Giving players a LIKE or THUMBS UP for Costumes!

[Phanto]

How often do you see a cool looking costume in game? All the time right?

 

How often do you stop just to tell a player that you like their costume? For most people, not that often.

 

What would be really cool is if we could right click on on a player and give them a LIKE or THUMBS UP for their costume. Each time it happens, you can get a notification, and somewhere in your ID badge or Personal Info, you could see how many likes you've received. You could even give out badges for receiving or giving a certain amount of likes.

 

What do you think?

[GraspingVileTerror]

I'm generally supportive of additional options, but I think this might be best solved with a keybind:

 

/bind KEY "tell $target, ((  Nice look! ))"

 

If the Devs feel up to adding that as a new default keybind for new characters, I wouldn't be opposed.  Just so long as it doesn't override any players' existing personal keybinds.

[nihilii]

I'm giving you a like and a thumbs up for this idea. Less friction in little acts of kindness always add huge value.

 

While keybinds are also a good solution, I think the OP's suggestion has an extra dimension in that people who like a costume but are reluctant to contact the person for whatever reason (don't want to disturb them, shy, or just doesn't feel like talking) could get a way to express their approval too.

Edited August 11, 2021 by nihilii

[srmalloy]

I have a character I recreated from Live, a Fire/Rad Controller born to a woman exposed during the Chernobyl accident, who I'd kitted out with the full Chitin set colored to look like chitin plates over exposed muscle tissue, the most visible effects of her mutation. After a few comments about her 'costume', I created a bind for quick response, saying "Это не костюм, это мое тело. «Подарок» «славной советской техники»." ('This is not a costume; this is my body. A "gift" of "glorious Soviet technology".') She has issues...

[Phanto]

1 hour ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

I'm generally supportive of additional options, but I think this might be best solved with a keybind:

 

/bind KEY "tell $target, ((  Nice look! ))"

 

If the Devs feel up to adding that as a new default keybind for new characters, I wouldn't be opposed.  Just so long as it doesn't override any players' existing personal keybinds.

 

What I was imagining is that you could simply right-click on the player, and a LIKE option would be among the lists of options which it already shows.

[Phanto]

42 minutes ago, nihilii said:

I'm giving you a like and a thumbs up for this idea. Less friction in little acts of kindness always add huge value.

 

While keybinds are also a good solution, I think the OP's suggestion has an extra dimension in that people who like a costume but are reluctant to contact the person for whatever reason (don't want to disturb them, shy, or just doesn't feel like talking) could get a way to express their approval too.

 

Yeah you totally got what I was thinking!

[Ghost]

I tell teammates regularly.

Ive only told a few outside of a team - not sure why.

Anyways, I like the idea

[Crazyleo]

I always send a tell when I am impressed with the player's creativity. This is both for costume and profile. I even got some compliments on my characters and that gives me a bit of boost to my morale.

 

[Aeroprism]

17 minutes ago, Crazyleo said:

I always send a tell when I am impressed with the player's creativity. This is both for costume and profile. I even got some compliments on my characters and that gives me a bit of boost to my morale.

 

 

This.  I do the same. (Though I never got any because I suck at costume)

 

Also, your avatar makes you incredibly awesome in my book.

[Dungeoness Eloora]

I'd love to see this! An option for both costume and backstory, respectively, would be wonderful! I do send tells to compliment people on one or the other now and then, but an easier way to give someone a "drive by" nod of appreciation would prompt me to make it rain kudos :D

[skoryy]

On one hand, I can relate.  On the other, please no more high score drama.

[Luminara]

9 hours ago, Phanto said:

What do you think?

 

I think people who are unwilling to spend five seconds to send a /tell are going to be unwilling to spend five seconds right-clicking and selecting a "like".

[Phanto]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

I think people who are unwilling to spend five seconds to send a /tell are going to be unwilling to spend five seconds right-clicking and selecting a "like".

 

Does it take five seconds to do two mouse clicks?

[GraspingVileTerror]

The biggest concern I have is suggesting that Badges (or any kind of "scoring") is added to this idea.  If the "Likes" remain entirely private to the player, then I certainly wouldn't object.  But in tying any kind of public way to review it will only "gamify" it.  Once gamified, the original intent as you describe it @Phanto would be largely lost in the pursuit of players gathering Likes from friends or alt accounts expressly for increased points.

While it has potential merit for market research, that wouldn't need to be public to players.  But then we would run in to problems with that data being potentially misinterpreted or tailored to fit an agenda.

 

I had unreasonable hopes for the Reputation system here on the forums ( https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/15491-forum-reputation/ ).  While it's been somewhat fun to review them and theorize on the implications, they've been weaponized and subverted an inordinate number of times.  Their positive informative value has seriously been eroded due to that.

