Stuff Done Right

[Miss Demeanor]

Hence the Moral I tagged onto the end. I don't think +vote is bad. I just don't think it's any better than any of the other systems out there. It's just as susceptible to abuse as anything else, and in some documented cases, ended up working out worse than some others. In other instances, it might be the better option. Much of it depends on your playerbase, TBH.

[crusader]

Every XP system requires a certain amount of police work.

I do know (from personal experience) that it's slightly easier to keep track of where +votes are headed, than to handle +reccs, conditions or beats.

Hell, in my tabletop games, we don't even use XP really. People basically raise things when it makes sense within the story, based on their actions and focuses. This works because in tabletop games, there is lots of IC downtime. I can ask someone...well, what have you been doing over the last three months? I'll make suggestions so that people basically accumulate 'XP' at the same rate, and it goes from there. They've gone half a RL year without making any spends at all. Then the game faded forward ten years, and they made a ton of em at once.

Obviously, that can't work on a MUSH.

So it comes down to...Fixed XP promotes idleness and insularity. Reccs/Conditions are taken advantage of by a small minority (about 5-10% of the playerbase gets 90% of the benefit). Votes are far from perfect, for all of the reasons M-D outlined, but I find them the least imperfect and the easiest to administrate. Generally speaking (of course not always), the best and most active RPers get the best benefit from a +vote system, and I'm generally fine with that.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I've always kind of wanted to see a system in place that allowed stat raises after major story arcs/the conclusion of plots, rather than using XP.

[Sunny]

If everybody gets the same amount of XP (roughly) every week, then yes, it puts it back to the point of: RP is its own reward. What you'll see are fewer huge scenes, and people doing more RP that actually matters, rather than doing something not-fun because they have to. Forced-activity isn't particularly fun activity.

[crusader]

@Sunny said:

If everybody gets the same amount of XP (roughly) every week, then yes, it puts it back to the point of: RP is its own reward. What you'll see are fewer huge scenes, and people doing more RP that actually matters, rather than doing something not-fun because they have to. Forced-activity isn't particularly fun activity.

Sadly, what works on a tabletop, rarely works on a MUSH. A MUSH, in order to be successful, ultimately thrives in one of two ways:

1. Be the 'IT' game of the moment, where people congregate to in spite of its many failures, simply because it's the biggest game in town. Quantity has a quality all of its own. Haunted Memories and the Reach are both good examples of this phenomena. But even back when there were a lot more owod games, the player population shifts could be dramatic.

2. Reward and encourage activity by hook or by crook.

I submit to the court, that if Reno had a +vote system instead of a weekly system and beats +requests, they'd have twice the active average playerbase as they do currently.

[Misadventure]

Vote whoring is tedious.

I say this as a person who earned over 100 xp in a month at Whispers and Dark Secrets which had decreasing returns on votes from the same person in a month. I made sure every scene was one I wanted to be at, it was a lot of deal brokering and planning ahead. It was still terrible.

Votes for actual meaningful and enjoyable RP get drowned out by people getting ten times as many from doing public scenes and healthy RP-->vote circles. Your reward must be capped, and that caps peoples participation rate.

[Arkandel]

@Misadventure The other thing is... the more mechanics get in my way, changing the way I play, the less I usually like it.

Take the Beats/Conditions system in nWoD 2.0 for example. I'm totally sold on it but that's more due to the excitement I see from some people using it than that I think I'll actually be okay with incorporating filing Conditions in my everyday routine.

Basically what I would want from an XP system is to be somewhat seamless. If I need to farm votes from public scenes then it's the opposite - since I hate big gatherings. Don't make me choose between 'having fun' and 'character advancement', the two should be linked not at odds.

If I had to choose I'd take automatic activity-based XP. Sure, it's content-agnostic but it rewards being out there regularly (as opposed to TR's "advancement for existing" implementation) and you literally need do nothing else but roleplay to get it.

