GameLayers

I think there is space for more user content on PMOG other than missions and I think a way to achieve this and gain more popularity as a result it to allow custom badges from the players themselves.

Any player should be able to create a new badge and set the rules for it (perhaps PMOG can provide a tool to create such, like with missions). The player would be responsible for providing the artwork as well.

Depending on the capabilities of the tool created, there would be more choices for the badges but initially even a simple option to provide the number of visits and the timeframe they need to happen could work.

(Optional) Make badge creation require some kind of new tool. Possibly create a new class (Tinkerer?) or assign it as high level item, possibly to Pathmakers or Benefactors.

Custom badges, I believe, should be hidden. That is, there should not be a list for them on the codex and their description should not explain how to achieve them. Perhaps only a hint on what website they are related to should be enought of a tease but even that might no be necessary.
This wouldn't stop people who created them telling how they work but people finding them on a profile would be more prone to check out the related site and or attempt to coax people to tell them (Bribes? Role Play? Possibilities).

Once a person achieves a hidden custom badge, how he achieved it should be mentioned and the creator should be informed as well, to enhance socializing.

(Optional): Limit the number of badges a player can create. Possibilities are
* One custom badge per 1 or 3 levels.
* One custom badge for each official badge you've achieved
* A set Limit of X custom badges.

(Optional) Allow badges to be limited in number. That is, the creator can create a limited set and claim that only X number can be won which might trigger a rush for people to get it.

Discovered/Awarded custom badges could be placed on a new tab in the badges part of the profile. Thus they would not have to be standing out like the official ones but people can choose to see them.

(Optional) Provide a link to the creator which links to the badge description. This way people can give it to friends to display it exists and tease them to get it.

{Optional) Provide a DP reward to the creator each time their badge is won from someone. Alternatively, provide a reward to the one who won it.

(Optional) Allow people to rate custom badges. A badge that receives a lot of low ratings stops working

Why would this increase PMOG visibility? I can already see people linking to PMOG and telling people that they can achieve a nice badge by visiting the page. Instead of a standard link to PMOG, people could be linking through their badge artwork. Suddenly you might find that a lot more online places might be willing to link to pmog in order to have their readers gain a shiny new trinket.

Currently the system works by changing your associations every three days depending on how many missions you took and tool you used. As a result your associations are constantly in flux and it doesn't really fit with the "Develop a rich user profile passively, just by surfing the web." aspect of PMOG.

What I would like to propose is an alternative way to work with levels and associations which should really make your profile represent the way you use the web.
The idea is this:

* Each player can have levels in all associations and these levels can differ. Thus a player could be a 6th level Benefactor / 4 Level Destroyer / 3rd Level Pathmaker. You accumulate xp for each association by taking missions associated with it and using tools, as is the current style but instead of having those xp "reset" after three days, they accumulate and define your level in that association.

This of course creates a problem on how to deal with the generic XP/DP you gather as you're surfing the net. If you just tally them to your higher current level, it means that it would be difficult to switch it as it would always be one step ahead. Possible solutions to this include
1: Have the "surfing DP" count for your three top associations in the form of 50%/30%/20%. This way your DP help you advance levels in your current choice of assocs.
2: Have the "surfing DP" count towards either a neutral level, or a whole different association (that has something more to do with simply surfing and possibly taking missions, say "Mission Runner")

* You can buy items from all associatons but the cost of them is reduced by how hight a level you have in that association. That way, nobody is stuck if they decide they want to work with different tools, but they might have a larger problem bying them. Of course, the differences in price might make the market an even better place to be and having the top level in your association would allow you to trade well.

* Provide new and special tools for characters who have reached a high enough level in the association of their choice. This would act as more of an incentive for people to stay on their association as well as give another dimention to trading.

These are, of course, basic thoughts on the concept. I could expand further with more ideas but for now I'd like to hear your opinions.

Further to my previous idea, I'd like to suggest another tool, this time for destroyers.

Since Benefactors will be able to create locked chests, it is only appropriate that destroyers should be able to brutally open them somehow, and this is what this tool would do.

When a destroyer stumbles upon a locked chest, he can use the Lock Acid to melt the lock and get to the contents without having to bother with passwords.

Of course, this tool, like the one before, should be available from level 8 and up.

Also, in case Lock Acid is not good. Another name option would be: Plastique Explosive

There should be an option to have locked chest available for buying. The concept is quite simply that the player that lays such a chest can demand that a special password be enterred before the chest is opened and possibly he has the option to provide some descriptive text before it's opened (in order to provie a hint for example).

These chests could then be used for missions or generally for more interesting stuff.

In order to make them more interesting/rare (so that not everyone has them). Perhaps allow them to be bought only by benefactors or level 8 or more.

There is certainly a demand for puzzle missions but currently players have to rely on workaround in order to get it to work (i.e. tinyurl to block the next step until the hint is found).

These workaround don't always work (personal experience) and don't give as much options as possible.

So I would like to suggest that specialized tools are provided by PMOG to make such puzzle missions. Examples are:

* Roadblocks: Allow the player to place a roadblock between their lightposts that the mission runner must work around. Perhaps the roadblock will open a page in pmog with instructions (written by the mission author) to the player.
* Crossroads: These allow the mission author to split or merge the mission paths at this point. This would allow alternate endings or dead-ends
* Finish Lines: A special type of lightpost that will give a reward to anyone who finds it. This would allow the mission author to provide rewards to runners without having to rely on crates which may be found by random people and cannot be refilled easily.

