Update to 1.1.6 + INVENTORY SHOP MOD

No, I'd have to say we (that is, the people discussing the mod) are taking it just seriously enough. For others, a new source of hopeful fame just opened up. For the minor benifit of new equipment, they're putting spamish posts up everywhere. That's overreacting. Considering that we're discussing both the intended and real consequences of the mod, I think we're reacting well.

Bluestone Wrote:Could it be that you're simply more sensitive to spam or spammish posts now that the topic has been forced by the new points system? I don't see much of a change in posting habits, personally.

I'm going to have to disagree on this one - I usually check the forums on at least a daily basis, and most of the time threads in subforums other than Spam are a LOT more sedate and/or sane, though there are exceptions (often when something already interesting or silly comes up in that topic). The normal thread length before interest is lost in the Greetings forum is a glaring example of this - look there for a good example.

Not to mention, the 'quality' of the spammish posts in other forums has decreased as well - recently it's become less common for them to be entertaining commentaries/jokes related to the current topic, and instead tend to actively divert the conversation with something pointless, stupid, or extremely overused. The difference is subtle, but it makes reading through updated threads more of a chore than something entertaining.

Bluestone Wrote:As you pointed out, even the people most interested in heading off a potential spam outbreak find themselves adding thoughts to a thread as it grows naturally. It's the conversational style of the board that keeps it active, and that's a good thing.

The continuing conversations isn't what I'm concerned about. That's healthy. The problem is in trying to maintain some real content or humor to those posts, and for people to recognize that it's okay to let a thread 'die' when you don't have a decent response to make. Otherwise, it could become impossible to keep up with more than one or two subforums (perhaps outside of the RP stuff), and an absolute chore to read through most posts in the process. Perhaps I try to keep up with too much on the forums, but in all honesty I think it's starting to get out of hand.

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Ryan: Since you designed the inventory system, I'm gonna want to talk to you about it. I'll be sending you a PM with a list of problems and possible problems that I'm apt to complain about here once I get the chance.

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I think Shaven has the right of it on this one. The effects of the mod have been significant, and somewhat negative. Taking some action to get it under better control would probably be wise. The problem is in getting that done, and exactly what to do.

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Masa still has a good point, though. For the items themselves: if the system is fixed, they could become an entertaining way to customize your account and/or show how active you usually are in the forum community. It's a for-fun thing, but it won't be worth it unless we reduce or eliminate the negative side effects.

Well, I'd say the forums overall have reacted quite well. There's been a rise in spam-like posts, and spammish digressions, in main-forum threads, but I haven't seen the feared octuple posts resurface, and it's not so much more off-topic than we've had before, it's just more people are doing it. It'll probably die back down within a month or two.

Not to derail this conversation, but why are the Crystal Armor, Crystal Helmet, and Crystal Boots labeled as "made of silver"? Also, Star Pendant is mispelled in Accessories.

There's some good points made..

I can easily remove group/joined/etc. it's all in the templates. I can probably move stuff down to the bottom too pretty easily.

Spamming problems: I imagine it'll settle down once people catch on it's just a fun new way to express post count. But, there are issues with the system, I agree. I didn't expect what I though to be a fun addition was going to cause so much controversy

Quality of posts: I might be possibly to blame for this. Less comics, less often CMC updates, means less things to talk about, right?

I stand corrected on the left-bar editing part. If you move things to the bottom, online/offline could be a nice addition to the bar on the lower-left of posts (E-mail, PM, site, find, etc): Perhaps it could be the PM button, but with two seperate images, one for "Online: PM" and "Offline: PM"?

You're right about people probably calming down eventually. I'm being pretty impatient about it, I realize. There are some problems, and some greater potential for the system, but I'm probably ranting and raving about it too much. D'oh.

Yeah, the lessened updates are probably part of the problem, but I can understand that you needed a little time to get used to your regular job. It's been a while, though, and sometime soon it'd be good to try and step things up a little if you can. Maybe not all the way back to 3/3 a week, but three panels/one page a week is pretty little to go on. Making a post reminding about what happened (if you feel it's something you should apologize for, that's your call) and why things were slow for a while may also be wise, too. People are more understanding when they know what's happening.

Or something.

Quote:Ryan: Since you designed the inventory system, I'm gonna want to talk to you about it. I'll be sending you a PM with a list of problems and possible problems that I'm apt to complain about here once I get the chance.

I look forward to your PM, and I hope to resolve things, I'm always open for new ideas to add to this mod.

Quote:Not to derail this conversation, but why are the Crystal Armor, Crystal Helmet, and Crystal Boots labeled as "made of silver"? Also, Star Pendant is mispelled in Accessories.

That, my friend, is the result of lazyness. I often forget to check over stuff I copy and paste.

And my spelling isn't the greatest, I'll probably fix all of the spelling and grammer errors in the next major release.

Surely no selection of weapons can be complete without a Masamune?

webrunner Wrote:Quality of posts: I might be possibly to blame for this. Less comics, less often CMC updates, means less things to talk about, right?

Nah, there was a drastic and immediately apparent surge in the number of stray spam posts after the shop mod was introduced, although from the looks of it, it has mostly calmed down. Just the first couple of days there was a heck of a lot.

And anyway, who's complaining about a three panel update per week? Between ADVENTURERS! and Antihero for Hire that's still two quality comics per week, which is still more frequent than most of the comics I'm reading at the moment.