However that's just me. I can totally see why other people might want something else.

[Misadventure]

There will always be a strong element of personal taste involved in these things. To a degree an active large selection of players is best, but sometimes people want to experiment with a different and potentially different quality of play.

For instance, I am a junkie for character advancement. However, I think rewarding fun with advancement is detrimental.

Power creep changes the scale of character activities (you go from conning goblins to conning dragons or invading empires as an example). If the players aren't able to create stories at the higher level, or can't relate and reconcile their actions and consequences with others, then your scale is too high, it is unsustainable.

Or you get The Reach, where hundreds of Epic Heroes languish with epic birthday parties, and scrabble for a scrap of relevance or contribution to things labeled "beyond the reach of a few/many heroes". Meaning your growth is meaningless, and it cramps you from having player created content.

[Ganymede]

@crusader said:

Fixed XP promotes idleness and insularity.

Prove it.

Oh, wait. You probably can't. No, wait. You can't.

Fixed XP promotes idleness and insularity as much as having shitty staff, bully players, and restrictive rules. The presumption that an absence of activity-related inducements means a reduction of RP on a grid is absurd, and countered by several games that enjoyed substantial activity over a period of time.

I concede there are players who want a reward for being online and roleplaying above and beyond the enjoyment therefrom. I question if I want to set any policy to favor those players.

[Sunny]

@Ganymede said:

I concede there are players who want a reward for being online and roleplaying above and beyond the enjoyment therefrom. I question if I want to set any policy to favor those players.

I agree with everything Gany has said here, but I want to emphasize this point. These things are a matter of personal taste, of what sort of game somebody is putting together. Some people want those people that need to be bribed to be online and out and playing. I don't.

I will concede that rewarding people for big scenes and random RP (+vote) does work to encourage big scenes and random RP. You reward what you find valuable, though. If I do not, as a game designer, give two shits about having a 300playerlogin game (please god no), or random grid RP, or huge scenes happening...well, I'm rewarding behavior that's not actually contributing in any way that I find meaningful for what I want my game to be.

I'm not interested in padding my WHO list with those who need to be rewarded for playing, or with random grid RP. I do not personally have time to spare on random grid RP these days, of going out to huge scenes just because I need XP. (Okay, yes, right now I do, but most of the people who I enjoy right now do not.)

XP as a reward can be used to encourage the behavior that you want. If you want public mass random scenes, +vote/here without a limit is going to do that. If you want people thinking in terms of goals, setbacks, and plots and approaching their RP that way...you reward people for that.

I do not want a game where nonsense RP is rewarded. I want a game where the meat is rewarded.

[ThatGuyThere]

When it comes to xp systems I think my favorite of the ones I have seen in action is used by Requiem for Kingsmouth, which seemed like pretty stock NWoD 2.0 xp. You could get some from scenes regardless of what they entailed and the staff worked with you on beats. Most weeks I would miss stuff like working towards a long term aspiration but from the beatsheet I filled out for other things it would get credited to me. Granted that was likely a very labor intensive process for the staffer doing it and I hope they have kept to it since the game was really growing, as I was leaving. It likely did skew towards those who were most active, but I regularly got more then one xp a week with being in 3 scenes or so on average, and since every scene counted the same there was no feeling I was hosing myself by avoiding large scenes. If it was not for my dislike of Vampire I would likely still be there.

[crusader]

@Ganymede said:

@crusader said:

Fixed XP promotes idleness and insularity.

Prove it.

Oh, wait. You probably can't. No, wait. You can't.

Fixed XP promotes idleness and insularity as much as having shitty staff, bully players, and restrictive rules. The presumption that an absence of activity-related inducements means a reduction of RP on a grid is absurd, and countered by several games that enjoyed substantial activity over a period of time.

I concede there are players who want a reward for being online and roleplaying above and beyond the enjoyment therefrom. I question if I want to set any policy to favor those players.

