Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems

[Roz]

@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

When I lay out the math for a system, it's not with the intention of telling anyone they're playing the game wrong, it's with the intent of allowing them to make informed decisions and provide the foundation I make conclusions from. If someone doesn't want to know how the systems work, then a systems discussion thread is probably not the best thread for them to be in, maybe we can make a no-spoilers version of the thread for people who don't want to know, or maybe I should start putting the math behind spoiler tags.

I think that's a bit unnecessary (and also kind of condescending). And, again, kind of missing the point I was trying to make. People aren't being spoiled by math, and I don't think they need to be PROTECTED FROM IT or something. You don't need to put your stuff behind NSFW TAGS. Or, like, a single link.

Again, my point is that when people are coming into a discussion from the perspective of someone who is interested in using systems but who has some gut feelings about how they play out and how that makes them more or less likely to use a given system, drowning them with the mathematical proof that their feelings are wrong -- doesn't usually help. Pointing out that there have been recent revisions to the system can surely be relevant. People's gut reactions to systems are indeed often not accurate to the numbers, because no system survives first contact with players. Sometimes those gut reactions are inaccurate enough to say "sorry, can't help there," because sometimes people have unreasonable expectations about what they should get out of something. (Those sorts of feelings you especially can't math away.) But, frankly, throwing math equations around is a good way to get a fair number of people to skip over text. (Pax's guide she's been drafting for the magic system deals with this in an interesting way: for each section that she goes through the system from a usability standpoint, she has a mini-section at the end detailing the math involved. At the start of the guide it basically says "I'll include the math at the end of each section for people who are definitely gonna want to dig through it, so please skip over if you don't care about that stuff."

[Sparks]

@roz said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@sparks I think that uncoupling -- or reducing -- the connection between house prestige and house income would go a long way as a stopgap. I think that's a really huge area where it kind of comes down to people feeling a lot of pressure, and I think it's a really big area in which the "prestige is a minigame" intent can fail. (Then again, the potential pitfall of that is then it becomes -- what value is social stuff bringing the house at all to encourage houses to support their social PC projects?)

This is something I've already discussed with Apos. I think we're going to integrate it in dominion down the road, rather than trying to graft it into the current bits of dominion.

So instead of affecting income, having someone with high prestige as a sort of 'spin doctor' to assist with any dominion rolls will lower the difficulty of dominion rolls by an amount based on their prestige. Thus making having a social maven in your family—or hiring a Whisper—still have a lot of value, but hardly something that should feel "required".

[Groth]

@roz
The feelings people have about a system are useful in all sorts of ways, they tell you a lot about how the system is perceived and used and where there might exist clashes between design intent and how things work out in practise.

I also agree that when it comes to guide writing, you want the math and figures in the appendix. It's also something that makes writing a good guide for things like Work and Modeling somewhat hard since you want something that you can point people new to the game to without overwhelming them.

That said if someone makes a factually incorrect statement at me, I'm going to correct them with math and it will be in spoiler tags from now on so those who think working things out is the devil don't need to snark all over the thread.

[Roz]

@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

That said if someone makes a factually incorrect statement at me, I'm going to correct them with math and it will be in spoiler tags from now on so those who think working things out is the devil don't need to snark all over the thread.

Dude, come on.

[Ganymede]

@roz

At some point, the fellow using math and numbers to demonstrate something is just going to stop doing it, and frankly I find the math far more interesting than 90% of the responses thereto.

[Kanye Qwest]

@ganymede cool, go take a class or do a workbook or something. You don't even play arx, so that's not surprising, but it also isn't very relevant.

[Sparks]

The design goal is not just to make a meaningless leaderboard, but to give a reason that people will want to have social characters in their house, just like how people want to have combat characters in their house for combatty things. Or if they don't have social folks in their own house, a reason to hire social characters—Whispers, for instance—for social things, just like people hire Champions or mercenaries for duels and combat.

The problem is that by making social characters important to existing systems people feel like they have to be social characters, because people in general are stressing that "if you aren't a social character, you aren't maximizing your prestige gains, and if you aren't maximizing your prestige gains you're not maximizing your gains in other systems, and that means you're doing it wrong". (And whether or not that's the intention, focusing on 'what is the most effective way to use the system' with examples given in math is going to add to that flailing.)

At any rate, the entire thing clearly has turned the whole thing into a source of frothing stress for people in about seven different ways, rather than something fun to make social characters useful to non-social characters.

