Kaden Wrote:I think the counter-argument is equally valid. If it's a game, with stats and progression, why is it fair for someone who posts once a month to be at the same level as someone who posts three times a week?

Quote:You can not create a completely balanced system with something like this, that combines elements of talent with simple stats. Your choices then become how to reward what and what should be kept in/left out.

Quote:I've always felt like the stat-based, competitive part of the RPG made things more engaging and interesting to the writers. Even with the stats, the RPG has never been about PvP. Yeah, there have been times where someone could've walked around and just one-shot every other member, but that's never happened. Ever.

Quote:Personally, I think the people who accumulated the most "power" in the game are the people that were willing to prioritize playing it over doing something else. People talk about only wanting to make quality posts and that's why they don't write as much, but that falls flat to me. Look at the people who have been at the top. They've always been people who write quality posts and want to put more time into this than something else. Maybe other people don't have as much time, maybe other people want to do other things, there are a lot of reasons for it to seem unfair. It is unfair. It's also unfair to diminish those efforts by saying their posts weren't that great and they only cared about word count.

Quote:With one exception, I genuinely don't think there's been anyone here who has made posts just so they've put down more words than someone else.

Quote:This got kind of tangential. Sorry for that.

Quote:My point was eventually going to be that, when looking at the intended path of development for players in a game, consistency is very important. Decide what you want to reward, stick to that, and keep an eye on the player's progress. Here, for example, the XP rate-of-gain was adjusted after a couple months to fit more appropriately with how we wanted characters to progress.

Quote:Fair enough, but I think it would be foolish to assume that everybody who has been 'at the top' of the rankings have always busted out quality posts. Some days we're feeling it, some days we're not.

Quote:I do not feel that what we have now is completely balanced, at least, not as it is currently being interpreted.

Quote:As far as what to reward and such, I think in most cases, perhaps a static or staggered prize should be offered. Depending on the effort put in, the reward can range from a range of of 3-10XP

Quote:I feel that competition shouldn't be about who has the highest combat ability.

Quote:No worries. I like discussing this as we are now. I do not feel you are being defensive, and I hope I am not coming off as that way, either.

Kaden Wrote:It's equally foolish to assume that people used "I only want to make quality posts" as an excuse because they wanted to go play whatever new video game had come out instead of write.

Quote:Gokon was flying to school on the flying nimbus passed down to him he was scared ms.mccaig was going to kill him for being late and then he heard the bell ring at that point gokon powered up and rushed to class Ms.mccaig had been teaching multiplication when gokon rushed in he was wearing the regular green pants and white shirt with suspenders he rushed to the his seat but was grabbed by ms.mccaig tail first and was given an assignment to write i will not be late x1000 since he has been late many times

Quote:Just for point of clarification, I wasn't saying that what we have here is balanced. I was actually saying that it, specifically, is not. Also saying it never will be.

Quote:Always consider that you have to have people actually doing manual updates. If a player is RPing to get the XP for a new move and, to them, it's important to what they do next with their character, they have to wait for someone to grade/reward/whatever their work, then they have to wait for someone to add/grade/whatever their new move is, and then... you see what I'm getting at.

Quote:Also, I strongly advise against thinking you should ever grade on "effort." One of the reasons that we decided to use word count for XP is that we avoid having to reward someone for being a better writer than someone else. Or, conversely, we punish someone for not being as good a writer as someone else. It's incredibly demoralizing to see someone who made the exact same length post as you get rewarded more for what they did. You also can't determine how much effort someone put into something. Even if you don't think the quality is very high, it could taken them twice as long to write it as something you consider very good.

Quote:Then what should it be about? Here's the problem with a site like this. If Joe is simply a better writer than Bob, by an agreeably sizable margin, then Bob has no reason to ever try to compete against Joe. He will always lose.

Quote:You can call it "levels" or "CA" or "Ki" or just "awesome points" but if you have people working to reach a goal, then whoever reaches it first or more often is winning. It doesn't have to be through a number, either, it can be abstracted through number of abilities or amount of zeni or types of items, but the competitive aspect of it will always be there. The only solutions, really, are to remove stats in-and-of themselves, or have them set so that, once created, they never change.

Quote:Ok, so, this next part I typed, then deleted, then retyped. I know it's probably going to be irritating or... I dunno. It'll sound bad. All I can say is that I'm trying to be straight-forward, not insulting. So... yeah...

It sounds like what you and Greg want (and it could be a ton of people, you two are just the only ones who've said anything) is a system where you can put it down for a while, then come back every now and again and still be on-par with the people who never stopped. The system that is here right now was specifically designed to avoid that. I think that's horribly unfair to the people who continue playing. That said, it probably could have been mitigated more than it was, but live 'n' learn.

While I appreciate the desire to maintain an level playing field, I can't caution you enough against diminishing people's efforts.

Quote:I also am curious, why don't you make a new RPG? It sounds like there's enough that you want to change (both mechanically and canonically) that you'd be best served just starting with a blank slate. One of the things that we wanted to do was turn Chubbs into a hub of (apparently failed) RPGs to keep the community, but appeal to people in ways that the current stuff didn't. If you have ideas you want to pursue, that's the course of action I'm inclined to encourage.

Quote:EDIT:

You're definitely not coming off as defensive. I actually was being defensive earlier in this post, but just for the bit about people at the top making quality posts. Hopefully nothing else came off as defensive/was offensive.

Quote:It sounds like what you and Greg want (and it could be a ton of people, you two are just the only ones who've said anything) is a system where you can put it down for a while, then come back every now and again and still be on-par with the people who never stopped.

Rose Wrote:...

Belle Hibiki Wrote:In my mind, we've just been dancing around the truth for a long time now. Whenever we have debates about this, it's always about incentivizing this, or promoting that; "If only we change the CA system, people will play", "if only we can do this, we can get more sagas." But that's completely wrong. The forum isn't a game, as much as we try to dress it up as one; there was an element of that, once upon a time, but that vanished along with the automated bot.

No, what this is supposed to be about is writing with other people, of exchanging ideas, of that excitement you get when you're not fully in control of the story in your hands, where your partner(s) take you down turns in a tale that you might never have seen coming. That's why roleplaying is awesome to me, and why most of us started to do it in the first place. Writing shouldn't be something that the system has to coerce you into, it should be a labor of love, freely given. We focus so much on the 'system' and 'competition' that I think we miss that fact.

We constrain ourselves and our crazy ideas for the sake of 'balance' in what is essentially a formless construct. We deny ourselves the opportunity to build a Titanic on the waves, because we're too busy trying to build a sand castle there. Is CA an issue? Sure, but it's not the main issue.

Alexander Trafford Wrote:Hate: Finals.

Kayne Wrote:Same here >.<

Piper Juunanagou Wrote:Hate: Having to leave Argentina