Leveled Up!

Hello, everyone!

Are you excited? Because we sure are!

In today’s blog post we’d like to introduce a couple of fresh features we’ve been working on for a while and believe are a step in a right direction towards improving the community of Royal Road.

We’ve received plenty of feedback from you, our dedicated user base, on improving user communication, and especially on fictions and the forums — something we think has not been given a proper priority until now. That is about to change.

Reputation of a Royal

To start off, we’re reintroducing and repurposing the old Reputation feature. Once present on the old Royal Road Forums, the feature has been reintroduced a few months ago, left to gather up some strength and dust, and now has been improved with, you guessed it, levels.

But, let’s start from the basics.

How to get Reputable

Users can give each other reputation on comments and forum posts (look for the small +Rep button in the corners).

Now, where have I dug these up from?

The amount a user can give to another will vary but will depend on their reputation level, which they increase by getting reputation. So, get more reputation to give more reputation in return. Simple stuff, really.

Authors can give more reputation to users that comment on their chapters. We feel this should encourage more productive conversations in the comment sections of fictions and allow authors to get more valuable feedback from their readers, which was one of the primary goals of the features.

You will notice that authors can't receive reputation on their own fictions. This is to encourage authors to communicate with each other and the rest of the community, as we don't want them sticking to just their own comment sections and getting scores of reputation from it.

Your previous reputation score (all the way back from obscurity) has been saved and will be factored into the new reputation as a way to jumpstart your climb through the new systems.

Shine bright like a… gem

Your reputation level will be now displayed on your profile avatar, encrusted in a magnificent gem that levels up as you do!

There’s a lot more where these came from!

Experience Experience

Along with the Reputation system comes our new Experience system! That’s right, you can now level up in Royal Road!

Each level has a corresponding border for your avatar picture to nestle in while you show it off across Royal Road. Note that comments do not get the full border due to room constraints.

A display of all borders, from level 1 to 30. Shiny!

There are multitudes of ways to get experience (in no particular order):

  • Gaining new achievements
  • Logging in (or just visiting if you are always logged in) daily to Royal Road
  • Gaining Reputation levels
  • Giving Reputation to users
  • Commenting on fictions
  • Making reviews, and voting on reviews
  • Referring new users to Royal Road

We will be ironing out details, rewards, and ways to get more Experience in the future, but we feel this is a comfortable starting point.

So, go on, Level Up, get Reputable, and we will see you on the Royal Road!

If you want to hide your border

If you don't feel up to showing your border to the world, you can disable it on the Settings page under General settings.

Settings page screenshot

PLEASE NOTE: The experience system is currently in its infancy; numbers have been tweaked in the last couple days, and may be further tweaked down the line. All such changes are retroactive; we re-calculate experience and level thresholds all over again. Your achievements/contributions are not lost, but your total experience and level may increase or decrease depending on how we re-balance things, as it has today. Apologies about this; the community is too diverse for us to be able to easily figure out the numbers we should use even after days and weeks of calculations and estimations.

Let’s Loop back to Feedback

We’re also rolling out a new user feedback portal. After logging in via Single Sign-On with a Royal Road account, you can use the new feature to provide us with valuable feedback and directly communicate your wishes and requests to the site crew, with improved UI, communicability, visibility, and response time.

Note: Due to this platform being a completely different one from the previously used feedback portal, we manually copied the most upvoted suggestions from the old one, losing all comments and upvotes they had in the process. While we apologize for any issues this might cause and some data loss that occurred, as we couldn’t do any better in the transfer, we believe that the new system should work significantly better long term.

Sorry for the Blinding Light mode

Summer 2019 Feature Break

We will be taking a break from new features for awhile while we transfer to a new platform. We will be tweaking the existing features only if a major issue occurs that needs fixing, but nothing is expected until the transfer is complete. After the transfer, we expect smoother updates, fewer downtimes, better-streamlined releases, and more flexibility on our end, allowing us to make swifter and better changes to the system.

Royal Road App When?