What I, as a coder looking to redesign things, would like to see is suggested solutions to that actual design goal and problem (hence the 'constructive' in the thread title), so that I can deal with it and get back to the magic system. I've got one in mind, as I've detailed, but that doesn't mean people's input might not be useful.

However, any solution kind of needs to be at a more macro level—this isn't about "what can be tuned in modeling", this is at a higher level; "what will make social characters fun and useful to other people" is the question that we want to answer.

That's why I personally feel that the math behind things is secondary to this consideration. Raw math—or focusing on how you maximize your gains in a mechanical sense—is not going to make social characters feel useful. Worse still, any system where people feel you have to read the system math in order to "maximize" your gains is not going to be fun for people. (Thus why I'm going to try to remove numbers from the scoreboard and from viewing your own prestige in the rewrite.)

[Groth]

@sparks
I think a broader design rework really needs to address all the various character archetypes that you want to have a fulfilling role in the system. You really do need the military clout, investigation clout, economic clout etc if you don't want the game distorted around this one thing that has proper representation while the others don't.

They don't need to be the most engaging or deep systems ever, but making War/Command more important then Etiquette for generating millitary resources would go a long way I think.

[Pyrephox]

@sparks Honestly, my only problem with prestige as it stood was just how many other systems it boosted, and it seems like you guys are working on that. The numbers themselves don't mean anything to me, just what the numbers allow you to do! I feel like prestige should still factor heavily in social resource generation (maybe not so much in either military or economic, but maybe use related propriety mods for that instead? Like someone who is a 'Hero' and a 'Knight' and a 'Veteran' should probably do /really well/ when recruiting military people, etc.). and also be REALLY GOOD at changing affection/respect for orgs, for themselves or others, somehow. When one of the best known people in the city singles out someone and says, "This person is a special person," then NPCs should take great notice. That's partially reflected in Praise, to be sure, and org/donate/hype, but I feel like maybe something that is more directly reflected in actions and dominion? Kickass social characters may be able to tax at a much higher level without the people getting all revolting (because they're spending their time being all diplomatic), and if they know someone is trying to, say, recruit for an EVIL CULT in their backyard, they should be able to have a great sway on the way the population sees that group (for good OR for ill, if they're on Team Evil).

[Sparks]

@pyrephox I don't disagree; the issue I see is that "singling someone out to the NPCs" needs to be something that has a meaningful system tied to it. If social characters are only useful in GM'd actions ("I'm pointing out that Gertrude is starting an evil cult in her backyard!") that doesn't give them a lot to do in their downtime.

Simply generating social resources isn't going to do much for them either, especially because "you can make a resource for me" is just a grindy system where people use social characters like vending machines, which probably won't be fun either.

I want social characters to always have an advantage for staying on the buzz list, because they know how to manage their fame and publicity. Given that, what can being on that list let them do without requiring GM attention (like actions would)?

Without answering that, the prestige list will not matter to people, and houses will go back to "no, you can't have money for clothes or jewelry, we need to keep the funds for weaponry" (which is what happened before).

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Without answering that, the prestige list will not matter to people, and houses will go back to "no, you can't have money for clothes or jewelry, we need to keep the funds for weaponry" (which is what happened before).

Can't staff make it clear this isn't cool and punish people who do it when they are reported?

ETA: I'm a person who thinks that the org head who spends their House's entire income on refining their personal weapon should face social consequences and be considered a bad ruler. Maybe I'm mean.

[Pyrephox]

@sparks I agree! Which is why I suggest being able to make significant mods to how people are seen by orgs (affection and respect), somehow. Or something like having their own version of Favor/Disfavor to bestow which boosts org or personal power. Like, if people who have the buzz are all talking about a particular org, that org rises in prominence/power if it's good talk, and has to struggle if it's bad talk.

Unfortunately, there just aren't a lot of actual social systems on Arx to give social characters as their domain - we don't (yet) have big NPC factions to manipulate, there's no social conflict dynamics where social characters could shine, and all the systems which exist have slowly turned towards producing silver and resources in ways that, unfortunately, create some serious distortions around wealth and the expectations thereof.

So, I guess I'd turn it around and say, when you say you want social characters to have meaningful systems to interact with, what sorts of systems do you envision as "meaningful" in the context of the sort of game staff wants Arx to be? Like, if you didn't have to code anything, and could just wave your hand and declare, "This is what social power MEANS in this setting," then what would it be?

