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Witcher MUSH Design
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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.
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@hellfrog said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@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.
@imstillhere - Ares does not log all input, it’s much more nuanced than that. If anyone wants more details we can certainly spin off a different thread, but this is probably not the place for it.
ETA: But like I mention in the article Data and Privacy on Ares Games, “any data transmitted to the server and/or stored in the database is ultimately accessible to the game owner and anyone they choose to share it with.” That is true for every MUSH platform in existence, and in fact any online service in existence.
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@pavel Sure, if that was my entire suggestion. I’m not sure people are reading the entire post. Should have made it shorter.
The suggestion is to handle XP rewards, item rewards, and ‘prestige’ rewards via separate avenues to reward different types of players in meaningful ways.
If Player A just logs on every day but does nothing else, at the end of the year Player A will have 364 XP, but no cool job title and only starter gear.
If Player B logs on twice a week, but runs an event once a month and does Bar RP every now and then, at the end of the year Player B will have less XP than Player A, but Player B’s character would have much better gear and a much better ‘in game’ position, which means Player B would probably win in a fight if coded items are being used (which I imagine they are, as this is someone who is used to AoA’s system.) It also means that Player B would be first in line for positions of IC responsibility, rather than just having staff appoint whoever they like best to run factions.
This isn’t a ‘terrible’ idea, and it would work great with the sort of system that is probably being proposed here, which obviously involves conjecture on my part. ‘Winning’ will probably involve a combination of skills, attributes, and coded gear. There will probably be ‘fiefdoms’ of some sort to run.
This incentivizes logging on AND doing scenes AND being friendly AND logging quality scenes to the wiki, all of which are desirable player behavior.
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
The suggestion is to handle XP rewards, item rewards, and ‘prestige’ rewards via separate avenues to reward different types of players in meaningful ways.
See, that’s the crux. It’s a deep difference in design philosophy. We’re primarily a MUSH/MUX community, so we don’t really do item rewards and the like. Not commonly, anyway.
The idea of a ‘cool job title’ being from anything other than actual story progression is bizarre, at least to me. And gear, when it exists, is bought with IC money, not tied to OOC participation.
It seems as if you’re designing an MMO, and asking a bunch of RPers how best to do it. So you’re going to get people looking at you like you’ve grown a second head.
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Referenced by
Tez
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@Faraday said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@hellfrog said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@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.
@imstillhere - Ares does not log all input, it’s much more nuanced than that. If anyone wants more details we can certainly spin off a different thread, but this is probably not the place for it.
ETA: But like I mention in the article Data and Privacy on Ares Games, “any data transmitted to the server and/or stored in the database is ultimately accessible to the game owner and anyone they choose to share it with.” That is true for every MUSH platform in existence, and in fact any online service in existence.
If anyone is interested in talking more about how Ares handles data, please go here!
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What if we don’t need to “reward” players for anything? If we must have a “reward” other than the enjoyment of the activity itself, it’s more chances to be drawn into plots, or given extra hooks, etc. as they arise through play. Less active, get less of that. Natural consequences, babyyyyy.
I want XP to be an IC thing, not an OOC thing. XP represents skill growth, which is about the character not the player (though some would argue this point). So if the character exists, it’s doing whatever the things are that make them better at things, regardless of how much I RP. It’s why I like the weekly XP gain system - some representation of the fact that my character was alive and learning, doing, and experiencing things that increased their skills.
If we want an OOC reward, still, it should be something more OOC. Like I know FS3 has ‘luck’ points. Which, yes, have an IC impact, but it’s really (as I understand it, maybe i’m wrong) more of a ‘you the player can feel really cool for a minute’.
Many places definitely already do it this way, and probably smarter than my rambling, I just see “reward” thrown around a lot and idk, we’re all grownups with stuff to do, why are we trying to lure people into anything or punish them for inactivity.
as previously stated, good day.
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@farfalla said in Witcher MUSH Design:
I just see “reward” thrown around a lot and idk, we’re all grownups with stuff to do, why are we trying to lure people into anything or punish them for inactivity.
Agreed. Honestly the more I think about it the more I see the predatory mobile game design creeping in. Which makes sense for mobile games, daily rewards, multiple currencies, special ‘titles’ or ‘exclusive gear’ to keep you playing, keep you seeing ads, keep you looking at the cash shop…
It’s very weird, to me, to put it into a MU.
But, you know, it’s not my game. Do as thou wilt.
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I think people should run events that they’d like to. Usually that’s the reward.
I can guarantee you as a person who has always enjoyed doing that I do not get included more in things (sometimes even less, as people think that I get invited to a lot of things because I’ve invited people to do things. It just never has worked like that in 20 years of mushing. I used to think it was just me being second rate and second thought but actually I’m convinced now that most people who like to run stuff experience the same. Regardless of if it’s social or combat or even plot). And often there’s a side helping of people making comments about how stupid and worthless and boring it was. Which can take the high of having fun doing a fun thing and just destroy it in a second sometimes.
When there’s a reward for that sort of thing my experience is that it just means an increase in people running things that they really don’t give a shit about they just want the reward. Which is really a waste of everyone’s time. Leading to more jadedness. More resentment. Ect. Especially when the game is carried on players running events for long periods or if that is the more time efficient way to rack up xp.
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
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.
I am vehemently against the concept of any sort of coded prestige system as it can be and almost inevitably will be “gamed” by people, to ridiculous degrees that can be pretty unfair. No matter what limitations you think you’ve put in to prevent it, there’s a specific kind of obnoxious player with loads of free time who will basically dedicate their life to finding a way around it just to one-up everyone else, and rewarding that kind of player adds a lot of toxicity to your game’s culture.
