Introducing Toyark Experience - Win Stuff!
 

New Site Feature - Toyark Experience - Win Stuff!

Toyark.com is implementing a new site feature, called Experience. This is a tracking system which awards points for everything you do here on the site, once you are registered and logged in, that is.

Different actions will receive different point amounts, and those with the top points in certain areas will be rewarded with physical, real-world prizes at the end of each month. For doing nothing but participating and interacting on Toyark.com as you normally would!

We will award 3 prizes each month, for what we are calling "Activity". This is a statistic generated by averaging Posts Per Day - then taking into account Consecutive Days Online (if you stay away for a week or 2, that detracts from your score). The 3 with the best stats from this calculation will win each month.

To set things off, On October 1st, 2011 we will award our first set of prizes (roughly one month from now). We will run the award generator on that day, and whomever gets first/second/third place according to the system then, will win:

• 1st Place - Marvel Universe Sentinel (In Hand, Pics Attached Below)
• 2nd Place - Announced On Award Day
• 3rd Place - Announced On Award Day

One note - If you win first place for October, you will not be able to win in November. You will then be eligible to win again in December. 1st Place winners will need to take a month off from potentially winning the next month. This will be done to allow some up and comers the opportunity to win some prizes, and ensure one person doesn't monopolize 1st place winnings. But hey, if you are kick ass and would have won every month, you can still win 6 times a year, for posting on a message board. Hopefully we can all live with that. :).

Once we generate the winners, we will contact you via PM, get your mailing address, and ship it out free of charge.

International members are welcome, but we will declare the value of the toy on customs, and will not mark it as a gift. Duty fees are your responsibility.

More details are below.....

Toyark Experience Overview:

To view the Experience Charts - click here: Toyark Toy Forums - Ranking

I'll try to explain what is important in relation to Toyark, and what isn't below. I will go "tab by tab" here:

Ranking
This is just a leader board, similar to some video games, which shows the top "point getters". Levels are based on the top point getters, who get Rank 100, and then it ranks backwards from there. Level 100 is max.

Awards
Only 3 are given out. They may change throughout the month, BUT, whomever is on top on the first of the month, will win real world prizes. Our Activity awards are based on the following data:

Average Posts Per Day
Consecutive Days Online

The system will get your Average Posts Per Day, in the last 30 days only. It will then look at your consecutive days online. If you have been away for a while, your point total will be decreased. The longer you are away, the lower your point total will be decreased. So, in order to truely get max points, and potentially win the prize each month, will require you to post regularly, consistently, online at Toyark, AND, be online, logged in, every day.

Or - as many days as you can be. We understand that people may need to be away for whatever reason. Don't worry, so long as you come back online when you can and get to posting, it shouldn't affect you too much. Posts Per Day are weighted more important than the Days Online.

So, regardless of whether you are a Toyark Veteran, or, just joined today, or joined a year ago but never posted, it doesn't matter. The awards, and prizes for them, are given out to those that perform in the last 30 days only. So get going!

A review of your posts prior to award announcements will be done, if they are heavily weighted with generic responses, and not contributing to the site, we may recalculate awards without you as an option (same way we exclude staff from winner results). Regardless of any system notifications you may receive, you are not officially a winner until a staff member contacts you via PM directly.

Achievements
These do not calculate into physical prizes. They are a set of goals for you to shoot for here at Toyark. As you reach certain goals, you will get icons that show up under your name on posts and your profile page, letting the Toyark community know what you've done. We've kept it simple for now, and just made each achievement level "Point Totals". So if you get to 500 Post Points, you get an achievemnt icon. Etc. We will add in new achievements over time, and switch up the icons to be more "Toy" related.

Activities
This just shows the latest awarding of points on Toyark, who did what and got what.

Earn Points
This shows you what you can get points for on Toyark. There are 4 tabs there, so click each one. They break down to 4 types of points - Social Points, Thread Points, Posts Points, and Points for Misc. It shows you what actions get what points, and how many points you have right now for each.

