Hello, just an idea before the release of infinite, as I don’t remember a rehaul or major visual update of this place in recent history.
Make forum rank more prevelant.
Right now it’s just text.
Add emblems.
Like oh you know, every Halo game since Halo 2?
I don’t care about being a ‘spartan’ but you bet your -Yoink- if I could reach inheritor or something higher I would probably be more active here.
Not that gamefaqs is a great example cause of the toxicity there, but they have karma and unique titles that are decent incentives for being there.
Edit: wow after re reading this I see there is an emblem system. The fact I JUST NOW saw it though speaks to it’s relevance. Add cooler emblems, not generic military ranks.
The only incentive to be on a forum should be wanting to discuss with other people about whatever the forum is for. Everything about a forum’s infrastructure should encourage high quality discussion. That’s what forums thrive on, not traffic. Forum ranks practically always work against that, because—as is the case with Waypoint—they are built around metrics like post count which encourage lots of short low-effort posts you can write in a couple of seconds and then move on, which is the exact opposite of what you’d want. As long as the forum ranks are post count based, they should be given no more perceived value than they already have, and I’d prefer if they were removed altogether.
Being on a forum and discussing only for rank boosting leads to a lot of problems and not really rich conversation. And many forum have so many rewards that most people just spam to rank or write 1 sentences post.
In the meantime tho, having some “reward”, based on what you bring to a discussion is also a thing I like to see.
So I believe what we have now is enough as it cover both (seniority rewards and amount of contribution). But maybe instead of a rank by messags posted, it should be a rank by karma/likes so that is rewarding only for people that do bring something in the table.