Unfortunately, while mobile app designs are ready, we still need some time to start development on it.

Comments(230)

Lone

Lone on

UwU

Oinos

Oinos on

Wohooo! It's on! 

Ironbeagle

Ironbeagle on

Exciting! :D

    Ironbeagle

    Ironbeagle on

    Also, I dropped from level 6 to level 5 in the period since my last post. Is there a reason for this? I wasn't going to post this here, but for some reason I just keep getting error messages when I try to report it on the link below..

      Wing
      Admin

      Wing on

      We noticed some bugs that we immediately worked to fix. Sadly, among them, we noticed an incorrect calculation of the exp. Which means that once they were recalculated correctly, some people lost a few levels. 

      As for the error: 
      https://feedback.royalroad.com/s1-general/problems
      First, make sure to login with your Royal Road account.
      Then in the search bar that says [report your problem]
      Write what the issue is, you will get similar reports to it, if none of them match your report click on [continue posting...] 

      If you do it accordingly, do you still get an error? what is the error exactly? 
      Can you share more details about it? 

       

      Ironbeagle

      Ironbeagle on

      The exact error might just be due to my computer. What happens is whenever I press login, it opens a side window, but all that appears is '403 forbidden'. The same thing happens when I press post, but that might just be because it wants me to log in first, and then opens that same window. Hope that helped!

      kanadaj
      Admin

      kanadaj on

      Can you please post a screenshot of the 403 page, including the address bar? Please send the link to me in PM.

Aselo

Aselo on

Looks epic

Chryiss

Chryiss on

Shiny gems and avatar frames are adorable. :3 Very pretty!

Sounds like we'll all be working to level up now. XD

kanadaj
Admin

kanadaj on

Just a small note here, there are known bugs in the system. If you find any, please check at this site if anyone has reported it and if not, please report it there. If yes, please just upvote their post, don't post the same issue multiple times. Thank you.

vorg666

vorg666 on

yeeh

Eli8iR

Eli8iR on

 Add a function where posting a new chapter of a story gives the author xp and rep.

    Statesidespy

    Statesidespy on

    Add different emphasis features around the frames such as feather quills, laurels, books, folded paper, etcetera.

      kanadaj
      Admin

      kanadaj on

      There are so many things wrong with that idea I don't even know where to start.

      Actually, I'll start by mentioning the artist would have an aneurism. And so would I when I have to implement that.

    kanadaj
    Admin

    kanadaj on

    Maybe, though giving exp for chapters is somewhat problematic due to deletions and such. And only XP could be given, not reputation.

      Statesidespy

      Statesidespy on

      Would receiving reviews work as a source of reputation or exp? 

      kanadaj
      Admin

      kanadaj on

      Again, the only allowed source of reputation is other users. And definitely not on an author's page. Anything an author touches as an author, he cannot get reputation from. It'd go against the point.

      Experience though, maybe. I still have to do a bunch of sanity checks on the numbers.

      Len923

      Len923 on

      Hmmm, maybe you get exp from "unique views" on posted chapters, where the amount depends on the viewing account's rep/level and/or chapter length?

      That would make it fair for many different kinds of authors and would make a view from an older, more reputable member weigh heavier than fresh, throw-away/spam accounts.

      Twomonkey4u

      Twomonkey4u on

      There are spam accounts? how would you even spam something on here?

      xenotrap

      xenotrap on

      I think this is the first time I relised just how fucking amazing our admins are. You actually talk to people give, read feedback and so many other things that just don't happen often. Most admins for websites I've run into are cancer mixed with ebola but you guys are actually amazing. 

      Just thought I'd let you know I think your doing a great job and I appreciate it.

Donetaskdontask

Donetaskdontask on

Interesting new update.

I had been wondering what was going to be done with the reputation system, since the old rep comments were still around, and this seems like a pretty cool way to bring it back.

 

After reading through the update notes a bit more, I had a few questions:

Are the various ways to get exp listed fully implemented?

Is there a soft cap on how much exp you can recieve from giving reputation? 

