Good morning everyone! It's Justin here with another instalment of our Bell Tree Direct series! For those new to the forum, or who missed the previous instalments, Bell Tree Direct is our series to announce the latest happenings around TBT and new additions to the forum including items, boards, and more.
Let's dive in!
Celebrating One Year of New Leaf
The timing of today's Direct isn't a coincidence... today is New Leaf's first anniversary in North America! Can you believe it's been an entire year already? It doesn't feel like it was that long ago we were speculating on release dates, and then counting down the days. (and seconds) Celebrate* with us by picking up a newly restocked Japanese logo collectible from the Shop while supplies last**.
*Don't mind the irony of celebrating the English release with Japanese collectibles
**Supplies are unlikely to last longer than 5 seconds, no rain-checks.
The Fourth Fruit Collectible (Peach)
Time for some butt fruit? The fourth installment in our Fruit Collectible series, the Peach fruit, is finally here today for sale in the TBT Shop for just 159 Bells. Stock will be added throughout today and tomorrow.
And don't forget, the previous Pear and Orange fruits are still available in the TBT Shop for just 79 and 39 Bells respectively with unlimited stock. The Cherry fruit is available for 119 Bells with fresh new stock as of today. Stay tuned for the remaining fruits in future Bell Tree Directs.
I heard there's games this week or something?
E3 2014 is here, and we've got an entire board dedicated to it! Join us today and tomorrow in watching the press conferences from the major companies, and discuss all the new games announced throughout the week in our new board. Find times and dates for everything in this handy thread. Also, check out our Nintendo E3 Bingo card which Prof Gallows put together for us.
Don't forget to pop in the IRC Chatroom and Mumble while it's all happening.
A quick word on Post Count
We're making an adjustment to the workings of post count on TBT today. Throughout TBT's history, we've always had a policy of restricting post count gain from certain boards which were deemed 'unworthy' by us. As of today, this is changing and post count has been enabled on all boards across the forum, including The Basement.
Why?
- Deciding which boards are 'worthy' of post count, and which are not has become very arbitrary with little reasoning. For example, the average post content and quality of a post in a New Leaf trading board is hardly any different than The Basement, yet post count has always been permitted in Re-Tail and not The Basement. It's far simpler to just not care about post count at all and allow it everywhere.
- Post count is largely considered pointless by users now. In the past it was commonly seen as a indicator of someone's status or activity. Nobody really cares anymore, and we have far better ways of displaying a user's history and activity on TBT now. (collectibles for example)
Please note that this will have no effect on TBT Bells gaining, that's not tied to post count in any way despite how it may seem. We may revise it in the future, but for now TBT Bells will remain as they were yesterday.
The Top 10 posters as of 4:15am PDT June 9th
Mario Kart Monday!
Unless you've been living under a rock the past week (literally, have you seen the banner?), you're probably aware that the highly anticipated Mario Kart 8 released on the Wii U at the end of May. What you might not know is that we have a fairly sizeable community of Mario Kart players on TBT.
Every Monday you can find us playing Mario Kart 7 & 8 in the TBT community and tournament. (although lately it's mostly been Mario Kart 8) So come join us tonight at 4PM PDT/7PM EDT in playing! You can find all the juicy details in the official Game Night thread by clicking here. See you there.
Would you like some murder in your TBT?
Have you heard? A thrilling forum game full of lies, deception, and best of all cold blooded murder has been sweeping The Basement by storm since last October. But don't worry if that scares you as we've dumped it all away into a brand new sub-board called The Cellar. It took Kaiaa a whole week to bust those cobwebs, plus Prof Gallows and Tina drank away all the wine too, so don't go looking for that.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention what this game even is. It's called Mafia and it has its own sub-board dedicated to it now. It's not your average forum game in The Basement. Check out the spoiler below for an introduction to the game written by prominent Mafia player KarlaKGB:
Welcome to TBT Mafia. Mafia is a game of the informed minority versus the uninformed majority. To elaborate, the game is divided into two teams: the Town and the Mafia. Mafia know who each other are, and can coordinate their actions privately. Town on the other hand don't know anything other than their own role. To compensate, there are many more Townies than Mafia.
At the beginning of the game, you are PM'd your role. The game is divided into repeating phases of Day and Night. Day will generally last 48 hours and revolve around voting for a player to be lynched. Each player (including Mafia) get one vote, and players must figure out who the Mafia are, and convince others that they are correct. At the end of the day, the person with the most votes is lynched, and their alignment and role are revealed.
