Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
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Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
There are very strong arguments to be made that it works perfectly as it is. You make characters and when it's time to put their stories to rest, you may roll them for a potential award. You get a better chance for a 5% with some extra gold.
Seems fair at a glance, right?
But there are much, much stronger arguments to be made against this - In my opinion and the opinion of many others that I have spoken to.
You could say that this system encourages power grinding. If you want a 5%, you can perfect the work of the power grind, and continually roll lvl 26 characters over and over and over again until you get the 5% that you want, with minimal RP effort put forth along the way. After that, you might not even RP when you do get your 5%. You just want it for the sake of having it.
You could say that the system does not reward RP. It rewards grinding, an encourages it accordingly. You could argue that it does not encourage quality RP, and instead caters to those whom grind and roll on repetition.
You could also argue that it is part of the reason we see some characters last for real life years on end.
Let's face it - If you have a beautifully portrayed character and your roleplay is strong, you have made differences and impacts in the world, your character has become famous and has interacted with hundreds of other players - It would feel real crappy to sacrifice them after all of that end get a Normal.
Unfortunately, that's the reality we deal with. I personally know plenty of characters whom I would absolutely be thrilled to witness being guaranteed a 5% award of their choice and the other tiers below it to their liking for a single selection.
But because you are guaranteed a Normal award far more than a Major, these players simply do not roll. Because it would not be fair to put in all of that effort and quality for their RP, and end up with something that does not match the content they've created and the RP they've portrayed.
Meanwhile, expert powergrinders can circumvent this by grinding to 26 and rolling on repetition until they get what they want with the absolute bare minimum of RP involved along the way.
This is, in my opinion, completely backwards, and the system is systemically encouraging the wrong behavior.
We should encourage and award quality RP to the point of guaranteeing a major because of your character's lifespan and their RP. We should not encourage and award powergrinding multitudes of characters until the player gets what they want based on RNG, and meanwhile the quality RPers are left with Normals, or else nothing, because they fear a Normal and do not ever roll.
A new system that I would personally endorse the most would be one that is partially automated with manual variables to eventually guarantee a 5%.
The automated system would track things like time played, faction ownership size, Roleplay Bonus, lines spoken/emoted, unique items made, level, RPB Exp ticks gathered, and so forth. It could be furthered expedited with things like the -recommend feature that can be allotted by both DMs and players VIA in-game tells. This would eventually guarantee a 5% roll, which can be announced to the player in the System Log.
"When you are ready for your character's story to come to a close, you will be granted a Minor/Normal/Greater/Major Award upon their sacrifice."
This message would update accordingly as this system progresses.
Obviously, guaranteeing a major is no small feat. And it would take time - As it absolutely should. A long time, and with many recommendations and factors at play. But I feel that it - At some point - Should absolutely be guaranteed as a reward for the player's RP.
I believe a remastered version of this system would not only encourage better RP and award it thusly, but it would encourage those veteran characters (Who may actually be around for longer than is realistic at this point, because RPing age is weird) to finally lay their characters to rest, and they may feel comforted at the fact that they have their choice of a 5% in the end to start again with something new and exciting.
Disclaimer: All of the above mentioned factors are purely brainstorming, and can be subject to change!
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
I don't like the awards system all that much in general. The main determining factor of deleting a character, to me at least, should be narrative. I deleted a level 14 a while back because I hadn't logged onto them for over a year, and I wasn't so obsessed with getting an award token that I'd bring them out of retirement just to vanish them later.
The award system as I see it is there to allow for the potential to play more unique races/classes/etc in such a way as to prevent there being any absurd spike in that race. It's a way to make sure those things stay special, much like the Good Drow problem. I was speaking with someone today who knows a couple people with Major Award characters that make that award 'less impressive' due to their take on how to RP that Award. And it's hard to disagree knowing the situation.
