[F] Further categorizing trials

[Jean Of mArc]

Hey Meph,

Do you think we could set some sort of standard in the "Your Trials" section that distinguishes Trial "ideas" or "coming eventualies" from actual playable trials? Not that it means we should just ignore the idea threads, but it's kind of nice to take a look and immediately know what's playable and what's just a concept for now...

[Bad Player]

I think this is a good idea. It could be something simple, like a square or circle at the beginning of the thread name (similar to the star for featured trials)

The outline of a square/circle if the case isn't complete but there are released/playable sections, and then a filled in square/circle if the case is complete.

[Kroki]

Wow do you want to make the titles even more heavy than they already are with all these tags? x)
A "Trial Showcases" subcategory might not be a bad idea though.

[Meph]

So you just want to have a little marker in the thread title to show whether a case is playable? OK, we could do that. But I have two questions:

Should we use the marker to show when the case is playable or not playable?
Would it be used when an entire case/episode is completed or just when the first chapter is?

The outline of a square/circle if the case isn't complete but there are released/playable sections, and then a filled in square/circle if the case is complete.

You mean these: ● ○? That seems like the best idea, but do you think we should use something that's already on the keyboard. And would we use one circle per case, like we do with featured cases? I think that would look rather nice: ★★●.

[Bad Player]

Yeah, something like that. Using something that's on the keyboard would be good, but I can't find anything on it that'd work well..... Copy/pasting isn't so bad, is it? xP

And yeah, I'd say one circle per case. So what you posted would mean 2 featured trials and 1 complete, non-featured trial. ★●○ would be 1 featured trial, 1 non-featured complete trial, and 1 trial that has playable sections but isn't complete.

[Meph]

Ah whatever. I usually have to edit people's thread titles anyway to add the genre prefix.

OK. I'll add it to the rules. Thanks.

[Bad Player]

Tbh, I don't think it should be mandatory. There's just a bit too much to manage, I think xP
But then it should be encouraged, and it should be against the rules to 'overstate' the progress of your trials xP

[Meph]

OK, I'll use "should" instead of "must", so that it's not mandatory. I'll still need to put it in the rules, though, to explain what they mean.

EDIT: OK, I'm testing the idea, now. If we get bad feedback, I'll change everything back.

If people don't like the idea, what we could do instead is use a [WIP]. But then again, most threads would end up having that tag, so it wouldn't be very helpful.

[Jean Of mArc]

I just checked it out, and personally, I think it looks WONDERFUL! It's SO easy to tell the progress of all of the threads now!

I personally would like to see this be a requirement rather than just a suggestion, because otherwise it will be very inconsistent... But I guess it's up to you.

[Meph]

I was worried people might think they get in the way, but that's good to hear.

[Jean Of mArc]

I was worried people might think they get in the way, but that's good to hear.

Well, I admit it does shorten the amount of characters they have to use by 1-4 (generally) characters for their topic because of the circles... but seriously, the way you guys worked it out looks great and I think looks much less like an ambiguous free-for-all in the Your Trials section than before.

I'm worried that if it is optional that people who DO have complete trials will NOT use it, thus making people think it is an ideas thread or something.

But maybe that's good motivation to do it...

[Meph]

I usually have to add them myself anyway.

But we could provide more space. What if we changed the "trial", "investigation", etc prefixes to these: [T], , [C] and [M]. Since [C] is currently used to show competition entries, I'd have to rename it to something like [Comp].

[Jean Of mArc]

I usually have to add them myself anyway.

But we could provide more space. What if we changed the "trial", "investigation", etc prefixes to these: [T], , [C] and [M]. Since [C] is currently used to show competition entries, I'd have to rename it to something like [Comp].

If you could add more space, then really there aren't any legitimate complaints that I can think of. Spending a few seconds to copy/paste a character is really something I think most people should be able to manage.

Changing the prefixes might be a good idea too, if you want to check with others about it (so far there have been few opinions shared here). Maybe for competitions it could be changed to [CE] for "Competition Entry"?

[Meph]

Good idea.

And yeah, I'll be adding a topic about the changes now.

[Bad Player]

I think stars should take the place of circles when a trial is featured or getting a QA review. That is, MSAT should be "☆○○○" instead of "☆●○○○". I mean, if I see 5 symbols, I think 5 cases.
(also I meant that the ○ should be a case that has playable content that but isn't complete, not just any planned, incomplete case)