Incentives and Benefits for Positive Character Actions

[Lorgan]

Penalizing old characters does not increase turnover. It doesn't increase opportunity. All it does is hold down these characters, making them less fun for their players, and making them create less fun for their peers.

Truth. The game should move away from features that pester players and move towards positive enforcement.
As for turnover, characters can take actions to make turnover happen. Perhaps more such actions should be provided? But the age thing, it's nothing more than a nuisance.

[Anaris]

Truth. The game should move away from features that pester players and move towards positive enforcement.
As for turnover, characters can take actions to make turnover happen. Perhaps more such actions should be provided? But the age thing, it's nothing more than a nuisance.

I'm coming around to this idea, too.

The real problem is the way the "punishments" work: they penalize active old characters, while being practically no hindrance to the idle old fogies we most want to discourage.

So I'd be open to ideas that more harshly penalize people who take a position, then sit there doing nothing with it, while not making life hard for those characters, young and old, who add spice to the game.

[Chenier]

I'm coming around to this idea, too.

The real problem is the way the "punishments" work: they penalize active old characters, while being practically no hindrance to the idle old fogies we most want to discourage.

So I'd be open to ideas that more harshly penalize people who take a position, then sit there doing nothing with it, while not making life hard for those characters, young and old, who add spice to the game.

And there lies the problem... What on earth can only affect the idle oldies, but not the active oldies? How could the game tell them apart?

[Anaris]

And there lies the problem... What on earth can only affect the idle oldies, but not the active oldies? How could the game tell them apart?

Well, it's really getting into the more (academically) interesting and (practically) thorny question of programmatically identifying activity in BattleMaster. Which, I think, is actually a worthwhile thing to be able to do—even if only for this and for being able to more accurately display activity within a realm to people searching for one.

But it isn't even close to being a trivial thing to identify accurately. Someone sending multiple messages per turn may just be copying & pasting scout reports and the results of courtier work. Someone sending only one every few days may actually be coordinating the downfall of an empire.

Someone sitting in a single region for several weeks may be logging in only to hold courts, do survey admin, or other mindless busywork because he's inactive. Or he may be repairing a critical region that was badly damaged in a war, and needs a long time to fix.

I feel like one can probably get a fairly accurate picture of activity by combining measures of all these things, but it's going to be a tricky balancing act, no matter what.

[Lorgan]

I was thinking more along the lines of giving other characters the opportunity to usurp Lords (primarily since I wouldn't know how to deal with other positions right away).
For example, allow a noble to gather a following of supporters in a region, who could kick out their lord and replace him with that noble (or at least attempt to) when riled up. The gathering would notify the Lord but perhaps not in an obvious way, like a message at full turn change.

[vonGenf]

For example, allow a noble to gather a following of supporters in a region, who could kick out their lord and replace him with that noble (or at least attempt to) when riled up. The gathering would notify the Lord but perhaps not in an obvious way, like a message at full turn change.

Priests can already do that.

[Anaris]

I was thinking more along the lines of giving other characters the opportunity to usurp Lords (primarily since I wouldn't know how to deal with other positions right away).
For example, allow a noble to gather a following of supporters in a region, who could kick out their lord and replace him with that noble (or at least attempt to) when riled up. The gathering would notify the Lord but perhaps not in an obvious way, like a message at full turn change.

And how would this affect inactive lords, who only log in to keep their position, more than others?

The only way I can see that being the case is if they simply didn't notice the messages about peasants gathering to talk about how much better Sir Kepler was, or whatever the mechanism for warning ended up being.

Or, it would only work on Lords the game deemed "inactive"...which brings us right back to trying to define what that means.

[Lorgan]

Well, maybe it doesn't need to affect inactive lords more than others. As long as there's enough options for players to generate turnover, there will be turnover. And either the inactive ones return to defend themselves, or they lose their positions.

[Anaris]

Well, maybe it doesn't need to affect inactive lords more than others. As long as there's enough options for players to generate turnover, there will be turnover. And either the inactive ones return to defend themselves, or they lose their positions.

It's certainly a possibility worth considering. I just worry about what it will do to trust within a realm.

[Lorgan]

It's certainly a possibility worth considering. I just worry about what it will do to trust within a realm.

Well, that's a choice for the realm to make. Either kick out the troublemaker, or reward his initiative and ambition. It also depends on how it's worded of course. And which actions could gather someone a following.
But in the end, it still comes down to the influence you hold with the rest of the realm.

[Indirik]

Activity is an IR. You can't have any mechanics that target a player's activity.

Reward desirable behavior. Don't penalize activity. 

[Eirikr]

Hey, what about a player-driven reward? Something that requires a player to signify they're active and gives a bonus as a result. That way, there's no need to retroactively define an active player - they do it themselves. The reward would have to be something that doesn't hamper the normal player experience and isn't as easy as clicking one link. More to illustrate than actually provide a suggestion, maybe something like one of these:

• Player has to perform a set of actions, randomly chosen with a notification each day. (Scout once, send a letter, and visit their regional page.)
• Player gets a mini scavenger hunt where they need to find things randomly embedded on various pages they have access to.

