Incentives and Benefits for Positive Character Actions

[Eduardo Almighty]

First, that would be good to determine an old character. Since I paused Erik, I will use him as example. BM have two turns in a system of day and night. Erik joined Sirion with 17 years old, serving the realm for something around 2500 days. Now, after fought almost every battle in a realm fighting almost every war, he's an old man of 73 years. Why, in a system of day and night and of days of service, should I play him like a mummy!? He aged 60 years in 2000 days. We must have really short years in BM... while I don't expect to play him for 70 IR years, it's better to define age here as days of service instead of a variable number of little significance.

[vonGenf]

First, that would be good to determine an old character. Since I paused Erik, I will use him as example. BM have two turns in a system of day and night. Erik joined Sirion with 17 years old, serving the realm for something around 2500 days. Now, after fought almost every battle in a realm fighting almost every war, he's an old man of 73 years. Why, in a system of day and night and of days of service, should I play him like a mummy!? He aged 60 years in 2000 days. We must have really short years in BM... while I don't expect to play him for 70 IR years, it's better to define age here as days of service instead of a variable number of little significance.

A BM year is 84 RL days. Therefore in 2500 days of playing the natural aging should have been 30 years; the rest is due to wounds.

[Jens Namtrah]

So, this thread has absolutely nothing to do with Activity levels of players. There's some really good discussion going on about it, but perhaps it ought to be split out to a different thread.

---

As for the idea of getting rid of inactive Lords squatting in regions, Are you serious? There isn't an island that doesn't have at least one realm where there's a shortage of lords. Have you looked at Tara lately? Squatting lords are a blessing in some places.

I think this is a thorny, difficult to solve "problem" that isn't really a problem, and doesn't need any resources spent on it right now.

[Chenier]

We used to have a glory score, along with infamy and two other stats I think. I don't remember why it got ditched, but I think part of the problem was precisely to make it a meaningful stat that reflects reality, which I think it did poorly. Any introduction of such a score also needs to be given time, because it's hard to give a proper stat value based on events that happened before the stat existed.

If it is too war-centered, it also becomes pretty close to stats we do already have, which are H/P. These only reflect the past, though, and not the present. A lot of the really inactive guys do have high h/p. Often, they are the ones with the most of it in the realm... Which is why, while I like Indirik's ideas, it must be considered that oldies who just follow orders into battle don't necessarily make things fun, though at least they are taking risks and participating, which is already better than many others.

Perhaps in place of (or in addition of) such game-generated stat, we should have a player-driven one? In this regard, we already have medals, but these only reflect the past, target the player as a whole, and don't actually have any effect. Perhaps characters should have an option to rate other characters in the realm? A few metrics could be used, such as trustworthiness, respectability, leadership and fun. Bonuses and/or new actions could be granted, according to some of the scores. For example, someone with a high fun score could passively see a percentage of the fines he gets payed by NPCs. Someone with high fun and leadership could use that usurpation feature suggested by Lorgan against someone with low scores in the same stats. Characters with high respectability could band together to force destitutions of government members. The like. I'm not 100% confident we can trust players with this power, though.

Edit: for such a mechanic to work, there would need to be some bonuses or actions that are no longer possible when a certain stat goes too high, otherwise cliques are certain to give each other max scores in all measurable stats.

[Indirik]

The difference between a glory score and h/p is that a key mechanic of glory is that it decays over time. H/P are permanent traits that a character never loses. Glory is more of a "what have you done for me lately?"

And yes, as i have often said, a bonus you don't get is equivalent to a penalty. But eventually, you have to just say "so what?" If everyone gets the bonus, then it's not really a bonus. This isn't some kind of misguided self esteem exercise intended to boost everyone's ego. It's a bonus for activities that we determine are beneficial to the game. You don't do the activity, you don't get the bonus.

And yes, if your side gets this and the other side doesn't, you have an advantage. But the mere fact that you are engaging them in battle means that you are giving them glory, and they will start to get bonuses, too. So it's kind of self leveling.

[Chenier]

Priests can generate a lot of fun, though, they shouldn't be penalized just because they don't participate in battles.

[Indirik]

Gather 'round folks, it's story time.

Way back when, in ... oh ... 2007 or so, one of my characters was ruler of a realm on BT. (Kingdom of Alluran, for any of you old timers that are still around.) I started a program in our realm to create and pass out medals for people who did various things in our realm. You can still find it on the old KoA wiki page somewhere. Every time a noble got wounded, or participated in a certain number of battles, or was present for certain key battles, I gave them a new medal. When they got elected to council positions, they got a medal. I split it into ribbons for minor stuff, and medals for big stuff. Special medals for heroism. Star on the ribbons for getting them more than once. The players in our realm loved it. We RPd some stuff around it. We all had a blast.

