Make Role Idea Posts Count Again

[alex1234321]

No, I'm not postfarming

Back in 2016 or 2017, a lot of people made posts in the Role Ideas Forum that did not contribute to the topic at hand and were blatant attempts at postfarming. As a result, the mods made it so that Role Ideas posts did not count toward post count. After coming back from a 3 year hiatus, I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of Role Ideas posts. Not all posts are full of substance or contribute to the topic, but the vast majority are on-topic. Even most off-topic posts don't seem to be postfarming attempts and instead result from threads being slowly derailed. I don't think the quality of RI posts is any lower than posts on other subforums.

The reality is that post count matters. If I see someone with a noob or Amnesiac flair, I sometimes assume that they're new to the forums and might be more willing to give an in-depth response about why Firefighter is a bad role. However, it's slightly confusing to see people with low post counts who understand balance and have been on the forums for several years. This might just be due to me coming back and not recognizing many of the usernames, but either way post count still serves as a way of gauging how long someone has been on the forums. Also, even though it sometimes encourages spam, post count serves as an incentive to be active on the forums and contribute to our community.

You might say that making RI posts count again would just cause the same problems to come back. However, other factors may have affected the increase in post quality over the last few years. The paywall means that a much smaller portion of users and forumers are here to troll and spam. Additionally, anyone here since before the paywall existed has probably been active for a long time, and trolls tend to only stay here for a few days or weeks. Even if more people joined the forums in order to spam, what's stopping them from postfarming on other forums? You don't see too many postfarmers outside the RI forum, and I highly doubt that they would concentrate in RI if we made posts count again. Because so much has changed since post count was removed, I think it's unnecessary and outdated for Role Ideas posts to not count. Why should we keep rules that aren't really needed anymore, especially if they lead to increased confusion and possibly decreased activity?

[Ezradekezra]

/neutral

I get the argument, but it's still not hard to make a bunch of role ideas to inflate your post count.

[alex1234321]

/neutral

I get the argument, but it's still not hard to make a bunch of role ideas to inflate your post count.

What's stopping people from going into ToS Discussion and making a bunch of posts about game stories while ignoring the fact that there's a thread for that?
What's stopping people from going into Ask Questions and asking dumb questions that anyone can easily find the answer to?
What's stopping people from going into Off-Topic Discussion and pretending that it's the Lounge?

I don't think there's anything special about Role Ideas that makes it super easy to spam compared to the other forums.

[kyuss420]

Lots of noobs and amnesiacs have been playing for years. You are just seeing their 2nd or 3rd account posting.....

[cob709]

People should be awarded with a number going up by "1" every time they contribute to discussions or work towards improving the game.

/support

[Paradox12]

/neutral

I get the argument, but it's still not hard to make a bunch of role ideas to inflate your post count.

What's stopping people from going into ToS Discussion and making a bunch of posts about game stories while ignoring the fact that there's a thread for that?
What's stopping people from going into Ask Questions and asking dumb questions that anyone can easily find the answer to?
What's stopping people from going into Off-Topic Discussion and pretending that it's the Lounge?

I don't think there's anything special about Role Ideas that makes it super easy to spam compared to the other forums.

I mean, I get your argument, but your reasoning is wrong. Most of the people who "understand balance" and have low post counts probably don't use the forums often and really only play the game. Like, I know that a lot of ranked players only use the forums for appeals and occasionally dropping in an idea or two. Also, it is true that many of us have many alts. That's because of how easy it is to get banned for no reason in this game. But anyway, if having RI posts not count means that there will be less shitty firefighter-tier role ideas, then I'm down for keeping that. As Brilliand once said, we don't really NEED more role ideas right now, especially not low-quality uncreative unbalanced and overall shit ones that make up more than half of the role ideas on the RI board. All you need is to look one or two posts down before you find some amnesiac-flair user suggesting some OP buffed town arsonist role. I genuinely don't think this is what anyone wants, and I'm pretty sure having those posts count would just incentivize more people to create those kinds of roles.

[lemonader666]

Post counts in RI don't and shouldn't matter. I don't want to see shitters accumulate official posts by shitposting.

[deadlyblack]

/neutral

I get the argument, but it's still not hard to make a bunch of role ideas to inflate your post count.

What's stopping people from going into ToS Discussion and making a bunch of posts about game stories while ignoring the fact that there's a thread for that?
What's stopping people from going into Ask Questions and asking dumb questions that anyone can easily find the answer to?
What's stopping people from going into Off-Topic Discussion and pretending that it's the Lounge?

I don't think there's anything special about Role Ideas that makes it super easy to spam compared to the other forums.