Is there any reason why you can only give reputation on comments and forum posts, as opposed to reviews etc, or has it just not been implemented yet? 

Is it possible to give large sums of reputation to a single person even at base level by giving reputation multiple times?

 

Thanks for the regular updates and listening to the community, -rando

    kanadaj
    Admin

    kanadaj on

    Let me go through those one by one:

    "Are the various ways to get exp listed fully implemented?" - Yes, except for voting on reviews, which gives experience to the reviewer but not the voter currently.

    "Is there a soft cap on how much exp you can recieve from giving reputation?" - EXP is gained on Rep level up, and Rep level is capped at 50. Each level gives progressively more EXP but also requires progressively more reputation.

    "Is there any reason why you can only give reputation on comments and forum posts, as opposed to reviews etc, or has it just not been implemented yet?" - reviews are under consideration for reputation. EXP is already given for thumbs ups received but we've been trying to decide on a good way for the reputation, given that review upvotes are already a thing, so having a separate +rep button could feel redundant. On the other hand, daily reputation from a single source is limited, which is hard yo apply on review upvotes.

    "Is it possible to give large sums of reputation to a single person even at base level by giving reputation multiple times?" - There are limitations in place - you may only give the same person reputation twice every 24 hours currently, and only once in that period for each of their posts/comments. You are also limited to giving reputation 20 times a day at most.

javert

javert on

I kinda wish that authors' own comments were elligible to get reputation from. It seems like it's unnecessarily punishing authors for interacting with their own audience. Punishing might be the wrong word, dis-incentivizing might be better. If the problem is that "authors could get too much reputation", I don't actually see how that's a problem- authors are the people who are providing the content for people to read haha. 

Perhaps a compromise could be that readers can give authors reputation on each chapter they post. That would somewhat cap the amount of reputation authors earn, while still feeling rewarding for providing content and engagement to the reader. Especially since there's no way to gain levels via writing either...

Overall, I like the changes, but I do think that they "favor" readers over authors. But if the system was designed that way, then I guess I can't really complain.

    kanadaj
    Admin

    kanadaj on

    The problem is that giving authors reputation on their own fiction dis-incentivizes interacting with other authors and the forums.

      javert

      javert on

      Perhaps. I can understand that your goal is to spread engagement out over as wide an area as possible, rather than have people remain in their own little niches.

      In the end, it probably won't have any measurable impact on my behavior as a user- and I'm only complaining because I just love to see the numbers go up :p

      Caoimhín

      Caoimhín on

      Hmm, not really.
      Almost every author here is a reader of the other authors too. We will comment and interact with other people on the chapters of other authors' novels every single day. Point out typos, speculating on the plot, making theories, discussing the current arc of the chapters, etc.
      We are readers too, so we do the same as them, but prohibiting readers to give reputation to the authors seems unnecessary. That doesn't disincentivize interacting with other authors.

      I must say that I agree with Javert, because for an author their main interaction is their reader audience. The readers of a novel are the supporters of the author, so anything that the site installs that can be seen as a supportive feature should be enabled for the readers to give it to the authors. Readers always want to show their support in myriads of ways like giving ratings, reviews, comments, and donations, so now reputation could be added to that list.
      That shouldn't be denied.

      kanadaj
      Admin

      kanadaj on

      See Caoimhín, you forget what the effect of authors would be on the system overall. Authors have such a ridiculous gravity that they'd distort the reputation system, making viable numbers so high due to number bloating such that readers would never have any chance ever to reach them. Or authors would basically instantly cap the numbers.

      And ultimately, it'd still result in you not considering reputation as an incentive for interacting outside of your story, since getting reputation for your own stuff would probably give you an entire degree of magnitude more reputation.

      Caoimhín

      Caoimhín on

      Ah, good point.

      So the reputation is to be given in our status as fellow readers, not as authors that can get it en mass due to the followers of the novels. That makes sense.
      You guys have obviously considered this features for a long time and thought of the different possibilities more than the rest of us (our comments here are, after all, initial reactions and thoughts at the top of our heads), I think we will all need some time before we can properly grasp the depths of these new features and their uses.

