Ok, first off, a warning because presenting this topic has already ruffled some feathers, please keep your cool people. The issue I'm bringing up for discussion is that of people doing good deeds to an extreme resulting in it being bad, and their motivations for going to such extremes.

Let me elaborate. As some of you may or may not know Magnagora rewards people with bound credits for doing things that benefit the city, namely power. Now having been power minister for a good while myself I know what a fickle beast this can be. The thing with power is you use heaps of it and your resources for gathering it are limited. This seemingly only becomes more of an issue when rewards are stuck on it.

But Calixa, how can rewards ever be a bad thing? Wouldn't Mag have the happiest novices in the basin with so much to do and earn? Well, sadly, in practice I (and others who agree with me) feel this doesn't work so well. The crux of the issue seems to be in the rewarding for limited resources.

Let's have an example. Currently, anyone can get up to 10 city credits per year, 1 for 500 power. Not bad, eh? Now, some people play it respectful, get their 10 credits and then drop it. Others, though no longer such an issue, farm the living :censor: out of everything regardless of what's going on.

Now if you're scratching your head at that, that ain't so strange. Why would I be upset that someone is busting their ass to help the city? Because this seems to have an adverse effect on the rest of the city, that's why.

Let's take a new novice as example. They see this reward scroll and decide to be a useful cog. Lovely! This is what we want! But then our novice goes to spectre isle, and sees everything is gone, because spectres are a great source of gold and xp and karma in addition to a somewhat longish way of gathering power. Ok, let's go to earth. Nope, all gone, especially in times the earth lords are empowered. Nexus world maybe? Nope, someone else who wanted to help out scooped that up. Erm ... empower Nil? Novice goes up and gets ganked. Well damn!

Now, this would be ok if it happened once or twice but this stops being ok when it becomes a regular thing. Because soon enough that novice will discover they can just go influence and sell esteem and buy credits of the market, which aren't even bound so they get more lessons. Or we take the case of a demigod who runs into the exact same thing, and scoffs because might as well sit in a manse doing nothing.

This isn't a criticism so much against the people who put this into place. I think Silvanus and the active members of the council do a great job. The thing is that this reward system seems to backfire because there is too much people to actually want to do stuff and too little resources.

To illustrate why this is bad, let me go on about how this is backfiring. First off, there is the thing that people raged when someone who wasn't much liked, and suspect of automating it (despite not being afk, and thus legit, and thus really not something to complain about despite it being perceived as 'lame' because in truth every system out there either has some of the options for it or can be made to do so). But now another person, who does it from the kindness of her heart, and thus is much liked, and even respects the 10 credit limit and stops farming after it, is being seen by outsiders (there are logs) as the next bad person.

Why? Because in doing her duty she takes away the opportunity of others to show they care, to the extend where they stop trying. And what else were we expecting, really. If you are denied something several times in a row, wouldn't you stop bothering? Wouldn't you automatically assume after a while that it is just not worth it to go even look? Yep, that's what happens, and that grates.

The thing is people gravitate towards least effort / biggest reward scenarios. So if power gatheirng is suddenly more profitable than anything else, of course people are going to farm the living daylight out of it. Not only this, but Magnagora also has a culture where praise and favours and so on are lavished on those who stand out above their peers. And while this is valid RP, it's actually pissing people off OOC, because no way is there a fair chance to go against someone who locks down and make a certain method their own.

In this discussion some solutions were brought up however. Personally, I always favour player-driven solutions, even though while I feel the concept of one hour respawns and limited resources is something dated and MUDs should stop using, I can't dictate the admins to change the game because a number of people have discovered a most unfortunate flaw. So, the solution then brought on by someone was to limit these credit rewards to the first 3 city ranks. However, it would need a failsafe, as people could abuse it by for example getting deliberately disfavoured. Also, people who go beyond the limits should in fact be favoured extra, because clearly they stand out, and we don't want there to be the situation that one CR1 of a high level locks down the whole thing again.

