Shattered Kingdoms

Bonanzas are supposed to be festivals, celebrations of the game and the player-base. Cornucopian. But as it is designed right now they are just a dangling carrot, a treat for an arbitrary factor (Imm control or count). The essence of bonanzas are that they are incentives to play. So why not leverage this incentive?

Instead of rewarding the playerbase when there is a count that is High enough, I propose that Bonanzas should occur until there is a High Enough count.

The "reward feedback function" of a Bonanaza is not being managed properly. Players have little to no control over when Bonanzas occur. It is arbitrary and bad management to have Imms control this. They can only do so much with their time, facilitating new situations (limiting).

So the minimum count for turning OFF bonanza XP-gaining features should be around 25. When the count is less than 25 the features remain on.

Why? Because if the purpose of SK is to facilitate interaction and gaming with other people and players, it is not until there are enough players that the game truly becomes fun. When the count goes up, the chances of new interesting interactions and "groupability" -- being able to easily find a group grind or RP -- also goes up. The Reward then becomes -- Hey, you don't have to grind out XP anymore, without a group. The reward is interaction with other players. This is a positive feedback loop for players.

So please keep in mind that SK could be more fun, please reconsider the policy behind bonanzas. I for one think that it can be leveraged to increase players. Let us have supplements to our party before the party really gets started when everyone shows up.

Perhaps just during prime-time (7-10PM CST), every single day, each time until the active count reaches a minimum number of players (25-35). NOT the overall count historically in the day.



*Finally, I would like to say that IF bonus features are actually turned on right now (undocumented) then there should be some sort of notification. For example, like a normal extra worth message. It isn't about making the game easier in terms of skill, it is about players feeling special and focused in their game-flow. Thus why a turning-off message when the active count criteria is met, is important.*

I had the feeling that the high player count project was abandoned?

Nah. I remember at one point when I was leveling my warlock (dying a lot) there were like a few days in a row where the auto-rez thing was turned on.

I agree with most of what stratford said here.

From a design perspective, there would need to be something replacing the bonus during high counts, or the incentive will simply be to do the opposite of what the reward intends: player recruitment and retention.

Grep, I'm not sure if I agree with that, yet. I consider the amount of active players at any given point in time the fundamental source of pleasure and entertainment (retention factors). When there are enough players they can do whatever they want with the challenges that already exist in Pyrathia, or make up their own challenges sociologically.

Your suggestion speaks to new challenges that would take advantage of large active player counts. I think there could be new areas or challenges built to accommodate this, but I also think that it is more important the Player-base have enough different elements (roles) to enjoy in the first place.

So what replaces the high-count bonus is the regular group-bonus to melee experience, and the difficult-to-measure increased player interactions in general.

Good picture to describe this process here.

Somehow I doubt giving bonuses to low player counts is a good idea. I would suggest making it more difficult when there are low player counts, but that's an even worse idea.

There was obviously some thought put in to the high player count reward system, the only problem is we can't seem to recruit enough people to make it noticeable, and as mentioned, there really is no way to tell when it is turned on even (the nice thing about bonanzas, you are alerted at login).

As I see it, we just need to get the word out there, get new blood in and keep them, and then we'll likely see the high-count rewards more frequently and possibly more bonanzas to keep things fresh for everyone.

Please don't wimp the game by giving bonuses to low player counts.

Another idea is turning on Bonanza daily for a shorter period of time. Even only 1 or 2 hours. Doing that would certainly not constitute wimping. Nor would it give an unfair advantage to power-levellers. Who, like the_me, already have a vested interest (and accomplished pride) in their deep knowledge of levelling areas and strategies -- which cannot be regulated easily -- though they were at one time by zealous watchdog Immortals.

An idea that I'm stealing from an iteration of Ultima Online (I don't know if it's still a feature of that game), is that when a character is created a two-hour span of time EST is selected during which that character gains twice normal exps. The time slot is randomly generated by the system, and if you want to log in during that time and level, it's up to you. Will it perfectly conform to everyone's playing schedule? No, but then it's not necessarily designed to (I know for myself that unless I got very lucky, I'd almost never be able to take advantage of such a system).

Bonanza's would just add to that multiplier. This way, there is incentive to log in and play, but it doesn't detract from the high player count bonuses, nor conflict with them in any way.

here's an idea for recruitment

stop syn from jlooting newbies



the challenge is to find a bonus which does not affect the difficulty of the game, and ways to move from punishment-based online time quotas to reward-based time banking systems, if anything

and I use the term banking very deliberately.

I'm just glad we get bonanzas. I remember all the years where there was no such thing as SK bonanza. Now we have them and they aren't good enough for some people. I'll have to admit my surprise at this to be honest.

My opinion of Bonanza is it's a great bonus.