And as for a lack of CMC updatery, maybe an occasional "progress post" on the CMC news page just to remind/inform people about the upcoming Mechanical Chaos, and so they know that it is being worked on. Maybe showing the occasional "spoiler" card in the allcards to build up interest even further (Like you did with Kid Radd/Ian Decoy/Khrima's Address)?

Quote:Surely no selection of weapons can be complete without a Masamune?

O_O

I completely forgot about that...

Will be added in the next major feature version.

Just in case anyone wants to track what's happening with this, here's a link to Ryan Ashbrook's Shop Mod Thread on the MyBB Forums.

And hey, MyBB 1.1.7 was released today, so when Ryan's mod hit's 1.2, webrunner can update them both simultaneously.

And I'm glad to hear that you're adding Masamune to the selection

Maniac. :{

PMs have been exchanged, pretty much every topic discussed in this thread was mentioned. With any luck Ryan'll be able to take care of the most important stuff for the next edition of the mod.

*NightWind* Wrote:Perhaps "Money" can be replaced by "$"

Yes! This is exactly the type of thing needed to clean up the sidebar. Drop group/joined (group is already indicated by the name's colour and text under avatar anyway since our only seperate group is for mods), drop status and replace it with some other kind of online indicator (underlined name?) - because whether someone is online/offline is useful information, it can just be done without a dedicated sidebar line.
The stars can **** off, and everything else is user controlled aside from eq. Which I just had another idea about, excuse me while I go double-post Ryan's intro thread.

hah, just kidding I've got more to take care of here.

sXeAndriex Wrote:I really don't get people complaining about sidebars, or sigs. It's not like you're reading them EVERY post.

I'd like to take the liberty of raising my middle finger at you while I still can.
You know, since in a couple of years it's going to have RSI from scrolling past all these fricken sigs with the scroll-wheel.

And while the sidebar is long, the option to turn off sigs is practically useless (not to mention the effect it has on the posts from people who don't have offensively long sigs).

Some of you have noticed that I have over two billion golds and custom equipment. Well, took your time, I even announced that I was a forum billionaire in the IRC, but nobody paid heed

I done it with a simple exploit. All it took for me to find the exploit was to be made aware that it existed. Right here. You'll notice that my initial reaction was a righteous warmaking one. That changed as soon as it clicked what the exploit was - which took less than half a minute after I started my search. In about two minutes I had hit the money cap (it's one of those binary -1 numbers) and had given myself stupid equipment. Oh well, that was easy.

I know there was a big fuss at the beginning, with regards to cheating by spamming and by deleting posts/threads after making them. Back then it was a system, and ifthat behaviour ceased it worked. But the exploits as they currently are seem built into the system. And it's a mod that Ryan Ashbrook wrote, not webrunner, so you can't really expect webrunner to go and wrewrite it (or Ashbrook to allow him to). This exploit kills the system. Because you could ruin it by cheating as I did, but if you just snuck in the extra thousand here or there, gave yourself a discounted item, who'd notice? If it gets fixed with an update, a reset will be needed (if we care).

As it stands, it's currently the equivalent of the space under the Avatar or custom title: just additional fields that you can put your own thing in.

Time yourself. Now that you know of the existence of the exploit, how long will it take you to work it out (even if you don't use it)?

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Oh, and for curiosity's sake I recorded my current equipment prior to using the exploit.

Previously I Equipped, Not Wrote:7810 gold
3856 posts
Silver Sword (weapon)
Ribbon (accessory)
Earth (element)

Heh, I had the most expensive equipment for 2 days before anyone noticed. It kinds of says things about how observant the people on these forums are.

Acctualy, I think it says more about how many people really care about the post count money equipment thing.

Do not get me wrong webby, it is neat. But I find it more ofr a personal thing. Sort of a way for me to get a mental image of what I'm "wearing" or look like in the forum.

Hence why I did not save for the "cool" stuff, just things that I happend to think I'd really "wear".

...tho if you ever got tye dye I'd save up for that for sure.

moriastar Wrote:Do not get me wrong webby, it is neat. But I find it more ofr a personal thing. Sort of a way for me to get a mental image of what I'm "wearing" or look like in the forum.

Hence why I did not save for the "cool" stuff, just things that I happend to think I'd really "wear".

In theory I agree with you, but the extant equipment list simply doesn't offer much variety in its options, so you just have to be lucky to see something that fits you.

Though, the options appear to have improved since last I checked.

Darn. Guess I'll have to double-check my own stuff.

And here I'm even doing it all legitimately.

This is totally awesome! Yay for variety! thanks for the tip Masa! So finally I did learn something from JSP. Neato.

The whole point is that I didn't need to and haven't given out any tips. All I said was that an exploit existed

But yeah, if you'd get more enjoyment out of 'earning' the equipment, then that's still a valid option. Ultimately it's purely aesthetic, like an avatar or signature, and different people use those in different ways.

I'm just a little annoyed that I went and earned about 12500 golds before realising...

... why am I not surprised to find this level of retardedness in a MyBB mod.

But nice work on the element Masa
And props to Fighter143 for spotting it.

masamunemaniac Wrote:Well, took your time, I even announced that I was a forum billionaire in the IRC, but nobody paid heed

That's actually the main reason for my visit tonight