Arelith

Yeah, I'm 100% against that, and part of the reason I enjoy Arelith so much is I feel DM favoritism -doesn't- afflict a majority of the aspects of the game. To me, RPR is more of a "thanks". A nice thing to have, but not a requirement of game systems and I am HAPPY they removed RPR requirements from a majority of things.

Xerah wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:08 pm

Lunargent wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:53 pm I wholeheartedly disagree. Before the 'automation' of rolling/the reward system, 5% rolls were controlled by Admins and (mysteriously!) only people the Admins liked actually got the rolls. It eventually came to light that certain people paid for them in large server donations. This is actually the origin of the Iron Citadel guildhouse in the Abyss, it was essentially bought by Keth Naburis. It isn't a 'what if'. It happened. Adding DM oversight to the system in any way would just be repeating the mistakes of the past. Let's keep things fair and pseudorandom.

I still highly disagree. One case that happened 5 (10?) years ago doesn't prove that the system cannot work. I doubt the same team is in charge of that.

It is only one example of what was going on, but it wasn't the only instance of this happening. I give you the "golden age" of Arelith, everybody. And, no, the same team is not in charge of it. Things are much better now, I agree; however, there is no guarantee that good people will be in charge forever, and that's why true fairness is important, because (pseudo)randomness treats you the exact same as everyone else, no matter who likes you and who doesn't. And also, not speaking in the Thane's case or yours, but playtime doesn't always equal 'impactfulness' or whatever metric you're using. When I came back to the server I rolled Valiney and Jhenneth, two characters who were planetouched (which is now a 5%) and were over 8 years old. I had a lot of fun playing them when I did but I rolled them in the blink of an eye because... they were old, and it was time for something new. The reward for playing them for so long was.. playing them. Enjoying the roleplay I had and the friends I made on the way. I can't speak for littlefellow but I imagine he felt similarly.

The reward for roleplay is roleplay. Anything else is just a second cherry on top of an already delicious sundae.

Lunargent wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:38 pm

Xerah wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:08 pm

Lunargent wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:53 pm I wholeheartedly disagree. Before the 'automation' of rolling/the reward system, 5% rolls were controlled by Admins and (mysteriously!) only people the Admins liked actually got the rolls. It eventually came to light that certain people paid for them in large server donations. This is actually the origin of the Iron Citadel guildhouse in the Abyss, it was essentially bought by Keth Naburis. It isn't a 'what if'. It happened. Adding DM oversight to the system in any way would just be repeating the mistakes of the past. Let's keep things fair and pseudorandom.

I still highly disagree. One case that happened 5 (10?) years ago doesn't prove that the system cannot work. I doubt the same team is in charge of that.

It is only one example of what was going on, but it wasn't the only instance of this happening. I give you the "golden age" of Arelith, everybody. And, no, the same team is not in charge of it. Things are much better now, I agree; however, there is no guarantee that good people will be in charge forever, and that's why true fairness is important, because (pseudo)randomness treats you the exact same as everyone else, no matter who likes you and who doesn't. And also, not speaking in the Thane's case or yours, but playtime doesn't always equal 'impactfulness' or whatever metric you're using. When I came back to the server I rolled Valiney and Jhenneth, two characters who were planetouched (which is now a 5%) and were over 8 years old. I had a lot of fun playing them when I did but I rolled them in the blink of an eye because... they were old, and it was time for something new. The reward for playing them for so long was.. playing them. Enjoying the roleplay I had and the friends I made on the way. I can't speak for littlefellow but I imagine he felt similarly.

The reward for roleplay is roleplay. Anything else is just a second cherry on top of an already delicious sundae.

This 1000 times over.

Xerah wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:08 pm I still highly disagree. One case that happened 5 (10?) years ago doesn't prove that the system cannot work. I doubt the same team is in charge of that.

I ran/built/DMed on a server off and on for 14 years (it's still active) that does not allow progression past level 20 except by token from a DM. Are their claims of favoritism? Of course. However, people only see part of the picture and make assumptions about the rest. It was clearly laid out what DMs were looking for, so we favoured people that engaged in that type of play style (hint, it's no different than what gets you high RPR here). It's still a successful PW after all this time (granted with less population than Arelith).

For me, it feels bad rolling a long term character and getting a normal reward. A character that was highly involved in the server and the setting. For example, wouldn't it be lame if Thane Ghest rolled and got a normal reward after all that time (maybe he did, I don't know)? Then Gritty the Ginder makes a goblin and rolls @26 in 18h and gets a major reward just seems extra lame.

It wasn't a single case, though, that's the thing; DM favoritism was endemic, and honestly probably still is to a degree - that's not a knock on the current DMs/Devs, but rather just an acknowledgement that they're human, will have biases, and those biases will affect their behavior.

Even beyond issues of favoritism, a lot of this is subjective; DMs are going to disagree on how much "value" a character contributed to the server.

If you want to counteract Gritty the Grinder types, put some sort of time played cap on it so that you have to have generally Existed for a couple of months before you can get a 5% - that's not a perfect answer, but it's better than just hoping the DMs come to the right decision.


Edit:

Lunargent wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:38 pm
The reward for roleplay is roleplay. Anything else is just a second cherry on top of an already delicious sundae.

Also, this. The reward for playing a Thane Ghestaldt type is playing a cool dwarf thane. The 5% system, from what devs have said in the past, isn't meant to be a reward for playing a cool character, it's an encouragement to get rid of old characters, and have some change on the server, because otherwise people hold on to the same characters for fifteen stagnant years and everything's boring and same-y.

Kalopsia wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:23 pm The more I think about it, the more I wonder if an award system can even cater to all kinds of players simultaneously.