Night is typically 24 hours long and is reserved for Mafia night kills and players with special abilities. Usually, players discuss the results of the lynch at night, and make plans for the next day. When night ends, everyone will be informed of who died during the night. The new day will begin, and discussions for the lynch begin anew.
Mafia is a game of logic, intuition, persuasiveness, reading ability, emotion, and will. In short, its a thinking man's game. There are many different ways to approach the game and every game is a very different experience. In addition, Mafia is not for the faint-hearted or overly emotional. While not occurring every game, sometimes people can get into very heated arguments with one another. People can get very emotional playing Mafia, as it is a high-intensity endeavour. That being said, playing Mafia is an excellent to develop thick skin, improve your patience, and make yourself a stronger person mentally.
Be warned - Mafia requires a time commitment. This generally depends on the player, but at minimum 30 minutes a day of solid effort is required. As part of the time commitment, Mafia requires a great deal of reading. Most people are actually quite poor at reading comprehension and playing Mafia is a great way to improve your reading ability, as well as your writing and ability to think and argue logically.
At the beginning of the game, you are PM'd your role. The game is divided into repeating phases of Day and Night. Day will generally last 48 hours and revolve around voting for a player to be lynched. Each player (including Mafia) get one vote, and players must figure out who the Mafia are, and convince others that they are correct. At the end of the day, the person with the most votes is lynched, and their alignment and role are revealed.
Night is typically 24 hours long and is reserved for Mafia night kills and players with special abilities. Usually, players discuss the results of the lynch at night, and make plans for the next day. When night ends, everyone will be informed of who died during the night. The new day will begin, and discussions for the lynch begin anew.
Mafia is a game of logic, intuition, persuasiveness, reading ability, emotion, and will. In short, its a thinking man's game. There are many different ways to approach the game and every game is a very different experience. In addition, Mafia is not for the faint-hearted or overly emotional. While not occurring every game, sometimes people can get into very heated arguments with one another. People can get very emotional playing Mafia, as it is a high-intensity endeavour. That being said, playing Mafia is an excellent to develop thick skin, improve your patience, and make yourself a stronger person mentally.
Be warned - Mafia requires a time commitment. This generally depends on the player, but at minimum 30 minutes a day of solid effort is required. As part of the time commitment, Mafia requires a great deal of reading. Most people are actually quite poor at reading comprehension and playing Mafia is a great way to improve your reading ability, as well as your writing and ability to think and argue logically.
If you're intrigued, check out The Celler sub-board by clicking here and start reading threads! KarlaKGB has a Newbie Mini Mafia starting soon, head over to the thread here to sign up!
Please keep in mind that Mafia games take place over the course of multiple days and often weeks. You can't just jump in the middle of an ongoing game and start playing. Instead, you need to wait for a new game to open for signups and post your intention to play. Ensure that you will have the time and effort to play the game, joining a game then going inactive or quitting will earn you a bad reputation and possibly find yourself banned from future games.
June Birthstone (Pearl)
Another month is here and with that comes a brand new birthstone collectible... The Pearl! It's now available in the Shop right now for 299 Bells as per the usual.
We're nearing completion of the full set of birthstones and there's been some questions of whether they would be coming back to cycle through for another year or not. I'm happy to announce today that we WILL be cycling through the entire set for another full year come September!
Staff Applications (Almost)
Just a quick heads up that we plan to open up staff applications to new applicants within the next two weeks for the first time since last August. Anyone interested in becoming a moderator on TBT should consider applying when we open them. Stay posted for a new thread when they go live.
That's about all from me today. I'm handing the microphone over to Jeremy now for a few additional updates directly from him. Take it away Jer.....!
Wi-Fi Feedback Changes
Hi everyone. One of the changes people have been asking for is the ability to use some sort of feedback system with forum transactions, like we do for Animal Crossing. Wi-Fi Feedback will now also apply to TBT Marketplace and its name will be changed to Transaction Feedback (or something better if we can think of it). See below to read our new rules related to feedback as well.
