Shattered Kingdoms

Ask your questions about the players online reward here.

Announcement is here:
http://www.shatteredkingdoms.org/forums ... p?p=328009

[edit: Question posts that are quoted will be removed when replied to, so we keep this thread clean and clear]

grep, I appreciate that you are (usually) a rather productive member of the forums, but I just thought I'd point out that there's no way you'd know all the details so please don't confuse things with conjecture. I won't be confirming or denying details about the specific reward - this isn't a guessing game.

NOTE: In the various examples below, I refer to 'Saturday' and 'Sunday'. Bear in mind that this is an ongoing bonus scheme that will run daily - I'm just narrowing down the example to one day's goal and one day's reward to make things clearer.


In reply:


If you are offline, you're not online. You need to be online and in the game to count towards the average. The subsequent reward is also for those that are online and in the game. Sorry if you're unable to play at present - hopefully that will change soon and you can join in!


Yes. For example, the goal for this Saturday is to have an average of 25 players across the 24hr period. On Sunday at 12:00:01 AM a script will run that will calculate the average - if we managed to achieve an average of 25 or more on Saturday, the reward ...'switch'... will turn on at 12:00:02 AM.


If the script that runs on Sunday morning verifies the goal was achieved, the reward will remain active for 24hrs, available to anyone and everyone online all Sunday.


They may, they may not. We haven't built them to necessarily suit one type of player or another. Our general preference would be a reward system that everyone who is online can enjoy.


Whilst the start and end points in all these calculations are based on server time (US Pacific, I believe), the average measurements and the reward durations are an entire day. This means everyone is treated equally.

The script doesn't care what day it is - it runs EVERY night just after midnight, checking the prior day's average and setting the reward status for the new day. Good luck!

My own speculations aside, I am interested in what kind of average we're talking about here.

I've personally seen periods of counts as low as two for over an hour during my own gameplay, and have seen counts of 1 every so often during the really dead hours.

Does this operate on means? Will every sample of 8 require a sample of at least 43 to trigger this? Or is there a more analog method of calculating player-hours that does not require sampling at work? Even so, the question is still one worth asking: are these averages arithmetic means?

I only ask because this is fascinating material, and I think it would help us determine how to best 'recruit' our fellow players to jump inside the game. That is to say, whether it would be better to get high peaks or higher baselines.

Grep's concern was actually my first thought as well: if you're aiming for a 25 players online average across as a 24 hour period you'll very likely never see it given the numerous hours between roughly 4 am and 8 am+ (EST) where there are no more than four or five, frequently less, players online. I'm not sure the few hours in the evening at peak time where the player count is highest will fully compensate for that extreme and extended lull.

Basically, I'm wondering if you are just intending to dangle a carrot here in front of the player base that you already know is going to be infrequently, if ever, attainable.

Your concerns are noted, however I'm going to withold a detailed response on the mechanics until after the weekend. Suffice to say, we have good reason to believe that the goal of 25 is easily achievable.

The goal could be achieved through either:
* increased activity in 'quieter' times
* higher peak counts than what we have been seeing (approaching 50 lately)
* characters just generally playing for longer periods.
...or any combination of these.

Give yourselves a chance and you'll see; it's a bit early to be dismissing it outright.

I don't think anyone's dismissed it outright. I'm certainly not, and I think it's a good carrot to dangle. My concern, however, is that if it isn't delivered upon with relative frequency, then it will actually probably be counter-productive at worst, or ineffective at best.

The term we throw around the office is "Over-promised, under-delivered."

I prefer to exceed expectations.

I can only bring so many new people to the MUD myself. Hopefully a few others can do the same.

There is frequently from like 4am-10am EST like less than 10 people on. Often it's more like 5.

I guess we'll see how this works out, thanks guys.

Solve for Peak:


And that's a best case scenario.

Putting the current argument aside for a moment, I want to remind everyone that attempting to artificially inflate the 25 player average does not constitute a good reason for multi-playing. Having more than one character logged on at once is still a deletable offense, and we will use it if we feel you are attempting to inflate the numbers.