Earned Experience and Tasks

I won't talk much about that but I think it's a great idea. I'll leave it to the GM to talk further on that.

My idea to expand on this daily tasks idea is to award maybe 1 or 2 UE for the completion of a certain number of tasks by the player ontop of the daily 3 UE that is awardable for being online.

This would help encourage players to be active online and doing something whether other players on online or not, and they would be available and active visibly for new players to take notice of and current players to seek out for RP.

It would raise the visibility of the player base and reward our dedicated players with a few extras points so they can feel like they're actually gaining ground on the oldbies competitively speaking without too much of an unfair advantage against those who cannot play for long hours.

Being a player who spends well over eight hours a day on Sindome, It's sometimes depressing to think about how long it takes to catch up and be competitive with a lot of the long standing characters out there.

It takes months just to build a solid base skill and stat wise, and if you play a lot and really enjoy SD and get out there and RP it up that you should be given the opportunity to get ahead and catch up, If Joe Schmoe Oldbie wants to stay competitive alls they gotta do right now is log in 3 times a day and keep getting UE.

How about we allow the noobs to make them oldbies have a reason to be active and play more often to keep their UE edge and encourage more active play and less idling all around.

Looking forward to the feedback.

Implants level the playing field for agility, because it's possible to gain 4 or more levels with roughly 100k in chy.

That is oldbie level agility, but what about perception?

You'll see a minimal gain in strength and endurance with injections but this won't make you oldbie strong.

Just don't think that injections and implants are a win button it takes a VERY solid base of stats to make good use of those things and that BASE of stats can take 6-8 months to achieve.

Combat is very specific in its requirements when trading blow for blow and we lack the player base to really make use of solid tactics..

We may have enough active characters to do tactical situations but theyre almost never online when IC situations arise that these tactics can be exploited.

Anyway we're going off the course.

What you said isn't really correct. Oldbies that get ahead with a few extra UE a day DESERVE it because it's making them ACTIVE in the game.

Thats a good thing, and we can still keep up with them if the noobs are active in the game, it doesn't make the problem worse, it sustains the current status quo for active players and encourages inactive people to get their act together and start enjoying the game again like the rest of us.

There's no guarantee such a system would guarantee more RP. The task system Rastus suggested was job-related. If your bonus experience idea were to tie into that, players could well stick to these tasks and ignore whatever they choose since hey, they're doing their job and they'd rather grind the money and UE anyway.

IIRC a long time ago Damon (was it?) was working on an AE system but that either got so backburner'd everyone forgot about it or it got canned. That system looked a bit more interesting.

What it really looks like here is that you're asking for more UE.

That said, if you spend more than eight hours a day on a game, you have a problem and should get help because it can, will and may already have affected both your mental and physical well-being. At the very least, follow Johnny's lead and get a bike.

Typically older players try to avoid perming newer players. In fact, most of them will bring a dead newer player to Genetek to clone 'em if they find out he didn't have a clone. And that's how it worked even before there were 9-10 year old players.

I don't think the UE system prevents player retention. I couldn't compete in combat with people like Lucifer, Kikai, Moss and hell, most anyone when I started playing. There were no vehicles, no cyberware, the only coded systems for making money were SHI and Bruce and Enforcers caused TBs when fired. That didn't stop me from playing and inconveniencing older players.

Player 'competition' isn't always about combat. In fact, most of the time it shouldn't be. You can mess people's shit up without swinging a fist or firing a round. What's slowing down SD right now and is keeping it from accruing a playerbase is the same thing that kills a pen and paper game.

As for how much you play, whatever. I'm not telling you how much to play. I'm telling you to not die a slow, painful, miserable and possibly Wilford Brimleyesque death. You want to, then be my guest.

Then you get someone else to kill Seven Ecks for you.

No active player is that tough. Not you. Not anybody.

That's the problem.

I just don't think PC's were designed to survive this long.

Too bad you're being sarcastic -.-

Anyway.

