners.

The policy on banners will be the following:
- Banners will last either one year or until there are new event winners, whichever comes first.
- Users can stack up to three non-staff banners. If someone earns more than that, they'll need to decide which ones to keep.

As time goes on, we're planning on adding more banners for other events. If you have suggestions or feedback, feel free to bring it up in this thread or talk to a staff member about it!