Race Rotations

[The GrumpyCat]

Many of the characters I've interacted with take a stance in RP against wealth and against gold.

I've never heard of someone who would RP against wealth and against gold (do they just dump it in the garbage?), but I guess it's possible. The big reason this exists is so people don't pass their gold to someone else before rolling.

I've personally rolled like 6 characters above 21, which gave me 2 greater and 4 normals, but maybe half had over a million gold.

There are characters in the Grove who want nothing to do with gold. They hover around 20k in their bank.

Either way, grinding for gold shouldn't be a requirement for rewards that have to do with RP, though I certainly understand the ideal behind wanting to prevent the gold from getting transferred around.

I mean, to be fair it isn't a 'requirement' it just increases your chances.

Not saying your other points aren't valid. I agree that rp needs to come into it more. But again, gold isn't /neccesary/ it just helps a bit.

[Glowing Mushroom]

I've never heard of someone who would RP against wealth and against gold (do they just dump it in the garbage?), but I guess it's possible. The big reason this exists is so people don't pass their gold to someone else before rolling.

I've personally rolled like 6 characters above 21, which gave me 2 greater and 4 normals, but maybe half had over a million gold.

There are characters in the Grove who want nothing to do with gold. They hover around 20k in their bank.

Either way, grinding for gold shouldn't be a requirement for rewards that have to do with RP, though I certainly understand the ideal behind wanting to prevent the gold from getting transferred around.

I mean, to be fair it isn't a 'requirement' it just increases your chances.

Not saying your other points aren't valid. I agree that rp needs to come into it more. But again, gold isn't /neccesary/ it just helps a bit.

Yeah I definitely don't think it should be eliminated as a boosting factor. But a more hands-on approach to evaluating RP and systems to look at factions and time-played is long overdo! Something that could, eventually, guarantee a Major and all awards beneath it. I believe that this would not only remove the risk of RPers rolling a great character and getting a Normal, but it would actively encourage people to RP more, RP better, and then when the time comes - Allow their character to move on, so others can step in.

[WanderingPoet]

It'd be nice if instead of XP at the end of events DMs could give RP tokens to players as well. That way a DM could see players RPing really well and give them a little nudge, in an event or just watching some great RP. Maybe -recommend could tie into that too; both limited to once/RL month. Long term characters then would accrue more of the tokens and by virtue get higher chance at better awards - but only if they're RPing well. So no one could stuff a character into a vault for two years and get freebies.

I'm sure we've all seen the characters that have existed and been a major player on the server for RL years that roll and then are left with a normal to show for it. Yeah there are some players/characters that get stagnant and it'd be good if they moved on but often those same characters made great RP for years before stagnancy. It can be hard to let a character go that you've spent thousands of hours playing knowing that someone that got to 26 in 2 weeks (doable relatively easily these days) has been able to get several major awards in that time frame.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

There are characters in the Grove who want nothing to do with gold. They hover around 20k in their bank.

Either way, grinding for gold shouldn't be a requirement for rewards that have to do with RP, though I certainly understand the ideal behind wanting to prevent the gold from getting transferred around.

I mean, to be fair it isn't a 'requirement' it just increases your chances.

Not saying your other points aren't valid. I agree that rp needs to come into it more. But again, gold isn't /neccesary/ it just helps a bit.

Yeah I definitely don't think it should be eliminated as a boosting factor. But a more hands-on approach to evaluating RP and systems to look at factions and time-played is long overdo! Something that could, eventually, guarantee a Major and all awards beneath it. I believe that this would not only remove the risk of RPers rolling a great character and getting a Normal, but it would actively encourage people to RP more, RP better, and then when the time comes - Allow their character to move on, so others can step in.

A more "hands on approach" can create similar problems that gating things behind a RP rating does.

I'm still for the, repeatively shut downed suggestion, time played boosting approach as its not hard to catch people who are clocking time afk. The more they do it, the more obvious it is.