      In the meantime... Let's grind some levels!! 


    kanadaj
    Admin

    kanadaj on

    EXP was also added separately so we can also reward authors without taking away the meaning of reputation.

Caoimhín

Caoimhín on

Looks cool, thanks.
Interesting features.
How about giving Premium status to those that reach Level 30? That could be a nice reward for those that reach the top level.

    kanadaj
    Admin

    kanadaj on

    We've actually considered giving Premium for level 25, or even for every level above 25 - it'll take a loooong time to reach those and even longer between the levels. We'll see. We have some issues we need to solve with the subscription system for this, as due to technical limitations we can't really gift someone with an existing subscription 1 month free due to billing periods being handled by PayPal and their API having no proper surface to delay/skip someone's next payment. Or their documentation is simply terrible. I'm having a hard time telling with them.

Ripperoony

Ripperoony on

This'll get more people to comment, but I hope it never becomes like webnovel with people spamming 'exp'

    Chryiss

    Chryiss on

    I know what you mean haha. At the very least, they likely won't be getting any reputation for it. Even possibly negative reputation by the author for spamming their story.

    foobar

    foobar on

    I think that most people will at least have the decency to spam "thanks for the chapter" instead.

    tbh, I kinda hate those comments; I almost think that it would be better for them to be prohibited. I am all in favor of thanking authors for their hard work; I just think that word-for-word identical comments are unoriginal and far from the best way of supporting authors.

    I really want this update will encourage actual discussion in the comments, but I'm not too hopeful :\

OnionPug

OnionPug on

Silverglade Dungeon?

Citsune

Citsune on

So it's finally little more than a vanity system, huh?

That works for me, Kyon~!

Sydorow

Sydorow on

Ooooh I'm really excited for the app version of this! Really hope you'd add a download feature  which allows us to save chapters in both versions.

Denisat

Denisat on

Neat. It seems as if is finally time to pull all of those filthy lurkers out of their dark caves into the burning light where they shall be damned for all eternity!

Root Greevil

Root Greevil on

I'm glad RR is continuing to add features, and adding levels and getting reputation back seem like great features for the community, although I can't deny that there's a part of me that's slightly salty about all the past EXP that I missed out on. *Shakes fist at kids on lawn*

Unknownsaint171

Unknownsaint171 on

It’d be cool if you at least show the designs for the Mobile App. But how long is it going to take?

At this rate a year probably.. If I donate $ will it quicken the process? lol

char11e

char11e on

Woo for the rep system! Enjoyed that as a feature back on the old site, was a good way for authors and readers to mutually show their thanks for comments, corrections, or providing content. Out of curiosity though, on the original system I believe there was a way to give reputation to authors on chapters they have posted (as I have reputation gained comments from people to such an effect) and I figured I should ask if that's planned to be added? It seems like a cool idea to be able to give your favorite authors a figurative 'thumbs up' for their work, which goes into a visible tracker people can have a look at. Just a thought though, and thanks for the new features!

Note: just saw an above comment chain on a similar thing, and figured I'd suggest maybe something like people only having x reputation to give on chapters? I mean, a lot of people read something like 30+ novels on the site, myself included, so if we only had 2-3 reputation daily for authors it would mean we'd actually give it to the authors that wrote the most engaging content, again just a thought lol

    Nemanja
    S.Mod

    Nemanja on

    The entire idea behind disabling reputation to authors on their fiction is to make them interact with the community in ways beyond just writing their fiction or interacting on their comment sections. Any implementation that just gives reputation for essentially writing chapters would go against that.

Syenzo

Syenzo on

I was here.

Sophia Carpersanti

Sophia Carpersanti on

*_*

Luke Scheffe

Luke Scheffe on

 Do you get experience when receiving downvotes as well as when receiving upvotes? After all, clearly people still felt strongly enough about it to indicate their disagreement.

