Dec 13, 2016, 12:32 AM

@Killer-Klown I appreciate the advocatus diaboli approach, it's one I rely on heavily professionally.

  1. This is the key design element restated, a "soft cap" that you rise to and fall from on a regular basis as you choose or your automatic income can keep you at the soft cap. It does reward people who gain participation XP (plots, recommendations, or other) with a higher cap, but only if they continue to excel.

  2. The majority of people will eventually end up at the cap because the math more or less demands it. You have two curves, an earning curve and a debit curve, and the intersection is that cap. Since this is an arbitrary number, it could be 50 or 500 XP. This is made slightly more difficult if you make preserving Attributes more difficult than Skills by charging extra to preserve those points, but only in calculation. If attributes cost 20 beats per dot and skills cost 10 beats per dot, charging 1 beat per 10 beats spent comes out the same way.
    You make a very good point about extended absences, but consider the costs. If you are on opportunities to participate and earn additional XP, the system encourages people to create more participation events so they can gain XP. Since maintenance is 10% in my example, even 1 XP earned can support 10 XP of expense. It will take a long time to fall to the cap, but there will always be the tendency to approach the cap, from above or below.

  3. This is by far my biggest concern. I'm inclined to treat it like a credit check. You pass at the time of purchase, and they don't know you have sufficient income, so you get to keep it as long as you can keep paying for the thing you bought. In this case you drop a point of resolve, you pay to keep martial arts, but you can't increase that because you don't have the resolve necessary to buy it.