Catching people that go above and beyond clocking time, but not actually playing the game is would be easier than hands on fairly reviewing everyone's RP.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

What we need is a third mark, a mark of super hero gamesmanship. An option when you level up your character to 30 for the first time to choose it, 5 more deaths means you auto roll and get a reward plus one. So if you got a Normal reward, you get a greater reward instead. Maybe it even gives an extra +2 to any stat to make it really juicy. This idea wouldn't solve every problem, but i think it would help with a few regarding characters living well past their story lines and pvp, particularly a increased healthy fear and respect for death on the server.

[Nitro]

What we need is a third mark, a mark of super hero gamesmanship. An option when you level up your character to 30 for the first time to choose it, 5 more deaths means you auto roll and get a reward plus one. So if you got a Normal reward, you get a greater reward instead. Maybe it even gives an extra +2 to any stat to make it really juicy. This idea wouldn't solve every problem, but i think it would help with a few regarding characters living well past their story lines and pvp, particularly a increased healthy fear and respect for death on the server.

That would be really easy to game. Just select it, get a char to 30 and die 5 times. Even if it was PvP only I have no doubt people would manage to get themselves killed 5 times in a row in a very short time.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

What we need is a third mark, a mark of super hero gamesmanship. An option when you level up your character to 30 for the first time to choose it, 5 more deaths means you auto roll and get a reward plus one. So if you got a Normal reward, you get a greater reward instead. Maybe it even gives an extra +2 to any stat to make it really juicy. This idea wouldn't solve every problem, but i think it would help with a few regarding characters living well past their story lines and pvp, particularly a increased healthy fear and respect for death on the server.

That would be really easy to game. Just select it, get a char to 30 and die 5 times. Even if it was PvP only I have no doubt people would manage to get themselves killed 5 times in a row in a very short time.

If that's the worst feedback on my suggestion I will take it, since really people are going to grind for rewards either way and while I do personally think that should be looked at the solution is going to be different then the solution to incentivize people to role, since they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Not to mention I think a reward for taking it for the current character as well will make it so people will want to do it. I mean, who doesn't want an extra +2 strength for free?

All that being said, I doubt it will be the worst feedback on my suggestion, but it just popped in my head and sounded good so I tossed it out there.

[Glowing Mushroom]

I mean, to be fair it isn't a 'requirement' it just increases your chances.

Not saying your other points aren't valid. I agree that rp needs to come into it more. But again, gold isn't /neccesary/ it just helps a bit.

Yeah I definitely don't think it should be eliminated as a boosting factor. But a more hands-on approach to evaluating RP and systems to look at factions and time-played is long overdo! Something that could, eventually, guarantee a Major and all awards beneath it. I believe that this would not only remove the risk of RPers rolling a great character and getting a Normal, but it would actively encourage people to RP more, RP better, and then when the time comes - Allow their character to move on, so others can step in.

A more "hands on approach" can create similar problems that gating things behind a RP rating does.

I'm still for the, repeatively shut downed suggestion, time played boosting approach as its not hard to catch people who are clocking time afk. The more they do it, the more obvious it is.

Catching people that go above and beyond clocking time, but not actually playing the game is would be easier than hands on fairly reviewing everyone's RP.

There isn't a whole lot that RPR "gates", and the things that it does are put there for a reason. And those are things that also require a fully hands-on approach with applications for the RP.

Which is exactly my point. The Award system should look at time played, yes, and like you said it would be easy to figure out who just loiters around trying to accrue time. But things like watching interactions in-game, following stories, viewing player Kudos on the forums and in-game recommendations, receiving recommendations on the forums VIA tells from players, tracking active Factions which actually participate in the world, and evaluating all of this RP, should be at the core of how the Award system works. And for the most part, I'd like to believe the aforementioned activities are already monitored. That's why there's a DM Team after all.