Then one day, someone who played a priest stepped forward and said "This stuff is all about fighting and battles. What about the priests ? We do stuff for the realm, too. Where are our medals?" Not really finding anything all that worthy of giving medals to priests about, the whole program fell apart and was abandoned. A lot of stuff that people really liked got dropped, because some guy who played a priest felt that he wasn't included in an RPd program that revolved around military service.

(And just so people are clear, it wasn't Chénier that complained about it up back then, it was someone else. Or maybe two someones, I really don't remember.)

Now 7 years later, my answer is different than it was back then: This program is intended to award participation of characters in military actions. This is one of the core concepts of BattleMaster, around which most of the game is built. I see no reason to abandon this incentive program because it specifically rewards military service. If you think that priest actions are a core concept of BattleMaster, and that adding incentives to participate in various priestly actions is important, then please feel free to create some incentive program for that. I'm not going to abandon championing this particular program just because I don't have an equivalent program for priests.

[Chenier]

Gather 'round folks, it's story time.

Way back when, in ... oh ... 2007 or so, one of my characters was ruler of a realm on BT. (Kingdom of Alluran, for any of you old timers that are still around.) I started a program in our realm to create and pass out medals for people who did various things in our realm. You can still find it on the old KoA wiki page somewhere. Every time a noble got wounded, or participated in a certain number of battles, or was present for certain key battles, I gave them a new medal. When they got elected to council positions, they got a medal. I split it into ribbons for minor stuff, and medals for big stuff. Special medals for heroism. Star on the ribbons for getting them more than once. The players in our realm loved it. We RPd some stuff around it. We all had a blast.

Then one day, someone who played a priest stepped forward and said "This stuff is all about fighting and battles. What about the priests ? We do stuff for the realm, too. Where are our medals?" Not really finding anything all that worthy of giving medals to priests about, the whole program fell apart and was abandoned. A lot of stuff that people really liked got dropped, because some guy who played a priest felt that he wasn't included in an RPd program that revolved around military service.

(And just so people are clear, it wasn't Chénier that complained about it up back then, it was someone else. Or maybe two someones, I really don't remember.)

Now 7 years later, my answer is different than it was back then: This program is intended to award participation of characters in military actions. This is one of the core concepts of BattleMaster, around which most of the game is built. I see no reason to abandon this incentive program because it specifically rewards military service. If you think that priest actions are a core concept of BattleMaster, and that adding incentives to participate in various priestly actions is important, then please feel free to create some incentive program for that. I'm not going to abandon championing this particular program just because I don't have an equivalent program for priests.

I'm rather surprised by your story... Why did you let such a minor thing break the system? I could think of a few things off the top of my head that could be rewarded... converting a pagan region to 75% of the local faith for the first time, constructing a grand temple district, converting a certain number of foreign nobles or government members, etc. Heck, even if you didn't find anything to your liking, I'm shocked that you'd let such a trivial thing ruin the whole system.

[Indirik]

We used to have a glory score, along with infamy and two other stats I think. I don't remember why it got ditched, but I think part of the problem was precisely to make it a meaningful stat that reflects reality, which I think it did poorly. Any introduction of such a score also needs to be given time, because it's hard to give a proper stat value based on events that happened before the stat existed.

The attribute system you're thinking of was the old pie chart thing. Your character was rate in four areas, and you were given a pie chart that was generated based on the ratio of each value to the sum of all of them. The two problems with this were: 1) No one else could ever see your chart. 2) There weren't enough actions available for each of the four attributes to really make it dynamic and useful. It stuck around for a while, but was eventually removed as not really being very useful. IIRC it was really Tom's project. It was implemented and then removed before I joined the dev team.

Perhaps in place of (or in addition of) such game-generated stat, we should have a player-driven one? In this regard, we already have medals, but these only reflect the past, target the player as a whole, and don't actually have any effect. Perhaps characters should have an option to rate other characters in the realm? A few metrics could be used, such as trustworthiness, respectability, leadership and fun. Bonuses and/or new actions could be granted, according to some of the scores. For example, someone with a high fun score could passively see a percentage of the fines he gets payed by NPCs. Someone with high fun and leadership could use that usurpation feature suggested by Lorgan against someone with low scores in the same stats. Characters with high respectability could band together to force destitutions of government members. The like. I'm not 100% confident we can trust players with this power, though.

