Shattered Kingdoms

Hello Dulrik,

I address this to you primarily because I mean this for you. I expect some serious hugs from people for actually making an appearance on the forums.

The following suggestion is an idea taken from several other role-play intensive MUDS and other games that have experienced a GREAT deal of success with this system.

Based on my experience, which is limited - I've only played this mud on and off for 10 years... I think that this would work well in SK.

The Problem: Cabal membership is a joke. People constantly flip sides between light and dark, causing massive power fluctuations in the game, short-lived characters with relatively poor role-play, and characters have no motivation to not do things like sell out their cabal roster for no reason.

Furthermore, I fully understand that it can be difficult to implement negative reinforcements and penalties without limiting role-play potential.

The Solution: Require the use of a substantially large number of unspent loyalty tokens to join a cabal or tribunal.

Additionally, I would, suggest that if implemented, given the dual cabal/trib system, the tribunal cost be much less. A third as much sounds appropriate.

But Big D, I trust in you to balance any implemented system appropriately. As ever. Except what you did to rogues after beginning the rise of the MR barbarian. I am going to call you out on that. Still much love big man.

As long as you prevent paragons from enlightening their friend 10 days in a row to power them into a cabal or someone creating a bazillion alts to get together the pre-requisite loyalty tokens, this will work.

The effects: This system would force players to actually role-play in order to join cabals and tribunals and make characters within these factions more valuable and less easily discarded for a power flip. It will prevent newer players from being sucked into these organizations without having more game experience.

This change would stand to benefit sk in every way by producing a positive reinforcement system for excellent role-play and motivate players to keep a character for a much longer period of time.

Implementation: There is already both a system in place to check on and charge a player loyalty tokens in order to roll abnormal race/class combinations. There is already a system in place when you try to induct someone into a cabal to check if they are an oath breaker or already a member of another cabal. Put together = profit? This should not be insanely difficult to implement.

EDIT/PS: I will not reply in the thread with examples of which other games and MUDS successfully use this type of system for obvious reasons. I will also not engage in banter over it. I have gone years without posting anything to any of you, and I will quickly disappear once more when I am done explaining how you can actually, realistically, fix the CRS/Cabal system.

You oversold it.

What are these other muds' systems, and how have they experienced success in using them?

Demonstrate that people constantly flip sides.

How will a system that requires use of a capricious and multi-purposed reward promote good roleplaying and not actually the accumulation of loyalty tokens? You seem to forget that you can gain tokens by participating in CRS without any roleplaying at all, for example.

Substantiate your claims, or post them in the board where flames and trolls belong. Right now OP reads basically along the lines of some veteran who highly rates himself posting about a problem that hasn't really been proven or defined beyond a thinly-veiled dislike for having to play the game with other people who don't play it your way.

What's wrong with the CRS system, and how will altering membership requirements even fix that at all?

If SK is looking to grow and hook new players, this is exactly the wrong way to achieve those goals.

Just sayin'

I would be okay with this just so I could tell you off for your post.

Chris

[I removed my post because it seemed upon review to be a little below gameplay standards. Nothing to see here.]

[FLAME REMOVED]

Now you're making me feel like we can't salvage the conversation at all bro.

I'm coming at this from the perspective that it's a suggestion which appears to be ignorant of a lot of the factors in the game, such as the fact that in all previous discussions on loyalty tokens, Dulrik has made it clear that you shouldn't be spending them for things that give you an advantage in the game. Maybe Ezeant just hasn't read the forums enough to have seen those.

I'm not sure what your views on the topic are. You haven't posted about the topic at all. Your only posts in the thread are basically flames directed towards other users.

Do you like the idea of spending loyalty tokens on cabal membership?

You're rude and unhelpful in 90% of your posts. For one. For two, "Your only posts in the thread are basically flames directed towards other users." Not sure what fantasy land you live in, grep, but pretty sure I only commented to your post, which, once again was rude and unhelpful, much like your post in his other thread. If you have criticisms, let them be constructive, not tearing down of said topic with ruthless abandonment for peoples feelings on their ideas.

Chris

But how do you feel about a price of membership to fix cabals and CRS?

I think this idea is terrible, and I doubt I'm in any sort of minority. Think of things like timezones: the game can run with only a few people connected. It would be a tacit ban of the people of Sochi from getting into cabals because they can't earn enough loyalty tokens due to the times that they play; you can't mechanically reward people with reliability. It's a silly economic idea to try to use a reward as a currency and will encourage allegations, if not instances, of corruption.

I am not under an obligation to give constructive criticism, but we are all under obligations to not harass others. Your continually off-topic and targetted comments to some of my replies, which you admittedly scoped to not encompass the thread beyond my own presence in one, don't suggest that you're trying very hard to be polite and helpful.