With the help of some automation, these are the types of things that should make up the vast majority of how Rewards are distributed. I have seen players RP who, in my opinion, 100% deserve a Major Award. And they should be guaranteed that because of the RP they've created and contributed to the world. And it's a shame that they have to risk getting a Normal award after all that time, when powergrinders can get what they want in a matter of weeks by burning through enough rolled characters.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Yeah I definitely don't think it should be eliminated as a boosting factor. But a more hands-on approach to evaluating RP and systems to look at factions and time-played is long overdo! Something that could, eventually, guarantee a Major and all awards beneath it. I believe that this would not only remove the risk of RPers rolling a great character and getting a Normal, but it would actively encourage people to RP more, RP better, and then when the time comes - Allow their character to move on, so others can step in.

A more "hands on approach" can create similar problems that gating things behind a RP rating does.

I'm still for the, repeatively shut downed suggestion, time played boosting approach as its not hard to catch people who are clocking time afk. The more they do it, the more obvious it is.

Catching people that go above and beyond clocking time, but not actually playing the game is would be easier than hands on fairly reviewing everyone's RP.

There isn't a whole lot that RPR "gates", and the things that it does are put there for a reason. And those are things that also require a fully hands-on approach with applications for the RP.

Which is exactly my point. The Award system should look at time played, yes, and like you said it would be easy to figure out who just loiters around trying to accrue time. But things like watching interactions in-game, following stories, viewing player Kudos on the forums and in-game recommendations, receiving recommendations on the forums VIA tells from players, tracking active Factions which actually participate in the world, and evaluating all of this RP, should be at the core of how the Award system works. And for the most part, I'd like to believe the aforementioned activities are already monitored. That's why there's a DM Team after all.

With the help of some automation, these are the types of things that should make up the vast majority of how Rewards are distributed. I have seen players RP who, in my opinion, 100% deserve a Major Award. And they should be guaranteed that because of the RP they've created and contributed to the world. And it's a shame that they have to risk getting a Normal award after all that time, when powergrinders can get what they want in a matter of weeks by burning through enough rolled characters.

Before the automated system and applications it was all rpr locked and 5 % did things like dragons. It caused issues before the player base of EE. You can be one if said great roers dor months and still not get noticed for a 20 rpr these days and everything was 30 rp locked back then

[The GrumpyCat]

Ultimatly the 'how to get awards' goes into two catagories.

1) Pure mechanics (e.g. time played. things done, amount of words said, ect)
2) Human Judgement (RPR ratings, individual judgements by DMs.

Pure Mechanids:
Positives Include -
*Entirely Unbiased
*No chance of being 'missed out'
*Easy to understand and judge.

Negatives Include
*Can be easily 'gamed'
*Can mechanics ever really be a 'perfect' judge of rp?

Human Judgement
Positives Includ:
*Flexibility
*A generally better 'yardstick' for RP quality.
*Harder to 'game.'

Negatives include:
*Can be biased
*Players can be missed out due to time zones/bad luck.
*More obtuse in judgement.

A system that relies too much on Human Judgement runs the risk of penalizing players who may be very good but are just on at the wrong times.

A system that relies entirely on mechanics doesn't really reward good rp, just following certain mechanics.

The system we have in mind (and it's still a way away yet) takes both of these things into consideration.

The basic thrust being that yes- you can get your epic award purely by following the 'mechanical' options, but 'good roleplay' - as judged by the DMs (one way or another) will bring benefits also.

[Drowble Oh Seven]

Have to say, I fall really hard on the pure mechanics side of the argument. I don't doubt the capability of the team to reward good roleplay; but the inevitable, very loud, unceasing, bias accusations are never fun for anyone involved. Appreciate the clarity provided by these posts, though, as far as intent goes!

[Hazard]

I'm pretty against any 'hands on approach' when compared to automated.

If I take my entire time played here and look at the amount of DM events I've been involved in (even as just a background character/by stander) it comes to be something like 0.5 DM events every 2 years. I have looooong playtimes, usually putting aside entire days and nights to binge my favourite hobby.

A system like that would totally miss me, I'm sure of it. I'm practically non-existent!
I need an automated system, or I'd just never be able to participate in reward races. Ever.

