I also wish that I could think of examples of "social events" that do not involve hunts and quests.
Kill An NPC Every Session
5 days ago
17 July 2010
Meet, Greet And Seat
I wish that Clan Lord had more tools for players so that they could hold more community-driven social events. Bard auditions are a good example of people getting together to support other members of the community.
I also wish that I could think of examples of "social events" that do not involve hunts and quests.
I also wish that I could think of examples of "social events" that do not involve hunts and quests.
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Puddleby Players was another social event that did not involve a hunt or a quest. And it was really exciting!
ReplyDeleteHowever...
These things take lots (lots!) of OOC work. Composing (with Bards) and playwriting and practicing (with the Puddleby Players)... well, it's not easy! And the rewards are pretty much "the satisfaction of a job well done and people pleased." Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but it is sometimes not worth it when you're balancing the work put into it with the one-time temporary joy of pleasing people.
Hunts? Well, you get the joy of hunting as well as the future joy of being more experienced. It's self-reinforcing and you can put as much or as little time into it as you want.
Barding - well, I admit barding is good fun and once you have put the (large) effort into writing a song, you can keep playing it forever. The amount you get out of it (in my experience) goes down over time, though, and some people just don't enjoy it. And there's no other in-game benefits, not that there *should* be, but there's not any.
Plays? They are super fun to watch, but have *huge* time commitments that require a lot of people at once - and people are kinda flaky, so finding a group that will practice with you is non-trivial. And then you have to get everyone together *again* to perform the play... so you tend to do it once or twice and then be done. No wonder Measle hasn't done a play in a while - that's a ton of work for little output. And again, no in-game benefits.
So it's hard to compete with hunts and quests, as you aren't getting something *tangible* in-game. And hunts and quests can be done just about any time, while plays and bard auditions are a lot of work, a lot of planning, and can only be done at limited times.
Again, not that getting nothing in-game for these things are bad - but there's a reason why hunting hunting is such a popular activity these days. It's self-reinforcing.
But what are other social events? Well, they suffer from the same problems (big time investment, little in-game results), but they exist... some examples:
Weddings. (Need RP though.)
Write literature/poetry and show it off. (No way to transfer 'notes' in game. Really this would be done on the Sentinel, which isn't even playing the game.)
Art show in the Museum. (People don't do much art these days, our great artists seem to have left. Museum gets no use these days.)
Contests. (Need something to have a contest for. Music? Art? What else? And even then, what do you have to win? The only thing 'valuable' in ClanLord is experience - many people have enough coins, and there are no items that are both valuable and that people are willing to part with.)
Races. (Again, need some sort of reward. And time set up.)
Games - Capture the Flag, Team Fortress. (No in-game 'reward' besides fun, and they *do* get boring eventually. Though obviously not immediately. Also, you need to have a sustainable population of players. Which is hard when there's not a lot of people, and many people consider it a 'waste of time' because they aren't getting experience.)
(Some of these were taken from the old-yet-still valid thread, "What to DO?": http://www.vagilemind.com/clanlord/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=877)
So what could help?
ReplyDeleteI am, and always have been, a big proponent of Worldwide Streaming Experience equal to the free library.
A lot of the time people don't do little fun RP things (even things like playing games) is because you are at a *negative* if you are out of the library not gaining experience. You are losing experience, comparatively, to those who sit in the library. To those who are *doing nothing*. What a great feeling, to be penalized for playing.
When ClanLord Team Fortress came out, I know several players used alt-characters to play the game because they didn't want their mains losing even an hour's worth of library experience. That's... well, it shows a design flaw in the game.
GMs have said things like "This is too much free experience! It will throw people against the wall within a year!" which is completely untrue. If you actually do the calculations, you'll notice that people will be gaining, *at most*, a few extra ranks a year. Not even in the double digits. Seriously, that is not throwing anyone up against any wall, to get rid of one of the negatives to leaving the library.
And no, I don't think the alternative plan of "calculate how much lib experience they would've gotten if they were in the library the whole time they were out of the library, and if this is more than what they actually made, top them off" is good at all.
1) It encourages gaming the system. Been sitting in TC for a while setting up the hunt? Better log off and log back on quickly to bank the lib-exp you would've made before going off on a hunt, or else you will lose it (since you will be making more exp than the library gave, overall). I imagine there would be a lot of log off/log-ons right before hunts start. Lame.
2) It does not help healers and mystics very much. Healers and mystics survive on shares - some mystics maybe only make as much experience out of the library as in the free library (at most). So overall, they don't actually benefit much from this system; it actually devalues the shares they get because they are basically 'worthless' - they would've gotten the same amount of exp without any shares at all.
3) Hunting for low-experience monsters (dispatches) is similarly discouraged - why hunt dispatches when you can just sit in town and make the same amount, overall. Because if you made as much as you would've made in the free library, you're not going to get any benefit.
