Classic / Official Author Discussion

Hey All,

As Free Rider HD grows we will continue to learn and make changes to the game with your input of course, one of those recent changes was around the naming of Classic to Official. We may not always agree but we do our best to make changes that we feel will be best for the community as a whole, sometimes we don't agree based on sheer effort to support something or it may not make sense for the longevity of the game.

Classic was initially thrown in to allow for long time Free Rider players that don't necessarily ride as much anymore but still enjoy drawing tracks hence the removal of coins to upload.

As the site has grown we have been finding that "Classic" doesn't necessarily fit anymore and "Official" is a better fit / term for the author status. "Classic" was never intended to be based on strict criteria on quality of tracks or skill of the author but instead was there to allow an author to focus on drawing as opposed to playing.

I would really like to turn around this sentiment of negativity that has been stirring up recently, yes some authors are more skilled than others but there is no need to cut down other authors putting in time to create the best tracks they can, they will only get better with time and with constructive feedback.

So can we try to focus on giving constructive feedback? If not, give me some reasons why and how we could bring out more constructive feedback. It is OK to disagree with something or to not like a track for one reason or another or to just simply not like someone but instead of saying someone is crap or something is crap try to give some constructive feedback on how they can improve.

And after all that, what do you want out of this private sub-forum?

 

How did VIPs work in CR? (how did players get promoted, what did players get after being promoted, etc)

 

VIP was pretty much the end goal for every CR player. There are 33 VIPS out of 13367 members so it was pretty exclusive. You would get VIP status after you won a contest or after you'd been making amazing tracks for a really long time. After you got promoted your name would appear orange instead of black and you would get acces to the VIP track gallery where you could make a gallery that showcased your tracks. Also you would get acces to the VIPzone which was basicly a spamhole. The status would really motivate players to make the best track they could possibly make for the contest because it was so hard to reach the rank.

Now that you guys made clear that official author here is not the same as VIP on CR I understand why there are so many official authors. I do think that the bar shouldn't be lower than it is right now though and that you still have to earn the rank a bit. Not every single author who made more than 4 tracks should get the status.

 

Who decided would make the cut to VIP (developer, VIPs, players)? Was the recognition only on the forum, on CR itself or both?

If we were to do something like that we would need to iron out what the criteria / nomination process would be.

 

Perhaps, would need to iron out what the criteria / nomination process would look like as well as the recognition.

 

If you have suggestions on how VIPs would be selected am all ears.

Currently authors on the leaderboard are ranked by Likes + minimum rating level, is that the right motivation to create tracks that are well received by a large portion of the community?
http://www.freeriderhd.com/leaderboards/author/lifetime/1