[Calk]

I think the favor system is too obtuse to work well as an incentive structure. Whether or not its working behind the scenes, it’s too hard to connect one’s behavior to favor gains, and without that connection people either assume that their behavior isn’t connected, or they guess wildly, resulting in erratic behavior.

There’s two things to consider when setting up any incentive structure for a game like this.

1) Incentivize engagement in systems that require multiple participants to be fun.
2) Disincentivize excessive engagement that risks burnout of the players.

The system here doesn’t need to be complicated. You just give out rewards for meeting minimum engagement goals, emphasizing systems that require multiple participants, but then drastically reduce those rewards for additional engagement past the minimum. In fact, the system should be clear enough that it’s obvious to anyone that engages with these systems in this way that they’re being rewarded optimally for their time. Otherwise, what was the point of the incentive structure at all?

Opaque systems work great when you don’t want people gaming the system too much, but you need to remember that Incentive structures are MEANT to be gamed. A good incentive structure encourages people towards a specific behavior, and in that way it’s different than other game systems that encourage diverse strategies. For that reason, the underlying design strategy of an incentive structure needs to be different than the rest of the game’s systems.

[Calk]

“This would significantly increase the difficulty of taking any Borough, as they could repeatedly arrest known contributors.”

Joke’s on them. Once you have enough people in the prison cell, you could throw an event, thus gaining even more popularity for your faction!

(This is not a serious suggestion)

[Calk]

I think the main issue that Mirabel might be suffering is in fact how unconnected the college sphere is. Even if you were to make a combat character, if you played in the college exclusively you would still not have any real impact on the game. At this point, it doesn’t matter if you play combat, social, skullduggery, or any of the other playstyles. If you try to focus on something other than the factions (and the college isn’t a faction for some reason) then you’re going to be on the periphery.

Don’t believe me? Try making a social, noncombat character who’s primary focus is the factions. You will become super relevant overnight to the point where it’s actually stressful. In fact, one of the major patches to the game was in making it less stressful to play for these characters.

Takeaway: It isn’t the game balance between social and combat that’s broken, it’s non-faction play.

A couple possible solutions:

1) Give non-faction characters sway in who gets control of the boroughs, giving faction characters reasons to interact with them.
2) Make Windermere it’s own faction.
3) Create a ‘citizen faction’ that bystander-style characters can join without mucking up their character concept. This might be more along the lines of real world community groups like a nonprofit, or city government. Actually, I’d really like to see a city government faction that’s given some teeth.

[Calk]

Try 2 for Jakem, Purveyor of Wonder

[Calk]

Jakem, Pureveyor of Wonder; Welcome to the Den

[Calk]

Yeah, I noticed this dissapeared from the score sheet. As a test I tried to buy some dream xp, and got a success message so it appears to be still a thing.

[Calk]

I don’t think I’ve ever received a profit at all. I didn’t even realize that we got a special message when we got one, I just assumed it like filtered invisibly into our payouts.

Are we supposed to get an explicit message that we’ve earned a profit?

[Calk]

In H6 the game kind of separated into two spheres: Those that go into the forest and those that don’t.

I think with H7 the idea was to make the monsters relevant to all players.

Unfortunately, the way that’s working out now is “you may be, through no fault of your own, sent into the mist where you will get a free trip to the hospital and spend the next 3 days there.” This will repeat at semi-random intervals with no real variation for noncombat characters, turning something that should be exciting and dangerous into an obnoxious monotony. I play a noncombat character and when he gets trapped in the mist it’s less “Oh no, danger” and more “Oh crap, time to dust off my hospital gown.”

I assume that eventually the pathing issue will be taken care of, but that’s not going to solve the underlying issue that the only interaction noncombat characters have with the mist is a trip to the hospital. I think expanding the options for dealing with the mists might be a necessary component of the game.

Fortunately there’s already a bunch of systems designed to make player created danger more interesting. What would people think about repurposing some of those as alternate solutions to being trapped in the mist? Some ideas that already have a basis in the code might be:

1) There’s a mechanic for fleeing from danger that could get you lost in an unknown location when your home is broken into, that could be repurposed to having people that end up flee to a random building (making it an automated thing rather than something they have to finegle through combat code) and then get rescued.

2) There’s a nice bargain mechanic whereby players can currently pact with a demon to get out of a player created trap. Just expand that to the mists and make it an option for tier 1’s.

3) When the dream worlds are up and running, maybe let characters opt for an automated adventure in the dream realm instead of physically moving through the mists.

[Author]

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