Still, will that be enough? Will that even change things? Another point was raised that Mag's combat clan has a system that can be further used to gain credits, although this is a "less efficient" way, as it is combat and thus you may lose or die a horrible death and pay more for credits than just bashing some mobs or gathering some esteem. I suppose if that is the only method for the higher ranks, it will do, but it still leaves that one issue.

The issue of people having to be told to not be so goddamn helpful because it ruins things for everyone. There is another example, of a person who helped people do their epic quest, to the point of having to be told to stop doing it as it made people lazy. While it blows my mind why someone would even do so (I'm a bit selfish, sorry!) there are in fact people who enjoy doing such things. And while in this case it is actually simple to tell them to stop doing it, and illustrate the effect, I don't agree we should be telling people to stop gathering power. But we kinda have to, else bad things happen. And that's where I feel stumped.

I'm bringing this up here in public because many minds can achieve more than a few, and I don't feel this is a 'private' city issue. Mag isn't doing anything wrong, it is a perfectly reasonable system, except we're somehow having too much people who want to help out (whatever their motivation may be).

I am also interested in what the admin staff has to say about this. I'm expecting to be told it is ok, and the reward system should change, but the same issue does arise with greathunts and the like. And yes, I'm sure Estarra and higherups want us to in fact buy credits, but having faster respawn rates and more crowded maps / larger maps isn't going to suddenly result in lost sales. If anything, if people feel happier about the game, they're more likely to buy something. Conflicting, I know, but there's truth in it.

(Sorry this trailed on so long, I'm done for now!)

Credit rewards to those only below level 80, regardless of city rank. While yes, they -can- try to constantly die to de-level, but that is a lot of de-levelling to do. Especially because doing most power quests (bashing/hunting) brings in experience that levels you up.

Ah yeah, someone did mention levels. I suppose it may be best, you reach 80 fairly fast and there are downsides to not being 80.

The main reason Mag changed over to a credit reward system was that the city was not prospering the way we wanted it to. We had more credits that we needed in reserves and instead of doing a credit sale we decided to use the credits to get people motivated.

Now, in Mag we give out points for various tasks and people can trade them in for city favours or bound credits. There is also a limit to the number of rewards you can get in an in game year. We do keep an eye on trends and will adjust the rewards for certain tasks as needed but we haven't seen anything like that yet.

Some competitions are only open to low ranking citizens to give them extra oportunties. However, only offering credit rewards to low ranking citizens when this is kinda replacing a credit sale, and when the city would benefit more from giving low ranking citizens cityfavours so they can better participate in revolts, is not going to happen.

If people are handed everything to them on a platter then they are being cheated out of a chance to better themselves. If you drag a novice around everywhere he or she needs to go and then that person freaks out and quits when you aren't around because they keep getting lost your 'helpful' actions have driven away a prospective player.

The quests in the epic quest line are quite involved with lots of lore, history and chances to explore. People should be given the chance to try it on their own and then ask for help if they need it. Rushing them through the process to get power for the city and to make yourself look good is actually a dick thing to do.

When I was CL, I had (still actually have it, in fact) a couple of programs I wrote to handle a full-blown 'rewards system'. Whenever in the logs I saw someone doing something, I'd do an "addcredit" to their name, and it would up their counter. Then I could dump that all out to a text file, and had the second program read through it and make it 'pretty' (so I could then drop it into a help file).

The general gist was: Once you earned 5 points, you could make a deposit for 5 credits, at something like 1500 gold per (back when credits were around 5-6k).

What I ended up finding was: There are a few people who just do tons of stuff regardless (for example, Ragniliff and her bard / scholar collection, not to mention the power accrual), there are some people who get into it, and then most people just didn't really care or take advantage of it. In the end it was mostly only being added to by things I observed, as others never got into nominating their fellows for good works. It happened from time to time, but it just wasn't consistent.

In the end, I came away with the feeling that reward systems don't really help a lot. They don't encourage people to actually care. They encourage a few people to put in more effort, but for the bulk of them that effort tends to be wholly selfish and doesn't bring much back to the org in the end (I consider motivation and continued good works to be the intent, not the more fleeting 'power gains' or 'commodity buildup'). It was actually kind of disappointing.

