Prestige Competitions

Portius

Org credits look like they might make culture competitions a little more relevant than they currently are. With that in mind, it might be a good idea to look into improving them.

Here's what I'd like to see:

-Move prestige onto a three year cycle.

--One year gets a design contest, then library, then stage. Only the most recent contest provides points to culture.

---Right now, all of the scoring happens at once and then lasts for the full 2 years. This should make culture scores shift more often.

---This should also alleviate concerns about culture overwhelming other areas in the org credit competition. Having only one providing points at a time will lower the overall impact.

-New design contest!

--Each design contest year, an org can submit a design from an org cartel for judging.

---This encourages people to put things in org cartels instead of tiny private ones.

---Acts as a gateway to culture. Lots of people do designs already, even people who don't do books/plays!

---Gives people more of a chance to see how admin judge designs, which should help make beauty seem more fair.

--Optionally, have each contest be for a specific trade and cycle through them. This should subsidize the trades that don't get as many designs.

---Evens out the playing field in case people think some trades get judged more gently than others.

----Could even specify a specific pattern (plate, chairs, whatever) for each contest, but that comes at the cost of making it much more restrictive.

-Library contest

--Librarians submit one book per year instead of two. It can come from either category.

---This lowers the burden on librarians. It can be hard to get two books per cycle without making crappy spam books.

---Also lowers pressure on authors to write books that fit into whichever category needs submissions, instead of the one they want.

---Presumably also easier for the admin to judge one book per contest than two.

----Keep literary/scholarly tags in the system to help keep the library organized.

-Stage contest

--Stage scoring is poorly documented. As far as I can tell, it depends mostly on the number of views, especially in the debut. BACKSTAGE SAY and EMOTE also seem to give points, but not EFFECTS.

---This system strongly favors having lots of people. That makes it hard to do successful plays if you are in a low population org or timezone.

----Make effects give points equal to says and emotes. You can use this with props to simulate having several actors even if you only have one.

-----Add a new prop category, CHARACTERS, to shove in the characters that you're portraying as effects. This isn't mechanically necessary, but having their own category would make it look better.

------I might be wrong about how scoring works, and that might make all of this meaningless. Documentation on how it calculates scores would also be good.

----Alternatively, add an artifact or org purchase for NPCs that you can TELL to use backstage commands to simulate having more actors. Could be a useful gold sink if they had upkeep.

Lycidas

@Portius if nobody has told you yet, you're beautiful. Will touch on a few things to just chime in opinion, but overall I highly approve of all these suggestions:

--One year gets a design contest, then library, then stage. Only the most recent contest provides points to culture.

       1) I really like this, it extends the time people have to actually make quality work rather than what you mentioned. Granted I, and I know others can as well, can churn out 1k words of work in the span of a few hours, it would be more agreeable if people took days to make high quality reading material instead. Also also, give playwrights more time, MY GOSH it can be a hassle to get people coordinated.

       2) I personally think some points should be earned on submission irregardless, but not the main focal point, and the competition being where the large portion comes into play. Also motivates people to make multiple works simultaneously and give the choice of which horse to put their money on.

--Optionally, have each contest be for a specific trade and cycle through them. This should subsidize the trades that don't get as many designs.

       1) An elegant idea to indeed help those smaller trades or even design types to get some love, I'm looking at you Forging Chain! You want a depressing list of choices, go look at available PUBLIC Chain shirts. I think it should remain to a trade skill rather than by pattern that you later suggest, as I do agree it would make it too narrow a scope.

--Librarians submit one book per year instead of two. It can come from either category.

       1) This helps with the smaller population overall of the game and indeed reduces stress on the Librarian to find recent works that are still fresh enough to have a chance at prestiging.

--Alternatively, add an artifact or org purchase for NPCs that you can TELL to use backstage commands to simulate having more actors. Could be a useful gold sink if they had upkeep.

      1) I like the idea of having 'hired' denizens that just happen to work at the theater. You can pay them a wage to take on a character role for the play, and are limited to that one character role, so that it also keeps it along the lines of 'real' people doing work. That would be a huge boon to the RP community to have an afterparty with their hired help as well if they wanted to.

Kalnid

So the question occurs of who exactly would submit the design suggestion. My immediate instinct is minicul but as it stands they don't have access to all city cartels. You could have individual trademasters do it when their time is up if you cycle which trade is submitting, but then you're asking for active trademasters to do something once every, like, four months IRL. Maybe just give culture minister cartel access?

Or just give everyone in an org read access to all org cartels regardless of trade. That would be good.

Lycidas

Solid suggestion either which way it gets implemented (if it does).

Kistan

Portius said:

-Library contest

--Librarians submit one book per year instead of two. It can come from either category.

---This lowers the burden on librarians. It can be hard to get two books per cycle without making crappy spam books.

---Also lowers pressure on authors to write books that fit into whichever category needs submissions, instead of the one they want.

---Presumably also easier for the admin to judge one book per contest than two.

----Keep literary/scholarly tags in the system to help keep the library organized.

That makes me sad - these things should be aspirational, stretch people. i hardly ever write scholarly. Yuk. Why do you want to make it easier for cities not to bother rather than pushing them to bother.

Surely an extra 300 credits every 12 days is enough to get someone to pull their finger out?

Portius

Because the correct strategy is to bank on other orgs not having submissions for the weak category, which is often the case, and churning out a quick filler book. Sure, the book will lose if it's contested, but if you do that every time, you'll pick up a bunch of non-contested wins.

