Game features in Community: new leaderboards and progress bar

[KelseyTaylor]

Hi Experience Makers,   

Have you noticed the many new gameplay features in our Community lately? In our previous blog posts, we covered many of the exciting new features we’ve added to view and showcase  your Community achievements. You can read more about featuring your favorite badges, missions, and super missions here.

We also want to share more details about the all-new leaderboards, and a unique method to view the leading contributors throughout all of Community as well as for each solution.   

    

Global  user  leaderboard   

As you all know, the Experience League Community is an incredibly resourceful and special group. The content is created by exceptionally talented individuals (like you!) who take time out of their busy days to help others. And for that effort, we want to say thank you. 

We love giving credit where it’s due, so in this gameplay update, we’re adding more visibility to our most frequent contributors with a global user leaderboard. The leaderboard will rank users based on two primary criteria: “Most accepted solutions” and “Most received likes”. By default, the leaderboard will rank members with the most likes and accepted solutions of all time. However, you can easily sort by more specific time periods like the past day, week, month, three months, six months, year, and all time. The leaderboard is also paginated, listing several users per page.    

This leaderboard provides an unparalleled view into our Community’s top and trending contributors. Are you listed as a top solution author for this month? Who currently holds the number one spot for most-liked posts in the Community? We hope that this new perspective will help you identify the Community’s most prominent users and motivate you to compete for the top spot!   

Game  alert  bar  

In any game, being able to see your progress is important. Progression transparency helps you visualize how far along you are in reaching the next level and acquiring more rewards. Throughout many Community user discussions, we heard you say leveling up is a key motivator to contribute more to Community and it is important for you to be able to visualize your progress.   

After several rounds of design and prototype testing, we’re ready to deploy a brand-new game feature – the game alert bar.  

It’s small (so as not to distract you from your work), but each section in the game alert bar serves a very important purpose. We’ll start from the left:   

• Badge  counter: The left number “X Badges” indicates the lifetime number of badges you’ve earned on your account. As you earn more badges, your counter will increase in near real-time.  This badge count is representative of not only badges but also missions and super missions. To learn more about these new achievement classes, check out our first gameplay blog post here. 

• Level  progression %: In the new gameplay, we are using level icons to represent your level i.e. L2 is Level 2, L3 is Level 3, etc. With the progress bar, you can easily see how far along you are toward earning the next level in Community. As you perform more community actions such as liking replies, starting threads, or responding to discussions, your progress bar will gradually increase. You’ll also be notified each time you level up.   

• Next  challenge: With all the fun, new challenges, we know it may be hard to decide what to do next. That’s why we created the dynamic and personalized tip feature in the alert bar. This prompt helps you earn your next super mission badge. Though achievements can be earned in any order you’d like, the unearned badges you see here are automatically presented to you based on what you need to do to earn your next super mission. When you complete a badge, the prompt will refresh to the next unearned badge. Clicking on either the badge or super mission hyperlinks will tell you exactly how you can complete that specific challenge. You can also quickly navigate to all Community badges by clicking on the “View all” link. Soon, you’ll be on your way to earning multiple super missions!   

We hope you enjoyed reading about the new game features over the past several blog posts. If you haven’t had a chance to read our previous gameplay blogs, you can check them out here: Blog post one, post two, post three. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or feedback, feel free to let us know in the comment section below. Game on! 

[david--garcia]

I am a bit confused with the progress bar, is it countdown or countup to next level? mine says 91% to next level, but the progress bar hints im 9% to complete the progress bar and creates confusion.

[anupampat]

The blue bar shows your progress in a particular level, which is validated by the %.

[Manu_Mathew_]

Great way to give credit to contributors! Nice initiative. 

[arunpatidar]

Are there any plans to enhance this experience further? Love to see innovation here.

[FrederikWerner]

Some users in my company have been asking me how the progress bar and levels relate to badges. Are levels only determined by the number of badges? Can you, at least in theory, reach new levels without ever earning a single badge?