Major Update! - December 3, 2018

I was a bit confused after getting the 10 day streak badge as the number on the summary page for streak is different then when you look at the stats page which shows my actual streak goes on much longer. Kinda weird that the two parts show different information.

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Ah, Good catch. I didn’t notice that. Yeah, right. Before I got 10 day streak badge it wasn’t confusing. The number on my gravatar showed my XP correctly on the summary page, like 9k XP, etc. But since I got that badge, my gravatar has that 10 day streak badge on my gravatar instead of 10k XP badge. :thinking:

Edit: After I looked at my gravatar on my summary page again and day streak. They’re different.

Maybe because Study Streak : 10, and 10K on my gravatar, look similar, and that leads to confusion. It wasn’t difficult to distinguish them before, when the number on my gravatar was 9k and the icon was fire.

Yeah, on my stats page my streak starts sept 4, not 10days ago. But I assume it’s only counting the time since the ‘streak’ feature was added to the site.

Might also be related to the post above, that there is somewhere a day where you missed it because of timezone. But it’s apparently planned to be updated sometime.

Nope, mine’s a solid block of yellow of >20 reviews, with only 3 days under that (14,19,20 reviews those days).

But I have noticed the timezone thing, sliding reviews onto tomorrow while it’s still before midnight here.

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The badge over you gravatar is just your latest badge. So as soon as you earn another one, it will show up there instead of the 10k one.

@Jul3 @Seraseth

I will be adding a timezone option in settings that will let you set your timezone and then that can be used to calculate the difference and get stats and the study streak count set properly.

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Hi. I don’t think the timezone thing is the issue (since I’m on UTC). It’s just the study streak counts seems completely different from the stats count? The study streak is from the beginning of the month? (It doesn’t appear to be from the update date as that was the 3rd) bunprostreak

(Anyway this is a minor thing… I’m enjoying the other updates :+1:t2: )

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If we reset a grammar point do we lose the exp we’ve accumulated from the reviews for it?

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@Jul3 Thank you for your feedback! We will keep looking into what might be causing the discrepancies in everyone’s streaks. Cheers!

@lopicake Yes. If you reset or remove a grammar point you will lose the xp for that grammar point. However, any badges that you have earned will remain. Cheers!

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Hi all,

I strongly agree with @Swinter and @seanblue and the others that I find this new XP thing hugely distracting (the added points which looks like a video game, the animated bar that is sometimes really creepy to me, and the level up). Plus, this is not a gamification that actually gives me something (mine is “percentage of correct reviews per level” and “reviews per day” and “percentage of learned grammar points per level”). So I just ignore this XP thing (and I wish I could turn it off altogether tbh).

But there’s something else that really bugs me since I started to think about it: I’m having a hard time figuring out what the level is even supposed to mean? E.g. in WaniKani I can look at somebody’s level and I have a rough understanding of how many Kanji they probably know. Beware: this does not say too much about the person’s general language skills (there seems to be something like a rough correlation but there often are outliers both ways).
But for Bunpro levels I cannot figure out the meaning behind it.

Here are some scenarios:

  1. Person A is at a solid N2 level and just wants to brush up a few grammar points here and there. This person will have a very low XP because they do not do many reviews. Thus, the level will be very low.

  2. Person B is learning all N5 grammar points through Bunpro. They are an excellent learner and they get each review right every time. Their XP and level will be much higher than Person A’s. But their level of grammar knowledge is much lower.

  3. Person C is also learning all N5 grammar points through Bunpro. But they have a hard time memorizing stuff, and so they go back and forth with the reviews - sometimes they answer one grammar point correctly three times, but then they will make a mistake and it drops to the lower level.
    By the time B and C have all their grammar points at level 12, C will have a much higher XP because of the constant back-and-forth (each level increase gains points so one can get many more points from the same grammar point if it keeps climbing and dropping).

