I think we all agree how annoying it was before they changed the way the popularity peen worked and you’d sign in to 4 or 5 unsolicited friend requests daily. Compared to the current methods of friendwhoring, I think I prefer it the way it used to be. Give me a couple of requests daily instead of blanketing flamebate and community ads.

Also, I don’t really remember there being anything wrong with the way you got the flamebate peen before, but I’m sure there was something. Whatever it was, it can’t be nearly as annoying as it is now.

Bring back the old ways so some of us will actually stand a chance of getting them and not be hated by the community in the process. Also it might be nice to implement some method of “retiring” people from the boards. Perhaps only have recent posts and friend requests count?

Yes on flamebate, not of friends, never on friends.

Also when someone tops the list, remove them.

Echuu Posted:

Also when someone tops the list, remove them.

This.

Nicco Posted:

Maybe remove them if they top a leaderboard for a month?

That would be a more desirable solution.

Flamebate Fodder used to be based purely on thread replies. The same character could not post twice in a row, but as long as replies were alternated it would count. It was changed after several members of Knights of LOL made scripts to auto reply to each other in klan threads. By the time the 4th person did it, the number of posts needed had been run up into the thousands.

The change to one post per character and not including “in klan” posts might be publicly annoying, but seems far more fair.

Same thing sort of happened for the popularity peen. At the time Bigguyinblack had it pretty solidly locked at 1000 friends. A couple of players decided to script friends request via player ID numbers. Not sure if it was coordinated or a coincidence that both decided to do it at the same time, but both ended up asking ET to cancel all their outstanding requests when the method was changed.

The request spamming is actually considerably lower since the change.

First of all, the way this topic and the replies so far are written, this seems GD material (so people can’t fabulous person up the discussion by posting porn and stuff): however I’ll post a serious reply here.

Second: taking characters off the leaderboards. Not a good idea imo. The definition of a leaderboard is that the person who tops it has the most of the thing measured; not the most, except for SG, Fran, Lara Croft, Nana, etc. That seems just silly in my book.

Kittiejenn’s idea of having only recent posts/requests count, seems like a fine solutionan improvement. It makes the E-Peen and the boards more available, without giving out pityPeens to people who don’t meet the criteria to top them. To me at least, “Most replies in the past three months” makes a lot more sense as a criterion for E-Peen than “Most replies… except for an ever-growing number of characters who actually got more replies”.

I think “recent”, in both cases, should be about three months: that way the flamebate board gives an indication of “successful” posters (as it should), and inactive posters don’t stay up way high forever. Make that period much shorter and actual good posters will have zero chance to build up a competitive score.

Nicco Posted:

Maybe remove them if they top a leaderboard for a month?

Week.

Meh, this has been discussed to death. The leaderboards are terribly flawed, not just the Flamebate/friendwhore boards. Really, of the leaderboards with a peen bumociated, at least getting those doesn’t require whoever is in front of you to either bow out or stop playing the way they want in order for someone new to have a chance. How does someone get most forums pwned, most cred, most INCIT wins if the players at the top keep maxing out their play? People give SG a lot of crap, but of the “they have to stop playing” boards she has given others the chance to jump ahead more than anyone else. Maybe they aren’t meant to be something for more than a very few players, but as long as they are viewed as collectible or an achievement, people are going to chase after them.

I do hope CZ considers doing something either with the release of Episode 2 or shortly after. It would be a shame to see a decent influx of new players, only to see some leave due to feeling it was impossible to achieve anything goal based.

I mentioned it in Echuu’s old thread and still say a monthly or seasonal reset would make a huge difference and actually bring a competitive feel to the boards.

Or what if all your friends counted but you were capped at sending 12 friend requests per day?