It's a challenge much in the same way you might have achievements when you play a game. The challenge is to complete your calendar and have battled on every day in a year.

The idea is to motivate developers to write code everyday

I think this thread brings up a good general idea about motivating people to battle

My original idea for this was the Emcee system, it was supposed to be more automated and tied into the battling system, so when you hit certain win streaks, or shutout someone on a battle, you'd get items automatically awarded. There would maybe be a way to put your items up for bet on a battle (like "I'll bet my chain on this battle"..), and a way to purchase items with credits.

@Pugz and I played a lot of Overwatch recently, and they do a really good job of this with the characters and items you can get for your characters, it really motivates people to play the game more. I'm thinking about revamping the Emcee system to be more like this.. and making Emcees more prominent throughout the site (new artwork too).

I like this idea and I think the more of this kind of stuff the better. This ties into my forum awards email that I sent you in a similar way. We need to find ways of reinforcing the behaviours we like (battling, voting etc.) when those behaviours are suitably reinforced they will increase.

I don't know about the emcees thing, personally. I'm five years in & still haven't even got an emcee, because they're just wholly unimportant to me and impact nothing. In fact I found them almost a damper on my profile, which is why I decided against it. Perhaps this is just me, though.

This is because they've been neglected, the same with forum awards. The lack of action when it comes to handing out items/awards has just left people indifferent about them. If awards and emcee items were predictors of activity and ability and were handed out promptly they would begin to be valued.

Honestly, I think small cosmetic awards (like emcee items) are most valuable in large communities, where people don't know most other users well. Since you can't become familiar with everyone, you rely on badges and such to tell you about people. With a smallish community like LB, where active users are usually well-known to each other, it's less relevant because you already know people in detail.

That's not to say that they're useless, just that they aren't nearly as valuable as they would be if LB had 10,000 active members.

u geocache Nick?