So for 1, the advantage is that they're all common tasks that an active player likely does anyway - automatic reward. But the problem is that someone could easily just go through the motions. For 2, you don't affect how a player does their business, but you add another (essentially mini-game) activity for them to do. Of course the issue here is similar in that if it's easy to find, a more or less inactive character can just go looking. It would be vital to have the right kind of reward, though, to ensure it doesn't become something players feel mandated to do or risk losing a war.

Maybe something like lowering monster/undead spawns a little or increasing the effectiveness of adventurer actions in the area?

Complete tangent, but I bolded "adventurer" because I just had an off-topic idea: Why not have methods for nobles to affect adventurer capabilities in subtle ways (aka not just arresting them)? I know there's some changes for advys in the works, but something like this could make life easier for them while not breaking anything at the noble level.

[Indirik]

There are several challenging parts of this:
1) Determining what behavior to be rewarded
2) Determining how to measure that behavior
3) Devising bonuses to apply to reward it


First, what do you consider to be proper behavior? Someone who sits in their capital not doing any game mechanics actions can still be a great player and asset to the realm with the sum of their knowledge, contacts, diplomatic skills, letters, rps, etc. Someone who follows every order and keeps their region in top notch condition can still be someone who contributes little or nothing to the game. Ask several people about a specific character's behavior, and you'll get several different answers. A lot of this comes down to individual play style preferences. Causing chaos may be fun for some people, but does it provide the largest amount of fun across the player base as a whole?

A way to narrow this down may be to focus on things related to position holders. It's not really a big deal if a character holding no position at all is a hermit who squats the capital. A duke/margrave/marshal who does that is causing a lot of missed opportunities.

Second, how do you measure it? The real challenge comes in making meaningful measurements that filter out the noise. You can't just count the number of messages sent. As Anaris says, copy/pasting reports of police/civil/court work is meaningless, or even counter-productive. Message length is easily spoofed by copy/pasting long amounts of text, like those people that copy/paste their unit stats. Or people that frequently quote other people's messages in their replies, or forward many messages between groups.

Third, how do you apply these bonuses? The bonuses should apply to things directly associated to the character being rewarded, and preferably related to the behavior being measured. Obvious things include their unit and their region. For higher level characters, the bonus can be applied more widely, perhaps to duchy and even realm.



One possibility: Fighting battles is usually considered a good thing. So why not do some sort of Glory for characters? Like the old stat we used to have for realms, but applied at the character level.
* A region whose lord has a high glory could have a morale boost.
* Every time a lord is involved in a battle, their region gets a loyalty boost as well.
* Perhaps the above two bonuses can be applied at the duchy level for dukes, at reduced rates.
* Units led by nobles with high glory could have training and morale bonuses.
* Perhaps the above bonus can be applied to entire armies led by high glory marshals, at reduced rates.
* Perhaps this could be extended to entire realms for high glory generals, at further reduced rates.
* This metric should not reward victory. We don't want to encourage ganging up on realms, or cause a positive feedback loop. We're rewarding participation.
* Members of the hierarchy who have high glory, and participate in battles could provide temporary bonuses to the troops of their realm for that battle. A high glory ruler could provide a morale bonus. A high glory general could provide a training bonus. Maybe the same for the marshal/VM. Higher glory gives higher bonuses.


This obviously rewards characters who participate in battles, and not things like religion or diplomacy. But then we are extremely war-focused.

Any other ideas that could be used to reward other desirable behavior, that is not necessarily directly derived from combat?

[Lorgan]

So why not do some sort of Glory for characters?

Love it.

[Eirikr]

One possibility: Fighting battles is usually considered a good thing. So why not do some sort of Glory for characters? Like the old stat we used to have for realms, but applied at the character level.
* A region whose lord has a high glory could have a morale boost.
* Every time a lord is involved in a battle, their region gets a loyalty boost as well.
* Perhaps the above two bonuses can be applied at the duchy level for dukes, at reduced rates.
* Units led by nobles with high glory could have training and morale bonuses.
* Perhaps the above bonus can be applied to entire armies led by high glory marshals, at reduced rates.
* Perhaps this could be extended to entire realms for high glory generals, at further reduced rates.
* This metric should not reward victory. We don't want to encourage ganging up on realms, or cause a positive feedback loop. We're rewarding participation.
* Members of the hierarchy who have high glory, and participate in battles could provide temporary bonuses to the troops of their realm for that battle. A high glory ruler could provide a morale bonus. A high glory general could provide a training bonus. Maybe the same for the marshal/VM. Higher glory gives higher bonuses.


This obviously rewards characters who participate in battles, and not things like religion or diplomacy. But then we are extremely war-focused.

As I think I said in my post right before, I like where your head is, but we want to avoid these being the kinds of things that turn a war, don't we? Such a bonus would make it a punishment to those who don't use the system as well... or worse, we run into issue with the IR when people are being blamed for losses because they aren't doing these things. Stranger things have happened.