Before Johnny went back to work and stopped gracing us with his presence he developed a list of items to complete before Sindome goes final and moves out of BETA.

The final step of this move was to reset everyone to 0, allowing established characters to keep their identity and possibly some connections due to established RP.

But it'd be an even playing field again, which I think was the best aspect of moving out of beta!

(Edited by DigitalTyranny at 1:07 pm on Feb. 17, 2011)

Doesn't anyone else think their be a huge spike in RP and interaction if everyone had to restart and build new connections and relationships with the new player base and letting go of how you got to where you are with the old player base?

I'm on a new character now and I'm already having more fun than I was last week.

Quote: from DigitalTyranny on 4:45 pm on Feb. 16, 2011[br]Rastus is Rastus but...

Wut? Feel free to elaborate. :-)

I really, really, REALLY wanted to ignore this thread, but hell, some bullet point thoughts:

Players complain that alpha player is too powerful, game needs to be reset, waah, waah, waah. This happened before any of you guys played, it happens in most games. It happens in pen & paper RPGs, it happens in modern MMOs. Just because you're not an alpha player doesn't mean the game needs to be reset/rebalanced, it just means you're shit at it. ;-)

SD's stat/skill checking system is vicious and extremely intolerant of weakness. UE isn't the cause of balance problems, a reset would only rebalance things in the very short term. If you wanted the game to be "fairer", the core stat/skill system would need to be completely changed. (This isn't going to happen.) I patched in the critical hit/miss system and postures to make it less brutal in combat, trust me, things used to be far worse. These days a weaker player can have some chance in combat, as originally intended the stat/skill system would mean a slightly weaker player would miss every attack they made and be hit by every attack made on them... combat, as it was intended to be, really sucks.

There's several chars who have substantially more UE invested than Seven Ecks. Just because you can't kill him, doesn't mean others couldn't. Playing smart counts for far more than UE, there's been a couple of notable players who've laid waste to oldbies and wreaked havoc in general within months of leaving chargen. (Playing smart also includes not perming yourself every few months in a fit of pique and going on to become a UE-gorged oldbie :-)).

Oldbies are balls deep in the UE curve and it slows them down MASSIVELY. There's chars who take 30-40 times the UE to advance one point, they argue the curve is too steep because it lets middlbies gain ground on them far too quickly.

This level playing field you speak of wouldn't generate more RP, you want to believe it's some kind of magic bullet that would "fix" everything. It isn't. It wouldn't.

SD history tends to suggest when players are fairly evenly matched they RP less and try to kill each other more. When all else is equal, cold hard game mechanics are your edge and players will use them to win rather than being a sitting duck while they RP.

The IC logistics of a blank slate are horrific. Reset stats, keep chars, everything gets wonky. Over-night the whole power structure of the world changes, Judges auto-lose combat to lone NPC gangers, bad-asses have to flee the slightest threat, the whole IC world just becomes one epic failure. Over 10 years of RP, inter-twining stories, NPC's and factions developed around characters past and present. Twisted. Explain it? Mass hysteria? Or just pretend it never existed? Neither works.

The admin logistics of a reset are just as horrific. It's not just a case of perming everyones characters and getting on with it. You think admin don't do enough for you now? Imagine what it'd be like when every item in the game needs to be collected up, checked, reset to default if necessary and fed back into the economy. Imagine everyone wanting histories checked, xhelps answering and NPCs puppeting, wanting little tweaks to the game to set themselves up, job applications, new roles, creating gear, describing homes... Sure, it's not like we have hundreds of players but most of our time is already spent doing this day in, day out with a minimal trickle of newbies and new chars.

Ultimately, if Johnny said there'll be a reset when a list of things are completed and the game comes out of beta, then it'll happen the day the list is finished, the game comes out of beta and Johnny hits the reset.