[Jagel]

The hands on approach right now is limited to a) reviewing applications where these are required b) reacting if someone is a detriment to the server (cute/comedic minotaur or whatever). This is probably a good thing.

I like Irongron’s philosophy that reward races should not be mechanically s-tier but interesting rp-wise

[The GrumpyCat]

If we do it by a pure mechanical approach then we don't get people who are the good roleplayers, who can take these concepts and treat t hem well, getting them. We get the people who are good at the Mechanical Thing getting them.

As is we don't neccesarly get good roleplayers getting the 5% rolls, we get those who are good at grinding characters up to 26 and rolling them.

If we it purely by say, time spent online - we get people who can devote hours of their RL to it, but not casual players.

IF we do it by amount of lines 'spoken' then at best we get fast typers, at worst we get people who can macro some llines over and over again.

And so on.

And if we did it purely by DM fiat (which rpr does partly come under) then yeah, you're right. Some folk would entirely miss out.

So under the system we're going to bring in - yes, some people may get their nifty 5% sooner than you. But the mechanical aspect means you'll still get yours eventually. And if you try hard to roleplay well, it may happen sooner rather than later.

[monkeywithstick]

Out of curiosity Grumpy, would that potentially allow the team to re-enable custom 5%s or is that just too much of a Dev time sink to even consider?

The volume of them at any time could presumably be more controlled if the prevalence weren't mostly a function of the people with the time and inclination to repeatedly grind and roll.

[Jagel]

I’d personally like more interesting races gated behind applications.

I can’t see individual custom coming back simply because of the amount of players

[The GrumpyCat]

I don't see that as returning any time soon to be honest. But I hope that in the future we'll be able to widen the possiblities of awards so that it would cover most of what we'd allow anyway.

[Deryliss]

I've fairly much resigned myself to never playing a 5% race. The chance is just too small for how much I play and how many characters I roll (not many). I don't like the idea of constantly rolling -3 ECL totem druids just for rolling them, as it prevents me from even taking any RP I do with them seriously.

What's funny about this is that it's had an effect on how I view other players in non-standard races, especially 5% ones. I always assume they got it by crunching characters repeatedly and have the RP engagement of a wet potato, and that assumption is often right.

The player who introduced me to Arelith has been trying to get a 5% reward for years. He has over 80 active characters and he will rotate through many of them each day doing circle grinds and writs. Tymora has not blessed him with a 5% yet despite several dozens of characters rolled, and it's been so long that all of the 5% rewards he wanted have since been rotated out.

While I understand the current system may be the best we can do, it's still a bummer.

[Lexx]

I feel personally a human review for rewards in general is a terrible idea. It's easily going to result in people being missed out due to timezones. What of all the people who play in the off hours when most DMs are away. out of game or busy?

The automated system isn't perfect. But instead of scrapping it as suggested it can be iterated on/improved. The last thing people need is gating all rewards behind human review. Especially the workload this would generate for an already worked hard and busy volunteer DM team. We can't expect the DMs to police that constantly.

As far as I was also lead to believe. Reward options are also to encourage selection of some races over others over raw mechanic advantages ranking. If there's too much of 1 race as we've seen before. Races can be shifted up and down tiers or removed entirely as needed.

[Glowing Mushroom]

Ultimatly the 'how to get awards' goes into two catagories.

1) Pure mechanics (e.g. time played. things done, amount of words said, ect)
2) Human Judgement (RPR ratings, individual judgements by DMs.

Pure Mechanids:
Positives Include -
*Entirely Unbiased
*No chance of being 'missed out'
*Easy to understand and judge.

Negatives Include
*Can be easily 'gamed'
*Can mechanics ever really be a 'perfect' judge of rp?

Human Judgement
Positives Includ:
*Flexibility
*A generally better 'yardstick' for RP quality.
*Harder to 'game.'

Negatives include:
*Can be biased
*Players can be missed out due to time zones/bad luck.
*More obtuse in judgement.