Maybe (hopefully!) you'll have better luck with it in Magnagora, but I know it was a huge headache for no additional benefit above and beyond a credit sale at the time I was working on it.

Llandros: While the idea of exchanging credits for something the city actually uses, rather than gold, is a good one, there are people being locked out that want to do stuff yet don't even get the chance to. Maybe it ought to be expanded some more. There -are- things like books but those give gold afaik (not logged in, can't confirm), which is sorta meh. And there is stuff like commodities gathering which doesn't get covered at all. PITA to track though, I've suggested some kind of comms log in the past, but didn't gather enough support to have that put in the game.

As for the epic quest, I was in fact referring to the mutts stage. One person has been doing it for a lot of other people, and yeah, those people grew lazy and just let her do it. Resolved though, afaik! And entirely right about the quests, I did get boosted through them (I could have said no, I know) and sorta regretted it after.

I'm not intending this as an attack on the council, far from it. In the end the leadership decides how to run the city. I just found this to be an interesting phenomena, because you'd expect a reward system to be wholly positive.

Xenthos: Funny that you say that, I have noticed power logs are not all that different from the old backups I got. I do think in part it is because there is only x amount of essence per hour that can be feasibly collected, and you can't farm non-hostile plains dry all the time, and even astral darklinking is capped. Not to mention with resists it is so damned inefficient you got to already gather a group + insanity sets it.

Generally speaking, what I have found most appealing were things like get a one time payout for 13 spikes collected. Or a one-time donation of esteem for a favour. I suppose a lower cap could maybe work, but then again, if that then results in not enough people doing stuff, it's kinda back to nothing.

I can't really add anything to this discussion in regards to what I feel should be done, because I don't feel educated enough to know what should be done and I prefer not pontificating on matters in which I am ignorant. That being said, I will state my approach to the whole thing.

I've known about the rewards program for a while and I don't bother with it, really. I never have. For me, it isn't worth it. Sure, I clear out spectres, but I mostly do that for the karma. Otherwise, I do it because there's a novice that needs to complete the power quest and if I'm going to help them, I might as well just give them all 42(?) spectres to help them out. The 50(?) gold per spike is, for me, a trivial amount. As a monk, hunting the mutts utterly sucks. Hunting anything that runs when hit sucks and it takes monks three times as long (three times as many balances) so I don't bother.

However, I do think the system is good for the small ones. Yesterday I finally convinced my girlfriend that Magnagora is, in fact, a fun org to be in and got her to make a character there (she had bad experiences when she first started) and I made sure to point out that scroll to her. For someone like her, who doesn't like to hunt for more than an hour or two at a time, I think it's good because she can get gold/credits without a lot of effort.

So, yea, that's all I've got to add. Hopefully there was something of substance in there

There's 53 spectres, excluding those in the mausoleum. 50 regular and 3 named. Afaik mobs spawn in fixed numbers. At least there are always 13 beggars (when one doesn't spawn in a guild hall, grr open room being the criteria) and I believe the number of mutts and dogs is also always the same.

That said, good to hear things from the perspective from a novice. And yay for more people for Mag. Positive upwards trend, best trend!

Well if it doesn't pan out we can always try something else.

'Do it or you are a bad person' and 'do it or I will rip your face off and eat it in front of your children' were some of the previous failed attempts.

I'm not convinced yet that a rewards system isn't a good way to dole out city credits tough. Even if it isn't as motivating as we would like at least people are doing stuff for the city and org bank accounts are hardly hurting for cash.

I'm not quite sure if I understand the problem. By incentivizing power hunting, then spectres and earth critters are hunted to such a degree that they're never around for others to hunt? Is that the issue?

If so, I'm not quite sure if it is an issue, especially one caused by incentivizing power hunting. There's already plenty of reason to do most things, like the karma from spectres, or the decent experience and power (don't know the power laws for Magnagora) from hunting earth critters.