Updated Rules & Guidelines
The AC Online rules have been merged with the main rules and guidelines. We've also greatly expanded on our auction rules and added guidelines for the feedback system. You can view the Rules & Guidelines here, or expand the spoiler below to see the newly created sections:
- Forum & Game Transactions
- General Principles
Transactions of Animal Crossing or forum items and bells on The Bell Tree should be straightforward and honest. Each user must agree to the transaction in its entirety. Feedback should be used to publicize an abuse from a buyer or seller. For example, if an item is stolen without payment in Animal Crossing, the offender is subject to receive a negative rating from the victim. However, fraudulent transactions between forum bells should be reported because moderators can view and revert them. Abusing TBT's bell system may result in removing all bells and suspension. - Prohibited Transactions
Do not post about buying or selling the following:- Forum or Animal Crossing bells for real money or gift cards representative of real money.
- Duplicated or hacked items in Animal Crossing
- Any other item in conflict with our rules and guidelines
- Auctions
Our auction guidelines apply to auctions of items and villagers in Animal Crossing, as well as auctions in TBT Marketplace. They are designed to keep auctions fair for both buyers and sellers, yet also give auctioneers freedom to create their own rules.
Rules for an auction must be clearly set and followed by both the bidder and auctioneer. As an auctioneer, if you wish to reserve special rights, please specify your reason for doing so in your original post before bidding begins. Otherwise, the auction should follow the default rules listed below.- Bidders are subject to accept all rules posted by the auctioneer. If a bidder disagrees with special rights reserved by the auctioneer, he or she should not participate.
- Auctioneers may only accept bids that are posted in the auction thread. No PM or VM bids may be accepted.
- Auctions posted on The Bell Tree should not also be made on another site. Not only does this waste the bidders' time, they should not be required to check another site for bidding purposes.
- Increasing or decreasing auction time is not allowed by default. It is considered a special right and must be reserved in the auctioneer's original post before bidding begins.
- The last person to bid on an auction within the scope of its rules and time limits is the winner. Auctioneers cannot choose another winner even if someone else makes a better offer after it ends.
- Auctioneers are expected to see their auctions through to the end. Unless valid reasoning is provided, an auction cannot be canceled. Otherwise, the auction winner may give the host negative feedback for failing to complete the sale.
- Winners are obligated to complete the purchase after they are determined to be the winner. If he or she backs out of the transaction, the auctioneer may leave negative feedback.
- Using TBT Bells In Animal Crossing
You may use forum bells with your item and villager exchanges, but all threads for such transactions should be made in TBT Marketplace. As in the Villager Trading Plaza board, buying threads for Animal Crossing villagers may not be created in TBT Marketplace. When accepting either AC or TBT bells in your transaction, post the thread according to whichever currency you prefer to use more.
- General Principles
- Feedback System
- General Principles
The feedback system is used on The Bell Tree for Animal Crossing online gameplay, Animal Crossing transactions, and forum bell transactions. Feedback should only be given for legitimate reasons. A negative rating should not be made as a response to feedback itself. Illegitimate ratings can be reported to the moderators and abuse of the feedback system may result in suspension.
- General Principles
As you can see, our auction rules are centered around the principle of creating a standard and fair structure for everyone to use, but also give auctioneers the freedom to create their own rules instead. Bidders may refuse to participate in auctions that have custom rules they disagree with. We think this will limit the amount of disputes created by auctions since all of this will have to be posted by the auctioneer when he or she starts the auction, allowing the bidder to accept or reject them. Feedback will also be used to make sure auction results are carried forward.
New Posts Links
We've added links under the New Posts tab that will allow you to monitor different parts of The Bell Tree, depending on your interests. Have ideas for additional links? Let us know!
We are starting with the following links:
- Animal Crossing - All Animal Crossing boards
- Trading Post - Re-Tail, Villager Trading Post, and TBT Marketplace
- No Animal Crossing - Everything but the Animal Crossing boards
- Gaming - Gamers' Lounge and its sub-forums
- Banter - Brewster's Cafe and The Basement
- Subscriptions - Quick link to all of your subscribed threads
It seems like it wasn't that long ago that we hit 2,000,000 posts, but sure enough, another milestone has been reached! However, because of the time we put into planning these announcements, we've surpassed 3.1 million posts as well. So for this Direct, the first 100 users to click this link will get 31 bells.
Back over to Justin!
Thaaaaaat's all folks!
Thanks for joining us on today's Bell Tree Direct! That's about all we have to share for today, but rest assured we're always working on future projects. Look forward to some smaller projects over the summer which we'll talk about soon, plus the triumphant return of The Bell Tree Fair later in the winter to celebrate TBT's 10th anniversary. Yes, ten years. (get hype!)
As always, be sure to let us know what you think about the announcements today by posting below.