If the system's other function is to help encourage more shifts/cycles of characters, then... I guess it doesn't work well for that? People who stick with a character for a long time tend to develop attachment to that character, and I can attest that character attachment is way more valuable than any award. That level 14 was an awarded character. They had a few good times, way back. But the character I sacrificed to make them was a multi-year 'one of the best characters I've ever RPed' situation, who I sacrificed because their story was done.
Maybe that's part of what the mechanic's intent is? To reward the completion of a character? That character was from way, way back when leveling was harder, so writing them off was a way bigger commitment at the time than it would be now.
Eh, I dunno'. Ramble complete. TL;DR/In summary, I think having the system be manual allows for the least problems and disincentivises grind-sacrifices. But then again I don't know how big of a problem that is, if at all.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
The mindset and gameplay it encourages could not be further from what the aims of an RP server should be. I consider it the single most tragic flaw of Arelith, along with an RPR system that doesn't get enough attention to function as intended.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
Encourages it is a weird thing to say. How many people have actually done RP-less XP grinding or is this inventing a bigger issue than really exists? I know I've never done.
There has been long term plans to adjust the system. I'm sure someone can go back and find it (pretty sure it's been said by someone), but I don't want to say too much that hasn't been said already.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
To me, the system encourages new characters/rolling. I am very much for that from an rp perspective. The only change I would like to see is less crazy/flashy reward options.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
I've always been of the opinion you don't need different races to do something cool, and honestly most of my favourite and most enjoyable people to interact with have all been base races. Of course, there are some exceptions to that, for better or worse, but you don't need to be special to be enjoyable.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
The other extreme - applications that need to be approved by DMs - can't be implemented fairly to everyone and would inevitably cause all kinds of problems (and be a ton of work for the DMs).
I don't think the costs associated with either of these solutions is worth having special award races. I don't deny that some unique RP can come from award races, good-aligned monsters, etc, and I would be sad to see these go completely, but I think at the end of the day the cons of the system outweigh the good that comes from these awards. Personally I wouldn't be opposed to scrapping the whole system entirely, but since we're brainstorming...
It seems like the award system is trying to solve two problems: first, it's trying to solve the problem of certain award concepts being too common (eg, legions of vampires running around is undesirable), and it's also trying to solve the problem of incentivizing long-running characters to roll to keep the game fresh. I really think these two problems need to be decoupled.
To solve the 'rarity' problem, I would propose a system that simply gives Awards to players at random over a certain interval of time (with minor awards being more common, and Major awards rarer). This would solve the issue of keeping certain races/nobles/concepts rarer, removes the need for grinding XP/gold, and is fair to players who have lots of time to play and players who have fewer hours to play. You basically get an equal shot at playing any concept as any other player simply by being a part of this community and logging in regularly.
As for incentivizing people to roll long-term, stale characters - this is harder to solve and I actually think the current system does a terrible job at solving this problem. Personally, no promise of vampires or rakshasa or dragon PCs would ever motivate me to roll a character I'm enjoying before I'm ready to roll them, and I think a lot of other players share this sentiment. People are going to roll their beloved characters when the story calls for it and they're ready to roll them (especially when you consider that if you really, really want that award, it's actually much less investment to roll up a brand new alt character, grind it to 26, and roll it than it is to pour your heart into a character and tell their story over the span of months or years and then roll it). Awards do a very poor job at solving this problem because the motivation that keeps players playing the same character (eg. "I'm enjoying this specific character's RP because they're fun and I've invested a lot") do not translate to being able to roll up a new character who is also a vampire.
So this is a problem that the current system doesn't even solve very well to begin with, and incentivizes undesirable behavior. I think it may be worth re-examining what exactly the problem is that this system is trying to solve and finding a better solution - because the current system does not do what it was designed to do and encourages harmful behavior at the same time.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
I never said it doesn't happen but everyone talks about it like it is a huge pervasive issue and I don't believe that to be the case. I just think if you ask around, fewer people are doing this than are assumed.KT28 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 11:57 pmThe current system incentivizes grinding up and rolling characters who have no stake in relationships, their own RP development, or the world. This does happen. If you don't see them it's because they're out there grinding, making zero meaningful impact on the world.