[Sparks]

@pyrephox said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

So, I guess I'd turn it around and say, when you say you want social characters to have meaningful systems to interact with, what sorts of systems do you envision as "meaningful" in the context of the sort of game staff wants Arx to be? Like, if you didn't have to code anything, and could just wave your hand and declare, "This is what social power MEANS in this setting," then what would it be?

That's a fair question. What I as a system designer would like is that prestige—both legend and fame—boils down to "you have influence with the NPC populace in various ways".

Now, note that prestige may not be from social sources; it might be because you're a Champion who just won a prominent bout and is enjoying your fifteen minutes of fame in the aftermath, or it might be because you're a social maven who spends a lot of time keeping yourself in the public eye. Where the prestige comes from should be irrelevant in this sense; social characters should just find it easier to maintain that fame.

As for how that influence looks?

• I want people who are high in prestige to be important to the dominion system; if you are trying to influence the NPC populace, it's easier if you have a "celebrity endorsement" to sell your plan to them, as it were. So I want you to be able to have someone with a lot of prestige 'endorse' a dominion action when you're taking it, and how much prestige they have will be used to lower the effective difficulty. (But dominion's further down the road, and so right now that would really limit people to GM'd actions.)
• I would like people who are high in prestige to have at least some benefit at the market while they're high in prestige, because a merchant can go "this celebrity shops at my stall!". (Think of Mass Effect; "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store in the Citadel!")
• I would like people who are high in prestige to have a chance to throw their weight behind societal trends in some form while they're in the limelight, but I'm honestly not sure how; we don't have a good 'social trends' system or anything like that, and trying to add one would be a horrible headache to maintain. This is the one I'm really stuck on. Sure, we could have them lend their weight to an org and give it some benefit by making that org the 'in thing' for one or two weeks, but as soon as there's any meaningful mechanical benefit to an org—like income, or resource generation—I currently feel like that's just going to circle back to this frothing "now it's necessary to grind prestige or else you're doing it wrong" mentality, which isn't what we want.

ETA a reply I missed before!

@three-eyed-crow said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Without answering that, the prestige list will not matter to people, and houses will go back to "no, you can't have money for clothes or jewelry, we need to keep the funds for weaponry" (which is what happened before).

Can't staff make it clear this isn't cool and punish people who do it when they are reported?

Sure, but I would rather have a system that makes people want to fund and facilitate the fun of their social characters than having to constantly police it and have the house leaders resentful about the social characters "sucking up money for stuff that doesn't matter".

A system is more work in the short term, yes, but a lot less staff work in the long run.

[Groth]

@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

• I would like people who are high in prestige to have a chance to throw their weight behind societal trends in some form while they're in the limelight, but I'm honestly not sure how; we don't have a good 'social trends' system or anything like that, and trying to add one would be a horrible headache to maintain. This is the one I'm really stuck on. Sure, we could have them lend their weight to an org and give it some benefit by making that org the 'in thing' for one or two weeks, but as soon as there's any meaningful mechanical benefit to an org—like income, or resource generation—I currently feel like that's just going to circle back to this frothing "now it's necessary to grind prestige or else you're doing it wrong" mentality, which isn't what we want.

It could work if it was designed to be completely unmaintainable and once the org falls out of the trend, it can't come back into trend for some amount of time (a few months?). It would create some pressure on the org to maximize the gains from their time in the sun, but not more so then the pressure to maximize the gains from say Grandeour during a week someone made massive gains.

@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

• I would like people who are high in prestige to have at least some benefit at the market while they're high in prestige, because a merchant can go "this celebrity shops at my stall!". (Think of Mass Effect; "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store in the Citadel!")

To me that sounds like something that's accomplished to a significant degree by the prestige gains on the designer from modeling. Currently weapon/armor designers get somewhat left out of the idea of being famous for their work, maybe they should get fame whenever someone wearing their things get fame from other sources?

[Kanye Qwest]

@three-eyed-crow said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Can't staff make it clear this isn't cool and punish people who do it when they are reported?

So we could. We tried that. And yet we still heard all the time that it was happening, and the people who DID want fashion felt bad enough that they might be keeping someone from getting THE BEST ARMOR to help the House that they wouldn't even ask, or - and this is the worst part - it was just accepted as the Way Things Were and that's the culture that was spread where staff wasn't aware of it.