Social Points - Things like Social Groups, Friends, Visitor Messages. They are not focused on here, and not awarded heavy points. But, they do get some point love.

**Thread Points - One of the important areas for gaining points at Toyark. Most important - New Thread Creation. You get 15 points for every new thread you create. You also get 5 points for every time you respond to one of your own threads.

**Post Points - Another important area of gaining points at Toyark. You get 7 points for each reply you make to a thread.

Points for Misc - Not used right now, but a staff member could in theory award you points manually for something you do down the road.

Statistics
This shows the top 10 point getters for every action that can get a point. There are 4 tabs here again, so make sure to click each one. Social, Thread, Post, and Misc Point getters.

One more note to all -

This is BETA. We still need to test this in a real world environment. We may need to change or adjust how things work, what gets points, how many points for each, etc.

We are also awarding points for many other actions that do not factor into physical prizes right now. Right now, that's just for the fun of it. In the future, we may implement physical prizes for top performers of other actions on the site, and possibly install a "Toyark Shop" where you can buy "digitial goods" to use around the forum (like special avatars and icons, etc). You would use your points to purchase "digitial goods".

But, that's down the road. So, even if you can't "win" each month because you can't compete with those that post a lot, don't worry. Your points will continue to tally up, and you will eventually be able to use them to get cool things, and do cool things, here on Toyark.

If you have ideas, or questions, or concerns, with the new Experience system, please use this thread to sound off on it! You can also PM me directly.

Now, get to posting so you can win some stuff!

I assume staff members are ineligible?

Hot dang!!!

very nifty! I a newbie to this forum so this is a nice change from the norm!

Correct - All staff members are ineligible for prizes. They do show up in the stats and achievements tho.

Hurray for phyiscal prizes! :)

Hehe, I didn't know what else to call it. Wanted to make sure it was understood we weren't just giving them a new icon or more PM space. You win real stuff if you win :)

Nice! Does it count when I'm on my phone?

lol knowing my luck i'll prorbably win something i dont want , thank godd for ebay !

It's better than winning a Physical Challenge!

"Congratulations, you won first place! Get a life! You must now do a pushup for every post you've made in the last month!"

lol

Yes, so long as you are logged in, and posting replies or new posts, it counts.

Wow, this reminds me of those Facebook games that my sister is so addicted to. LOL.

To everyone reading - keep an eye on that green bar under your name in posts. That is one of the main factors in who gets the prizes each month. I would be severely lacking right now :). You want that at 99.9% if possible :).

interesting. I cannot wait to see how this changes the forums. hope that it increases traffic.

This is awesome news

Great idea and glad to see it up and running, even if it's still beta.

You heard the man, people. Stop reading this and get to posting! :)

Good cause I use my phone 90% of the time when I'm on this site lol

Yeah, checking those 33 stores EVERY DAY like a mad-toy-man! lol

First off, rather clever way of increasing activity you've guys got here.

Second of all, I was gonna ignore this on account that I rather not spam and such, but then I saw my Experience tab thingy and maaaaan, I wanna level up.

Great idea, I was excited to see this when it was first announced. My only concern is now that there will be more random points which add nothing to the experience of being a Toyark member.
Will the type of posts be accounted into who wins? Such as being helpful to other forum members, providing information and posting pictures account for these points?
Id like to see a thumbs up or thumbs down feature for forum members to add points to those members when a post is regarded as helpful/funny/positive or thumbs down when a post is negative/hurtful/BS. I think that would help who is really deserving of being considered great forum members and winning prizes as opposed to a post count of "boy I wish Hasbro would hurry up and make MU Ares." and threads like "What is your wishlist?". My 2 cents for all its worth.

^ this!!!!

Im already seeing posts of cool, looks cool, nice....ughhh. I dont want our wonderful Toyark community to turn to crap.

We will be watching that, and if it becomes a consistent issue, we will amend the rules to specifically disallow that.

We may also bump up minimum characters per post to disallow short answers. So if you are going to spam, you at least have to write a sentence or 2. :).

Wait and see approach, will adjust as needed.