Not sure I can understand either, but that's also from an outsider's view. I haven't played my Mag in a long, long time. But even so, to me Earth (EDIT: and for that matter, any of the other Elemental planes) doesn't seem to be as bashed out as you are suggesting. Every single time in the past month or so that I've got the inkling to go hunt it, at most I've found the grubs gone (and that was twice, out of maybe ten times I've done so). Gargoyles have been all there, every single time.

Honestly I think it's fantastic that Mag has found a way to motivate people at all. That's a really hard thing to do. Though if there really is a problem like that, I don't see why the org leaders can't just decide to put a cap on their rewards for a single person, if that person does it way too much to the exclusion of others. You don't have to give things out just because a scroll says you get x credits for y essence or whatever. Mag never seemed to have a priority on things being fair, when I played there.

A few things:

Publishing a book can get you city credits (up to 20). Winning prestige nets you another 40.

There are more ways to generate power then just Earth/Spectres, like empowering Nil, which I usually end up doing and don't see many others do.

And, I did change the esteem rules and made a post about it. You can donate 3750 esteem for one time cityfavor, or (I think) 7500 for each cityfavor after.

The Reward scheme has been under constant evaluation, always open for new ideas or new things. Already had to change quite a few things around or up a few rewards, and lowered a few others. It will be pretty hard to find a balance for the rewards so they are equally done and not 'whored.' I have kept notes on every single reward given out, and have used those to change a few things. Right now there is just a Power Drive going on, so I would expect it to be done constantly as right now it has the most bang for the buck. Ultimately, competition drives success.

And, I would much rather have a rewards system then have a city wide credit sale.

What's wrong with credit sales (or, Why is a rewards system preferable?)

Like I said, this can be a bit of a difficult concept to grasp. The issue is basically that through rewarding a limited activity, it motivates some people to go to its limit (some even beyond) to the extend where if enough people all try to get to the limit others are locked out. Now, Mag isn't about fairness IC, but I feel fairness to some extend should be practiced OOC. Not saying the system isn't fair, it does have a limit, but it seems to also create a bad atmosphere in the sense that people get bad looks because they don't appear to help out, while in fact they went to check spectres for the 10th day in a row and they were gone.

I do like there is a reward system. I don't want it gone. It's better for the city because it gets things it needs. It's effectively a credit sale for resources such as power / culture / esteem. It may very well be the best system, or one of the best, what I am interested in is how can the drawbacks or flaws of this particular system be diminished or eliminated.

Silv: I noticed it upon reviewing the scroll. Not sure how recent that is, maybe I just forgot about it being there. So nvm what I said on that.

As for empowering, it is one of the least efficient ways, hence why most people don't really do it as there are better ways to make credits elsewhere. Yes, I believe players min/max, even if not hardcore theorycrafters. I do like the esteem changes, I've been working on those (slowly, very slowly).

Lastly, I don't doubt your leadership, or those who assist you. Like I said, any flaws in the system are in the end probably due to game mechanics and limited resources, something which probably isn't going to change any time soon. I guess my main concern is really that citizens who don't participate in the system unwillingly (by having what they can do farmed out, or the only options for them being very inefficient, say like an illithoid having to influence Nil) are looked down upon, or regarded / mistaken for being lazy or greedy. And yes, this probably even makes sense IC, but on an OOC level it's not exactly desired to have people feel sleighted for what is outside of their power. Granted, they still stand a chance in doing combat stuff for the legion, or non-capped stuff like book writing, but I've yet to see anyone go all crazy over the latter. While I hear constant praise lavished on those who gather huge amounts of power.

I suppose why a reward system is preferable is that instead of gold-bashing you would be doing things for the city, generating power or commodities or culture or assisting others or defending or raiding or.. well you could really just be doing something for the city nearly every minute you are logged on. Which kind of sucks. There is no shortage of things one can do, but a lot of these things aren't really profitable for an individual.

The person who has spent a lot of time working for the city, probably hasn't had as much time to bash for gold. Likewise, the person who is constantly defending, which could happen pretty frequently for certain people in their timezone, probably doesn't have the time to gold-bash either.

