badge talk

[Mab]

badges! so i know there was originally a bit of an anti-event badges stance at least among some of the people planning this and in older threads about the feature but after this thread (mods only sorry) i think we've all lightened up on that a bit. either way, i'm personally okay with event badges for the GT. they even come with easy gold-silver-bronze tiers too.

we'll need to be a little hands-on with it though. just like mod-requested badges, we'll need to emphasize there are limits on what badge icons are available based on availability and other factors, and i can copy over and elaborate on the reasons for that from the original badge announcement thread. i also think no more than one badge per event (not counting colour variants).

it would also be nice to make a participation badge for everyone on a particular team that we give out at the end, we could even use the colour system to give it in that team's colours. we seem to be leaning towards 2 teams so this wouldn't be too tricky. i bring this up because if we do want to do it we'll need to take badges into account when deciding on the team names and themes.

 

[colours]

something to take into consideration:

a) how many events we're going to have - if it's anywhere ~10-15 events (which is typical of GT), there may or may not be some difficulty finding enough appropriate font awesome icons for the events. while i understand that font awesome has a rather large selection of icons to choose from, it's still worth bearing in mind for things like the egg swap which, aside from fa-egg, don't have as many options as say, an event that's probably more art or writing-centric. in other words, the more generic the contest theme, the easier it is to find badge images for. more specifically-themed GT events may or may not be tough to find the right images for.

b) are we going to use them year after year? - it's worth pondering whether or not this year's badges would be good for next year, or if we're going to run a different set of images altogether. if we're going to use the same images for next year's GT, then this creates some complications as far as differentiating one badge from 2020's GT from 2021's GT for different first place winners of the same event, for example. one could argue that custom colours solves this to some degree, but are we going to custom colour badges every year after that, also? if we're going with different images, how long would it be until we "run out" of images to use?

i heavily recommend we think about both in equal measure (perhaps b a tad bit more) if we're aiming for a smoother implementation of badges in GT going forward.

 

[Mab]

i'm not sure about a, for b my tentative response would be to encourage re-use by not allowing "2020"-labelled or theme-specific submissions. we could even go further and reset all GT badges each year and have them just be a temporary thing. i'll think about it more though

 

[pkmin3033]

Why not have a single badge that you can build up according to your participation? Say, everyone who participates starts off with a base level badge, then as you earn points, you get an addition to that badge, then it changes colour, then you get another addition, and so on. That way we won't run out of images, or overload people with different badges for different events. Because of the option of different colours you don't even need to have very many stages to the badge either - maybe 10 stages would be a good number. Three images with the standard three colours for many badges - bronze, silver, and gold - and then a completed badge in platinum for people who have earned sufficient points through doing different events.

As a random illustration that is in no way viable in all probability:

- Everyone who takes part in an event gets a bronze circular badge with "GT20" on it. Earn 5 points and it turns silver. Earn 10 points and it turns gold.
- People who earn 15 points get a bronze circular badge with "GT20" on it with a wreath at the bottom. Earn 20 and it turns silver. Earn 25 and it turns gold.
- 30 points gets you a badge with a wreath on top too. 35 it turns silver. 40 it turns gold.
- 50 points gets you the final badge, which could be...a better design of some sort.

The point increments would likely need to be bigger and the badge could probably be better designed, but it's just a thought.

 

[Mab]

interesting!

only issue with that is that we're limited to font awesome icons and don't have a proper framework for custom badge artwork yet. but if someone wants to make one i could probably code a hacky exception to that for this one case.

 

[pkmin3033]

Oof, I forgot about that. Well, perhaps we could achieve the same thing with Award, Medal, and Trophy, with Trophy-Alt as the final rank? None of those have been used as of yet, and they're ascending levels of rewards, so it'd make sense. Those all have four variations as well, so if you wanted to you could technically just use one of them and just swap through the variations...just differentiate between them by naming them "Tier One" and "Tier Two" etc, so when people hover over the badge they know how far they got.

Feel kinda bad I lack the design skills to make a custom badge. I mean, I could edit some sprites - and the DS game ribbons are actually of a similar size to the badges - but...yeah, I'm graphically inept. xD;

 

[Janp]

What about special badge for EOs? Would that be okay?

 

[Nah]

Could just make it even simpler and instead of badge level being based on points, just do it by number of GTs participated in. Bronze=1 time, Silver=2, Gold=3+, etc. Same for EOs and whatnot, one badge for each.

Cuts down on the number of badges to manage year after year.

 

[Mab]

Could just make it even simpler and instead of badge level being based on points, just do it by number of GTs participated in. Bronze=1 time, Silver=2, Gold=3+, etc. Same for EOs and whatnot, one badge for each.

Cuts down on the number of badges to manage year after year.

I dunno I think that's a little too minimal. Getting new badges and levelling them up is fun, but I don't think it's fun if a) you never get a new badge beyond your first GT and b) you can only level it up once a year no matter how much you participate or how well you do. I really liked Dawn's idea because even if there's only one badge per year (so we're saving on icons), people still get something to work towards over the course of the event.

I'd agree with you in the case of most badges (including the EO one) but I'd really like each GT badge to be something special and something you have to work towards by joining events and winning points than being a participation trophy you get for free.

What about special badge for EOs? Would that be okay?

Sure, but in this case I agree with Nah where let's just do one EO badge and have it level up.