Tying it to any sort of nom/voting system is especially ripe for abuse. Hell, noms/votes period are already just a Bad Idea imho, and I genuinely wish they never caught on in the hobby.
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I think, when one is designing systems, they cannot be designed to be immune to abuse. They should try, as best as possible, to mitigate the impact such abuse can have. Such as limiting the number of available votes, etc.
It not perfect system, obviously, but it’s made by humans so it’s never perfect. Except me, I was made by humans and I’m darn close.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
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@Pavel said in Witcher MUSH Design:
I think, when one is designing systems, they cannot be designed to be immune to abuse.
That’s true, but some systems have been tried so many times that we kinda know they’re abuse magnets. It’s good to be cognizant of those.
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@Faraday said in Witcher MUSH Design:
@Pavel said in Witcher MUSH Design:
I think, when one is designing systems, they cannot be designed to be immune to abuse.
That’s true, but some systems have been tried so many times that we kinda know they’re abuse magnets. It’s good to be cognizant of those.
Oh, absolutely. I’m just trying to nix the inevitable “every system can be abused to blah blah blah.”
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@Pavel said in Witcher MUSH Design:
I think, when one is designing systems, they cannot be designed to be immune to abuse. They should try, as best as possible, to mitigate the impact such abuse can have.
Which is why I feel so strongly about prestige being a coded system at all. It’s a concept with a lot of potential impact on game balance and fairness, and we do actually have a pretty popular case study on the amount of sheer nerd rage it’s generated over the years, lol.
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Maybe prestige is a loaded term for people. A whole bunch of games have ‘karma’ which is basically the same thing.
I’ve staffed on games where getting awarded ‘karma’ for things like helping out with the wiki enabled players to do things like app restricted characters.
Sometimes ‘karma’ is tied to the number of votes players get, especially on games that have no XP at all, like superhero games.
Nobody is actually suggesting better ways to handle the acquisition of experience points, coded objects, and in-game assignments involving responsibilities (like running a faction.) This is what the original post was asking for.
It’s super easy to poke holes in a suggestion. What are the BETTER ways to handle these things?
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@DarthSmegma Before anyone brings it up, no I don’t think it’s a good idea to give players in-game karma for helping out with the wiki… that did not work well.
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
Nobody is actually suggesting better ways
I see at least three posters in the last dozen or so posts that have suggestions on how things can be handled, and also, people are sharing their experiences with the proposed systems, not just “poking holes”.
If you don’t LIKE peoples’ input fine, but those people still had suggestions.
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
Nobody is actually suggesting better ways to handle the acquisition of experience points, coded objects, and in-game assignments involving responsibilities (like running a faction.) This is what the original post was asking for.
It’s super easy to poke holes in a suggestion. What are the BETTER ways to handle these things?
Only XP/advancement was really brought up in the original post, and I think a number of people have expressed thoughts on how to handle that?
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@DarthSmegma said in Witcher MUSH Design:
Nobody is actually suggesting better ways to handle the acquisition of experience points, coded objects, and in-game assignments involving responsibilities (like running a faction.) This is what the original post was asking for.
For any system, you have to:
- Figure out what your GOAL is in systemizing it (versus just leaving it freeform for RP, which many games do).
- Determine whether the system you create supports that goal.
- Evaluate whether the cons associated with that system cause other problems that are WORSE than benefits you get for your goal.
There are a zillion potential goals for an XP system, many of which are mutually exclusive.
A system that rewards longevity will necessarily result in the “dino effect” unless limited. A system with progression limits will necessarily eventually result in stagnated players. A system that models the need for skill maintenance will have realism (pro for some players) at the cost of OOC effort (con for other players).
There is no one-size-fits-all system, or every game would already be using it.
And you can go through that same exercise for coded objects (which Ares games do just fine without), faction heads (which many games do just fine without), or any other system.
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Not all of the feedback was truly constructive, for sure, but even purely dissenting opinions have value. I have not digested everything as of yet but here’s some cliff notes of my headspace for those that are curious:
- I am slowly pulling back from my ‘log everything’ perspective. I think that I may end up having a report function that allows a player to highlight something problematic in a verified manner.
- I like having some extrinsic rewards. This obviously does not jive with the purity of RP for RP’s sake but whatever. I will figure something out.
- I really like the idea of consistent XP for existing rather than tying it to a specific activity. I really want to reward people for participating in a meaningful way but I do not want to expect people to be on daily. I think in the short term this means that if you don’t have /some sort of scene/ in a two week span or such you will start to get less of a return until it approaches zero. There may be a vacation mode ‘cuz life happens.’
- There will not be any nom/vote systems or any system defined notion of prestige. If you want to be well-known, get out there and be that thing.
- There won’t be classes. On a surface level I think I will set things up such that there is baseline availability of skills or whatever and then later on you can buy in to a specialization or two - or never specialize at all if you wish!
- There will be an upper cap on the amount of mechanical power you can obtain and you can not get everything. This will likely be tied back in to the specialization notion I am mulling over.
- There won’t be randomized vendors for ‘stuff’. How stuff distribution works is still a jumble in my mind but I may roughly tie it to an activity metric or something (re: extrinsic rewards for participation). Hand-me-downs will be prevented in some manner - advanced stuff requiring advanced skills or something. Who knows?
I may not always sound like it, and we may not agree, but I appreciate the suggestions and criticisms. Spending your own time to help me refine things is lovely.