It seems there are enough people that think mission having such an impact on associations is a bad idea (at least the current implementation of it). Generally the issue as I see it, is that PMOG is supposed to create the "character" of the user depending by how he uses the net and PMOG but with the associations so fluid, that does not work in the expected way

Perhaps this can be changed so that either missions do not affect associations that much or that associations can be somehow "locked" at the player's will.

The ways that have been proposed until now to alleviate this are:

* Make association unchangeable unless the players makes an explicit choice to reset his association. This could, for example, turn him into a shoat for a 3 days (until enough actions to determine associations are gathered) or perhaps simply start the 3 day counter (as is happening now)

* Make associations change only when the cumulative uses of items and missions from the start of the players character "life" have been changed. Thus someone who put many mines for most of his PMOG life, would need to start placing a lot more crates to turn into a benefactor.
In order to allow this to happen, allow the items in the shoppe to be open to everyone but at a discount to associated classes.

* Make associations lock if the user selects an appropriate option. This would allow people to take missions without having the association change every other day.

As a Benefactor, I leave a lot of crates around the internet. The feedback I receive from those is very important to me, so I can become better at gift-giving. I wish the "X just looted your crate" message would tell me exactly which crate got looted, because it could be any one out of a hundred I've hidden. I like to keep some crates perpetually stashed in certain locations, and there's no way for me to know when it's time to replace them unless I check manually. It would also be nice if the notification message included the text of the message I put in the crate, as well as the tools inside it.

Take away the description for a badge away.
Even take away what URLs you have to visit to get those badges. Some are quite obvious like the Perez Hilton one, if you've ever seen 'that' face on TV or anywhere. Some are quite obvious such as the Murloc for WoW and on and on and on...

Let's make this game a little more Passive when it comes to the LEAST of all Passive features here.

Yes, some will be painstakingly obvious what you have to do to get them, once someone gets one and declares it, such as hitting the 250 mine mark or some such landmark. The browsing ones will be a bit more ambiguous though.

I think the badges would be cool as a social tool "Hey, you are an xkcd addict too!" or "Hey, hey, what server do you play on?" or "What's your xbox live name?" so on and so forth...

How many "thumbbusters" do we have that don't even have a game system? How many people have the XKCD badge that have never heard of the semi-spontaneous meeting in a park at certain coordinates in Boston back on that fateful specific time and day?

It just seems... so false. So fake. Such lies.

I'd love to see PMOG team up with other web services in order to allow
PMOG players to hit two birds with one stone and also have more of an
incentive to contribute in those services.
For example:

* Allow people who play in the Google Image Labeler to gain Dp for doing so. Eventually grant a badge for it.

* Allow people who tag artists in last.fm, to gain Dps for it as well. Grant badges about it.

* Allow stumblers who perform reviews or tag pages to be rewarded somehow.

* Find some way to track commenting on blogs. Reward people who take the time to leave comments somehow. I know it should be possible since already cocomments tracks comments via a Firefox extention. Provide badges based on this.

* Give points to people who tag other people, say, 1Dp per tag. In
order to avoid abuse, make each tag that is removed, cost the tagger
5dp. This will give an incentive (albeit a minor one) for people to
help categorise

* Give 2dp per mission tag. Allow some way for people to mark tags
as irrelevant (and punish if possible the same way as above) so as to
avoid abuse. It's generally a good idea to help with categorising
missions

* Provide a Badge for 100/200/400 tags that have not been deleted.

* Badge for 3/6/9 4-Star Missions achieved (after 7 days mission
inactivity I guess, since the rating is always changeable)

* Badgee for 2/4/6 5-Star Missions (ridiculously difficult atm)

* Badge for 10/20/30 4-star and above forum posts

* Alternatively, just provide one badge for each of these
conditions (so as not to fill the place with them)

* Provide badge(s) for a number of mission reviews.

I would like to see some kind of reward for people that create high quality portals. For example a dp reward based on the rating the person who took it gave.
Thus a portal that is rated as 4 could give 2Dp to the opener, while a 5-starred one could give 3 or 4. Lower rating (average and below average) should not give a reward

Possibly punish 1-star average portals somehow to reign in spamming

This idea is so as to give an incentive for people to put more effort into their missions and so that those that do, get rewarded for it.

Currently each mission run gives the player 10Dp. I would like to see it changed so that each mission run gives the creator 3Dp per star rating the runner gives. This way people who just throw a few random pages together and hope for random clicks, will not be getting a lot out of it while high quality missions can get up to 15Dp per run.

Alternatively, reward people who make consistent quality
missions by increasing their rewards:

Lets say that everyone starts with 10dp gain per run on his
missions. After 3 missions created, you could change the DP gained per
run to be relevant to the average rating of all that person's missions
until now. For example:

o Average rating 2-stars:5Dp per run

o Average rating 3-stars:10Dp per run

o Average rating 4-stars:15Dp per run

Of course, it might be even better if you allow your algorithms
to work with decimals, in the background, for a bigger scale, but
that's not so important.
Alternatively, take only the average of the last 5 missions so
that someone who starts off with bad missions can eventually try and
make his average better (by making his newer ones of more quality)
without having to nuke his profile and start all over.