Let see,
One of the issues, that I have with Mushes, that have character advancement via points, is that there doesnt seem to be a good answer to it.
I've been on places, where staff hand out points at the end of TP.
Where players vote for each other.
Where staff review rp individually.
Fix Advancement Points per time period.
There probably a few others that I'm missing.
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First one, I'm not a fan of, because it only awards those who get to play in the TPs. And from my experience, this tends to be a minority of the mu*. Causal players, aren't going to be to interested in TPs or more likly miss them, and players who arent interested. Then there are those who simply can't make the appointment for the RP.
A general fix, is to host long TP, but RPing ona mu* can be a slow process, and this in my experience more often then not robs the TP of its steam.
Another fix, is to host Mini TP for small select of players, but this isn't really a good fix.
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For point two, this seems to be rather easy for players to game the system to maximize XP. Especially if a bad vote system is made. (I made a horrible one once, at NRM). It also seems to promote Polite Voting. I RPed with you, therefore I get gratis XP. And there is also peer pressure voting as well.
If the system is badly design, then it can lead to XP inflation. In which, to counter act the excess amount of XP, is to simply raise the cost of everything. This is poo.
To fix these issues, you could make voting enforced anonymity. This prevents polite votes, and peer pressure. Then you can also have a max award that a character can earn per time period.
And to an extra step to prevent polite voting, the votes get applied at the end of the month. So, smart players can't deduce that someone didn't vote by checking their XP right after an RP.
These fixes, tend to punish active and good RPers on the mush. Depending on the style, they will generally max out on max award with earlier then the other players within the time period. I'm not in favor of this really.
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This I think, overall works, but sucks for the Staff of the game. A some what active mu* will generate a fair bit of paper work. For a Head wizard, thats about 10-15 hours of work a week. On really active mu*, can constitute a second job. The other staff, have fractional paper work hours too, but they tend to do other activity thats just as time consuming at times And coders, can either be working crazy, or have nothing to do at all. Its weird.
Anyway. The point is, is that this system generates a lot more paper work. It wouldnt be uncommon for a mu* to break a 100 RP turned in a month. Heck, Bleach: The Beginning averages about 200 a month.
Thats a lot of RP. Thats a lot of paper work. And its super required for the game to move forward. If the staff lax on getting through the logs, then the entire mu* stagnates.
It also, tends to be one of the more crappy staff positions you can have.
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Fix XP.
This works kinda of well, but has the same issue for not rewarding the Good RPers of the community directly. I dont like this. Indirect rewards, or perks, have issue with transparencies, and can lead into psedo staff members. If you see a player, that acts like staff, or does staff things a lot, but isnt on the staff listing, you should leave that mu*. These rewards also tend to be ad hoc. So, we get into issues with fairness.
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So yea.
For Navitas, my mu*, I'm going with a different a system. Its a peer log review anonymity system, that is partially automated.
The players review their own logs, while being anon. You can't review logs, that you've been in or your alts. Staff can see who is voting for whom and how. These votes, are then averaged, and applied to the mush directly. Players who choose to to do reviews, will be getting a standardize bonus for doing so.
This levitates staff from the tedious extra paper work, and places them into the role of supervisors. This places the burden into the players hands, however the work needed is divided up by the number of players who are reviewing.
With this automation, we can do new things and interesting things. Such as Reviewers can nominate a particular pose, as out standing, and it can be an optional blurb that players can see when they log onto the mush. *Pose of the Day!*, and it can broken down to Quote of the Day as well. Players whom these belong to, can receive a standardize prize for doing so.
I was also thinking, of making an addition to the +fing, where it can display such RP rewards. With an alternate page to view them, or perhaps it'll display one of them randomly on the +fing.
Along with these nominations, we can also do Log of the Month, Quarter, and Year with, again, standardize rewards and probably a bbpost about it.
Other rewards I'm looking at, would be Most Improved RPer of the Quarter, and Year.
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A lot of the mu* code bases, are allowing interaction with ruby bots to a limited degree, which this system will take advantage of, and it'll need a customized hopefully simple blog software thing. These last two areas, I have limited experience on, but I'm confident that its plausible. Maybe not to the degree I've hopped for but plausible.