A system that relies too much on Human Judgement runs the risk of penalizing players who may be very good but are just on at the wrong times.

A system that relies entirely on mechanics doesn't really reward good rp, just following certain mechanics.

The system we have in mind (and it's still a way away yet) takes both of these things into consideration.

The basic thrust being that yes- you can get your epic award purely by following the 'mechanical' options, but 'good roleplay' - as judged by the DMs (one way or another) will bring benefits also.

Exactly. It should be both. I'm all for automated systems, I'm just saying it needs more hands on values. That's what Dungeon Masters are for! All of my aforementioned points about a system tracking IG mechanics in addition to the occasional boost from a DM might put some people ahead, but that's just how it works. And it doesn't mean everyone else won't get their 5% too, they will so long as they participate. But the people who do get those boosts deserve them, so it would only make sense for them to get there a bit quicker.

[TooManyPotatoes]

What's funny about this is that it's had an effect on how I view other players in non-standard races, especially 5% ones. I always assume they got it by crunching characters repeatedly and have the RP engagement of a wet potato, and that assumption is often right.

This is shockingly accurate.

I never really cared about having a 5% race, but with this realisation, now i care even less!

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I personally think this thread should focus on how to get people to roll more often, and leave the whole grinding for rewards part to the side for now. That's for the dms to sort out, if they decide to sort it out at all. The idea of judging others who have 5% not only is a bad way to play the game for your own health and well being, it can also be horribly inaccurate which ultimately does nothing but make you look like a jack Snuggybear based on your assumptions.

[Deryliss]

I personally think this thread should focus on how to get people to roll more often, and leave the whole grinding for rewards part to the side for now. That's for the dms to sort out, if they decide to sort it out at all. The idea of judging others who have 5% not only is a bad way to play the game for your own health and well being, it can also be horribly inaccurate which ultimately does nothing but make you look like a jack Snuggybear based on your assumptions.

Fair. Perhaps I overshared with my personal feelings on this matter.

How do you propose we 'get people to roll more often' in such a way that it helps those who currently don't roll very much, while not insanely benefiting those who currently chain-roll ECL -3 characters with minor awards and mark of humility without contributing one iota to the RP landscape?

[Preytoria]

If I were to replace the automated system with a new one, it would try to touch on the following points.

1) An increasing % chance for 'better' rewards based upon receiving minors or normals.
2) Limit how many rolls an account can make per real life month as to prevent turbo character-grinding.
3) Rotate out reward races/classes/what-have-yous ever half year. This can be used to ensure certain races still feel rare.
4) Remove vampires and grandfather all existing vampires into something in the realm of permissible.

But I think something like this would satisfy a lot of people. It might even curb the character grinder. Granted, this also sounds like something that would be a nightmare for people to implement. I would definitely be wary of any non-automated solution based solely upon the fact that it would tax dms even further. Additionally, custom 5% characters were a bit before my time but what I hear of them were more or less people trying to ask for really broken characters.

[Lexx]

If I were to replace the automated system with a new one, it would try to touch on the following points.

1) An increasing % chance for 'better' rewards based upon receiving minors or normals.
2) Limit how many rolls an account can make per real life month as to prevent turbo character-grinding.
3) Rotate out reward races/classes/what-have-yous ever half year. This can be used to ensure certain races still feel rare.
4) Remove vampires and grandfather all existing vampires into something in the realm of permissible.

But I think something like this would satisfy a lot of people. It might even curb the character grinder. Granted, this also sounds like something that would be a nightmare for people to implement. I would definitely be wary of any non-automated solution based solely upon the fact that it would tax dms even further. Additionally, custom 5% characters were a bit before my time but what I hear of them were more or less people trying to ask for really broken characters.

Something to touch upon with the customs. Most custom 5%s never saw use past the first month or two. Either deleted or languishing in certain players vaults to this day. So even whilst they were attainable they never really were endemic. Or even lasted any length of time, those that did show up. Which honestly is a shame given the work Spyre must have put work into to make happen.