Shattered Kingdoms

I agree, much easier said than done. I really don't think there should be more incentives to role play. People who want to role play, will role play. There are certain people who play this game that will do the bare minimum of role play and maximum pk, there are some who have a healthy balance, and there are some who rarely(if ever PK) and simply play to role play(nothing wrong with that but...). Some of these heavy role players essentially remove themselves from the environment as a whole, and create their own little game inside the game in which they play, completely ignoring the rest of the game.

Somehow, these people are finding leadership positions and will not interact with other factions which has created a stagnant environment, with the exception of a few factions. I suspect it is partly because they are afraid of the possibility of being ambushed under the guise of a diplomatic meeting, who knows? This is also why there seems to be a lot of drama in certain factions: they're too busy ignoring the rest of the player base and creating drama within their own circles, which eventually leaks out because butt hurt people tend to turn on each other.

All in all, it is up to the players to enjoy the experience of role play and if someone doesn't want to role play, I don't think any incentive will really get them to. I just wish people who don't intend to play the game the way it is meant to be played should refrain from accepting roles of leadership, or at least cabal/tribunal leadership.

Here are some ideas. They are given in the order that I like them. I'm not really a huge fan of the third one, but I put it there anyway:

Mentor Point Bonus:

Rewards could include a mentor point award as well as an XP award. Suppose it takes 100 mentor points to get an attribute point. Suppose further that a small reward gives 1/4 of a level in XP. A small reward would also include 25 mentor points. A full level reward would also include 100 mentor points. In the lifetime of a character who accrues a lot of rewards for great RP this might amount to a handful of attribute points. This would not be unbalancing, but it would be a little something extra for people who consistently RP well and keep characters for a long time. Of course, the opposite would hold true as well. Curses would detract from mentor points.

Paragon Buff:

The paragon title is worth very little. It gets you a few "<Hardcore RPer> tells you' OOC Congrats on paragon ,'" but that's about it. It could be enhanced to include an actual bonus. It could be a minor HP bonus (less than a victory bonus) that persists while you keep the paragon flag. This would also not be unbalancing, and would be a proper tip of the cap to good RPers.

There are other things that could be done to modify the paragon system, but that might be a topic for a different thread.

Elite RP Shop:

Some quests on SK grant access to special shops. Perhaps accruing rewards could be seen as a sort of quest. If you accumulate enough XP as a GM to become eligible to advance, you could spend those XP to get access to a special shop. This shop could have equipment for sale that is above average. Not as good as sacred equipment, but better than you can get in most shops. It would be of a desirable material with moderate innate endowments. It could be custom tailored to look how you want it to look, sort of like the engraved shields in Teron. It would not have any beneficial scripts, and it would not be as good as equipment you can get from difficult PvE areas, but it would be a little something that players might like. Furthermore, if anyone without the appropriate qualifications tried to wear it, it wouldn't work. They would remove it as per certain quest items that get removed when you try to wear them without having done the quest.


None of this directly addresses the specific issue that the OP raised about getting more RPers involved in CRS. But, this would get more PKers to become RPKers. This, in turn, would create more RP in general, thereby getting more PKers to RP with RPers, helping to bridge the gap between them.

People end up leading factions by default a lot of the time. There just aren't enough players for there to be strong RPK leaders in every faction. The only solutions to this that don't require a CRS overhaul are to enlarge the player pool or to decrease the number of factions. There is an optimal ratio between the number of factions and the number of players in the player base, and we're not currently at it. I think SK would be a lot more fun if there were routinely 5+ in each faction online during peak hours (can you imagine!), but this is not possible with about a 30%-40% faction participation rate, 10 factions, and peak login numbers that range between 35 and 45. So, if you or anyone else wants to be of service, you could go recruit a few quality players to SK to help us out.

I think it is necessary to lessons the factions, even if we did increase our player count. I have played during the busiest years of SK, when there were only cabals, and still the average cabal members online at peak hours were ~5 maybe a bit more depending on the faction.

I want to dissolve Peace Keepers, Guardians, and Talons and let their respective cabals take back over guarding those lands. Essentially just make them like the MC. If we have to adjust their RP, then that's what we have to do. Having more people in factions just makes the overall player experience more enjoyable in my opinion. Recruiting players takes time and effort, which I am willing to give, hell I've probably recruited more people to this game than any other person playing. There's a reason we were called the "Murfreesboro Crew" - because I recruited a lot of my friends and people from my high school to play. Granted, I am probably still the only person still playing from that time, but I do my part to vote and advertise SK as much as I can online and in person. You could be of service too, you know, and do just what you're telling me to do.

Random thoughts, and maybe this is a new "incentivizing RP" thread:

Make a new category of imm rewards/punishments that is not xp based and is different from enlightenment xp awards and curse xp punishments. Make it a hidden score so that imms can +1 someone or -1 someone at will, with notes explaining what they saw. At the end of every month, show a player "You received average marks for RP" "You received high marks for RP. Great job!" or "You received low marks for RP. Use OOC prayer to inquire if you'd like to do better". Make the notes available to all imms at request so that someone who wants to get better can be quickly briefed by an imm looking at their file.

At the end of a month your net +/- could go into a bank to spend at a shop or on other things like the one Styles mentioned.

The reason this wants to be invisible is that 1) it shouldn't be impacted by anything on the paragon system, which is too cliquey most of the time, and 2) you shouldn't be focused on "scoring RP points" as much as playing a good character, so it being behind the scenes helps with that.

I like the thought of something like that Pat, but I don't like the thought of creating additional work for the IMMs, imagine having to do that for every character every month?

Yes, it's a bit more work documenting observations, but I imagine they have opinions of most characters anyways, to the extent that they're doing any snooping at all.

There is no way I can imagine that coding things like these could possibly remove the personal touch required to correct behavioral issues.

I don't think the PAR flag necessarily currently reflects the good RPers, do you? Some are good, but some make me scratch my head and wonder why.

The PAR system is much like the leader and HF systems. People get it by default.

Most enlights are given from players to OOC/IC friends (or mudsex partners), not to people with good rp.

The PAR system gives you incentive to not give out enlights, too.

I don't understand what disincentive you are speaking of here.