FreakofGray

FreakofGray on

uwu

Lord Vile

Lord Vile on

Can you give us a breakdown of what gives exp, and how much is given for each, as well as the thresholds for levels and rep?

DoktorPrimat

DoktorPrimat on

This is great! Especially due to it being kind of casual with being hidden on the user’s profile. 

If only all previous comments added up to the exp task, from all those years back... all the lost exp! Ahh...Guess I’ll just have to do more commenting.

At what level in reputation can I give more than 1 rep at a time? So far I’m lvl 3 in rep and can give 1 rep at any time. Is it first at lvl 10 it changes? 

Let the Game commence.

-Dok
All Hail the Penguin Empire!
BANANA!

    kanadaj
    Admin

    kanadaj on

    But they do! All existing comments, reviews, upvotes and achievements have been awarded experience retroactively :)

      DoktorPrimat

      DoktorPrimat on

      Ah, I meant to the days of yore, before one of the big updates. I recall having some 30k comments back then, and awarded with the Penguin Emperor title or some such madness. Quite a chunk of those were lost somehow. Good times, though!

Nakkus

Nakkus on

Nice update, thanks!

Hakdort

Hakdort on

xtremeloldude

xtremeloldude on

reputation was a fun feature (if a bit wonky) i'm glad to see it return

boi the king

boi the king on

didn't read it yet sad too long for me Should reduce it to 100 word 

twinklecake

twinklecake on

This feels like someone gives a shit about their website and the people that use it. It's a super weird feeling.

BlackToTheFuture

BlackToTheFuture on

Oooh the Rep system gives me nostalgia. Glad it's back and better than ever.

Beyogi

Beyogi on

Um... I just saw the higher achievements have just become the realm of possibility, but I think the texts might not have been updated.

Like this:

Excellent Commenter (VII)
Achievement awarded for posting 15,000 comments

 

I did write a lot of comments, but I'm very sure it's not 15,000.

Inslayer

Inslayer on

Interesting idea based on what some comments said, plus my own opinion:

Give experience not based on uploading a chapter, but on release rate. 

Make it a passive exp, that when you upload at a faster rate you gain faster passive exp, but it resets every week/month. 

    Inslayer

    Inslayer on

    New thought:

    We could have 2 different passive exp givers in my idea, no need to separate it. 

    The first passive is weekly, but the second is monthly. 

    I mean, they reset in that time. 

    If that mixes it up too much, then it could simply be a different level thing, not the same as what you implemented. 

    If you want, you can also set a cap on the weekly/monthly passive exp.

     

DoktorPrimat

DoktorPrimat on

Huh, I like the level up pop-ups that follows a level up. A nice little thing to show how awesome you are! Heh.

though it looked like a video or sort was supposed to be there for level 10, but it didn’t work. A shame.

-Dok

Pokemonhi

Pokemonhi on

Good job

Vasko

Vasko on

Oh, this is actually a pretty cool update. Cheers.

Panjason

Panjason on

Cool

darkenedjawbone

darkenedjawbone on

glad to hear stuff's going on, frankly

Alchemyst

Alchemyst on

If you give reputation to someone on a comment do you lose it?

 

Saltshaker

Saltshaker on

Lol. I went from reading a comment from Ha2kon on one of my chapters to coming over here and seeing Ha2kon in the example picture. *Queue X-Files music*

Someone's getting a +rep

SPemrick

SPemrick on

This looks promising. Will be interesting to see it play out with all these nifty features.

Rikum

Rikum on

An interresting that will incite people to be more active and communicate better. That's pretty important for both author and reader.

Good job.cool

Monty

Monty on

üŵü

ActionWriter500

ActionWriter500 on

UwU

Namelesswanderer

Namelesswanderer on

nice

Astoredric

Astoredric on

I'm just glad that I now have confirmation of a mobile app's development

moonfangx2

moonfangx2 on

UwU

EliseElleneth86

EliseElleneth86 on

Am new, so a lot for me to learn around here...

