Witcher MUSH Design
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@imstillhere I think you might actually be misinformed about what most mu do or do not log tbh
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@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@Roz The only goal is to provide the means to investigate without requiring victims to justify their complaint. I understand that it is impossible to automate the resolution of an issue, and it is impossible to catch all instances of abuse. If it was possible, the YouTubes and Facebooks of the world would have already implemented it.
If you’re only logging interactions and not full content, though, you won’t have any means to do this. A log of the fact that people interacted isn’t evidence of anything. A list of pinged keywords also isn’t evidence of anything. You’ll still have to talk to people and understand what happened. You’ll still be dealing with player logs.
By ‘gut check’ I mean making a subjective decision on whatever evidence is available.
But that is how player management works. You have to be able to make judgment calls based on the evidence available, and it will always be subjective.
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@hellfrog As in most games ARE logging all content in the way OP describes? I think if that’s the case I am misinformed, yeah, I didn’t realize it is common.
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@imstillhere ‘most’ games (I only know Evennia and that Ares do it) record all input, yes. It just takes someone good at the code to LOOK at them, usually - and I think Ares logs roll off after a period of time.
Now, a gamerunner saying they intend to log everything in a way that is easily accessible to them and that they PLAN to access it is not the norm, I don’t think.
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@hellfrog said in Witcher MUSH Design:
‘most’ games (I only know Evennia and that Ares do it) record all input, yes.
I don’t know enough about the codebase market share to know if Ares & Evennia are the majority yet, but outside of those two codebases, it’s rare for a game to actually log absolutely everything.
Often other codebases can selectively log everything from a particular person, but that requires complaints to come in about that person first.
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@Pavel well evennia is DEF not in any majority lol, but just from vibes I imagine Ares might be
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@hellfrog I hope I never have reason to look at them if they end up existing.
I have never seen a game be up front about what they do or do not log.
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Never seen it? Really? That sounds pretty hyperbolic, or like maybe you haven’t looked. It’s pretty standard disclosure. It was pretty standard disclosure back in 1999 when I wrote my policies on it, and that has not changed afaik. Usually that info is under some sort of privacy documentation.
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@IoleRae Totally anecdotal, and I certainly have not looked for it. I have only dipped my toes in to three games so my sample size is very tiny!
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Am I understanding your statement correctly? You have only played on three games?
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@IoleRae Right.
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@Istus said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@IoleRae Right.
In that case, I’d be wary of making such general declarative statements. Some folks around here have played on hundreds (or at least several tens) of games.
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Yeah, “I have never seen” implies experience in having seen games.
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Circling back around to some of the original questions here, I have a couple of suggestions for the actual implementation of Experience Points and character advancement.
1: Give out set XP rewards DAILY rather than weekly if possible. It’s not a panacea but it obviously would incentivize daily log ins better than a weekly system would. For instance, every day that you log on, you get 1 XP rather than getting 7 XP per week.
2: Give no XP rewards for +noms, @votes, or whatever. Instead…
3: Give out IN-GAME CURRENCY for +noms, @votes, or whatever. This might literally be ‘currency’ in its simplest form. Or more interestingly, some sort of ‘prestige system.’ For example, a character with 1000 votes is ‘more famous’ or a ‘bigger deal’ than a character with 10 votes. This makes for an objective way to choose which character gets to be Mayor of Shinytown, or Head of the Cat School, or Chief of the Lodge of Sorceresses, or Most Famous Bard in Skellige, etc.
4: Give some sort of gear tokens out MANUALLY, for providing logs to the wiki. Staff can determine what criteria to use, perhaps rewarding events with more gear tokens than one on one RP, or Bar RP.
5: Allow players to trade in their ‘gear tokens’ for specialized gear, rather than forcing them to purchase things from randomized coded vendors.
So, all taken together, players would advance their sheets via automatic Daily XP, they would advance their ‘prestige’ through votes in RP, and they’d get some sort of ‘gear tokens’ from logged events which they could use for character-specific gear, or whatever else there is to purchase in your system.
In the Witcher games, ‘leveling up’ isn’t just about gaining new levels, it’s also about acquiring mutagens, learning new potion formulas, and finding/buying better swords and armor. When you add in a bunch of more conventional D&D-sequence classes on top of this to allow for Elven Mages, Dwarven Merchants, and Halfling Berserkers, it’ll be tough to make a list of precoded items that will fit everyone. Better to use a mix of precoded items for ‘starter gear’ and bespoke item creation to celebrate character milestones.
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
For instance, every day that you log on, you get 1 XP rather than getting 7 XP per week.
Why? This only punishes those of us with lives where daily, constant participation is impossible. If you are going to hold players hostage to a daily grind, you’d better have something going on every day, in all timezones, for people to do.
This is a terrible, farcical idea.
ETA:
@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
Or more interestingly, some sort of ‘prestige system.’ For example, a character with 1000 votes is ‘more famous’ or a ‘bigger deal’ than a character with 10 votes.
This is also terrible. It turns IC recognition into an OOC popularity contest that is ripe for abuse.
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@Pavel I don’t log on every day either. Who cares? It’s 1 XP. Log on when you want.
What’s the alternative? Just giving out XP once a week to everyone whether they logged on or not?
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
Just giving out XP once a week to everyone whether they logged on or not?
Yes. That’s a fairly common way of doing it.
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@Pavel Guess my ideas are terrible and farcical then.
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@Pavel I don’t log on every day either. Who cares? It’s 1 XP. Log on when you want.
What’s the alternative? Just giving out XP once a week to everyone whether they logged on or not?
I honestly don’t understand the objection to systems like this. I often see people talk about it in a way that feels like there’s a weird annoyance that someone who is less active than they are, or someone who they don’t see RPing, should be getting any XP. Like – not talking about you specifically here, but I’ve seen people talk about this with what seems like an actual layer of offense at this idea.
But XP, in terms of how it relates to a person, is really moreso a representation of IC time invested.
“It’s one XP” except it’s not, it’s the XP of however many days added up over time, etc.
I think either you make a system where XP is a sort of even-handed representation of what any character can invest into learning, which would suggest a steady even drop of XP to characters, or you make XP into something that rewards the behavior you want. Logging on every day shouldn’t be on that list, because that’s not actually desired behavior on a game; what you want from players is them engaging in RP and the game in meaningful ways. But if you do that, you have to basically put in measures to cap things in pretty meaningful ways, or else you’re just back to the issue of “whoever has the most time to play gets the most XP.”
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@Pavel Guess my ideas are terrible and farcical then.
In these particular cases, yes.
This small subset of the MUing community has ample experience of all kinds of reward systems. And, frankly, we don’t like any of them enough to agree on the ideal version.
However, any system which makes participating in the game feel like a chore or work, or systems that seek to castigate those who - by arbitrary metric - can participate less have fallen out of fashion for a reason.
ETA:
I’ll give an example: I leave my client logged in for a week. That’s seven XP for me, with no participation on the game.
Roz can log in once or twice a week. When she’s there she actively roleplays for several hours, expands the plot, and volunteers her time administratively. She gets one or two XP.
So I’m rewarded for my lack of participation more than Roz with her ample participation.
