Brainstorming Roleplay Rewards

Vatul

Hi everyone,

It was suggested that we needed a forums thread to discuss any ideas on how to reward and encourage roleplay for the playerbase. Some ideas are around in other threads but I think bringing them together and having some new ones will definitely be helpful too!

This is just a thread about roleplay, and in no way an interlude or opportunity to compare combat rewards to any non-com or roleplay rewards.

Let's keep the focus solely on how we can bring the story of all of our characters together in a way that continues roleplay in a manner that serves us best.

I'll be posting links to any main posts about ideas so it's easy to follow here.

Vatul

I'll start off with my idea. This was all about some coded in RP-events that would be org focused. Plus a reputation system that wasn't based off of the deduction/gaining points for activity i.e "She is an extremely credible character."

The main post is here: https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/comment/188873#Comment_188873

Rancoura

I can't remember if this has been mentioned before on these forums or not (by myself or others -- that memory tho), but I vaguely remember Aetolia having some kind of commendation system where players can submit a commendation of another player including details as to why, which ends up with the commended character receiving credits.

I don't know if the admins had to review each before passing out the credits, or if it was a limited thing, but perhaps we could adapt a similar system for roleplay commendations?

Edit: I'm envisioning this for more personal character-to-character interactions rather than large-scale events, of course.

Lycidas

Gave the suggestion a read and I think it would be awesome, though definitely coding would be involved heavily. That's not a bad thing! A suggestion I've had and have also heard was something like Esteem Token™ where you are given a token on daily weave that can be awarded to another player to show you enjoyed RP'ing with them. These earned tokens could have small random/set buff attached to them, or act like a mini-currency. These buffs would try to be non-combat oriented, something like increased esteem generation (like 5%) or increased influence crit chance (lesser goop mints). Another option could be just letting them spend the tokens on Czigany coins or some other reward.

I'm aware this could be gamed, and for example five people shower Vatul in tokens every day just because she demands it, but to me personally that's fine, as I don't really see it becoming an issue because most of the people I know that are focused about RP, won't do it. If it happens, then fine, at least they're minimal buffs that won't have a direct impact on conflict at large.

Ea

My initial idea was something along the lines of RP Tokens for the purchase of items (objects) that a player could customize to implement further flavor.  Granted, there would need to be restrictions in place to what someone can do/customize, but it would have no impact on things such as bashing/combat.  Strictly role-play oriented.

Also, I feel like this idea has a lot of complexity in how to discern when to award those points, and how it would be prevented that someone just sits in their manse and emotes to get free tokens.

I like the idea of a commendation system, as well, but I don't know much about it nor how it would work on Lusternia.

I'm not entirely sure what or how yet, but I do feel something shiny for actively role-playing would potentially help create more of it.

Lycidas

Rancoura said:

I can't remember if this has been mentioned before on these forums or not (by myself or others -- that memory tho), but I vaguely remember Aetolia having some kind of commendation system where players can submit a commendation of another player including details as to why, which ends up with the commended character receiving credits.

I don't know if the admins had to review each before passing out the credits, or if it was a limited thing, but perhaps we could adapt a similar system for roleplay commendations?

Edit: I'm envisioning this for more personal character-to-character interactions rather than large-scale events, of course.

I like the idea, kind of meshes with the other suggestions here, and also not sure how it would be handled. Though another 'reward' of sorts that these systems could employ would be a special line on the honours, reminiscent of the Bardics and Artisinal winners. Just something cosmetic to point out that "Hey, this person RPs and people say they're good at it." kind of thing.

Vatul

Maybe we could meld this token idea with a reputation system? Limit the amount of tokens you could give a year. And they could vary. In order to earn one you’d have to reach a certain threshold? 

Lavinya

In another game I play, you can 'playerbonus' another player for great roleplay, once every 30 hours or something of being logged in or something like that. The reward is only seen by the player and is a nice little bonus of both XP and some (their equivalent of) gold.

A player who just received a bonus can't get another one for around an hour or so, preventing people from piling them onto one person or whatever. The intention is to give someone a little reward for their RP with you. I love it, receiving it is the best even though the reward is small, it's the warm fuzzies that someone enjoyed interacting with you and wanted you to get some recognition. 