Like I said there is a really fine balance that we will probably never actually have, but just have to maintain based on the ebbs and flows of the system. A city wide credit sale will probably have to happen at one point to generate gold, this is all sort of a work in progress.

Calixa - I'm always open to ideas, and am currently in the process of working out similar systems for other areas. I would love to be spoken to in game, I really know nothing about influencing or other areas and am always looking for help.

This seems like a really straight forward optimization problem:

The City of Magnagora has C credits they're willing to spend and X manhours of useful work they're willing to pay to have done (at a rate of 1 credits per Q manhours) per year, and N workers willing to do work for pay. Each person is willing to do W hours of work. By imposing a cap, Y, on the number of hours that each person will be paid to work, Magnagora hopes to decrease the variance in W by trimming off any the high outliers. Our requirements are as follows:

Magnagora wants the product of Q and X to be less than or equal to C. Ie. they can't spend more credits than they have set aside for this project.
Magnagora wants the summation of W from 1 to N is greater than or equal to X. Ie. they want all the work to get done by someone.
Magnagora wants the variance of W to be low. Ie. they want everyone to share the work (and the pay) evenly.
And the problematic one:
Magnagora wants the quotient of the summation of W from 1 to N to Y to have a minimum value. Ie. they want everyone to be allowed to work. This is the requirement that currently isn't happening.

Thus, Magnagora needs to increase the floor on work-per-person. There are two options for doing that:
1. Increase the summation of W from 1 to N by increasing X. This means finding more work the city is willing to pay people to do, until the point where it's physically impossible for one person to hog it all. This is bounded by C, which may or may not be adjustable depending on politics and how many credits Magnagora is actually getting per IC year. There's also the issue of actually thinking of measurable efforts to be rewarding, which is a suprisingly difficult venture. Which brings us to the alternative:
2. Decrease Y. Just, straight up, tell people there's not enough work to go around if everyone wants to work and then cut paid hours per person in order to get a proportional increase in the number of workers working. The math isn't quite that simple and you'd need to figure out some kind of unemployment statistic before you decide what to lower Y to AND figure out if this is just a seasonal thing or endemic, but it's much easier than option 1.

E: If what Silvanus said in the post above this is true and "defending Nil" counts as work that you can get paid for, then a viable solution to the "how to increase X" problem might actually be to invade Hallifax and/or Serenwilde in order to provoke more raids and thus give people the chance to prove their loyalty by defending Magnagora against the increased number of raiders. :P

Silv: I'll give you a poke ingame.

Greleag: It would be as simple as this if all activity was equally profitable. If things are logged and monitored then rewards can indeed be tweaked accordingly, but right now there being a power contest during a stage where the earth lords are empowered, well, bet you people will vastly prefer activities affected by that empowerment. It'd be less of an issue if it affected all power gains, but again, we can't just expect the game to be rebalanced around this.

Since I was the architect of said citywide system (various reward systems existed around the place), I probably should put a comment here. Firstly I vote for the conservative side of politics and that will likely come out in this discussion. The dilemma with Mag at the time was simple; Mag had lots of gold and a reasonable amount of credits but the contribution towards the city by its citizens was limited to only a few (and there were only a few active citizens). The solution, use Magnagora’s resources to get people out of their manses, strengthen the younger citizens and ultimately strengthen the city. Basically apply the resources to the right area to get the results that you need.

Now I am not saying this scheme should stay in place for ever and I am not saying it does not need to be tweaked. Ultimately the aim needs to be identifying shortfalls/weakness in the city (ie not enough newbies, newbies need strengthen, need more combatants, need more power) and then use Magnagora’s large resource base to put some focus on fixing the problem. People will always exploit the opportunities, sometimes just creating competition but sometimes to the detriment of the whole. When this is the case the schemes need to be adjusted. Also the schemes need to be balance so that they only entice people to do the work, hopefully some will continue to do that task when the reward is gone.

Basically my view is simple. Lead the horse to water, don’t be afraid of it creating competition in the other horses to drink but try to manage the big horses drinking all the water or knocking the small horses out the way. Getting the horses to drink is the most important thing.

