Clans and the Point System

Alright. I think we can all agree that the Point System is a good idea. It gives people a reason to RP and a reason to help the pbase and the MUD. But something I’ve noticed is that it’s also taking away from the MUD in very important ways. We’ve got more and more people rolling engineers and hiding away, than rolling classes that might actually be in physical danger. In a way, the system is promoting a stagnation of the MUD. I think it’s obvious that clan players are pivotal to the MUD and without clans actively warring, the MUD loses a lot of it’s spirit.

SO!

On to my suggestion:

Give clanned players a bone. They’re important to the MUD, and they’re often in a position where as soon as they leave the safety of their base, they could be captured or permed. I suggest a change to the way the points system calculates the worth of a character, depending on if they’re in a clan or not. If they’re actively clanned, they should receive more points, sooner. My character hardly survived a week. No points. That doesn’t exactly promote a "go out there and get ’em" mentality. A change to the system could do a lot to get people out of their bases and playing.

A good start.

What if being in a ‘major’ era clan (rebublic, rebels, empire, etc.) was worth more because, following your logic, those clans are more important?

Yeah, that’s kinda what I was getting at. I don’t know if random engineers in a shipbuilding clan should be rewarded as highly as the guys in either of the main clans doing the fighting.

The thing is, the current points system is plagued with problems… it doesn’t encourage RP; it encourages botting. The current immly-driven "rewards" system never has enough time to get around to all the people that deserve it, but at least it doesnt’ encourage "I’ll reward you if you reward me" like a player-driven rewards system would. There needs to be another alternative, or one of those really needs to be changed.

I saw this system on a MUSH I experimented with, and i’m sure there is something similar on a LOT of muds.

RPRECOMMEND

We do try to give points whenever possible but as RenJed said, the problem is that we can only be in so many places watching so many people.

‘account rprecommend <greet/dub> <reasoning’

Can be used once every X (3 days? 1 week?) per ACCOUNT

This will allow players to basically say "Hey. I just roleplayed with this person, and it was so good they should get points."

IMMs would get the ‘rprecommend’ command that would look something like this.

[i:j0tlcs68]If @jimblow did….
account rprecommend StevenLorrd17 He was teaching me some engineering skills and he went above and beyond to do more than just use the TEACH command.
[/i:j0tlcs68]
[quote:j0tlcs68]Franklin (@Jimblow) recommends Steven (@IMANEWB). He was teaching me some engineering skills and he went above and beyond to do more than just use the TEACH command.[/quote:j0tlcs68]

Immortals can then cross-check system logs (or player logs, if they choose to submit them) and reward points to anyone/everyone involved.

Someone will inevitably mention the ‘what if people just recommend their friends’ bit. That is why IMMs will be the only ones rewarding points; the command will just serve as a pointer for their attention and to help speed the process up. Maybe if abuse becomes a problem, a ‘norprecommend’ flags for accounts.

I like it.

Here’s my idea, and I’m writing this without reading every point in the thread so… oh well.

Give players the ability to reward each other’s roleplay.
REWARD <player> <points>
– may only be used once per week per target account, and it’d probably have to have a limit of mabye a few hundred (up to 1k maybe?) per reward. This command would transfer points from the rewarder’s account to the rewardee’s account. Oh, and the frequency limit is there to prevent OOC friends from just tossing a few thousand points to each other, like some of you guys who have enough points to buy 3 or 4 forcers COULD say "Here dude, have a forcer." And also to prevent the well-meaning people from being duped into rewarding the same person eight times in one day for good RP across several different characters.

Willingly part with account points.

I think that only Imms should have the authority to give points, but I do like the idea of recommending.

Why? Simply to not make it too complicated and ruin the fun of playing LotJ. As a matter of fact, don’t fix what’s not broken. Sure getting points for RPing awesomely is neat, but it would only make the MUD spin more around the point system. Because honestly, it would knock the balance and people would start buying levels/races/force more than they do now and we’d be in the same situation we were a long time ago (CIS Wookiee army) when the races didn’t cost points. Actually affording a good PKer race does NOT encourage you to RP, especially not when you can just ask your buttpal on AIM to meet you up on Lorrd and RP for a while, then recommend.

And I fear that I’m right when I say that Imms would start giving out points alot.

Ok, sorry for bringing up so many old threads, but I think this needs to be looked into as well…

Not only is the idea that players in major (read: warring?) clans get the point buildup on the characters a good one and should be implemented in some fashion… I also like the idea of being able to point out a player/account to say, to the Imms, "Hey, this guy is the shit, check him out to give him some points maybe?"