Freebies - Investigation/Clues/Actions/Praise/Donations/Work

[BewitchedSpirit]

Just a couple suggestions!

Right now, to me, it feels like it is really hard to be involved and get anywhere because of how restrictive things are. You basically have to choose between doing a single thing or maybe two. So I have a few suggestions on how to some of the limits might be altered to allow people a bit more wiggle room to accomplish things while remaining true to not overburdening staff. And just as a note I do realize that some restrictions have been put in place because it does over burden staff and so I understand entirely if some of these are unacceptable. Nonetheless! I wanted to throw my ideas out there so that they can be taken or tossed!

As is the case with Teaching, I thought it would be nice if people could have X number of clues they can give out each week based on their investigation, leadership, and teaching skills. Then, after that, they would cost to hand out because of the time it takes to do so. I think this should also be the case with briefing an org. I think it could cost double or even triple the slots to brief an org as it does to brief a person.

The same with Praise and Donations but based on another set of skills. Donations could be based on the Economic skill, as an example, and praise price based on social clout or something similar.

With Work, I think it would be nice to allow people to work X number of times a week for free (maybe once every 24-hrs to encourage people to get online daily?). This would allow them to bring in a little bit of income for themselves and their org and then if they work in excess of that amount they pay the AP.

My last thought is that one action every X days (90) should be free and one assist and one investigation should be free every X days (60). It is really hard to commit AP to an investigation or action and still do work or teach or praise people or make donations, etc. So it would be really nice to have these. My alternative thought is to allow people to spend XP (around the Knack price range) to buy a free slot for every X number of days for Actions/Assists and Investigation separately.

Anyways, those are my suggestions. I hope that they are helpful if nothing else. ^.^

As always, thank you for all you do!

Arcelia/Clara

[netforce10]

I'll weigh in my opinion, I actually prefer that characters can't do everything. There are choices that you need to make and you need to decide what's important. Perhaps that's working as you want to gain some resources for a task or action, perhaps you'll use work less because you want to research that new thing.

If there was too much restriction then yes, I would agree that it might need to be loosened but as it is I don't think that is the case, especially as the cost increases also brought with them an AP generation increase. My character can easily be part of half a dozen organizations, have an investigation going(which needs a new clue every half dozen weeks, that would take up my AP for the week and some I would have spend next week) and do a few works and work/invests. If I end up supporting(or leading) an action then that takes up most of that single weeks AP aswell as diminish some of my AP generation but all in all it's not that bad in my case beyond impacting that week and the week after.

Then again that might simply be my preference.

[Selerik]

I think this is a very strong point to be made. I personally feel that diminishing returns (as opposed to exponential or flat) is critical to any design that has people weighing specialization against broad skillsets, and the XP system to some extent facilitates that due to the built in tax. So what do freebies achieve?

On the one hand, they give people the ability to participate in all systems. I rather like how we have a first few investigations that are heavily discounted, to help people find a hill to stand on early on. I would dislike that being a permanent or refreshing bonus, since it discourages people being good at that skillset ICly and cheapens the stories of those who focus on being investigators or riddlesmiths or similar.

On the other hand, it leads to bloat. When we talk about finances on Arx, there is no question the game has seen a creeping up of wealth as characters grow better at what they do on average. There are a few die-hard specialists who make the money I make from using all my AP in a week with a single @work command, and that is what they made their characters to do, be rich af. So where is the flip side to that scenario? Well, instead of just buying a reward, players can run plots to earn rewards/create rewards. The code for prps on Arx is the best I have ever seen on any MUSH/MUX/MUCK in my 20+ years in the hobby, and creating content helps the game*

*Some exceptions apply

So what is the core problem here.

"...it feels like it is really hard to be involved and get anywhere because of how restrictive things are." Involvement that comes from running code isn't going to get you really involved in anything, but freebies to help new players is fair. I could see a discount/freebie on the first few actions a new character does, where the price slowly scales up to full cost. That makes sense to me. I would argue that donation/work/praise should be dropped from this topic altogether, as they are not story generating commands. The emphasis should be on how to build a story and where AP-discounts make sense for that. Investigation already has this baked in, so @actions become the crux of it.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 4:17 AM netforce10 notifications@github.com wrote:

I'll weigh in my opinion, I actually prefer that characters can't do everything. There are choices that you need to make and you need to decide what's important. Perhaps that's working as you want to gain some resources for a task or action, perhaps you'll use work less because you want to research that new thing.

If there was too much restriction then yes, I would agree that it might need to be loosened but as it is I don't think that is the case, especially as the cost increases also brought with them an AP generation increase. My character can easily be part of half a dozen organizations, have an investigation going(which needs a new clue every half dozen weeks, that would take up my AP for the week and some I would have spend next week) and do a few works and work/invests. If I end up supporting(or leading) an action then that takes up most of that single weeks AP aswell as diminish some of my AP generation but all in all it's not that bad in my case beyond impacting that week and the week after.

Then again that might simply be my preference.

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