Deadheadz

Deadheadz on

yee been here for three years and ive seen some sh#t going on but thanks be to you Gods of royal roads

 

1HP_and_a_dream

1HP_and_a_dream on

What happens if we just never logout?

Milando

Milando on

The time for 'Royal Road - Legends' the Game is near!

The One Demon

The One Demon on

WAIT! When did the URL change to royalroad.com instead of royalroadl.com???

Transverse

Transverse on

Grinding...

 

Youshay

Youshay on

Long line of comments👍

LordofVoids

LordofVoids on

 I remember when they introduced the next chapter/previous chapter buttons.  *tear* so proud at how far this website has come.

hgagh

hgagh on

 UwU

speak2me

speak2me on

UwU
minestorm

minestorm on

UwU

Domini

Domini on

I really like that that royal road is doing this and I am looking foward to everything being rolled out. I hope it causes more activity between everyone.

Ripplerz

Ripplerz on

Holy crap! Admins that talk to people! What is the world coming to?!

Actually, thank you for not being too full of yourselves to talk to people AND still do your jobs. You're the first ones I've ever seen!

bukvyrm

bukvyrm on

i'm just happy that an app is confirmed. will you gamefy it like webnovel has done (with less pay-to-play stuff) i hope?

Sirantulas/That guy

Sirantulas/That guy on

Hard to believe how far this site has come. Guess this is what happens when Admins actually care

Tree477

Tree477 on

  • Gaining new achievements
  • Logging in daily to Royal Road
  • Gaining Reputation levels
  • Giving Reputation to users
  • Commenting on fictions
  • Making reviews, and voting on reviews
  • Referring new users to Royal Road 

 

Are these the only way to gain levels?

Zombiesleuth

Zombiesleuth on

I don't know if someone commented this already, but why not make a separate author reputation that is independent of reader rep and is much harder to get due to the volume of readers that authors can get?

    kanadaj
    Admin

    kanadaj on

    It'd mean making a system that can miraculously treat average authors and people like Puddles (Randidly Ghosthound) or Andur on the same scale. That's simply not happening. And that's just one problem out of a dozen... 

Shadowmiste

Shadowmiste on

Im sure youve considered giving xp for reading & since it wasnt listed as a way to get xp, I was wondering if you could enlighten me on the thought process behind the decision.

    Nemanja
    S.Mod

    Nemanja on

    That's a lot harder to log properly, doesn't actually do much in regards to actual reader community interactions, and doesn't serve any of the goals set by the introduction of the systems.

Doom607

Doom607 on

@kanadaj 

Cheshire2

Cheshire2 on

UwU

michaelhenson

michaelhenson on

Yeah, started reading a chapter of Savage Divinity and got a pop-up telling me "You have reached Level 6!" and I was like, "Excuse me, what the fuck?" until I read this. Good to know. Also good to know how the rep system works.

kiriecon

kiriecon on

UwU...?

Mike Wallace

Mike Wallace on

Hi, I just found Royal Road. Seems like a fun place to be. wink

Ezreign

Ezreign on

I'm excited to be a part of this community!

darkavatar

darkavatar on

Great this is leveling just by reding

 

Porkstew

Porkstew on

ok cool, hope it won't devolve in the black mirror episode about permanent evaluation score (facebook like) in a dystopian future. Exe royal road becomes a VR chat.

A bronze Pleb? what are you doing in the glorious Silver Xianxia halls? 

Shush don't, you know he is friend with a celestial DIamond of the Vrmmo Litrpg realm? he could come and crash our sect!

xoid

xoid on

Regarding logging in; do I have to? I just about never log out as I visit the site so often, so if the exp is only awarded on logging in…

OH-Shit-A-RAT

OH-Shit-A-RAT on

uwu owo

noseron

noseron on

cool

molfy nova

molfy nova on

OwU

 

Naptiu

Naptiu on

UwU

FRiGRiD LORD

FRiGRiD LORD on

owu

DrTNT04

DrTNT04 on

UwU cool

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