[Ganymede]

@kanye-qwest

The math behind your system is quite relevant to the discussion, even if you don’t think so. Understanding the marginal benefits of how each factor is actually helping me figure out how to best build a PC.

[Sparks]

@kanye-qwest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

So we could. We tried that. And yet we still heard all the time that it was happening, and the people who DID want fashion felt bad enough that they might be keeping someone from getting THE BEST ARMOR to help the House that they wouldn't even ask, or - and this is the worst part - it was just accepted as the Way Things Were and that's the culture that was spread where staff wasn't aware of it.

Which is why the goal is—as I noted earlier—to make all the player archetypes have a potential use to the other archetypes so that this sort of blocking doesn't happen, because there's always a benefit to facilitating other people's RP.

So we want things for combat characters to do, and we have some; Champions can duel, and people can spar, and combat will be important in Shardhavens, and combat can sometimes be fairly important in GM'd scenes that turn to conflict. Non-combat people have reasons to seek out combat characters, and their families have reason to fund their gear and training.

And we want things for crafters to do. We have some, yes, but we want the things they make—not just weapons, but all the crafted goods—to have relevance to the game world. Which is one reason modeling is actually a potentially important system. When the crafted goods are useful, non-crafters have reasons to seek out crafters.

We want things for mental characters to do, so we have the investigation system, helping to solve puzzles in Shardhavens, and such. So people have reasons to seek out mental characters, good investigators, and to help facilitate their RP avenues. This is one we could possibly add a few more hooks for, but the investigation system is a pretty important avenue; it still gives a good reason for non-mental characters to seek out good investigators.

We want things for social characters to do... and right now, this is one of the places where things fall down. Without value to the prestige system, there's little reason for the non-social characters to seek out socially-focused characters, or to facilitate their RP avenues by giving them money for clothing and jewelry, or to host events, etc. Hence why prestige tied into other systems.

[Groth]

If there exists a real and actual concern of HoH's robbing the house bank to refine weapons or whatever. It could be worth considering making a different kind of resource that houses earn their income in. We could call it Grain or Tribute or anything along those lines.

We could then make it so this would be efficiently converted into silver when paying stipends and it could still be used for things like Actions, but it could not be withdrawn as silver at will. I think that would also lower the expectation you should be using the house funds for weapons/armor, since it would be difficult to spend it that way.

@sunny said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Making someone wear the same outfit for a week is a punishment. I don't even fathom how this is not obvious.

I think we interpreted the suggestion very differently. Having to wear the same outfit for a week sounds very strange and arbitrary and I don't think anyone would enjoy that very much.

If I were to implement a system with the goal of ensuring outfits are worn before they're eligble for rewards, I would simply require the outfit to have been exposed to maybe 5-10 emits from another player, maybe require it to have been looked at atleast once. Ideally players shouldn't notice there is a minimum requirement at all, it should just happen automatically during the normal course of their RP.

[Groth]

@sparks said in The Arx Peeve Thread:

But telling other people that their fun is "wrong"—that they need to adjust their sheet or their very concept to be more "effective" mathematically instead of playing the thing they want to play—is what staff's really not okay with.

"Oh, you need to be a combat character, social stuff isn't really useful."

"Oh, you want to do market stuff? You need to pick these specific skills, in this specific order, or else you aren't maximizing your effectiveness and XP spends; if you do anything else, you're just wrong about it."

Being pressed on those things is not usually fun for the people who are being told they're "doing it wrong", when they have a character concept they want to play. It's especially bad if it happens to someone brand-new to the game who doesn't know any better.

If you don't want people to feel pressured to optimize characters this or that way, why are the game systems built to give such massive advantages to specialized characters? Almost all Arx systems involve high base difficulties combined with massive multipliers.

[Kanye Qwest]

@sparks yeah, what I would love to hear suggestions for is how to shore this up and make it fun and rewarding without necessarily being as tied to prestige.

What would make hosting events feel more rewarding? What would make you seek out a socially statted char? We have some ideas, of course, but by no means are gonna come up with all the best ideas.

I had ideas I liked for needing social chars for spin doctoring and hype and PR type things, but that's all to mitigate staff /npc reactions to things. What about things that are much more player driven? What's a good reward for someone who runs a bunch of in house events for new people to their orgs?