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Post by Greed on Aug 25, 2011 8:08:19 GMT -5
I'm going to point out flaws with Tok's plan so hopefully we can come up with ways to get around those problems. If anyone else comes up with something, I'll discuss that too. Alright, so, going by Tok's own Ideas: 1 - As you said it yourself, this is a freeform RP. In order to make an XP based system, we need to standardize it, which removes a crucial element of the basis of the RP. And I don't think we can just say "Oh hey, each thread starter will figure it out" because of the huge differences in strictness of us as people. I'm more likely to low-ball the XP (partly because Zane is intentionally weak and I don't want him gaining power fast, but also because I like slower progression overall), whereas some like Manchin may highball it for the sake of more intense battles later on. 2- This is the idea of yours I liked the best, but it does mean that we're leaving the fate of our characters up to a group of people who are going to have a radically different view of fair from the character owner. I can predict this disjointedness leading to some conflict in a highball v lowball situation.3- Tried that. It didn't work so well. Again, it would be decent if we all had the same standard ideas in our heads, but my feeling of how strong someone like Bon should be versus Slvr's idea of it are going to be significantly different, and without some sort of standard, we're going to have conflicts over character actions. The AP system we have now, as minimal as it god damn is, does provide a wee sense of scale for each character. 4- *blows on smoke coming off the barrel* If I'm not mistaken, that led to Taku somehow getting even more uber. I think there's a way to make it work though. It MIGHT be possible to use an average based system for it, instead of passing vote/not passing vote, but that's also complicated. Perhaps a simple vote could be "Does this thread warrant an ability or AP boost"? For instance, Once the whole Malen Universal school thread series gets started, points will be awarded for certain classes (If planning these out ahead of time, and they are apart of the flow of things.) Its also my belief that younger characters/weaker characters, ones with more room to grow, should benefit more often. I don't except any of the Grimlocke Corps to get more AP any time soon. Also, I'm planning slower progression in Kyril Mayor, don't worry.
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Post by SlvrNight on Aug 25, 2011 9:31:33 GMT -5
I actually wouldn't mind an XP system if we could figure out a good way to do it. Maybe the amount of XP needed can be based on how much AP the character currently has? I had originally thought it could go by the character's rank, but that's a bit too broad. Can't have an Ace with 1 point into the next rank needing the same amount of XP that a new Ace needs. Although that still doesn't fix the problem about deciding how much XP battles, threads, etc. would give...
As for Tok's second idea, we could just exclude the character's creator from the decision process. We could still ask them questions and such, if we have any, but for the most part we'd just go by what we'd be reading. This also means we'd have to actually READ the other threads.
Greed's idea doesn't seem bad either. It seems like voting is one of the easier ways to solve this problem.
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Post by Greed on Aug 25, 2011 12:57:47 GMT -5
Another small idea.
Characters get boosts according to what they do.
A character who uses heavy weapons and does alot of heavy lifting gets more strength boosts.
A character who is well coordinated, runs alot, and is generally very energentic gets more speed boosts.
A character studies and used magic constantly gets a mana boost
And characters who do major physical training and get turned into punching bags often get an endurance boost.
On second thought, the idea is horrible, and doesn't allow that much freedom. A more flexible and sensible idea is that ABILITIES that get used often develop. Abilities that don't get left out. Elemental control could be a part in this as well. Perhaps the above information could be used as a sort of bonus system, adding a single extra point onto whatever our "normal" reward will be?
This doesn't even account for androids and characters reliant on technology (Seline and Bon respectively, not even taking Peppermint into account) and how to handle upgrades. I still haven't thought of a way around that that won't get people crying foul.
I'll give this more thought with consideration into how Kyril works, keep the suggestions coming, they all help us come up with something.