Feeling pressured to write things to fit a quota rather than liking the topic is also a bad thing.

Kistan

Thats like saying we should have less domoths, villages and wildnodes because often only one side turns up to fight?

I am saying there are a lot of credits up for grabs, properly rewarded, people would concentrate more on it.

If people put the library at the bottom of the list, then why would they expect entries? And up until now, if you have minimal culture each year, it does not reward you for winning.

Lycidas

Compromise, it rotates? One cycle it's literary the next cycle it's scholarly?

Kistan

I still don't get why less not more?

This once again reduces the value of culture and promots combat as the way to win those credits (as you are allowing only 1 x 50 point win every three years rather than the two every two years)

Vatul

Kistan said:

Thats like saying we should have less domoths, villages and wildnodes because often only one side turns up to fight?

I am saying there are a lot of credits up for grabs, properly rewarded, people would concentrate more on it.

If people put the library at the bottom of the list, then why would they expect entries? And up until now, if you have minimal culture each year, it does not reward you for winning.

The credits are out there in our reward system but no one acts on them. We give proper rewards, and people don't concentrate on it. We've done large rewards, we don't small rewards, we've done gold, credits and everything the wazoo has to offer.

I don't think Portius is wanting library to be viewed as the bottom. Far from it. It's a not a matter of being at the lowest part of the totem pole for anything, it's just how the cookie crumbles at this point.

The majority of the population does not want to do any library submissions because fear of rejection from current rulings has led to some animosity. Those who care about the library know that the library needs to be fixed, and limited until things can be adjusted to current population.

Vatul

Portius said:

Org credits look like they might make culture competitions a little more relevant than they currently are. With that in mind, it might be a good idea to look into improving them.

Here's what I'd like to see:

-Move prestige onto a three year cycle.

--One year gets a design contest, then library, then stage. Only the most recent contest provides points to culture.

---Right now, all of the scoring happens at once and then lasts for the full 2 years. This should make culture scores shift more often.

---This should also alleviate concerns about culture overwhelming other areas in the org credit competition. Having only one providing points at a time will lower the overall impact.

-New design contest!

--Each design contest year, an org can submit a design from an org cartel for judging.

---This encourages people to put things in org cartels instead of tiny private ones.

---Acts as a gateway to culture. Lots of people do designs already, even people who don't do books/plays!

---Gives people more of a chance to see how admin judge designs, which should help make beauty seem more fair.

--Optionally, have each contest be for a specific trade and cycle through them. This should subsidize the trades that don't get as many designs.

---Evens out the playing field in case people think some trades get judged more gently than others.

----Could even specify a specific pattern (plate, chairs, whatever) for each contest, but that comes at the cost of making it much more restrictive.

-Library contest

--Librarians submit one book per year instead of two. It can come from either category.

---This lowers the burden on librarians. It can be hard to get two books per cycle without making crappy spam books.

---Also lowers pressure on authors to write books that fit into whichever category needs submissions, instead of the one they want.

---Presumably also easier for the admin to judge one book per contest than two.

----Keep literary/scholarly tags in the system to help keep the library organized.

-Stage contest

--Stage scoring is poorly documented. As far as I can tell, it depends mostly on the number of views, especially in the debut. BACKSTAGE SAY and EMOTE also seem to give points, but not EFFECTS.

---This system strongly favors having lots of people. That makes it hard to do successful plays if you are in a low population org or timezone.

----Make effects give points equal to says and emotes. You can use this with props to simulate having several actors even if you only have one.

-----Add a new prop category, CHARACTERS, to shove in the characters that you're portraying as effects. This isn't mechanically necessary, but having their own category would make it look better.

------I might be wrong about how scoring works, and that might make all of this meaningless. Documentation on how it calculates scores would also be good.

----Alternatively, add an artifact or org purchase for NPCs that you can TELL to use backstage commands to simulate having more actors. Could be a useful gold sink if they had upkeep.

A few comments from my end -

Library contest:

100%, as a librarian multiple times it was difficult to do anything to prepare for two books. Usually I ended up writing and submitting everything by myself.

Design contest:

Yes, absolutely. This would flow into preparing more for the Beauty Seal to understand current likes of administration. However it might be taken advantage of just for that purpose, so maybe something should police that like - maybe the winning design allows a cool-down for the next submission?

- Make the design contest come from org cartels only to encourage more designing for the general public.

Stage contest:

Stage contest requires judging and a careful look at submissions. If it is not done, then a lot of very questionable material can come out of the contest that may not be appropriate.

- Look into how recordings are saved. I lost a winning production on record because I wanted to change the program. Sadly Ianir worked hard to find it, but it was gone. He said something about how the code was so meshed that it is possible it got deleted.

- Low population is a huge problem. I have productions waiting to be done because no one wants to be an actor. Everytime I want to do the stage, I have to consider this and be disappointed each time.

-Actor solution: CHARACTERS would be a good idea to manipulate multiple roles at once should it be needed.

Kistan

Whereas we offer rewards and are regularly punching above our weight for culture because it is not seen as a low priority. 

I think it is about the ethos you create - I know when I feel less valued or rewards go down, I don't produce as much

Vatul

Kistan said:

Whereas we offer rewards and are regularly punching above our weight for culture because it is not seen as a low priority. 

I think it is about the ethos you create - I know when I feel less valued or rewards go down, I don't produce as much

We have never had it be a low priority. Some organisations cannot afford to pay out 300 credits per publication.

Kistan

And tehre I shall leave it -  agreeing to disagree