Player Ratios
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@Pavel said in Player Ratios:
That goes double for taking things that are typically “free” (staff attention, entrance into plots, add your own example here) and making them require points. The EA or Ubisoft approach to staffing.
Yeah that’s why these kinds of systems always felt icky to me. We’re all here to tell stories. I’m not going to bribe you to do it, and I don’t want to be coerced to do things I wouldn’t already do just because you racked up some kind of brownie points.
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I’m kind of with Faraday here. As long as the lore files on what is and isn’t allowed on PRP are clear, and especially if there are a few ‘plot in a box’ options that get pinned up now and then to be claimed…
We’re all here to be telling stories with, to, and for one another. We take turns running, or we just pitch and idea and co-run, or we just tell the stories we want and trust others to do the same.
But as long as there aren’t barriers to people starting, seeking, and running their own RP, a lot of story-telling needs take care of themselves just as long as a +req about:
Gonna run this plot, out of A/B/C which big bads are most appropriate, what outcomes need avoided at all costs, and any information in that setting I should know while running it.
It takes a few minutes to drop that knowledge onto a PRP that anyone (no storyteller needed outside the participants) can run, and that group is off and going, same as any of the others. If they overlap, cool. If they don’t, also fine. But for the most part… As long as we’re trusted with the pieces of plot that are relevant, we’re all capable of entertaining ourselves without hopefully becoming overly burdensome.
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@Roadspike said in Player Ratios:
@Gashlycrumb The whole idea of share points might work for some games, but it feels like it is absolutely rife with the possibility of the perception of bias.
Even if none of that is actually true, the perception can destroy trust in a game.
Yep. Honestly, I suspect that no matter what you did for transparency people would still percieve bias there just because it has an icky feel to ‘pay’ for shit. I am not sure it would really work on any game, but it’s an idea I had. I am now quite curious as to how it worked on Firan.
I really would like some method of displaying a player’s desirable-activity/inclusion-in-cool-shit ratio but if you do it openly it has this ‘paying for stuff’ ick feel, and if you did it secretly people would soon find out and it’d look weird and bad that way too.
I have had GMing staff put me off by saying I get a lot of votes and am thus a star.
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I’ll admit I would probably nope out pretty hard of an environment where I had to pay-for-GM on a MUSH, even if the currency was fairly fluid. Might work for some players. Not my thing.
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@Jumpscare said in Player Ratios:
What if any spotlight cost half your points?
I don’t know how that would work in practice, but I suspect it would discourage absurd grinding of points. And over time, the spotlight-stealers would have to put in twice as much effort to not fall behind the little guys. Inevitably, though, the little guys would have their chance in the spotlight.
Or you could just cap them. Say they max out at 12. 8-12 is ‘Green’ level, and GMs are encouraged to write stuff to pull greenies in with individualised hooks, and greenies get first chance at seats for GM-run events. 7-4 is ‘Blue’ and is where you try to keep everybody, 4-0 is ‘Red’ and that doesn’t mean you kick them out of the plot, but other characters get first chance at event seats and GMs should try to shift the focus.
First you’d need a unicorn player-base who don’t walk at the idea to begin with, and then they’d need to be patient as you dinked around with the levels to have it balance right. And you’d need to hand vet all the +share votes, since you should not be able to grind them by telling everybody about the borage blight, maybe a borage blight is only worth five. (Which is a spot where it would be nigh impossible to avoid being seen as biased. along with the ‘that was never a spotlight just now!’)
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@dvoraen said in Player Ratios:
@Pavel said in Player Ratios:
@Faraday said in Player Ratios:
incentivize the behavior you want, without incentivizing negative behaviors
That goes double for taking things that are typically “free” (staff attention, entrance into plots, add your own example here) and making them require points. The EA or Ubisoft approach to staffing.
Don’t you dare try to coin “microstaffing” or “microplots” as if we’re going to reach the MU* equivalent of microtransactions.
We aim to give every player some pride in accomplishment.
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So what if you never ‘spend’ these points at all, you only accumulate Carnegie points (for sharing plot, being helpful, doing crowdsourced tasks, etc) and Emmy points (for being on the show, so to speak.)
Use the Carnegie/Emmy ratio in the same way, but both types of points will probably appear desirable to accumulate regardless.
ETA: Especially if you gave a ‘real’ MU Carnegie and Emmy out every quarter, with announcements and possibly even a download code for a free Chuck Tingle book or similar cheap little e-treat.