Edit: for such a mechanic to work, there would need to be some bonuses or actions that are no longer possible when a certain stat goes too high, otherwise cliques are certain to give each other max scores in all measurable stats.

Any player-driven system where players click a button to rate other players will, intentionally or not, end up creating/reinforcing cliques and groups. Players will rate their own realm members high, in order to give their realm the special powers/bonuses. Your realm mates are also the ones you interact with most, and will have the most opportunities to rate or develop favorable opinions of. The medal system tries to get around this by making it easier to give medals to people that are not in your realm. But the medal system also doe snot have any real IG effects.

[De-Legro]

Any player-driven system where players click a button to rate other players will, intentionally or not, end up creating/reinforcing cliques and groups. Players will rate their own realm members high, in order to give their realm the special powers/bonuses. Your realm mates are also the ones you interact with most, and will have the most opportunities to rate or develop favorable opinions of. The medal system tries to get around this by making it easier to give medals to people that are not in your realm. But the medal system also doe snot have any real IG effects.

M&F has a reputation system for characters. You can leave 'rumours' regarding character behaviour and others can rate the comment all anonymously. This was something that players were desperate for on the forums, but I am yet to see more then a handful of comments actually made. My experience is exactly this, a few active groups have given each other rather nice comments and ratings, while doing the opposite to anyone they are against. How useful any of it ends up being to the rest of the player population is questionable. If the system had any in game effect I suspect this would be even worse.

[Eldargard]

Gather 'round folks, it's story time.

Way back when, in ... oh ... 2007 or so, one of my characters was ruler of a realm on BT. (Kingdom of Alluran, for any of you old timers that are still around.) I started a program in our realm to create and pass out medals for people who did various things in our realm. You can still find it on the old KoA wiki page somewhere. Every time a noble got wounded, or participated in a certain number of battles, or was present for certain key battles, I gave them a new medal. When they got elected to council positions, they got a medal. I split it into ribbons for minor stuff, and medals for big stuff. Special medals for heroism. Star on the ribbons for getting them more than once. The players in our realm loved it. We RPd some stuff around it. We all had a blast.

Then one day, someone who played a priest stepped forward and said "This stuff is all about fighting and battles. What about the priests ? We do stuff for the realm, too. Where are our medals?" Not really finding anything all that worthy of giving medals to priests about, the whole program fell apart and was abandoned. A lot of stuff that people really liked got dropped, because some guy who played a priest felt that he wasn't included in an RPd program that revolved around military service.

(And just so people are clear, it wasn't Chénier that complained about it up back then, it was someone else. Or maybe two someones, I really don't remember.)

Now 7 years later, my answer is different than it was back then: This program is intended to award participation of characters in military actions. This is one of the core concepts of BattleMaster, around which most of the game is built. I see no reason to abandon this incentive program because it specifically rewards military service. If you think that priest actions are a core concept of BattleMaster, and that adding incentives to participate in various priestly actions is important, then please feel free to create some incentive program for that. I'm not going to abandon championing this particular program just because I don't have an equivalent program for priests.

To start off, this is pretty awesome. It is sad to hear it fell apart. My initial thoughts were:

Why in the world would we give military service awards to Priests?
If a priest want's to be awarded for priestly service to his faith, why is he not talking about this to his religions elders instead of his realms king?
Why not have Civil service awards that anyone can earn by just doing things of value to the realm?

I really hope someone brings something like this back one day!

[Eldargard]

M&F has a reputation system for characters. You can leave 'rumours' regarding character behaviour and others can rate the comment all anonymously. This was something that players were desperate for on the forums, but I am yet to see more then a handful of comments actually made. My experience is exactly this, a few active groups have given each other rather nice comments and ratings, while doing the opposite to anyone they are against. How useful any of it ends up being to the rest of the player population is questionable. If the system had any in game effect I suspect this would be even worse.

I think this could be awesome given time and usage. I usually keep notes about how my noble feels about nobles he interacts with and the reasons for those feelings. I would love to have a way to keep these notes in game.

Beyond that, comment systems are a powerful tool. Look at Amazon! They more or less pioneered the product comment system and the reviews there really do provide a 'reputation' for a product. If I could click on a character and get a list of comments about them written up by other characters, it would be pretty cool.

On the other hand, I can imagine it being difficult to keep the comments in theme and make the reflect reputation more than anything...