Kouren

Wow when Joel takes it up to write something up you know its gonna be good. I can hardly add anything else on top of it. +1

If IPS is serious about gamification, here are some foundational points:
Entire suite -- Not just forums. Not just apps.  But the entirety and power of the full Invision suite: uploading a cover photo, filling out a profile custom field, writing a status update, making a blog post, RSVPing to a calendar event, getting a post marked as best answer, creating an album, renewing a subscription for the sixth time, winning second in the leaderboard, getting an item promoted.      Weighted -- Writing an in-depth long-form blog is very different from uploading one image, but IPS weighs them the same as one content item.  They shouldn't count the same.   Customizable -- I would like a gamification system to be customizable to exclude / include nodes, categories, and apps.  How I reward my users is very different than how you run your community or how Invision runs its community.  How we offer member journeys will be as diverse as our communities.   Clubs -- I would like a gamification system to include clubs.  Not nearly at the same amount of customization, but each club deserves its own basic set.   Meaningful -- The rewards should be: Immediate, Recognize the relative difficulty of the accomplishment, and Provide the steps needed to get to the next reward.   Typical reward: "Congrats, you won a badge for making X posts." Better reward: "Congrats, you won a badge for making X posts, an accomplishment that puts you into the top 10% of users.  Your next badge is at Y posts." Attention Grabbing -- If a tree falls in a forest and no notification is sent out, does anybody care?  Gamification needs to have movement, to have excitement, to be dynamic, and offer a call to action.      What I'd like for gamification to address:
Profile onboarding - I've logged in to the accounts of multiple users over the years, and every single one has totally ignored the Profile Completion.  I would love to actually see usage statistics on larger sites, but at least on my site, most users don't care about Profile Completion.  I'd rather deprecate Profile Completion in favor of Gamification.   New user activation - There needs to be multiple calls to action within the first X minutes, where X is the site's average session duration. I've seen first-hand how if I can talk live to a user when he first joins, his posting skyrockets at least over that session. There needs to be activity, excitement, and movement within that first session duration.      Member pathways - Users find fulfillment in many ways in our communities. We need to empower them to both progress along certain member pathways while encouraging them to also explore other pathways.  

Thank you for this plugin! It's a great fit for my community.
Our group uses custom items extensively, though, and we have two things we'd like to see if possible:
When a user purchases (and activates) a custom item, they get a pop-up saying it's been used. Would it be possible to also add the event to a user's log? Currently, confirmation is received via PM once it's awarded, but it would be nice if users could also track their purchases through their log, since there's no other way to tell a custom item was bought after it's been used (until it's awarded). Is it possible to have points awarded per word as an option? Not all engagement is equal in our community, and it would be very nice to be able to appropriately reward people who invest more effort into their contributions.

Oh okay, now I understand, in my free time I will think about it and work.

Thank you for the response, but I feel like we might not be on quite the same page.
The current iteration of custom items is perfect for our needs, as they aren't actually "items" but custom-made artwork and virtual rewards not related to forum/community functions. Users being able to buy/use an item and needing it to be manually rewarded by a mod is completely fine, as it fits the distribution process. There's no need for address information or anything additional on the user's end.
My concern is related to the time frame between using/redeeming an item and the item actually being awarded. I.e. right now, if a user buys and uses a custom item immediately, if they miss that "purchase" pop up, there's no way for them to tell they bought anything. There's no record of it in their inventory (because it's been used), nor in their log (because it doesn't show here). If that popup is missed, they won't know they bought anything until it's awarded.
Having said that, the second part of our inquiry was actually more important to our needs. Would you advise if a word count-based point reward is possible? Per post is "okay," but per word would be ideal for our community.

No mate it only starts from the install date
you would probably be better off getting a custom add-on made for your item, if you are selling lots of them and constantly then a add-on would make sense, with a add-on the items can do nearly anything you wanted when redeemed, for example I have made add-ons what adds data to another database when redeemed, one what will pop up and ask the members for information to manually post a item to them with a address field etc, items what will start a download of a file when redeemed and so on, it's limitless basically if using custom add-ons, if your interested send me a PM and we can talk more

Thank you for this plugin! It's a great fit for my community.
Our group uses custom items extensively, though, and we have two things we'd like to see if possible:
When a user purchases (and activates) a custom item, they get a pop-up saying it's been used. Would it be possible to also add the event to a user's log? Currently, confirmation is received via PM once it's awarded, but it would be nice if users could also track their purchases through their log, since there's no other way to tell a custom item was bought after it's been used (until it's awarded). Is it possible to have points awarded per word as an option? Not all engagement is equal in our community, and it would be very nice to be able to appropriately reward people who invest more effort into their contributions.