Medal Mania

They were once achievements, they were planned as trophies last round, they are now finally in the new version as medals. That's right, medals are in the game! This feature offers some great fun and that something extra to do rather than just ranking through the levels every day. You have to collect as many medals as you can but they each come in three flavours: Bronze, Silver or Gold. As I'm sure you can guess, the Gold medals are harder to gain than the Silver and the silver harder to gain than the Bronze. We aren't going to tell you what the medals are and how to earn them but once players start to work them out, then they can be put on our game guide which in future will have a full list of medals to work towards.

Most of this round will consist of players looking for medals rather than working towards them, since you guys don't really know what medals are out there. In addition to this there are just so many ideas waiting to pop into peoples heads for these medals that we will be adding more medals through the round. In fact, at the time of this post there are only a few actually in place but with time we'll be adding a lot more of them. The important thing is that the system has been set up and the medal train is running!

It's important to note that part of our aim for medals is to introduce new players to the game - so you OG's may find some of the medals really easy to earn, especially the bronze ones. A little bit of success, a pat on the back etc helps encourages new players to stick around, it makes them enjoy the game more at those early stages were they are really confused! Please just remember that the feature is here for everybody. We will try to add a wide variety of these medals though - both easy and very difficult.

Improvements over previous systems:

• Three levels of each medal (Bronze, Silver, Gold) so that we can have different levels of difficulty with just the one medal, instead of having to give out different medals for the same thing at higher levels.
• Simplified backend system so that we can add new medals quite easily, unlike the old coloured achievements system which was quite a pain.
• The time it has taken to achieve a medal in days is now displayed.
• Top 25 medal achievers shown on the game stats page, based on the amount of "points" they have from medals (3 points for a Gold, 2 for Silver and 1 for Bronze) and how quickly they have earnt them.
• We have pretty little icons and a much improved display! Ok, somebody complained about this one citing them as being "gay" but they're cool to me ;) We'll see how they go anyway... any opinions welcome.
• There is an option to hide your medals from your profile if you wish to.

If you have any ideas for medals at all, please post it in the topic which has been created already in the forums.