Okay. I wasn’t going to reply to this discussion thread because I feel that anything I say may sound – to some people at least – biased, since I’m one of the strongest here and I’ve risen through the ranks at a very high rate. I know it bothered people and stuff, but since
Vi-Poi asked for my opinion, I shall speak.
First and foremost, even though this is my first English language board, I’ve been playing on RPG boards for pretty much 16 years now, more time playing than some people here are alive. I’m not one to brag, or to like to be the “holder of the truth” or anything like that. Quite the contrary… I would rather lay low here, make friends and have fun, then bringing such sort of spotlight.
Okay, straight to the point. I’ve been admin of a very large number of boards, from the most varied themes. I would have trouble listing them all, but I have some that comes up to mind rather quickly: Knights of the Zodiac, Naruto, One Piece, Fairy Tail, Reborn, Dragon Ball Z, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Resident Evil, Marvel/DC comics.
Most of those boards we used a
Tier System to determine people’s level of power and stuff. At first it always seemed like a good idea, even though with the other boards coming after the other, we remained blinded to the obvious truth that the system is not very good for boards with large number of players.
Tier System is good when you have a
small board, mostly closed to a few friends, who want to RP their own closed plots. Such
small boards are capable of understanding deeply and following the users’ plots and be fair and square.
However, when the size of the board gets
massive like this one and some others I had, it starts generating tons of problems, mostly because the
staff would have to remain active and pay close attention to every single thread in order to be able to judge
all users in a fair manner. It’s very easy to judge people’s plot that you barely know, since you just read some of the plot, sometimes jus the trivial ones, and then the character automatically sounds uninteresting.
Other very important point is: a judge has to be very good in order to differentiate the thin line between:
Is this character plot really bad, or I just personally don’t like the character. If one fails to see that this is a thing that exists and happens a lot, then it’s not a good judge at all, and therefore, the
Tier System will already be born flawed, since most people won’t get a fair look upon their characters and plots.
Another very serious issue I faced when handling board with
Tier System is the fact that, pretty much, only people close to the staff get a real chance to be relevant, because those are the people staff tend to pay attention. Look… I had massive popular boards a few years back, and I will tell about a particular one, because it is the most recent example on my mind:
I had a Fairy Tail board called
Tales of Fiore, where we used a fancy-named tier system, using greek letters to determine people’s power. It went from Delta all the way to Omega, having a Souper Alpha in between the Alpha and the last tier. Well… The board lasted for about a year or so, which was good… But what started to kill it was because tons of users were leaving the board, because they didn’t feel rewarded enough for their efforts. Back then I thought that their plots were quite stupid, since it wasn’t so tied with the
main plot going on at the moment, but, after the board closed and I went back to read about the people I, as the
head admin, didn’t care about, I saw that many of them had interesting plots, that made perfect sense lore-wise, but worked decently enough on the sidelines rather than the spotlight. They were important to make the scenario rich and fulfilling, and they were never properly rewarded.
Speaking the truth, one of them only managed to reach from Delta to Gamma level, even though he was a quite active user, and posted really well. That made everyone from his group to leave, because he was feeling that they were receiving unfair treatment. At first I denied it, but later, after the board closed I apologized to him and recognized the mistake. A little too late, indeed, but unfortunately it happened.
At that wasn’t the only case nor the only board it happened.
On a Knights of the Zodiac board I was once again admin, names War Chronicles, one of my closest friends, who posted quite well, but not as active as many members, managed to become a Judge of Hades, which was the highest Tier possible for players. He made some effort, yes, he had an
AMAZINGLY interesting plot on his mind, that he was slowly developing, and then we decided to promote him. He enjoyed the promotion a lot and… posted only
THREE THREADS after that. Being a board where positions are limited and important, that caused countless troubles to the board. First because we needed him as an active member, since he was really important. Second because others much more active players and with fairly interesting plots complained all the time that he was awarded and they weren’t. This situation ultimately delivered a huge blow to the board and a couple months later it killed the board.
In my humble opinion and experience, having a
Tier System is never truly fair. People may complain about the
PL system we have here, but I had a similar system on a Harry Potter board and that board thrived. People were rewarded for their effort in being active users, but not only that. Combined with it, we had some sort of
MILESTONE System for the adults, and a
TEST System for the students, where they would get extra grade for homework assigned and participation on both classes and tests. This board became one of the largest communities for Harry Potter rp in Brazil back at the time (2006-2008), lasting for a little more than two years. It ended because I moved to NY and couldn’t be ahead of a board anymore, and people remaining got into personal fights.
This system values activity and effort, which is neutral and fair.
Other than that, we also had rewards for mods doing their job, which helped quite a lot with right motivation, other ways to grow in the board, but all set by fair rules, achievable by everyone in a very transparent and clear way. As I posted before: I’m in favor of a software for auto-grading! I’m in favor of a Milestone system such as Zuni had suggested back then. But I’m completely against a Tier System, because, from my experience – and that’s a lot – it’s never fair and does more damage than anything else.
I truly hope people will listen to this I have to say with an open heart, for I want to see this board thrive. I know I’m not a personal favorite for a LOT of people here, but I do have some knowledge to help.