Roleplay! (with incentives)

[Mithradates]

So, I have been playing on Arelith for many many moons. Something that has been griped about when I started and is talked about often now is that there is little to no mechanical incentive for players to engage in Roleplay. I mean, other than the joy of rping its self. Because Rp is what makes the server what it is, born from the fact that adding to and interacting with the beautiful world around you is encouraged, it's always struck me as a good idea to reward characters for just that. I know, I know, we have the RPR system in place to do this, basically-- but 10 - 40 exp points per 6 minutes doesn't add up to much and doesn't assist you much at all towards gaining levels unless you're spending innumerable hours online. I used to do this, and loved it, but I'm an adult now as opposed to when I bean playing on Arelith. F@rk, what busy lives adults have.

I don't know if this idea is doable in coding, but I have always thought an excellent system would be to give experience to characters based on how much they emote and have dialogue. This is the way in which we interact with the island and make it such a rich and diverse place. I'm not talking about the amount of experience you would get for monster kills, but it would hopefully give non-adventuring types a way of gaining more experience. Perhaps 2 xp for every 10 - 20 lines of dialogue and emotes? I'm sure that a logical and fair amount could be decided on, but essentially smaller amounts that would mostly be beneficial to those who RP more than adventure. Herein promoting more people to interact with each other and the world around them, adding the the immersion (and being rewarded too!).

[Mithreas]

I like the way you're thinking, but you're falling into a common trap.

There's a saying in management circles - what gets measured gets done.

You're trying to measure roleplay, but you're measuring it via lines of text spoken. I can guarantee that if we introduce this system, we'll have people sitting in the corner speaking one letter dialogs to themselves. Or if we add a minimum length, then min-length dialogs to themselves. We could anticipate that by rate-limiting it... at which point you're getting close to re-inventing RPR.

The Arelith ideal is for people to RP -and- adventure, preferably at the same time. It's not one or the other. Those who advance quickest in levels will be those who follow this ideal. Sure, Arelith technically supports characters who only RP (I've played some) or who only adventure (I'm less keen on these) but the sweet spot is when you do both, and benefit both from RPR and from hunting xp.