Reno seems to be a good example of a fixed XP system not working to provoke much RP on the grid. I know on Reach, there were many people who only logged in to play with a couple other people, who on past games, I'd known to be much more active on the grid to hoover up votes. And I know the exact reasons they gave about not needing to make the effort to meet new people or participate in prps, or do anything they were'nt 100% enthusiastic about, because they were already drowning in hundreds of unused XP.

I know my own predilections from playing on various games. When I thought I needed lots of +votes for things, I would make more of an attempt to be more active and meet new people. When I knew I was getting a ton of XP no matter what, I often didn't bother.

People love to respond to anything they disagree with, with demands for incontrovertible evidence and flawless facts. But that's not how the real world works. All we really have to draw on is personal experience and circumstantial evidence. I make my conclusions based on the observations I've made, both as a player and as staff, over quite a few years.

I'm not saying fixed-xp is the end-all and be-all, and that +votes solves everything. What I am saying is that +votes promotes more activity on the grid.

[Thisnameistaken]

Personally, I think a combination of three things can work. 1) A low but fixed XP, although I still do like HM's idea of basing it on actual activity. This would be low but steady. 2) +votes. These would also be fairly low and limited on how often you can vote for the same people. 3) PrPs. I like the idea that PrPs earn XP. And a PrP doesn't mean combat. I also think STers should get a little extra for taking the time and putting in the effort to ST.

I think that if balanced, players with drastically different RP preferences will be able to keep at more or less the same XP-level, give or take. The only people who would suffer, really, are the people who log on and idle.

Beats and Conditions are a whole different story. If used right, they can be a lot of fun. I think some of their usefulness is lost on MU* simply because different staffers will have different ideas of what counts and what doesn't, and you'll always get players who will attempt to push the line and abuse them, while other players will put more effort into them for less return. I haven't yet decided what my stance is on them quite yet.

[crusader]

As unpopular as this opinion will be, I actually think that PrPs have had an overall negative effect on MUSH culture.

Some of them are great and well done, but a lot of them aren't. I've also never seen players take them particularly seriously. They phone in participation, never expecting that they'll face any danger from a PrP that could threaten their character.

There's something about staff running a plot, which has always made players sit up and take notice and invest more in the outcome, even if XP wasn't given as a reward.

I'd rather create more vehicles and conflicts for players to ICly hash out on the grid amongst themselves, because at the end of the day, only players can keep up with other players. A cadre of dedicated storyteller staff (not headwiz types, and not approval or administrator types...just storytellers), kept around to spice things up, would be better than random PrPs.

If someone has a great idea, or a great story to tell, then they can get 'deputized' for a temporary duration.

Obviously, current culture is almost 90% prp and 10% staff-run, where it used to be 90% staff-run and 10% prp.

[Sunny]

@crusader said:

As unpopular as this opinion will be, I actually think that PrPs have had an overall negative effect on MUSH culture.

Yeah, no.

I think what you're looking for vs what most gamers around here (these days) are two very, very different things. This is becoming clear with your various views on how things ought to be. If you want a game that harkens back to the 90s stuff...good luck, I'll provide what support I can.

What I like =/= what is right/the best. Period, end of story. Saying 'it's an unpopular opinion' has nothing to do with peas and carrots. Validity has nothing to do with popular vs not. It's an opinion you already know that folks around here aren't going to agree with.

Now voicing it and discussing it is something different and is fine, but you really need to slow your roll, read what other people are saying, recognize that most of us have been around probably as long or longer than you have (I started in 1993, have run multiple games, and staffed on at least a dozen others), and understand that we're not just disagreeing with you because we want to disagree with you.

You've got lots of experience and blah blah, but I'm speaking from MY experience, and @Thisnameistaken is definitely speaking from their experience (they started around the same time I did), Gany is speaking from her experience, and so on. Your experiences are not any more valid than anyone else's.

