Shattered Kingdoms

The more enlights you give out, the more likely you are to lose your PAR flag next month. (And not get it back in the long run.) I am aware you added some activity requirement or something, but I think that caps at giving out about 4 a month and you're good.

It doesn't help when you have all the PARs enlighting each other, to further ensure nobody else gets it either or certain players who wind up with it, and will only enlight 'certain kinds of players'.

I.E. I imagine Tyto could RP his [REDACTED] off (yes, this would be a change) and not get an enlight from 90% of the people with PAR flag.

Actually, if you don't give out PAR rewards you're more likely to lose it.

It's also worthy of noting that you don't gain any benefits at all from being PAR... so why would you care about "losing" it by doing what the PAR flag requires of you?

I just dont know, Edoras.

Maybe it's because this thread is about rewarding people who get PAR flags.

Just maybe.

Superman, I actually take pains not to reveal how paragon works with the hope that people won't game it. Some of the details leaked out once, but it's been changed since then. Suffice to say, you should do the job of Paragon to the best of your ability and trust that it will be good for both you and the game.

There are also now limitations on how often people can be rewarded, especially by other paragons.

Anyone's who's ever gotten PAR and read the popup that appears whenever you log in knows that PAR is almost completely a responsibility, and not a reward. I would disagree with the notion that increasing PAR to be a reward would actually incentivize RP.

I also think that giving gameplay rewards for attaining PAR would just encourage people to attempt to game the system far more than they do now. IMO, that would actually make it less effective at incentivizing actual RP.

That's why I suggested a purely behind the scenes approach.

Le pardon monsieurs ~♫

May we please return upon the topic at hand?

I understand this is a branch from another topic. The rewards currently in Dulrik's trunk are more appropriate for those associated in PK. Which is interesting to note. As that suggests Dulrik's main focus is PK with RP balanced of one another.

However, Dulrik doesn't realize that he already has some RP elemental items, several I've noticed (but lacking knowledge of) are the items that give off a "sound" or "event" when the player-character walks around. Sacred items/weapons as well. There are several, but to be honest, I am not aware of them. I don't know if the owners of such items even RP having them.


Anyway...
Given that the Head Sancho is open to suggestions, shouldn't we act in tern?

By the way, nice seeing you all again. Especially Edoras~♫

So. Lets drop the "extra rewards for Paragon/PAR" thought. Doing so would solely reward those who do obtain the title. Not everyone can become a Paragon. Granted. Not everyone has high standard RP. Granted. Given that, instead, lets just reward people for simply RPing. Lets encourage creative dialogue and writing emotes instead of throwing around socials.

We don't exactly have hard-set guidelines to our RP. If we did, it would remove from individual creativity. Right now we rely on player input, thus letting their Roleplay interaction in 'this' world be it's own reward.

But from what I understand, some of our RP is: Fountain/Inns, Priests, Bro-fists, Snuggles, Lighty vs Darky, arse kicking Necro-Drows, and Hawt lusty Elf on Drow action...

Just a thought, and lets be honest, Patrisaurus, we shouldn't have to completely rely on the existence of a hidden Staff member. Something just might have to be coded in. Not should, but might..

What other rewards could be given to those willing to put their heart into their RP? And if what, then how? And if how; how can we insure we're truly encouraging RP in the Pbase as a whole? I quite honestly wouldn't want to sit around waiting for someone to watch me RP to reward me. I vaguely recall a global event celebrating the opening of a new location. There was food and drink and some badges for souvenirs (soon taken by thieves upon logout), but nothing else. As mentioned before, RP in itself seems its own reward, at present..

Logical fallacy. It suggests it's easier to give a coded boost to combat than it is to give a boost to RP.

The gameplay award I proposed was pretty minor. I don't think people will go out of their way to game the system for a minor HP bump (though I could be wrong). I think it would be easy to detect if the same people just keep rewarding each other, though. That said, I think there are some paragon overhauls that could go into place that could make the system better.

First, what is the purpose of the paragon system as it stands? Why does it work the way it works? The purpose is supposedly to acknowledge good RPers, and it has some formula whereby it gets shifted around month to month so as to allow different people to receive that acknowledgement. But, as has been pointed out in this thread, the acknowledgement is fairly empty. It's more of a chore than anything else. RPKers are in no way moved or motivated by the paragon system. So, the mechanics of of the system, no matter how effective and well thought out, are being applied to something that does not work. I think it only serves as a polarizing agent, that actually widens the RP/PK gap on SK instead of drawing these elements together in a collision.

I would rather see a paragon system that rewards the players with longterm, consistently well played characters in a meaningful way. There would be up to one paragon for each race. Whichever member of a given race had accrued the most RP rewards over his character's lifetime, and over a minimum threshold of an entire level's worth of rewards, would be the paragon for that race. Some races may not have paragons all the time in this system. This would also allow paragon to be a longterm flag without unfairly benefiting the longest lived races, since each race only has one paragon. This flag would come with the current paragon ability to hand out rewards and a meaningful, but not unbalancing, gameplay bonus, such as a minor HP boost. Paragon would be checked for on a monthly basis like it is now, and would also require a minimum amount of activity and perhaps a minimum number of rewards handed out. Retired characters would not be considered, and largely inactive characters would get passed over until such time as they become active again. Any curses at all could preclude a character from having any chance of ever becoming a paragon (without divine intervention).

In order to game such a system, you would actually have to RP well and keep a character a long time so as to knock the existing paragon off his throne. I don't mind that sort of gamesmanship, as it is precisely what we would like to see out of people: consistent, longterm character development and interaction with other players. It would be simple enough to monitor where a character had gotten his rewards and where his rewards went to detect any foul play, and that could be punished severely (and publicly for maximum shame value).

A lot of the hesitancy about switching away from the current system seems to be borne of mistrust toward the players. If you give them something, they will abuse it. I think that, given the history of SK, that's a fair concern. I also think that earned mistrust is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I say give people a chance to do it right and the majority of them will. A few bad apples can be mercilessly crushed and excluded from participating in the system.

We already give people a lot of responsibility in the PK arena. We let them lead factions with almost zero quality control. We let them run amok and jloot people with paper-thin RP, having a material affect on other players' experiences. We let them make heavy use of OOC knowledge throughout their characters lives. Why is the particular area of potential reward abuse such a sticking point? It really has less potential to be a negative force on SK than unexamined PK does, and more potential to be a positive force if used correctly. RP and PK should be on equal footing on SK, but the nature of CRS and the worthlessness of the RP reward system have definitely tipped the scales toward PK. Ideally, people would be subjected to tough RP scrutiny and standards to join factions, but CRS disincentivizes leaders from doing this. Factions with lower activity levels get crushed in CRS, and leaders in those factions are lucky to have anyone with even a shred of PK skill looking to sign up.

My proposals are aimed at tackling this issue with minimum codework and imm involvement, and without even getting into the sticky area of CRS reform (though I am certainly open to talking more about that, too...). A combination of including a mentor point component as part of the reward system and of altering the paragon system to give a gameplay award and be based on lifetime accumulated rewards both encourage longterm character development. The characters that stick around the longest and RP the best are going to be the ones who end up with the paragon flags and with the most attribute points gained from rewards, and it will benefit the entire SK community to have more characters like that around. I have seen some flashes of RPK greatness that disappeared too quickly. I thought that characters like Markas and Ithorim (among many others) were extremely solid and had great potential, but ended up being too short-lived. Perhaps with better incentives in place, players will keep characters like that around. It will be worth the inevitable RP headaches and PK setbacks to have strong RPK characters persist.