I just got a trophy telling me that, supposedly, I am liked around the world. OK, it sounds fun and cool. But... what the hell is it for, anyway? I just think it's not important or necessary. Unless there's some kind of a sweepstake at the end. Otherwise, it's pointless. I mean, it strokes my ego, but other than that, what is it for?
It's probably default xenforo and a throwback to vbulletin (where the xenforo guys cut their teeth). Shawn has done a heap of work to keep dp fast, spam free and reduce the incidence of scams and I suspect writing the trophy system out wasn't a priority. FWIW I don't get it either, gave up on badges when I left Girl Guides
So, you want to keep it just for the fun of it? I am sure all it takes is just a "highlight and remove it" type of thing from the profiles' file. I'd remove it because, personally, I don't get stuff like that. The thing is the users in their 20's or even 30's will never reach 140 Trophy Points on your forum, since they are impatient and expect fast results for anything. They'll quit this forum long before they see the 140 Points mark. It's the old guys like me that can achieve something like that. The thing is the old guys like me don't care about that sh*t. So who is it for then?
It's not quite as easy as just editing a profile file... There are so many parts of the framework that touch it in one way or another (scheduled tasks, templates, usergroup promotions, etc) It doesn't *hurt* anything, so not really a super high priority to spend all the time to remove it... Plus you start running into issues where removing it might actually break future updates unintentionally. *Some* people probably like it, and maybe someday we'll do something more creative with them. If it was entirely up to me, I'd remove everything that had any sort of counter attached to it. I also think things like Post Count, Best Answer Count, Marketplace Transaction Count, etc... But I'm also quite aware that what I like isn't always what others like.
A suggestion to feed back to the Xenforo guys is to make trophies an admin setting so you turn it off once and all the other things refer back to the setting.
I like the trophy system.. Doesn't hurt anyone, and is a bit of an incentive to post useful stuff(the "like" and "best answer" ones).
It is kind of childish. I liken it to the stickers my first grade daughter's teacher hands out to the kids when they do something good. But, I don't see any point in getting butt hurt over it.
I never got stickers in school. At least I can pretend my trophy points are sticker's. <-- Is happy with his trophies