What's with the medals on this forum?

[worldofneil]

Try the forum contest section here. There's a lot of infrequent posters there so you are bound to find some examples.

Thanks, that's a great idea, I'll see what I can work out!

Something else odd I just noticed - you know how when you've just posted, your profile picture isn't visible next to your post? The medal count is different too.

Currently I have three gold and four silver medals.

When I have just posted, I have one gold and four silver medals.

The one gold and four silver is your rank 9 medal (for having between 1000 and 1999 posts based on what I can tell).

The two gold ones on the left are two separate images (the same image though) and seem unrelated to post count. I don't think we've seen anyone yet who has silver medals on the left (only those where it's part of their post count and they don't have left medal(s).[/QUOTE]

Be nice if SE could confirm this for us, but then half the fun is working this out :P

[Xibri]

Okay can confirm the second half of the medals/right side are the post count (they literally have post rank in the filename):

Post count may have something to do with it but it's not the only deciding factor. I have had 4 silver medals since I had about 30 post and I have seen people with 50+ post that have 1-3 silver medals

[InkstainedGwyn]

It may simply be 1 for 1. You get a point for every like given, like received, thread started, and post made. That might be why Xibri, who only has 37 posts, has 4 silvers - he's possibly liked a lot of posts/gotten a lot of likes, versus someone who's posted 37 times and hasn't ever liked a post or gotten a like. It's just impossible to tell, since there's no way to actually go through and tally every time someone has liked a post (and difficult to tell how many likes they've received without a lot of counting).

Here's a post that links to the dev posts where they explain that it's "number of posts", "number of likes given", and "number of likes received."

[worldofneil]

I've completed more checking and have updated my post here, but Xibri has 4 silvers because they have between 30 and 49 posts. That's rank 4.

I don't think I've explained this very well though, but the "medals" are actually two parts, they just have the same icons so it looks like one thing:



The right side is the post count and is definitely only related to the number of posts you've made. See my link above, every single person I've checked falls within the rank brackets I've listed there.

The left side is "kin", which is probably the "likes" that have been mentioned already. People can have 0, 1, 2 or even 3 kin. Each one is a separate gold medal. I haven't seen anyone with 4 yet.

I'd like to propose an experiment though to see if we can determine if that's definitely the number of likes you've received?

I've found this post here which was from 2015 and the poster hasn't been back since and I'd like to propose we all "like" it and see if they start getting gold kin medals. I don't know that poster, but picked them because the post itself seemed like something neutral that no one would probably have a problem liking and it needed to be a poster that hadn't posted in a while so as to now skew the results.

[whiskeybravo]

I often wondered how the medal system works. Very interesting. Thanks for the efforts!

[HaelseMikiro]

Participation awards for the forum game. You don't have to be good at it, just play along

[Ramesses]

I'd be more in favour of the option to display a character's achievement points above their avatar. It'd help show which posters are heavily invested in the game.

This is the post of the hour for me... +1, Theo. I thoroughly agree that it would be beneficial to show which posters are heavily invested in the game.

Ironically, I was just posting something related to the medal system just recently. I've seen the most banal posts from players that get a ridiculous amount of likes... and then if one views their character profile, they have only one job at level 25 or level 30. Yet, they are posting on issues related to level 60 to 70 MSQ topics.

[Alleo]

@Ramesses: That could be someone that is posting on their alt character thus not having high leveled jobs.

I would not be against showing achievement points but it would be getting in bad territory to use them as a way to say, if someone is deep into the game or not. One could use their alt character thus low achievement points, or someone has not been here for long but has leveled up enough to see the game to post valueable opinions. But since they have low achievement points some other posters could use this to attack them personally. Or if someone is not interested in certain parts of the game they might not have high points but still can give their opinion about things.

(I mean we already had posters that said, that if you dont enjoy x you are not a true ff fan, or if you dont like y you should not play the game at all)

[Gemina]

The left side is "kin", which is probably the "likes" that have been mentioned already. People can have 0, 1, 2 or even 3 kin. Each one is a separate gold medal. I haven't seen anyone with 4 yet.

I'd like to propose an experiment though to see if we can determine if that's definitely the number of likes you've received?

I'm trying to think in SE logic; something more complicated than it actually has to be, so it might be formulated around number of posts vs likes given/received. There are posters here with two red medals but < 2k posts, and less popular posters such as myself with well over 1k posts but only one or perhaps no 'kin' medals at all. Because of this possibility, I am not sure if your test can pinpoint acquirement of kin based on likes alone. I think we would have to test multiple accounts in order to eliminate other possible algorithms.

Not sure if SE will ever confirm though. Hell, the person who programmed it might not even be around anymore, and the person responsible now won't bother going through lines of code for something that is not broken.

[Xibri]

@Ramesses: That could be someone that is posting on their alt character thus not having high leveled jobs.

I would not be against showing achievement points but it would be getting in bad territory to use them as a way to say, if someone is deep into the game or not. One could use their alt character thus low achievement points, or someone has not been here for long but has leveled up enough to see the game to post valueable opinions. But since they have low achievement points some other posters could use this to attack them personally. Or if someone is not interested in certain parts of the game they might not have high points but still can give their opinion about things.

(I mean we already had posters that said, that if you dont enjoy x you are not a true ff fan, or if you dont like y you should not play the game at all)

that's an interesting point, maybe that's part of the reason SE hasn't shared the specific formula for calculating the medals, because this knowledge could be used to verbally assault or condemn a player and his opinions or comments