Our essence is currently worth 5 power, and with the current power drive, higher ranks get 1 cr per 250 power (capped at 20 for the year) and low ranks get 2 cr per 250 (capped at 40). This is a pretty awesome motivator for those willing to get power. With essence worth so much, it's not all that hard for your average lowbie to clear earth a few times and net some credits. The downside? When one powercollecting superstar gathers 2000 power in a day from elementals. Now, don't get me wrong, that is freaking awesome. The down side? A good majority of the time while said powerhouse is being awesome, it means the elementals are all cleared. A lowbie sees the incentive and thinks yes! I can do this awesome thing to help the city and get rewarded - yet each time they check earth, it's empty. If they're brave and sneak to air, it's empty. Yes, there are other ways of getting power (spectres/nexus world/demons) but they net far less power for generally more effort. How long before said lowbie just gives up, with the opinion they're too little/slow etc? That's not an environment we want to foster.

I think it's a moral dilemma. Maybe the older/higher ranked/higher experienced people should be the ones saying - you know what, I'm going to let this little guy be useful, I will leave earth and just brave out the enemy planes, or I will just empower demons, or I'll team up with a Nihilist and we'll darklink! It's still getting power, and reward, but also making it possible for some other people to be useful. When people feel useful or that they have a purpose and are needed, they are more likely to stick around. It's why I've been encouraging the little guys to do the things like mutts and spectres - simple, and helpful! It gives them a purpose until they get more skills, more experience, find other ways they can contribute.

Have to agree with Llandros with the epic quest stuff. It's why I started my campaign of 'everyone kill mutts before Shally can!' Not because Shally isn't awesome and helpful, but because it's a great job for novices as I already said, and because the people 'working on jars' (ie on the list to do the epic) would complain if someone else got the jar Shally had worked all day to get! It was promoting laziness - someone else will do my epic stuff for me, while I go bash over here for my own gain. People were just relying on her to do it for them. I don't have much of a brain (or patience) for quests, but I also think at the very least people should be taught how to do them - this way they can help others too, and we don't end up relying on one or two people to just do it and hand us the orgbix.

Trying not to ramble, promise. I think the rewards are awesome, especially for little guys wanting to earn some gold while also helping the city. It would just be nice if there was a way to ensure everyone got a piece of the pie, expecially the guys that are so much slower at bashing. They shouldn't be punished for not being big and fast, if anything they should get priority and make us big guys do the harder work ( I am always willing to darklink for anyone brave enough to join me). If I kill spectres, I give them to a peasant (RP they do my dirty work plus they get the reward they need more than I do), if I see someone on earth, I leave them to it. I want those free credits as much as the next guy, and I'm raking in the power too, but hopefully I'm not making it harder for anyone else while I'm at it. :) There will always be people who don't take advantage of the rewards, but everyone should at least be given the chance to compete in a power contest while essence is 5 power.

First, I'll note that my character already profited enormously from the scheme last year (20k for 50 bards/scholars in a day was way too hard to turn down).

If the point of the incentive system is to get people to clear earth, or do spectres, it is clearly working. Aside from some issues matching rewards to task difficulty, which Silvanus attended to almost immediately when I talked to him IG, the rewards are getting people to do the activities that we seem to want them to do.

It seems like the issue is more focussed on what exactly to we want to be the outcome of the system. I tried to get at that point when talking with Silvanus about the rewards for bards and scholars (why set this weird barrier at 50?), at which point we found out that neither of us really knew what use bards and scholars were to the city. Again, if the system was set up to have earth cleared at all times, it is quite successful. If it is trying to engender a spirit of participation within the city, maybe not so much. To back Calixa's worries, when we had the spiking contest (last year?) the isle was so frequently cleared that I stopped checking. If I remember the rewards correctly, one person got more spikes than the rest of the participants combined. In that way, it seems as if we are failing at getting a wider variety of people to participate.

tl;dr summary: a successful reward system must be tailored to create incentives for the people you want to do the things you want them to do. Mag's may or may not be currently fulfilling those criteria.