New Coloring System

Alright, so I'm sure some of you have all noticed, by now. We are changing the system we use to color people's names in the chat room and on the forums. Each group has their own color, listed below along with a description of the roles of the group.


The Moderators job is to assist the admins in governing the website. Answering questions and helping users with issues, etc. If you need to speak to someone about something, you should first ask the mod in charge of whatever it is you wish to ask about. Mods are in charge of the following sections.

Kooplah: Website
Amber: Timeline
Metroidhunter: Official Events; Initiation
Drake Ferrox: None
DrGustave: Chatbox, Face Claims, Voice Claims
Seiryuu24: Character Reviews and Creation
SentientSnake: Character Reviews and Creation
Vox: Worldbuilding Reviews and Creation

Trusted Members is a new group we have created. Members in this group are responsible for maintaining or assisting in the maintenance of certain portions of the site. They are not mods, and do not have any special privileges, only responsibilities. They are able to answer questions you may have, but if you have an issue, the issue should be taken to a mod, not a Trusted Member. Trusted Members are currently handpicked by the moderator team, and this list will be added to as time goes on.

Current Trusted Members:
Wrecker: Voice Claims
Kaliot: Timeline
Cheshire Schrodinger: Gamemaster for Initiation and Official events
vide1993: Gamemaster for Initiation and Official events


Members is the standard rank and file. All users with 2 or more posts are in this group.

Newbies are members who have less than two posts. This system is present to help show people who have just arrived and may have additional questions or wish for extra help.

Edit: The color scheme is being tested, and may change at any time. Feedback is appreciated by posting in this thread. The reason we are changing the system is because our old system, where players were colored based on which Beacon team their characters were on, was no longer serving its interesting and fun purpose. When everyone could have only a single character, it was fun to be able to log into chat and see your teammates. With the current system of multiple characters per player, that factor is gone, as someone can make a new team then be the only person with that team color due to everyone else retaining their old team color.

Additionally, some people would want to retain their old colors while some would want their new colors. This was becoming increasingly difficult to do because of the way the color system works. There is no known way to assign colors to an individual person without giving them their own custom group, and there is a limit to how many groups the site can have. On that note, the limit is 250. A limit we are far from. However if we continue expanding, we will eventually run out of groups and become unable to make new teams, which would make the old system not work as well.

Did you pick green for the basic members because it obviously the best color?
God dammit, Koop. Taking mah green.

Make the color something nice. Like.....idk.....anything not grey, since grey is too....dull, and uninspiring. I'm saying I have no problem with the system, it's just making us all one color without as much as a notice beforehand, and the fact that grey is boring.

Just a thought here, but wouldn't it be easier if the Newbies category was something like people with ten or less posts? One post is required to create a character, and another one or two are sometimes used to explain edits that they've had to make to their character, so in some cases there will be Members who still don't have a clue what to do and haven't yet posted anywhere.

Daemonblade wrote:

Just a thought here, but wouldn't it be easier if the Newbies category was something like people with ten or less posts? One post is required to create a character, and another one or two are sometimes used to explain edits that they've had to make to their character, so in some cases there will be Members who still don't have a clue what to do and haven't yet posted anywhere.

Plus once newbies have made their character it's often difficult (In my experience) to actually get started in a thread, if it's <10 or even 5 posts then people in the chat can see someone who has a character, but hasn't joined in any threads yet and can invite them and make them feel welcome. Knowing that someone has less than 2 posts doesn't give a chance to actually help them - if they have questions about character creation they'll just ask.

Now, I don't know if anyone agrees with me here, but I'd much rather have the old system back. It's a small thing, but grouping us all under one category takes away from some of the fun of the chatbox. Getting a colour, getting in a team, is seen as a sort of rite of passage, and it was fun getting your first colour. As stupid as it sounds, your colour was something to be proud of, and now there's no difference between someone on a team and someone without one. However small, that aspect feels taken away, and I'd very much like you to reconsider.

Dakir wrote:

Now, I don't know if anyone agrees with me here, but I'd much rather have the old system back. It's a small thing, but grouping us all under one category takes away from some of the fun of the chatbox. Getting a colour, getting in a team, is seen as a sort of rite of passage, and it was fun getting your first colour. As stupid as it sounds, your colour was something to be proud of, and now there's no difference between someone on a team and someone without one. However small, that aspect feels taken away, and I'd very much like you to reconsider.

I think part of the blame lies on Forumotion. Considering the number of people who have joined, teams have been increasing crazily. Some people aren't getting the color they want, most of the newer colors were just paler/darker versions of used colors and as such looked terribad placed together in the chatbox. Changing a single person's color was possible but you had to rearrange a whole bunch of other stuff to make everybody else happy, and with more and more groups that simply ended up not being possible.

I agree that it does suck, and it probably hit you harder considering you were already green, but in all honesty it's probably for the better.

(Could this be a Pro to forum migration? Hmm.)

Also part of the blame probably lies on Vox

However, I honestly have to say Green is not a good color of choice. Grey honestly looked a lot better to me, melding far better with the darker colored background of the theme we use.

Thanks to your edit, Koop, I can see the need to change the way things work, however I still cannot fully agree with it. I would bring up the point that we are "far from" the hard limit of 250, but we have been expanding pretty rapidly as of late, and I don't want that to be my main argument. My biggest problem is this: I don't like the idea of people who have been around for many months being displayed the same as someone who came here yesterday and posted a thread asking some questions. I would prefer if there were a sort of, for lack of a better term, "experiance-based" system where people who have been here longer are displayed differently.

I understand a system like this may lead to a potential problem, with newer members potentially being looked down on by older members, but I am just sort of bouncing ideas around. I simply think that there is a better way to do this, and that if there is input from everyone that we can find a solution that doesn't take away from the fun of having different colours.

I feel like < 2 posts defining a "newbie" is rather low. It seems like it just shows if a person has only just arrived and not done anything. A person could still not understand a lot of the rules and stuff even after making the 2 posts. Maybe raise it to like 5 or so, since that would be a character post or 2 and then posting in actual threads before they go green.

While I dislike the system because of it's limited... uniqueness in color (and yeah, I understand the whole thing about no single person colors and whatnot) I think you should AT LEAST change the green to something else. You can barely see people join when lots of people talk. I like silver/grey idea.

This concludes the test of the new color system. It is being reverted to the old system for the time being, until a better solution can be found. Your feedback will be retained and weighed against any future systems that come into place.