I'm okay with not receiving post points because the creative aspect that is involved in creating the role ideas/etc are incentive enough for me to continue making them. Though I don't mind getting post points, as well. Wouldn't REALLY make a difference for me personally. Alex does make a great point that there is no difference between subs--even if the "quality" of the role idea/concept whatever isn't "great," they are still trying to contribute to the game and the development of it. You can also say the same thing about a lot of the posts people make in the other subs.

[CapWarrior2]

I mean I do see why they got rid of it, it's got the 3rd mos posts in the Forums so clearly it was atleast a problem in the past, and it can very well still be a problem in the future. Although I feel it can still atleast be given a shot, and if people continue to do low quality posts then it can be reverted.

[StlnSP]

who even looks at the flair anymore amirite? it's just for bragging rights, nothing else.

i mean, really. other than the fact that you get to be a trusted user and do more BBcodes, what else is the point of flairs? it's not the mods problem you assume just because someone had never posted/ is relatively new means their ideas are nothing relevant, or vice versa. Hell, i'd say most of them with 1k+ posts either play Forum Games or shitposts on Lounge. or already left the forums.

if people actually wanted something to indicate post quality, we should probably implement some sort of Karma points, where people give good karma to statements people said in a post that they like. it may become a circlejerking fest, though.

[lemonader666]

who even looks at the flair anymore amirite? it's just for bragging rights, nothing else.

i mean, really. other than the fact that you get to be a trusted user and do more BBcodes, what else is the point of flairs? it's not the mods problem you assume just because someone had never posted/ is relatively new means their ideas are nothing relevant, or vice versa. Hell, i'd say most of them with 1k+ posts either play Forum Games or shitposts on Lounge. or already left the forums.

if people actually wanted something to indicate post quality, we should probably implement some sort of Karma points, where people give good karma to statements people said in a post that they like. it may become a circlejerking fest, though.

ABSOLUTELY NO karma AND NO upvoting/downvoting systems, thanks.

[alex1234321]

/neutral

I get the argument, but it's still not hard to make a bunch of role ideas to inflate your post count.

What's stopping people from going into ToS Discussion and making a bunch of posts about game stories while ignoring the fact that there's a thread for that?
What's stopping people from going into Ask Questions and asking dumb questions that anyone can easily find the answer to?
What's stopping people from going into Off-Topic Discussion and pretending that it's the Lounge?

I don't think there's anything special about Role Ideas that makes it super easy to spam compared to the other forums.

I mean, I get your argument, but your reasoning is wrong. Most of the people who "understand balance" and have low post counts probably don't use the forums often and really only play the game. Like, I know that a lot of ranked players only use the forums for appeals and occasionally dropping in an idea or two. Also, it is true that many of us have many alts. That's because of how easy it is to get banned for no reason in this game. But anyway, if having RI posts not count means that there will be less shitty firefighter-tier role ideas, then I'm down for keeping that. As Brilliand once said, we don't really NEED more role ideas right now, especially not low-quality uncreative unbalanced and overall shit ones that make up more than half of the role ideas on the RI board. All you need is to look one or two posts down before you find some amnesiac-flair user suggesting some OP buffed town arsonist role. I genuinely don't think this is what anyone wants, and I'm pretty sure having those posts count would just incentivize more people to create those kinds of roles.

Post counts in RI don't and shouldn't matter. I don't want to see shitters accumulate official posts by shitposting.

So do you guys think that posts should be completely eliminated? By your logic, why should they even be kept for the other subforums? Also, I don't think most people who make firefighters are doing it to gain posts. I think they just don't know about balance and had this idea that they actually believe should be in the game. You can argue that they're too lazy for not reading the stickies, but the point is that someone who's new to the forums isn't going to post bad role ideas in order to get a higher post count. I'm not even sure if most of those people are aware that RI posts don't count.

While I acknowledge that post count isn't a perfect indicator of someone's knowledge of balance or experience, I think it's fairly accurate. I started posting on the forums about 6 months after I created my account and I browsed the forums extensively before deciding to post. But I would say that I learned more about balance in my first week of actually making role ideas than I did in the entire time that I played the game previously. Yes, some people play thousands of Ranked games and rarely post on the forums, and those people probably know a lot more about balance than I did when I first joined the forums, I highly doubt that they make up the majority of new people posting unbalanced role ideas. I also doubt that alts of active forumers post that many firefighter ideas. If someone makes a balanced suggestion, I would say that I think it's balanced regardless of their post count. But if they make a blatantly unbalanced suggestion, I would give a more detailed reply if they are new.

Post counts are also useful to new people. When I first started posting on the forums and two people had conflicting opinions on a role idea that I made or something, I sometimes assumed that the person with the higher post count had a better understanding of balanced and was more likely to be correct.