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Post by Jisui on Aug 25, 2011 15:53:27 GMT -5
Another small idea. Characters get boosts according to what they do. A character who uses heavy weapons and does alot of heavy lifting gets more strength boosts. A character who is well coordinated, runs alot, and is generally very energentic gets more speed boosts. A character studies and used magic constantly gets a mana boost And characters who do major physical training and get turned into punching bags often get an endurance boost. On second thought, the idea is horrible, and doesn't allow that much freedom. A more flexible and sensible idea is that ABILITIES that get used often develop. Abilities that don't get left out. Elemental control could be a part in this as well. Perhaps the above information could be used as a sort of bonus system, adding a single extra point onto whatever our "normal" reward will be? This doesn't even account for androids and characters reliant on technology (Seline and Bon respectively, not even taking Peppermint into account) and how to handle upgrades. I still haven't thought of a way around that that won't get people crying foul. I'll give this more thought with consideration into how Kyril works, keep the suggestions coming, they all help us come up with something. The first idea as you noticed, is too restricted on freedom. It's a unique idea, and good that you're thinking outside the box, but what does a fighter like Sael specifically have to be a fighter now? Can his role change at all? How about an agile mage? His role, while specifically geared towards Speed and Will, have now been restricted to just that. And the last thing we want to do is restrict personal choice in a person's ability to create a character. As Cheese said, we would need to standardize parts of the RP in order to make an experience system work. However, while I dislike the idea of standardization, I believe that it's relatively impossible not to somewhat standardize parts of the RP without creating a good system in place. How about this...? Forget the ability grant thing for now. We can do a combination of some of the ideas. We make a sub-forum named "AP Records" which basically will act as both an archive for AP Boosts, and a place where AP Boosts will be checked over by fellow RPers. When a topic is completed, the topic owner can have free reign to grant AP to any of the participants in his or her thread. Yep, free reign. 2000 AP? Sure. But, you must post the request in AP Records. Then, it will be checked over by 1-2 people preferably not in the thread briefly, and granted if it looks good. This way, you won't get AP from random bar chats. And this also checks over high AP amounts (highballing; high AP for weak miniboss) or extreme lowballing (low amounts for an especially strong boss). If all RPers are participating in the thread, all we need is a group consensus. Afterwards, points may be added freely. It's not as much work as it sounds, and most of the time we should be able to get by without too many problems. Now, abilities come to play through ranks. Do you see Civilian - 8, Soldier - 12 and all of those ranks? Or perhaps Ankaa's version of the ranks? My suggestion is that every time you cross into another AP rank, such as soldier, you would get a new ability. If the points seem too close, you can ask Sacchin or SRK to separate them a little more. Now, what does this leave the stronger characters, like Masters? While powerful, they have less opportunity to gain abilities then weaker ranks. This leaves the weaker ranks with much more potential ability wise in the end and also encourages weaker characters. I'd also say from Soldier to Civilian, or from a lower AP rank down, that in any topic completion, they would get a 1.5 multiplier increase in the amount of AP they got (2 AP * 1.5 = 3 AP) to encourage growth more. Of course, this is just a personal opinion, since many people like slower growth, but the growth would return to normal upon hitting Ace. We could also implement Sacchin's 2nd idea quite easily if we wanted to. We would just need to add "Ability Rank" to every ability in the bios section. This would not state ability strength, but the character's mastery of the ability. Almost all abilities would start at E rank, unless it was their Signature Attack or something by few exception. We would then implement a set of standardized values for "Ability Growth", which are ability rank ups. It might look like this, just for example. Ability Growth: Rank E --> Rank D: 5 uses Rank D --> Rank C: 10 uses Rank C --> Rank B: 15 uses ... Just for reference of course. The more your rank goes up, the more that ability grows as well. This can range from simply being more powerful to slight details in the attacks, to entirely reforming the ability at higher ranks (IE: Ice Arrow turns into Ice Storm at Rank B...). It's a cool idea, just needs the right things attached to make it work.
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Post by Shin RyuKen on Aug 25, 2011 16:01:38 GMT -5
going off of the XP idea, we actually discussed it before. the problem with experience points in an RP like this is the issue of scaling. whoever makes the boss/grunt would have to determine EXP for each combatant and, without standardization of EXP for each rank or character or whatever, would lead to clashing of different views for how a character should grow. and, like mayor said about tok's second idea, it would lead to a highball v. lowball scenario.
i kind of like the idea of voting; though instead of a three vote thing, i would go by majority vote just so we have a fair consensus among RPers about if the character deserves to develop in such a way. it's not a perfect idea, as pointed out earlier, but it's better than not letting characters grow at all.
i want to say have like an EXP system for individual abilities/elemental control based on letting an ability evolve after usage or with time, or just the idea of letting an existing ability evolve in general(like what Mayor did with Kyle), but i feel like that can be done regardless.
other small suggestion: like what we did in Ethona, make a thread chronicling how many fights a character was in, if they won or not, etc. and scale AP/ability distribution based on that. it might still be a subjective way to give out rewards, but if done properly and in moderation, it could work.
edit: damn joo jisui for interrupting me...
