[barmar]

jjbrr, on 2014-January-22, 09:34, said:

Slight derail to respond to this as an idea just popped into my head, so feel free to move this to a new thread.

Has BBO considered implementing a sort of "trophy" system or achievement system based on player results? For example it might be nice to win an award for making 3NT 10 times, 50 times, 100 times, 500 times, etc, and receive a little trophy icon in an awards page in the profile or whatever. I can think of literally hundreds of little awards that might be fun to try to accumulate that would incentivize players to stay longer and play more hands.

Hmm, sounds like the "badge" system on Stack Exchange.

[jjbrr]

barmar, on 2014-January-22, 10:03, said:

Hmm, sounds like the "badge" system on Stack Exchange.

Or the achievement system in every video game since 1998. I didn't say it's an original idea.

[barmar]

jjbrr, on 2014-January-22, 10:11, said:

Or the achievement system in every video game since 1998. I didn't say it's an original idea.

I don't think I've played any video games since my friend's Atari in the 1970's. Breakout didn't have an achievement system.

[uday]

Quote

Hopefully BBO will never get to the point of acting on the belief that good scores are the only point and purpose of bridge

Absolutely. However, I believe that the data I'm talking about is more social-data than skill-data.

With the exception of "Average total points earned per hand over last N hands" the data seems to me to be unrelated to gaming. And this stat, if expressed as a percentile ( or even simply color coded to mean "hmm. is that really possible?") will be more about the social aspects than anything to do w/skill.

I want to make it easier for two people to decide whether they want to play together, mark each other as friends, exchange cordial greetings. Not measure skill.


Selecting partners based on system is an ok thought but i don't think this will work IRL. You'd need people to actually fill out a questionnaire of some sort ( else how to match)?

I'm not convinced that people want to chat about systems before playing.. are you ?

[uday]

Quote

Has BBO considered implementing a sort of "trophy" system or achievement system based on player results?

Y. Rain has convinced us that 'badges' are a good thing - one of these days.....

[onoway]

jjbrr, on 2014-January-22, 09:34, said:

Slight derail to respond to this as an idea just popped into my head, so feel free to move this to a new thread.

Has BBO considered implementing a sort of "trophy" system or achievement system based on player results? For example it might be nice to win an award for making 3NT 10 times, 50 times, 100 times, 500 times, etc, and receive a little trophy icon in an awards page in the profile or whatever. I can think of literally hundreds of little awards that might be fun to try to accumulate that would incentivize players to stay longer and play more hands.

You could even have a set of awards that you earn only by playing with lots of different partners, eg bid and make game with 100 different partners or with partners from 100 different countries or whatever.

Maybe as you accumulate achievements, you can have another little icon next to the red circle number with how many masterpoints you've won online.

Obviously the awards wouldn't need to require a certain level of skill - they should be accessible to beginners and experts alike - but obviously having lots of awards would be an indication of how much experience you have on BBO and probably correlates well with skill.

It might also be a good way of getting people acclimated to the features in the web client of BBO; give people a trophy for setting up a team game or a teaching table or whatever in the web client.

Anyway, just a thought.

What an absolutely wonderful thought it is, too! (please don't make them all available only to the web client people though..those of us who dislike it intensely in spite of trying it several times are already discriminated against quite substantially).

[onoway]

uday, on 2014-January-22, 14:11, said:

I'm not convinced that people want to chat about systems before playing.. are you ?

dunno about anyone else but when I first sit with a random p, even when subbing in a tourney I always say something like "2/1 standard carding ok p?" or "I'll try to play your card p, but I don't know a bunch of stuff on your profile." Usually it's "profile ok but not (Y)" or "I'll play your profile" or simply "ok" and we're off. They can see from my profile most of what I play and bid accordingly. If profiles disagree about RKC then I change mine to match theirs to avoid unnecessary confusion. It all takes about 5 seconds and establishes contact with partner. Not sure I know anyone who doesn't do this at "normal" tables, although maybe not as a tourney sub.

If I get invited to play a tourney and p won't talk to me even briefly about system/carding before the tourney I cancel as that tells me that p apparently doesn't consider bridge a partnership game.

Half the players at the intermediate and below group (maybe a lot at higher levels too) don't really know conventions that they claim to play anyway, so it's always use at your own risk even if they have them on their profile. I bet everyone playing Sayc or 2/1 has at one time or another been left staring at a combined 4 card trump suit contract they won after pard passed their splinter bid ...which p's profile claims he plays.

[barmar]

onoway, on 2014-January-22, 18:59, said:

Half the players at the intermediate and below group (maybe a lot at higher levels too) don't really know conventions that they claim to play anyway, so it's always use at your own risk even if they have them on their profile. I bet everyone playing Sayc or 2/1 has at one time or another been left staring at a combined 4 card trump suit contract they won after pard passed their splinter bid ...which p's profile claims he plays.

Back in the days when I played with randoms on OKbridge, my profile said something like "SAYC (including J2N)", because I kept running into people who didn't realize that Jacoby 2NT was part of SAYC.

[barmar]

uday, on 2014-January-22, 14:13, said:

Y. Rain has convinced us that 'badges' are a good thing - one of these days.....

Badges? We don't need no steenking badges!

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

If you don't get it: http://en.wikipedia....Stinking_badges

[Cromlyn]

OldPlayr said:

‘Trying to use the 'view tables' function is near useless, as seats come & go so fast. By the time you have viewed a profile, the seat is likely gone.’

I would like to add to this that I find the most annoying aspect of the ‘OPEN TABLES’ option is to join a table to find everyone is leaving. Could BBO have some function for the host to close the table if ALL the players are leaving?

[Rain]

I can only kinda address "2". I think you should set up your own table and thus be able to select the option called "Completion Rate". Make it something like 95% minimum which most players who bother finishing hands should fall under.

This way you should eliminate most people known to table hop.

We've actually discussed many of the points raised here recently and are close to implementing our own take on some of them. I think Onoway's points are very true and a good guideline for our actions. For instance, there are few enough people willing to learn this crazy game - we will be very careful about encouraging new players rather than ostracize them more or lump players into some groups or play up importance of rating.