Has RPOTM been officially cancelled?

[YakaryBovine]

I was reading through the RPOTM biographies (found here: http://www.sundren.org/wiki/index.ph...r_of_the_Month) and noticed that there aren't any entries for this year. It sounds like a great concept - was it actually cancelled at any point or am I missing something?

[Doubtful]

It sort of petered out last year due to a lack of people being involved and a persistent view from a few quarters that rpotm was little more than a shallow popularity contest. This kind if soured it for anyone winning it.

We've discussed replacements, but there is nothing set to replace it atm.

[ManUtd4Ever]

I start by saying that I am a policy analyst in RL so as to provide some context to my comments... I like data to help guide me. I think if we replaced the voting aspect with one of two methods, RPOTM would be awesome. The first purposed method would be for the Staff to review the Kudos thread from a specified start date to a specified end date. Pull out a player that received high marks from the community and designate them RPOTM. I suspect some eager folks would spam this thread but I for one love reading about the great actions characters took in game.

The other method would involve coding that the - already busy Staff - would most likely have little time to do. Here I am purposing an RP vouching system not unlike our faction vouching system, but this one would enable anyone to give you "RP Credit" for an event, action, or dialog. Here too the staff could review from a specified start to a specified end date the number of "RP Credits" given and assess a winner.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers!

[Lugwy]

I believe Legacy has a point system where players can put forth a commendation with sufficient reasoning why; if it's deemed valid, the player gets the point. Tiers of points gained allows them access to cool things.

It'd be a nice idea if there were more staff to sift and oversee such a system, though.

[Daimondheart]

Legacy's system could work. I believe DoN had something similar before it became dead. Sadly any direct form of voting has the risk of being taken as popularity contest and to be abused as such. Even if the staff were to just look at the RP over a given month and choose someone, then that person would be labeled as the staff favorite.

[Lugwy]

The system has its own holes, true. Maybe I'd just like the people who RP at the wee hours, RP excellent characters that tend to be hated by everyone, or other such folks to get their bone of appreciation, which is (probably) the intended purpose of RPotM.

[cmosier]

Role Play is its own reward. :-) It would be easier to list the the one person who I didn't enjoy role playing with. I'll be curious to what staff comes up with.

[Laurk]

Im actually from the Legacy server, so I can give you a little insight into their system.

Here are some of the Pros:

1st: The Legacy Point system was amazing. It did a lot (edit) to removed favoratism because it had tiered rewards that you were "guaranteed" to get if you reached that score. For example, capstone classes (like a PrC). Titles, ranks, quests, items. This system took it from the arbitrary whim of DMs (who usually don't want to do anything for fear of being labeled as a favoratist) to a concrete "your score is this - you get that."

note: Granted you could still be knighted if you pulled off some amazing feat, like rescuing the princess or whatever, its just the LP was a "guarantee" that you'd get rewarded and not overlooked by the staff.

2nd: On every server ive ever been on, no matter who your PC is, no matter what they've accomplished, the town guard always treats them like a suspicious noob and brushes them off/smarts off/threatens them. On Legacy, if you had a high LP score, your PC was treated like a somebody. Again, this removed the need for a DM to know your PC personally, if your score was high, they modified the interactions with the NPC talking to you to suite. This is MASSIVE to immersion, because it means your PC's history & accomplishments ment something.

3rd: LP was NOT given out for good RP. Good RP was expected. LP was given out if your PC did something that impressed others or taken if he did something that humiliated himself or his faction. You could get Recs for clever diplomacy, impressive acts of courage (on perma-death, this is rare) or setting goals and accomplishing them (while involving other PCs). In otherwords it was awarded to movers and shakers who drove RP and created plots for other players by their actions... not just good RP.

Here are some of the Cons:

1) There are a lot of similarities between this and the reputation system on Sundren, save that every Legacy Point rec had to be approved by the admin. This way buddies couldnt sit around and rec themself to the moon without having actually done anything worth reccing for. This would seem like a good thing, but the the downside was that it was "very" labor intensive for Legacy's admin, who predictably burnt out because of his work load. This (in my opinion) was the one of the major factors in why the server began to die.