I expect that something of that nature added to the game itself would be treated very, very similarly.

 

So . . . I'm not necessarily against it, but I do recognize it as being a potential can of worms.

 

(Personal experiment time!  I'll decode https://forums.homecomingservers.com/profile/42940-graspingvileterror/?status=84&type=status if someone reminds me to do so after a couple of weeks have gone by.  Will be nice to be wrong.)

[Phanto]

3 hours ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

The biggest concern I have is suggesting that Badges (or any kind of "scoring") is added to this idea.  If the "Likes" remain entirely private to the player, then I certainly wouldn't object.  But in tying any kind of public way to review it will only "gamify" it.  Once gamified, the original intent as you describe it @Phanto would be largely lost in the pursuit of players gathering Likes from friends or alt accounts expressly for increased points.

While it has potential merit for market research, that wouldn't need to be public to players.  But then we would run in to problems with that data being potentially misinterpreted or tailored to fit an agenda.

 

I had unreasonable hopes for the Reputation system here on the forums ( https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/15491-forum-reputation/ ).  While it's been somewhat fun to review them and theorize on the implications, they've been weaponized and subverted an inordinate number of times.  Their positive informative value has seriously been eroded due to that.

I expect that something of that nature added to the game itself would be treated very, very similarly.

 

So . . . I'm not necessarily against it, but I do recognize it as being a potential can of worms.

 

(Personal experiment time!  I'll decode https://forums.homecomingservers.com/profile/42940-graspingvileterror/?status=84&type=status if someone reminds me to do so after a couple of weeks have gone by.  Will be nice to be wrong.)

 

See, I read the thing about some players gamifying it and don't think its necessarily bad. Having a bunch of likes for your costume won't actually give you any material benefit, so if someone wants to collect likes for their own personal satisfaction, I think its ok. Its not like having the most liked costume won't get you ad revenue. That said, I don't think many players will be interested in collecting as many likes as possible.

 

In regard to badges, the amount that something like this should offer should be very few (1 to 3 I'd say). Maybe you get a badge for giving one LIKE, a badge for receiving one LIKE, and a badge for receiving 10 LIKES, and that's it. The badges would exist mostly just to introduce the mechanic.

Edited August 12, 2021 by Phanto

[skoryy]

7 hours ago, Phanto said:

See, I read the thing about some players gamifying it and don't think its necessarily bad. Having a bunch of likes for your costume won't actually give you any material benefit, so if someone wants to collect likes for their own personal satisfaction, I think its ok. Its not like having the most liked costume won't get you ad revenue. That said, I don't think many players will be interested in collecting as many likes as possible.

 

There will be those who absolutely will create a multitude of alt accounts just to give their own costumes a +1.  Bank on it.

[Triumphant]

6 hours ago, skoryy said:

 

There will be those who absolutely will create a multitude of alt accounts just to give their own costumes a +1.  Bank on it.

 

On the one hand, that's likely true.  But, on the other hand... man, you've got to have some serious narcissism to put that much effort into it.  😛  

[arcane]

Will these likes come with dislikes

[Tahliah]

I always send a tell to someone I really love their costume.  It takes two seconds to spread a little joy and appreciation. 

 

I'm not a fan of a "liking" costumes option and would not use it if it were adopted (unless it was tied to a badge, and then I would stand in AP and "like" everything I saw. Twice.). 

[Ghost]

Still like the idea,

but I can imagine someone losing a CC and having a tantrum because they had way more likes than the winner

[Ston]

I'd be very against having any kind of in-game public metric of something along the lines of "Likes". I can just see this leading to a lot of toxicity in the community (see Instagram). I've even seen people complain their costumes don't get enough attention on the Discord and Forums.

 

However, the idea of a simple Right Click > "Compliment Costume" sounds amazing. I think the implementation could be both a private message that gets sent to the player and a "thumbs-up" icon that floats above the character for a second or two (similar to the icons used for the dice emotes). It would be cool if this animation could be seen by other players nearby, too.

 

I know that last sentence may seem contradictory to my first statement, but I think it's the quantification of "Likes" that would be a major problem, not necessarily the public display of admiration. 

[Phanto]

8 hours ago, arcane said:

Will these likes come with dislikes

 

I don't think that would be a good idea. It wouldn't add anything positive to the game. The point of having a simple option for giving likes is just to make it very easy for shy people to share tiny bits of encouragement and appreciation.

[GraspingVileTerror]

I like @Cirque's suggestion for a middle ground.

Maybe a minor, non-intrusive visual effect which pops off next to the player-character's name bar, maybe a little fanfare.  

I'm imagining a costume contest event where it's like a little mini fireworks display.

Public, but not "scored" on a permanent tally card.

Kudos, Cirque.