At any rate, the award change, whenever it comes, will deal with targeting these types of characters.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
Being guaranteed a 5% would mean you consistently play a well-portrayed character with strong RP for a RL year at least.
It would be rare - But at a certain point, players who put that much effort into their characters and their RP, who make big impacts and create amazing stories and content, deserve their pick of an award.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
It is to encourage character turnover, not to reward upstanding members of the community.
So, this notion of rewarding long-term characters is actually contradicting the very purpose of the award system. The thing is, Arelith doesn't really want 1+ year ("at least") old characters. It wants short life-span, high impact characters who do their thing and then promptly leave before they start hogging social cachet, seats of importance and DM quest macguffins. It's critically important that the pipeline of interesting and fresh characters rising up the ranks is kept flowing*. As much as we all love those tenured "Important Guy" PCs**, they're actually kind of bad for us on a macro level.Glowing Mushroom wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:35 amBeing guaranteed a 5% would mean you consistently play a well-portrayed character with strong RP for a RL year at least.
It would be rare - But at a certain point, players who put that much effort into their characters and their RP, who make big impacts and create amazing stories and content, deserve their pick of an award.
I also just don't agree with the proposed model of assessing a 'good rper'. I can think of many of Arelith's all-time greatest who would fail to grade against such arbitrary statistics such as faction size or lines spoken. I don't think there's any system that couldn't be abused, and I'd much prefer the "mindless grinders" gaming our current system, than what I'd foresee as the insidious social engineers that would plague the kind of systems proposed in the OP.
I completely agree with Xerah and others -- I believe "mindless grinding" is a bogeyman. The most efficient grinders I know all happen to be highly decorated roleplayers. Roleplay and "being good at the mechanics" are not mutually exclusive, yadda yadda.
Anyway, so what if they get awards? Characters come and go, that's what we want. Just because they're in the Orclands most of the time doesn't make them any less part of the game world. Would you rather these expert grinders stuck around for 'atleast 1+ year' and asserted their superior mechanical abilities over all the "good rpers" patiently and peacefully managing factions and racking up lines spoken?
* Total tangent, but I have a pet theory that, much like in real life when access to resources and prestige are denied to the young by a dyfunctionally entrenched social/economic system, revolution is inevitable. The Arelith counterpart being those periods we run into where there is a great deal of PvP and OOC drama as large institutions past their due date are disrupted by newer characters who feel the only way to affect change is to start cracking skulls.
** To add: I think it's common for those who become important to feel their longevity and dedication should be rewarded. But they would never have had the chance to become an Important Guy if the Important Guy preceding them hadn't rolled.
Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
Is encouraging a high turnover rate by developing an award system that specifically rewards grinding actually what Arelith and its devs wants? I'd love to hear from more of the devs and staff on this to source such a claim. I'm afraid I have not heard this perspective more and I'd love to get confirmation on this. Why would we not want to reward RPers? Long standing characters are not a bad thing. In fact such characters are often encouraged to remain by the rest of the community because of the RP they generate. I'm not sure where you're getting this from, so please elaborate if you can!
The purpose of rewarding time played and RP would be to reward players for the RP. Not grinding. This is an RP server first and foremost - Spending time to create content and RP all to end up with a dull reward can feel deflating for the player. Yes, it's not about the reward in the end. But receiving things that are well deserved is the objective, especially when those RPers are not the power grinders who can get what they want by simply playing the odds enough times.
No system is going to be perfect, especially since this type of award system exists in the first place.
And as I've stated, "time played" does not necessarily have to be the sole contributing factor, nor the most important one. All of these ideas are mere brainstorming.
But I believe rewarding RP on an RP server would be more appropriate than rewarding PvE grinds on an RP server.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
I truly don't believe that there should be a time limit like this on a character for reward. A RL year is a -very- long time. Characters can be played for a few months and still make an impact. A character doesn't have to be involved in large factions, DM events or rl years of rp to contribute to the server.Glowing Mushroom wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:35 am
Being guaranteed a 5% would mean you consistently play a well-portrayed character with strong RP for a RL year at least.
