make a page that lists people who are advancing in the game very quickly. it would be determined by their score and the date of creation of their charater.
make the n00bs feel more loved.

Dude this is a great idea. We should totally do this.

why do you guys keep trying to make alt finders?

peytros its not like character numbers aren't sequencial. It cant be that hard to make some kind of script that keeps track of all the characters with a number over X.

'Score'? 'Advancing in the game'?

Have I slept a thousand years, Activision Blizzard acquired GSW through shady means, and it has become a bar pusher intended to rope in the rest of the gamers who do not like (semi-)cartoonical monster mayhem?

Nay.

NAY!, I say to this grindomaniacal suggestion.

How about a page that simple lists advancements and badges.

Noob2x combat 2
dope3y mining 4
Noob2x light weapons 2
reticle advanced trader 49

etc...

It would not be hard to see who is advancing quickly by just looking down the list, and noobs would tend to dominate the list.

edit: and toss in the bounties like on the news page. just think of it as a more detailed news page that was available by a web interface.

edit edit: this would also be a good way to attract new players. Seeing activity in a game is a strong emotional motivator to jump in and play.

+1 to roda

-1 to alt finder

Roda: I like putting bounties and things on the front page.

But I'm not following the advancement thing. Are you saying have a list of badges, and then say how many people have advanced to them in the last X unit time, or some such?

One entree per incident.

I start a new character and gain combat 1, light 1, trade 1, those are three separate entrees. I am talking a very verbose listing.

At some time in the future, when the list becomes overloaded, we can talk methods to reduce the verbosity, but at this point, I think overly verbose may be a good thing.

That would seem to have the same alt-finding issue, in that any character who advances significantly in a short period of time will be a suspected vet..

Any character that can advance so quickly that they will be identified as an alt, might should be identified as an alt.

Some of the options for reducing verbosity might also serve double duty in reducing alt finding issues, so perhaps we can review some of those options ahead of time.

Reduced verbosity options:

A) Obsolete advancements are deleted. Noob_x gains combat 4, the news item of noob_x gaining combat 3 is deleted.

B) varying levels of statistics. Statistics can be reduced to how many pilots per period gained combat 4, gained a combat level, gained a level in any category, etc... with the level of detail decided arbitrarily to support anonymity, or automatically to maintain a certain quantity of news items.

C) Full accomplishment detail can be reported, but the name of low level pilots masked. High level pilots are in less need of anonymity.

And perhaps many other ideas that I have not thought of.

It is true that even the bounties listed by web interface would be better than what we have now. But Something more dynamic, and something that actually encourages real noobs (by getting their name listed in a news real) might be more effective. If I am thinking about playing, and I see that 4+ other noobs have just leveled, I might also want to join the action. Alts are already subscribed, and frankly, most alts would willingly suffer a level of inconvenience if it meant more new players.

Ok, an alternative:

Make some milestones:
-Licenses 3, 5 10
-Flight licenses and Test Pilots.

Now register how much time that alt has spent online. Not when, simply online time, as 5h33m12s.

And make a sort of competition, the 5 or10 fastest pilot to reach each level (like mine5 combat10) and full level (as 3/3/3/3/3).

From engine side, each time a pilot completes a milestone, engine compares his online time with achievements list.

(Just like I proposed for VO's book of records.)

It would be cool to see that as objective, and alts created for that:

TPG Test Pilot:
1h23m02s Someone.Rec
1h23m03s Other Pilot Rec

no one noticing this thread is from 2003...

oh yeah i forgot to post this

lol pey. seems everyone here has been trolled by our new suggestion bot named ladron!

/me takes a bow.

However, I actually do like the idea of posting bounties and possibly other stats on the front page (provided that sufficient precautions are taken to foil alt-finders and prevent anyone from determining who is online at a given time).