It can't. We're just looking for the best compromise.

DM Avalon Soul wrote: Wed Nov 28, 2018 10:38 pm Though to some degree if you are taking a character to the point of level thirty (30) and have played them for an extended enough period of time, would you not have either by nescessity or design of character done at least one of those to some degree?

I've played at least four characters to level 30 that never went beyond 200k. I have another that currently sits on 10k at level 21. And it's not even something I would try to "fix", because I don't care, and the characters IC wouldn't, either.

Halibutthead wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 12:01 am Well, if we added other ways and increased the maximum, do you think this would solve your (or [the], if you prefer, I'm just posing a question) problem, or just shift it, since you would still get a bonus for being rich?

And if we added another way and kept the maximum, wouldnt that just open the door to unsolving the original problem?

I think that offering alternative ways to get better chances for a reward should be opened. That's the main point I'm making. I didn't make the thread to suggest any solutions, as I'm currently blank on how to find a good approach. I rather wanted to inspire a discussion and see where it goes.

Circlegrinding for GP or resources just isn't appealing to me, and I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels that way. It's my opinion that the chance of playing something "special" shouldn't be decided by how much time you put into these things that are really secondary to a sufficient number of people for me to make this statement.

Out of the two vague approaches you mention, I think the first one is more sensible.

Kalopsia wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 1:03 am I could imagine this bonus being tied to the actual play time of a character.

Add an activity counter for every character. Every non-afk server tick increases the counter by 1. Every 500 ticks add +1% chance for a major award. This bonus percentage could even remain unlimited, in which case 42500 ticks - roughly 4250 hours of play time - and 1,000,000gp would equal a 100% chance for a major award.

Additionally, the current counter status could possibly be displayed with the first usage of -delete_character, as well as a command like: -delete_character ?

The server can already recognize afk players, so all this could probably be scripted with a rather small time investment.

Cool to see a concrete suggestion!

DM GrumpyCat wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 6:06 pm Here is a crazy idea!

How about at character creation, put in a new Mark of Destiny type item. Maybe call it 'Mark of Rebirth' or something. This can be taken by anyone with an rpr of 20 or more*
Like the Mark of Dispair, this mark gives no extra ticks, and after a certain amount of deaths (e.g. 10) your character is perminently deleted.
However, when this happens, if your character is level 26+ they get an extra percentage to their roll.


* RPR 10's can apply for it too from Dms, but must do so early on in creation. The reason for this is soley to ensure that new players don't take it by mistake and get disenheartened.

Actually I kind of like this. Then again even if I mostly play MoDs, I figure many people don't.

The reason why I like it is that it's in the spirit of the original idea of the reward system (incentivising deleting and rolling up new characters), and still gives people the means to play whatever concept they enjoy.

dominantdrowess wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 6:39 pm I think that encourages the grind mentality and throw away characters rather than helping the community or economy Grumpy cat.

I don't know why the above mentioned approach should do any worse in terms of grind mentality than "grind a million dollars (or resources) and double your chances at a reward yo".

Hunter548 wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:58 pm
Edit:

Lunargent wrote: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:38 pm
The reward for roleplay is roleplay. Anything else is just a second cherry on top of an already delicious sundae.

Also, this. The reward for playing a Thane Ghestaldt type is playing a cool dwarf thane. The 5% system, from what devs have said in the past, isn't meant to be a reward for playing a cool character, it's an encouragement to get rid of old characters, and have some change on the server, because otherwise people hold on to the same characters for fifteen stagnant years and everything's boring and same-y.

I don't think anyone said anything against the reward system per se. This is just about the way the system to increase your chances currently favours grinding a lot, when "adventures" are just one puzzle piece of this game. One puzzle piece that some people don't have a lot of love for.

The implication of the statement rubs me the wrong way, too.
So, motivating a lot of people, creating a dynamic, and being an exemplary writer should be its own reward, while investing time into silently clicking through the same dungeons again and again will enable to you to get better chances at playing something "special"? That's where I disagree.


Personally I never experienced any supposed "DM favouritism" people keep bringing up to affect me in a bad way. The average player doesn't pay for this game. The admins don't get paid. They can do whatever they want, and if that's what they want to do, okay. We're all here because we want to be here.

Irongron and the others are good people whose judgment I trust when it comes to the server. If they would favour someone in some way, I wouldn't even care. I've had a lot of good times on the server without any special DM attention.

Obviously, this is a question of degree, either way.

i believe the 5% roll system was originally intended to give incentive to deleting high level characters who are at the end of their story, and making room for new characters to fill the voids. the fact that we now have a reasonable demographic that "grinds" for these rolls, means arelith's culture has changed to the point that this feature can no longer perform its intended function. i blame that on
two things: firstly, how easy it is to get to max level due to changes in xp, power creep, and (jeez, can they get any more annoying) writs. and secondly, actual, big mechanical advantages that were applied when the system was automated.

i don't think we can fix it. we've grown too large, and evolved as a community. but i've been wrong before.

i really like grumpcat's idea, but dominantdrowess makes a good point against it (reread the first part, though. i still like the idea).

(edit: also, i am avoiding the topic of "dm favoritism" on purpose. i've seen it. it has existed. we have acknowledged it, now let's move on to the topic instead of devolving this thread into a flame war).

I don't think it's a matter of degree.

I think it's a matter of how much the population is willing to tolerate before there's a tipping point, and there are better places to spend that capital than in a system that is not currently -broken- to a majority of the population and I believe is one of the better selling points of the server in general.

Currently? It does its job by allowing us some fantasy elements ... without swimming in it, but I think it could be put to better use by helping curb some out of control elements of the economy that I believe are left over from the old artifact days.