I also don't see a problem with players that have a character they use to enjoy a certain build, kill stuff or exclusively adventure. Everyone relaxes differently. A character that holds a play in a tavern is not any different than one that gathers a party to go slay a dragon. I'm sure if you think someone is abusing the roll system for the 5%, it can be brought to the attention of the DMs.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
I vaguely recall a quote from JJJerm (the server creator) that could once be found on the wiki/old forums perhaps. I can't find it anymore, but it was something to the effect of "we would rather you roll than stick around - go and play something new".Glowing Mushroom wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:38 amIs encouraging a high turnover rate by developing an award system that specifically rewards grinding actually what Arelith and its devs wants? I'd love to hear from more of the devs and staff on this to source such a claim. I'm afraid I have not heard this perspective more and I'd love to get confirmation on this. Why would we not want to reward RPers? Long standing characters are not a bad thing. In fact such characters are often encouraged to remain by the rest of the community because of the RP they generate. I'm not sure where you're getting this from, so please elaborate if you can!
That was the common perception of the award system when I joined circa 2011 - much like the mantra "DMs are smelt not felt" was known to everyone. Unfortunate that such an understanding hasn't been preserved in some kind of cultural document.
Of course, this may no longer be how or why the award system is designed or regarded by contemporary devs/DMs, I can't speak for them, but I am quite confident that the OG award system existed to politely nudge characters, even the good ones, to retire. You can actually still see the original name for the 5% roll used in certain places of the wiki today - "Epic Character Retirement Scheme".
If that is no longer the case, I still stand by my arguments. Having played on other servers without a "retirement scheme", it's quite apparent the malaise and deep entrenchment of long-long-term characters who have no carrot to give up their cachet and power for. A system for encouraging retirement was extremely prescient, a system I believe is even more vital in our times with our much increased population.
Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
Not everyone rushes for 26 to roll. It's an enjoyable experience to play out the adventuring lifetime of a character. Some of that might be grinding, but mostly it's the RP along the way.
My characters tend to exist for a month, sometimes up to 6 months, depending on what they become involved in and how the RP goes. Some of them are rolled before 26, some of them are rolled somewhere after 26. It's not really that important. People aren't playing this game solely for the chance at a snowflake reward, and if they are... That's ok, too! Let them. Just enjoy the things that you enjoy and if that's what they enjoy doing, let them do that.
My personal opinion is that the thing that is truly detrimental to the server is a lack of turnover of characters. Characters that exist for more than 1-2 RL years tend to become entrenched. They get stuck in a place or in a group and become unable to change as the setting changes around them. It leads to all kinds of problems, but the main one ends up being that other players simply don't get a chance to enjoy or experience certain parts of the server.
The RARE gems are the ones that are able to continuously change their character with the setting or adapt to a variation of factors on the isle. One of these kinds of characters I'd point at doing this very well is Garrett Kelson. It's an old character but the player is very good at not being in the spotlight, but rather sharing an ongoing and ever changing story. This is the sort of player I'd want to be like if I kept my characters for more than 3 months.
I don't think the system needs to be changed. RNG is the core of DnD. Rolling a 20 is a special thing. We have a little bit of a boost thanks to gold value already, that's already potentially doubling your chances! That's enough.
RP only starts at 30 if you're a coward.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
I had written out a long post discussing exactly what Xerah mentions here, but in fewer words. I agree 100% with this stance, and think the rambling on discord and other environments are exaggerated within an echo chamber. Despite these few-and-far-between "rush to 26" characters, their efforts do not harm your attempts at securing a reward.
The benefit of this system is transparency. There is no fudging the dice or handing out rewards to players the DMs might like. It's just RNG.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
Emotionaloverload wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:08 amI truly don't believe that there should be a time limit like this on a character for reward. A RL year is a -very- long time. Characters can be played for a few months and still make an impact. A character doesn't have to be involved in large factions, DM events or rl years of rp to contribute to the server.Glowing Mushroom wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:35 am
Being guaranteed a 5% would mean you consistently play a well-portrayed character with strong RP for a RL year at least.
