The Like/Hate Thread

[Kaden]

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

This got kind of tangential. Sorry for that.

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.