And while I'm on, quit griping about how shit GM's are and how little we do for the game behind our backs then telling us how much you appreciate what we do to our faces. When we're on, we do shit, most of it happens to be trivial: answering xhelps, sorting shit out, reading notes, fixing or tweaking code and carrying out the general maintenance that needs doing. We'd rather be running events, RP and storylines if we had the time and manpower, it's sure as hell more fun than janitorial duties.

(Edited by Rastus2 at 7:58 pm on Feb. 17, 2011)

(Edited by Rastus2 at 8:03 pm on Feb. 17, 2011)

However:

As most people who post on this board would know, my character is one of the few active olbie characters that is not associated with admin in any form, however:

I'm far more resistant to kill someone now, then I ever was before. If I can avoid killing you, and it won't result in me getting raped en-masse I'll do it.

Hell, I did something which would probably be considered Un-IC to try and save a character the other day, which I wouldn't have done five years ago.

It costs me an absolute crapload of UE to boost my skills now, and you also need to take the following into account:

Any current, active olbie, has probably had a significant break from the game, I've personally probably had 4-5 years off of the game over the last 11 years that my character has been around, if not significantly more, and I also have lost more fights then I've won over that time. Hell, if Moss came back now, he'd still be considered an oldbie, and he probably hasn't played in 4 maybe 5 years?

Someone here pointed out they've paid a significant sum to support the game. Good for you, I've thrown $100 on the game myself, and I'd still have done so if the option was available to donate without receiving any perks. Donations don't give you any right to a better result in game, only slight game advantages.

Quote: from Rastus2 on 10:39 pm on Feb. 17, 2011[br]

Quote: from DigitalTyranny on 4:45 pm on Feb. 16, 2011[br]Rastus is Rastus but...

Wut? Feel free to elaborate. :-)

He looks like a cow...

Someone here pointed out they've paid a significant sum to support the game. Good for you, I've thrown $100 on the game myself, and I'd still have done so if the option was available to donate without receiving any perks. Donations don't give you any right to a better result in game, only slight game advantages.

This was in response to Murphy trying to tell me I play too much, and me answering back with I donate, I'll play however much I want.

Nothing to do with suggestting donations should equal more UE.

Please try to read the posts if you're going to comment.

Thought so.

And you just admitted your information is not current. You can silencio yourself and stop acting like you know what's going on admin-side now. K thnx.

This thread is deader then disco.

Quote: from DigitalTyranny on 10:09 am on Feb. 18, 2011[br]

Quote: from Murphy on 4:15 pm on Feb. 16, 2011[br]What's slowing down SD right now and is keeping it from accruing a playerbase is the same thing that kills a pen and paper game.

I'm sorry Murphy but in 2011 in my part of the world the only thing that kills a pen and paper game is a lousy
DM... �I translated your comment to fit SD and that's how I came to the conclusion you're blaming the GMs. My bad if you meant otherwise.

In my part of the world there's more than one thing that can kill a campaign, but they all have the same root. I will not reveal this immediately because I am an asshole and want to make you read the rest of the post.

Players (hell, humans in general) need a goal. Short term, long term, it doesn't matter. New players don't know what's possible so they can't form goals. Since it's a game and they're new to it, survival can't be a driving force unless death is an immediate threat - while they're logged in. If they log off and don't intend to log in again, they don't care what happens to their characters.

So, when I would GM CP2020 games, I would keep players on their toes. I would give them big toys for the express purpose of using them to motivate them by threatening the shiny toy. I would have the more interesting poser gangs harass certain players in the group. Six Marylin Monroes with razor-sharp claws tend to keep things moving along. Or Wilford Brimleys. Never tried that one.

Unlike a pen and paper game, however, events aren't uniquely GM-driven. Players can serve to motivate other players just as well as GMs.

The problem is, there's a shortage of both. The shortage of either one produces a shortage of the other.

What's killing SD, and ultimately kills any pen and paper game is a lack of interest.

Also, a "lousy DM" goes without saying - DMs only exist in D&D which is a lousy game. :P