Correct, and this is precisely why the system would track multiple values automatically, and could have manually inputed values as boosters. It could be longer than a year, or much shorter! Time is not the only factor at play here. All these variables are subject to change and simply brainstormed. But I absolutely understand that there's no easy answer, but a complex system would be necessary to fulfill that.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
RP only starts at 30 if you're a coward.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
My vote went to the Partially Automated, Partially Manual option. Not because I believe it is the most preferable, but because I believe it is the most doable whilst involving change in the process (my personal preference would go to full manual, but it would be an overwhelming about of work for the staff!).
That said: if an award change may be coming (as Xerah implies), I am keen to see how that vision develops before pressing for further changes.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
A lot of people, in fact I would argue most people, but not necessarily strictly to grind for awards.
Levelling on Arelith is an interesting and enjoyable experience for new players (usually) who aren't familiar with all the locations; they can poke around, explore, take their time.
But a lot of the dungeons, especially lower level ones, lose a lot of their charm pretty quickly - after a few years or a decade of making and playing new characters, the pre-epic grind just becomes a slog that you just kind of want to get through, since the vast majority of impactful narrative driven gameplay comes in at the end of epic levels (and yes, yes it does, regardless of whatever opinion people want to share on the matter - the days when a plucky lowbie can shit-talk or schmooze their way into a position of genuine authority and administrative oomph, outside of being assigned to deal with tedious busywork, have looooooong past on Arelith.)
And the epic level grind can be even more of a pain in the Snuggybear, since there's only a handful of locations that are actually efficient sources of experience (writs should just be extended to 30 already, imo, since they already can take you to 26 and a chance to roll for a Major; it might get people out of the Orclands, lol.) Most people who have been around on the server for a minute kind of just want to get to 30 and be done with the tedium of grinding, so they can focus on just having to play their character without that tax on their playtime.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
You are rewarded for stellar RP with RPR and the appreciation of a grateful community. You are rewarded for rolling characters with an Epic Sacrifice roll. Two different things, or so it should be in my opinion.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
I don't think anyone disagrees with the sentiment that it'd be nice if the same folks with well-RP'd characters were more likely to play those sorts of high impact reward characters (at least, from the perspective of people who have to interact with them!). But I'm yet to see any system that satisfies me that could quantify that in a way that wasn't likely to lead to more division and unhappiness in the community. Cue the;
'The DM team is biased against my application.'
'So-and-so plays on a more active timezone, so can collect an unfair amount of endorsement tokens.'
'Other players are intentionally holding back my application by not recommending me, because I'm playing (insert reason here).'
The blind eye of RNG knows no favour and this, I think, is as it should be. Everyone knows you've got the same chance to play your super-cool, years-hidden concept, regardless of your perceptions of server staff at the time, other players, timezones, and (as Curve said!) perceived ability. Everyone gets the same chance to have their fun, which I think is an important thing in any sort of community.
Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
it's very possible that just as many people don't appreciate your rp, but they're not in your echo chamber so you won't hear it. this essentially suggests making 5%'s a matter of popularity contests.
having a big faction, saying a lot of lines, and creating a lot of items are all things that are easily gamed, and quantity does not mean quality. it's really not a step up.
5%'s need to remain as RNG as possible.
also, the server's already dangerously leaning towards becoming a zoo already. we don't need even more majors around.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?
5% should be that, 5%. Nothing in D&D in any version or variant should ever be by demand, everything is literally built upon the roll of a die. Everything has luck built into it, and you should not be able to guarentee a result, even if it's something you really, really want.
There are many reasons that I won't list out why I think the 5% system is not the worst thing in the world, but suffice it to say, there are larger problems with the community at large and the rewards systems are not the place to focus attentions at this time to improve the server.