So, the only meaning of the level that I could come up with is “diligence”. I.e. how much time a person spends on the platform (as opposed to how much the person actually knows).

And I’m wondering, do you really want to measure and display that?
To me, it feels more like an embarrassing metric (it says something like “Look, I already spent so much time on Bunpro, and I still don’t know this and that…”) tbh…

I’d be happy to hear your thoughts about this!

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I’m trying to think of what would be a replacement method. I do agree that the current levels don’t really convey much of anything.

You could try a leveling system based off of the JLPT level. So for every one grammar point you know, that’s maybe +1 to your level? Or something? But the problem there comes with, like you mentioned, people skipping around, only doing ones they want or need. (Plus that’d lead to some ridiculous level numbers, haha.)

Maybe a color code of some kind to separate the JLPT levels? N5 vs N4 vs N3 etc could have different colors on their level badges?

Just tossing some ideas out there x’D

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I’m loving these gamification changes, really motivating!

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I completely disagree with your last view: “Look, I already spent so much time on Bunpro, and I still don’t know this and that…”

I think it’s kind of a badge of honor, saying you spent so much time studying, no matter your level. Just like how gamers like to see how much time they spent on some games. It’s all time spent pursuing something of value to you and that is inherently meaningful imo.

However, you’re right about the levels not meaning much to other people aside from how much time you spent on the platform, that isn’t a problem per se (you could study 90% of your time on classes or a textbook for example, doesn’t matter), but there could be something like a main badge the person could put like: N5, N4, N3 to identify his current level or the level he’s pursuing at the moment.

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Hm, that’s an interesting viewpoint, thanks!

I see. I guess I personally am more interested in the outcome of the time spent than in the raw time measures. So, in gamer’s terms, I am more looking for ELO than for XP, I guess. Of course they clearly label it XP, so nothing to complain here :wink: At least now I understand where my confusion and antipathy comes from.

That sounds like a really interesting idea!

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I in part agree with this whole argument, it does not really tell much about your real progress. It does not even tell how much time you invested really. That is simply due to the fact, say I’m already N3 and just want to add some old grammar into my queue or mark them as I already know. Once marked “I already know” you automatically get the XP associated with that item without having done any work on it.

I agree it is difficult to give a linear indication on your progress as you can add grammar at random and start at any given point you want unlike for example WK.

I think it would be nice to have:

  1. A number indicating your level based on the actual reviews done, excluding skipped or simply marked as I know already items.
  2. A coloring or second bubble, indicating the JLPT Level you are working on.
  • Example:
    ** First person really started with N5 from the first Grammar Point onward worked a bunch already and reached Lvl 12 with his/her XP + color blue for N5 (current highest JLPT Level studying).
    ** Second person has started in N3 but has done less reviews so Lvl 6 color purple for N3.

Either way I do enjoy the gamification and it is always nice to see when I do level up, as a little motivation boost :smiley:

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I just wanted to say that the level indication and the “level up” notification are really motivating! Thanks for that. I’m using focus mode so I’m not annoyed by any gamifications. And I just saw that you already implemented the setting to start reviews in focus mode right away - thanks!

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I personally think that streak is great functionality since it builds a habit of learning every day.
Even if you graduate from bunpro. making learning a daily thing will be certainly useful in life. :+1:

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@Nicole, @conan, @nyo, and @Andulien Thank you all for your insight! There are still quite a few things in XP that we would like to tweak and all of your suggestions and feedback will help guide us as we make changes going forward. Cheers!

@Anthropos888 Thank you for your feedback! Please let us know if you have any suggestions on how we can improve XP and leveling up. Cheers!

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Just my personal opinion, but I would prefer to see the badge with my new level when I level up (instead of just a tiny “level up” text). Even if the level number doesn’t indicate much, it’s a boost for motivation. Since you implemented streak, I’m trying to be disciplined with doing reviews every day

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@Anthropos888 Thank you for your feedback. This is something that we plan to implement soon. Cheers!

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