I'd love a way to do something similar. Once a  game month or RL day or whatever, the ability to give someone that little kudos.

Possible rewards:

- goop craftables (much like from poteens/genies)
- straight up goop (small enough to not be over the top that people want to game it, ~20?)
- XP (great for encouraging new people too)
- gold (but goldsinks I know I know)
- bound credits (1-2 perhaps)
- maybe special honours after so many bonuses accrued, like publishing/bardics etc in honours, noting that they have been considered great to rp with?


Just some off-the cuff thoughts. If it can be gamed it will be. Keeping the rewards on the small side stops it from being game breaking and might still be enough to hopefully encourage people to go out there and interact.

Lycidas

We share similar thoughts, and I adore the 'cooldown' of it, which by itself fixes the gaming of the system, at least from being casually done.

Vatul

I wholeheartedly agree that cooldowns will be necessary for anything that’s this intricate. Maybe if our ideas are implemented we could harken back to the idea of looking into a more non-com VA branch of that skill set. 

Kalaneya

link to my idea in the previous thread, which was a commendation system: https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/comment/188902#Comment_188902

probably highly abusable when it comes to daily credits, but food for thought.

I'm all in for making RP more attractive to people in whatever way.

Devora

This is a big ask from staff/volunteers, but here's my rp reward fantasy: divine interaction.

People accumulate points given by other players for their cool rp and the storylines they're bringing into the city/commune/guild/world. Then, maybe once an RL month, the person who has the most points gets to work together with a divine to make a scheduled mini event happen that relates to their storyline.

There would be one of these for each of the 6 city/communes. The nice thing about this is that even divine who are solely coding-oriented could be a huge help in making this rp happen; players could even offer scripts/guidelines for what divine-possessed NPCs might say.

Alternately, people could propose plots once a month, like the new envoys system, and players with enough rp weight and presence in the realms could vote on the mini plot / event / storyline they want to see most. Then divine would help implement that.

The idea here is to take part of the burden of organizing rp off of staff/volunteers and having players do the heavy lifting for coming up with rp ideas, mobilizing players, and maintaining storylines on the daily, while at the same time expanding the admin-side infrastructure for player-organized rp by actually rewarding it in a way that adds to the game and highly incentivizes people, without enabling mechanical abuses or depriving people who don't rp of rewards that matter to them.

Vatul

Bumping this thread! Let's see if there are anymore brainstorming ideas out here.

Saz

A mechanic that awards huge chunks of experience at gmt 0:00, preferably one that scales with levels and is very effective between 90-100 as well, that should work on how many roleplay recognitions that player has earned in that day. Especially people below demigod will have a motivation to spend time roleplaying instead of doing semi-afk, fully automated bashing activities. Not saying they shouldn't do the latter, but what's stopping us to have an awesome alternative for it?

Devora

@Saz Any thoughts about how to keep that from getting gamed heavily?

Saz

For a start limit amount of recognitions a person can distribute per RL day. And add diminishing returns to the recognitions points you hand out to the "same" players, with a cooldown on it of a few RL days or a RL week. So people can't boost their friends on their own, and also has to earn recognition from other players if they want the benefits of this, which might encourage them to make the world a more vibrant place. Also, if anyone's trying to hand it out to someone without stating valid reasons or in the absence of a roleplay session, I guess admins can reserve right to punish that too for trying to game it.

Devora

I really like the idea of diminishing returns for boosting the same PC, but I don't know how you could limit it to players rather than PCs without exposing alts. I also don't know about a system of staff/volunteer moderation. They have more than enough on their hands and figuring out whether or not an rp session in fact occurred seems pretty subjective.

Saz

I mean it in the same vein that there're warnings against afk bashing/aetherhunting, yes there are examples but how tightly are those moderated again? Just a warning will help keeping people on toes, not that admins should sit down dedicate hours to watching everyone throwing emotes at each other.

Re: Alts, I think alts can break many things if they are being abused, not just this system. But a decent solution for that could be that you earn a recognition point, that you can later hand out, by spending x amount of time as logged in, rather than having a set number of points for every day.