So that's why it should be streaming *on top* of whatever is going on in game. I'm not saying this is a magic pill of any kind. I'm just saying that it would remove a disadvantage to leaving the library while not 'costing' anything - perhaps a few ranks per year worth of 'bonuses'. However, the psychological benefit is huge: People are really skipping out on an hour or less of play-time because they could be getting that much time in the library, which is a very very tiny bit of experience. However, if they *know* they won't be penalized, they'll be more likely to stick around, be more likely to stay before and after hunts, allowing times for RP to happen.
(And yes, you would have to announce it to have it give any sort of benefit, because the change in reality is so small few people will actually notice, but it is large psychologically because they are 'gaining' something they had 'lost.')
ReplyDeleteOh! More community things:
ReplyDeleteClasses, like the University of Puddleby. (Needs teachers, needs students, needs commitment, needs players in general, and new players. No 'rewards' for teachers.)
Debates. (All done on the Sentinel anyway.)
Funerals. (No one dies but Sir West.)
Religious Ceremonies. (Religions are not really in Clan Lord, even though technically there is the worldwide mythological background as supported in the CL manual. There used to be the Nox, but there are not a lot of incentives for RPing in ClanLord, and RP thrives best with lots of people... people we don't have.)
Court. (No point really. People are rarely nasty enough to each other that you need to have court, sometimes it's buggy and you can't get a trial anyway, and you can't punish people in relevant ways anyway - like making them return a stolen item. Though such ways would be abused anyway, so I understand why they aren't implemented. Still need a "hang 'em both" option.)
Protests. (Against what? What for? RP nonsense and there's nothing to protest against anyway.)
Festivals. (Players can't really put them on at all. We can only wait until the carnival comes into town once ever ~two years.)
Political/Educational/Cultural Conferences. (All done on the Sentinel anyway. We don't even have politics. The Mystic Guild does, but they are run by people who don't actually play ClanLord, they just run things from their mailing list that allows them to never even touch the game. Bad form, bad design.)
Other Ceremonies, such as Knightings and Monk events. (Needs RP support, and few people RP these days. I mean Knights are implemented, which is great... if anyone RPed them... but Monks require you to spend ranks on RP - 50 ranks to wear bracers that give you maybe 5 ranks of benefit?! - and then you're forcing people to choose being ranks and RP, and you *know* which way that is going to go.)
An RP-GM would be nice, by the way. We were offered one forever ago, but Spiel came and went and I don't know if she is still around, or if she's even been around for ages.
ReplyDeleteNPCs give people something to participate with, gives people the impression that they have *some* impact on the game, allows things to happen and rewards to be given that wouldn't be possible simply by player interaction. They also give a 'foil' that players can set themselves against. The 'Brions were a great example of this, but such things just puttered away and faded off into the distance. Sad times. I remember all the debates that raged over them. Even if they weren't there, they encouraged RP. NPCs *do* matter, at least a little.
Overall there should be plenty of other ways that players can have social events and fun things happen all on their own. But sometimes outside prodding works well too.
Much shorter comment :)
ReplyDeleteOne more to add to the list Xepel made. Clan contests. Suu tried to renew that recently but as for most of Xepel list, they require quite a bit of preparation. WoD newbylimpics were good as well, but again, required so much time to setup and to organize. With rewards provided by the community.
On the Puddleby players, Measle did a lot of work there and we've seen some terrific plays. But most of the group now is on a lengthy break, which doesn't really help I suppose.
On the reward part, and mostly to answer Xepel, I don't really think there is much to do there. The fun is the reward. Or at least should be. Sure it's nice to get something more concrete but there are plenty of occasions for that (plenty of players were out during the last "nothing count" saturday, and there was no experience to get there so the fun was clearly the reward for all). It's a game, so the fun one is getting is the reward.
I also really think, even with so little community driven events now, that CL is maybe one of the very few games that do have some.
Now we just need more spiders :P (guess I will end up using that one as my signature :) )
All those activities Xepel describes are fun and should be happening
ReplyDeletemore often. Why aren't they? I think part of the reason is because no
matter how fun they are, the game itself isn't changed by it at all. If
you want to have a lasting record of any roleplaying you do, you have
to make a web site and folks have to visit it. Even if you make a
movie, they often become unplayable with later versions of Clan Lord.
As a result a lot of the history is being lost.
Then there's the fact that some of the roleplaying has a lot of work
associated with it. Many folks don't have the time to put that together
or help with someone who will so groups such as the knights, monks,
university, newbielympics, and even clan hunts aren't happening.
Even if you want to roleplay it's hard to do because the history of the
world isn't reflected well in the game and all of the possibilities for
new stories (the bubbling on Dal'Noth, the brion brothers, winged
centaurs vs. orga, Darshak vs. Rebel vs. Exiles, Roar on KI, the
destabilization of the EP, our lost catapult, etc.) aren't being
developed. Also, I think that many players think that Delta Tao owns
these stories so won't touch them ourselves either out of a desire to
not ruin the real story or because we know we can't effect it either
way. Well, when you can't work on those stories there's not a whole lot aside from the stories we make up on our own.
If you want to liven up Clan Lord then I think integrating the history into the actual game without requiring folks to read tons of web sites to figure out what happened would be a good start.