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Witcher MUSH Design
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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?
the entity previously known as Sunny
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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.
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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.
