[nirvAnA]

A bunch of us have been hard at work over the last week and now we can finally make an official annoncement introducing a series of new features on the site - to explain a little bit more and how to get the best out of them. Also feel free to give feedback, e.g new achievements u like to see, new avatars or more suggestions for improvements on the site.

Would also like to use this opportunity to thank the people who have helped in making these features possible.

#1 Revamped Avatar/User title system.

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We have done away with the User Title system replaced it with a spanking new Avatar system. The more posts you have, the cooler your avatar becomes!

You start out as a larvae then morph into a zergling >..etc.> reaper >..> void ray >... > and finally into a mothership.



Special thanks to jaczie who painstakingly went thru all the avatars, cropping/resizing them and making them transparent and finally rejecting the ones which didnt look good on the site after testing them out one by one!

#2 Achievement badges

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In a bid to encourage more particiapation on our forums and in SEA tournaments, i thought it would be cool to come up with some Achievement badges you could have displayed in your profile everytime you post. These badges range from Winning BSGs to the "Seasoned tournament player" for having played in more than 10 tournaments to achievements recognising valuable members of the community be it through streaming, organising, or making quality posts.

Check out all the badges we have here - who the awards have been given to and how to win such awards!
http://www.sc2sea.com/awards.php

Also feel free to suggest any cool achievements you can think of.

#3 Streamer Status Widget

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100% functional already and still undergoing refinement, this is pretty much our very own version of TLs streaming status notifier. Basically everytime your stream is on, the site will highlight it and display your stream link on the right, alerting visitors of our site to your stream. Submit your stream in our thread here and our admins will have you listed in less than a day.

A huge thanks to Erasmus (who had previously wrote up code but my server language was too outdated ) and Veteris who has thus wrote up the new code all by himself for the stream widget.

#4 Quick Find Player Widget

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A brand new idea, where instead of scrolling through our "Find a partner" thread to find AT or 1v1 practise partners, you will be able seach with extreme ease in the box on the right hand side of the site. Find players by game type, race, league level or country and submit your details so other players can search for you!

And of course a huge thanks to Veteris who was behind all the coding for it.

#5 New Infraction Ban System

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Pretty self-explanatory, i had to come up with a system to help with the growing popularity and activity on the forums. i wrote up a whole article explaining it, so admins could better deal with the growing trolls, ensuring the sc2sea community stays as a friendly and positive home for us. Basically you are giving points for doing something wrong and if u reach a certain level of points you get temp banned/perm banned. Read it here and beware the ban hammer!!

#6 Tweaked Site Staff Distinctions / Heirachy

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Basically there needed to be more distinctions between normal forum users and those who have contributed alot to the site. As a little something for their contributions, these groups of users have their own special colors so people will take more notice when they post/chat and they are also the only ones who can upload their own special customised avatars and hence dont follow the avatar system as above.

These positions can be earned only by thoses dedicated enough(organisers), put effort into quality posting (mvps) and in addition to these two qualities, have also proven themselves to be absolutely trustworthy and responsible (moderators). So if you want to one day be a moderator, it definetly is possible but it is a gradual path meaning before being a moderator you have to be a mvp or organiser and it will take time to prove yourself.

MVPs - A user who has contributed on sc2sea through a history of well written posts or articles. Most recent inductions are Benji and Pinder and so have a look at their recent articles about "small money tournaments" and the "new ladder map pool" respectively to get a feel of the quality needed, in two very different writing styles.
Other MVPs are Unstable, HuT, Apth, and DFM and MvP/Partial mods kelly and hdphoenix.

Organisers - A dedicated and responsible user who has contributed to the community thru regular tournament hosting.
Organisers are Mukade, Santi, Kaz, dogsi, Baka, Zergtastic, frequency, eddie, Sixth.

Moderators - The highest level on the site, moderators have proven themselves to be highly responsible and trustworthy in addition to the qualties listed above. Moderators have the ability to edit anyones post, move/open/close threads, give out infractions and of course wave their ban hammer!
Moderators are Mezza, skybreaker, torniquet and jaczie

#7 New tournament format for our regular tournaments next week

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Finally with Benji's "small money tournaments" article which i mostly agree with, it made me realise a new system would be needed to basically get the streams listed on TL so there would be more exposure for the SEA community and to this site. So he suggested intead of running a series of $10-$25 tournaments weekly we should just run it once at the end of the month so there is a $100 minimum prize. I dont however, agree with stopping the smaller tournaments entirely cause i beleive pple would like something to play with for the fun of it even when there wasnt any prize money so what i came up with was a hybrid of this.

Using the Community Opens as an example:

-Tournaments are continued to be held every week at the same timeslot on Wednesday.
-The prize pool is $0 but instead the top 2 players qualify for a $100 tournament at the end of the month.
The 2 finalists fight it out for glory with the winner receiving an achievement badge on their profile, a short interview and a higher seed in the final tournament.

The $100 tournament will be held at the end of the month on a weekend and will either be
1) an invite only based on the top 2 every week, 2x4weeks = 8 players OR
2) a 128 man tournament where the top 8 winners are directly seeded into the ro16.
I will need feedback on which would be better.

We were actually spending $100/month spread over 4 weeks at $25/week so this change in format actually helps us get listed but keeps the exact same budget!

The BSG will run as usual as it has always been a no cash prize tournament meant for fun.
The prize however has been improved and the winner will receive 1 hour free coaching with Pinder / deth.

The GPD might be slightly changed as well to a more hybrid type model.
Will have to talk to eddie first about this

iMaster of SEA will be changed slightly, ill have to think about a new format as well while its being put on hold.

So with recent donations it is actually possible to run this new tournament format for at least the next 2 months.

#8 Re-organisation of forums.

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The forums as viewed on the index is now alot neater and readable.

Shifted some modules around in a more organised manner.
Broke the general forums into Non SC and SC.
Got rid of various unpopular modules
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Thank you for reading and may you continue to enjoy being part of sc2sea!

Quick Comments

	UncleTom:	Wise as the day is long
	[TA]LoSt:	:)