As far as I understand it, this is how it works:
Member A does good action B.
Staff Member C notices good action B by Member A.
Staff Member C decides to give some arbitrary mineral reward to Member A.
Pros:
-Not possible to abuse the system
-People who deserve minerals will get them, and people who don't, won't
-less "post for minerals" spam
-minerals exist. (THIS IS A BIG PRO)
Cons:
-People who don't deserve minerals might still get them (staff could play favorites *COUGH COUGH IP/DEVILESK COUGH UNBANNED COUGH*)
-Not fun anymore, since you can hardly get any
-Only receive minerals once in a blue moon, or even less often
-Extra work for the staff
-Staff must first notice that good action B has occurred by Member A, and its likely they'll miss many
-members like Kame, that we still like (well thats debatable for some I suppose) but don't actually contribute anything like maps will never get any
-new members won't be able to get any
-it's no longer a game really, it's a merit system, which we already have
-decisions about how many minerals to give for what action may vary between staff members, leading to inconsistency
-if there is some "Minerals Draft" for consistency within the staff, people will nitpick it
Remember, these are "Cons" not "Problems with no possible solution at all" before you all go and say to me "oh but we could easily just say 'no' to all the nitpickers" ect ect.
Essentially what I see, is that this new system is a piece of junk which is simply drawing on the enthusiasm for the old version of minerals from the older versions of SEN. As a new member, I would want to be able to immediately take part in the 'fun', which now consists of me (the figurative new member) having to do something like produce a whole map (presumably) to get enough minerals to be worth buying anything. I would not expect new members to be immediately omniscient with regards to sc/sc2 knowledge, rather that they come here to learn about it, and should be able to partake in the minerals games while learning.
Imagine where the minerals system will be 1 year from now. Are all our moderators and staff really going to be diligent enough to dole out the merit in minerals for every single action every single one of our members makes? Won't this system favor the people we know already? For example, when I was a moderator I was much more likely (and still am more likely) to read a post by Kaias, than by say, Lanthanide, because I hang with Kaias in channel donuts, and never said a word to lanthanide on SEN for the most part. Remember when NudeRaider had a bazillion minerals because he helped out in UMS Assistance so much? As far as I know, that's how people came to know him, and he was asked to be a moderator because he was so helpful, and not because he was a particularly well known person by the existing staff.
It's not much of a game anymore, now that the staff are the only real players. If the minerals system stays this way, we might as well remove the regular/veteran/elite status, since we'll be able to tell what a person is at sen based on their mineral count, and how many items (like name color, avatar space ect) they have. This in turn limits the people who have minerals to the veterans and elite mostly, and that's just silly that we're not letting everyone play.
As for my solution, basically go back to something resembling the old system. 1 mineral for each new post containing over X characters. Sure it's not perfect either, but it's a hell of a lot better than what this system looks like. If people make a bazillion posts with exactly X+1 characters, the staff will notice and have to fix it once, instead of continuously having to do stuff. Essentially, this new system is "lets prevent all cheating" instead of "lets just play the damn game" and sucks.[/essay]
None.