2) LP can really only work well on a perma death server IMO. The reason is, on Legacy where if you die in PvP, DM events, or a few times in PvM, you are dead, and there is no such thing as raise dead (unles your Jesus). For this reason, actual courage was rare, and the only PCs who survived for long were the cowards who always ran away to fight another day. But when someone did accomplish some crazy/suicidle/courageous act and survived, they could reach hero status for it and it WAS impressive. On a server without perma death, this would be much harder since no one is really afraid of dying. Infact on a non-perma death server, I applaud people who actually RP fear as being good RPers.

3) We lost many players to perma-death. As a result, plots stopped pitting PC factions against one another as often, and PCs stopped dying as often. Also new measures were taken to retain players who lost well established PCs and let them carry over some of their LP to a new PC. Because of this it wasn't long before a large number of people had the LP to become Marchlords. The trouble with PC Marchlords, is that they don't want to die, so they don't take the risks NPC Marchlords would take by plotting and scheming against one another, and in the end... there wasn't enough conflict & tension. Even though you could only get to level 8 (only feats after that), a new player finding that the "old guard" PCs all seem to be Lords & knights was in some ways even more insurmountable than being level 3 on a server where everyone was level 20. LP takes a loooong time to get afterall.

Its just a fact that for LP to work, you have to have a lot of dying going on, but that can hurt your player base as many people don't like loosing their PCs. Its a fine balance I think, and one that Legacy was never able to strike perfectly. This was the other major reason the server died in my opinion.

Summery: LP was awesome, nearly impossible to abuse, removed favoratism. However it was labor intensive for the staff & won't really work well on a non-perma death server in my opinion as there's nothing "impressive" accept the quality of one's RP. Feats of courage are a dime-a-dozen when death is irrelevant.

Sundren's Reputation system seems to be a good fit for her. While I imagine there could be a lot of buddy buddy Rep boosting, and it wouldn't get rid of favoratism quite like LP did; its still a nice number that lets DMs know exactly how your PC is viewed in the world, and that is a massive good. It proably requires a lot less staff oversight too, so that is also probably a net good for the longitivity of the server.

[Valhalla]

Since other people are busting out their Legacy experience, I'll go ahead and do my own. I played there since launch right up till it more or less crapped out recently (though it is still continuing in some form), and I staffed there for the better part of a year+.

Legacy points were not a complete buffer against favoritism. They helped, sure, but staff favorites and people who saw more DM attention still got their rewards more quickly than everyone else - on a server where how many rewards you had could well determine if your character lived or died forever.

It was an incredibly controversial system that only worked, imo, because it was implemented from Day 1 and the server's mechanics were based around it. I would really advise against Sundren taking up something like it, and sticking with the reputation system which is similar in many ways but not nearly as... extreme.


Or, to put it more simply:

Role Play is its own reward. :-) It would be easier to list the the one person who I didn't enjoy role playing with. I'll be curious to what staff comes up with.

+1

[Laurk]

Probably true Valhalla. I never thought of it that way because I never saw DM attention anyway because of my late-night log in time. Still I was able to gain some rewards and Capstones even without ever getting more than a handlful of DM events in the time I was on, just based on player recs.

In summery I agree with Valhalla. Sundren really is better off sticking with their Reputation system. Its not that I don't like LP, I just think its not a good fit here and would cause more problems than good.

[Lugwy]

Arpee is fun as it is, I'll agree with that. It's just that sometimes, it's very uplifting to know that there's people who really do appreciate the effort you put into your character(s).

[Seheren]

I'd have to agree with Lugwy on that. Sometimes it is just nice to know that your character/presence is appreciated. You know what always did it for me? Seeing my name in the Kudos thread every once in a while. Kept me thinking 'Hey, at least I'm not the only one enjoying how much of a Dick I am..' +1 for me.

[Lugwy]

You and Gamling were always my favourite bad bros.

[OnyxTigress]

I... but...

[Seheren]

You and Gamling were always my favourite bad bros.

We had some lovely chats, didn't we?