You're displaying very typical poor listening skills; it's very common in meetings and the like to have people closing their mouths while other people are talking, but rather than listening to the other people that are talking and paying attention, the poor listener simply is waiting for their chance to share their opinion further/prove they're right.

Who cares how seriously people take anything? Who cares whether there's actual real danger or not? If you don't want plots that don't offer real danger, don't go to them.

Someone else having fun does not subtract from the amount of fun left for you to have.

Personally, I prefer a game in which there is little to no PVP, nothing major present for characters that they would come into direct conflict for. There are always going to be conflicts, but I vastly prefer a game -- even a mush -- that is as PVE as possible. To do this and support this and keep things actually happening, rather than stagnating, you have to have a LOT of plot-stuff going on. Putting the entire weight on staff to ensure that's happening is nuts for a variety of reasons from burnout to the temptation to hire shitty staff because you need them.

[Arkandel]

@Sunny +1. I couldn't have said it better. I'd have used more words though.

[Ganymede]

@crusader said:

Reno seems to be a good example of a fixed XP system not working to provoke much RP on the grid. I know on Reach, there were many people who only logged in to play with a couple other people, who on past games, I'd known to be much more active on the grid to hoover up votes.

Reno is a terrible example.

The players on Reno seemed to think that RP will just spring up and suck them in. It doesn't. My opinion of the players there, largely, is that they can't be assed up to start their own stories. It's part-laziness and part-apathy. It has nothing to do with the XP system.

Look at the Reach. Same thing: people are lazy and apathetic. Over there, it's due to the staff largesse and stagnation, despite the size of the player base; on Reno, it's due to the small player base, and minimal staff.

My point: you cannot with any certainty lay the blame on the XP system. How XP is delivered is usually of minimal concern. To make a game work, you need to be able to attract the right kind of players. Those players will gravitate to games where the activity, community, and rewards fit their vision of comfort.

[2mspris]

@Sunny said:

Someone else having fun does not subtract from the amount of fun left for you to have.

I'd like to repeat that for emphasis. And add, props to people who don't just expect fun to be handed to them but are willing to make fun happen.

[crusader]

@Ganymede said:

My point: you cannot with any certainty lay the blame on the XP system. How XP is delivered is usually of minimal concern. To make a game work, you need to be able to attract the right kind of players. Those players will gravitate to games where the activity, community, and rewards fit their vision of comfort.

I fully agree that the XP/incentive system is just one part of a greater whole of why something succeeds or sucks, and is far from the biggest part. Great ideas, great motivation and great leadership often overcome in any setting.

[crusader]

@Sunny said:

You're displaying very typical poor listening skills; it's very common in meetings and the like to have people closing their mouths while other people are talking, but rather than listening to the other people that are talking and paying attention, the poor listener simply is waiting for their chance to share their opinion further/prove they're right.

Way to make a whole host sweeping over-generalizations, about myself and my views. Where do you even get off talking down to me like this? Who should I be listening to, that I'm not? Who I was arguing with in my post or trying to convince? Where did I say my experiences were more valid than anyone else's? You're the one that seems to have poor listening skills.

In my experience, I've seen people take staff-run plots far more seriously than PrPs, and I've seen PrPs often done in shallow, meaningless fashion just to rack up some XP for participation. If your experience is different, more power to you.

I do prefer a game with dedicated RP staff, and where players that become PrP runners are a bit more vetted, and working with staff.

You don't agree? Fine. But your long, condescending post making various RL allusions in my direction is hardly merited. You don't care how seriously plots or storylines are handled? Fine. I disagree.

I want some element of quality control. You evidently, and feel so strongly about it, as to make attacks on me. That's fine.

I wasn't even in a discussion with you. You seem to have gotten overly worked up about something which had no effect on you, and in which you weren't even addressed. Would you rather just live in an echo chamber?

I'm sure this has nothing to do with my totally unrelated opinion of Detroit's staff, and the way you seem compelled to protect that game against majority opinion.