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Post by Greed on Aug 25, 2011 16:10:32 GMT -5
Another small idea. Characters get boosts according to what they do. A character who uses heavy weapons and does alot of heavy lifting gets more strength boosts. A character who is well coordinated, runs alot, and is generally very energentic gets more speed boosts. A character studies and used magic constantly gets a mana boost And characters who do major physical training and get turned into punching bags often get an endurance boost. On second thought, the idea is horrible, and doesn't allow that much freedom. A more flexible and sensible idea is that ABILITIES that get used often develop. Abilities that don't get left out. Elemental control could be a part in this as well. Perhaps the above information could be used as a sort of bonus system, adding a single extra point onto whatever our "normal" reward will be? This doesn't even account for androids and characters reliant on technology (Seline and Bon respectively, not even taking Peppermint into account) and how to handle upgrades. I still haven't thought of a way around that that won't get people crying foul. I'll give this more thought with consideration into how Kyril works, keep the suggestions coming, they all help us come up with something. The first idea as you noticed, is too restricted on freedom. It's a unique idea, and good that you're thinking outside the box, but what does a fighter like Sael specifically have to be a fighter now? Can his role change at all? How about an agile mage? His role, while specifically geared towards Speed and Will, have now been restricted to just that. And the last thing we want to do is restrict personal choice in a person's ability to create a character. As Cheese said, we would need to standardize parts of the RP in order to make an experience system work. However, while I dislike the idea of standardization, I believe that it's relatively impossible not to somewhat standardize parts of the RP without creating a good system in place. How about this...? Forget the ability grant thing for now. We can do a combination of some of the ideas. We make a sub-forum named "AP Records" which basically will act as both an archive for AP Boosts, and a place where AP Boosts will be checked over by fellow RPers. When a topic is completed, the topic owner can have free reign to grant AP to any of the participants in his or her thread. Yep, free reign. 2000 AP? Sure. But, you must post the request in AP Records. Then, it will be checked over by 1-2 people preferably not in the thread briefly, and granted if it looks good. This way, you won't get AP from random bar chats. And this also checks over high AP amounts (highballing; high AP for weak miniboss) or extreme lowballing (low amounts for an especially strong boss). If all RPers are participating in the thread, all we need is a group consensus. Afterwards, points may be added freely. It's not as much work as it sounds, and most of the time we should be able to get by without too many problems. Now, abilities come to play through ranks. Do you see Civilian - 8, Soldier - 12 and all of those ranks? Or perhaps Ankaa's version of the ranks? My suggestion is that every time you cross into another AP rank, such as soldier, you would get a new ability. If the points seem too close, you can ask Sacchin or SRK to separate them a little more. Now, what does this leave the stronger characters, like Masters? While powerful, they have less opportunity to gain abilities then weaker ranks. This leaves the weaker ranks with much more potential ability wise in the end and also encourages weaker characters. I'd also say from Soldier to Civilian, or from a lower AP rank down, that in any topic completion, they would get a 1.5 multiplier increase in the amount of AP they got (2 AP * 1.5 = 3 AP) to encourage growth more. Of course, this is just a personal opinion, since many people like slower growth, but the growth would return to normal upon hitting Ace. We could also implement Sacchin's 2nd idea quite easily if we wanted to. We would just need to add "Ability Rank" to every ability in the bios section. This would not state ability strength, but the character's mastery of the ability. Almost all abilities would start at E rank, unless it was their Signature Attack or something by few exception. We would then implement a set of standardized values for "Ability Growth", which are ability rank ups. It might look like this, just for example. Ability Growth: Rank E --> Rank D: 5 uses Rank D --> Rank C: 10 uses Rank C --> Rank B: 15 uses ... Just for reference of course. The more your rank goes up, the more that ability grows as well. This can range from simply being more powerful to slight details in the attacks, to entirely reforming the ability at higher ranks (IE: Ice Arrow turns into Ice Storm at Rank B...). It's a cool idea, just needs the right things attached to make it work. You misread my idea for the ability changes. Abilities will be "unranked" because the nature of abilities and attacks defies rank in a rather random fashion. Its hard to, say, categorize a move that injects a lethal poison into an enemy against a move that attacks them directly, protect yourself by fortifying stats, or even setting off a simple flash of light. The changes will come in the nature of the move, as each change can change how it works, make it more efficient, increase its range or radius, or basically anything that would make it more useful. Characters should not have any exceedingly basic elemental attacks listed, as those should be covered under elemental control. Taking Sorel for example, the kid can bend the earth to his will by laying his bare skin against it, making fists, spikes, fissures, and and causing tremors. The uses idea wouldn't work, as there are a few characters who rely more on weapons than abilities or attacks, and passive abilities aren't even taken into consideration.
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Post by SlvrNight on Aug 25, 2011 16:31:51 GMT -5
The "uses" just show how many times the ability needs to be used before it can rank up. An ability's ranking also does not have anything to do with its power. All it does is show how much growth the ability can still get.
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Post by Jisui on Aug 25, 2011 16:37:08 GMT -5
But my idea's not categorizing anything. On the contrary, it's putting them all in one Rank section, the level of the ability. This basically just means the amount it's been used.
Which was what I meant as well, lol... but you took the idea of changing the entire ability too seriously. In my suggestion, that would probably only be possible at the higher ranks, while the others might do what you listed above.
This idea benefits those who use abilities, yes? If you rely on weapons more, then that's just a personal character choice. It could still benefit them, but the majority of characters, yes, use abilities, and if they simply are fist brawlers or swordsmen, then that's the choice of the RPer.
Passive abilities are also covered. You just need to open up the thoughts more... if I have an ability that protects me against fire, if someone hits me with it, does that mean I used it? Yeah, it does.
Mechanical Eyes - The differently colored eyes that have replaced Seline's original eyes are by and far superior. They have incredible zooming and targetting capabilities, and an advanced HUD (Heads Up Display) that allows Seline to flawlessly keep track of her opponents. Over the years, they have been improved quite a few times since Seline left the service of Devoid 13 years ago. Other functions include reading for her own core, a bio-sensor, and a massive host of other miscellaneous functions.
How about this? If Seline uses her ability to access her HUD maybe, or spot an enemy easily, she's using her passive ability really. Now, I know there's some exceptions, and some abilities might need to be unranked (like this ability doesn't really work that well with it). This idea isn't perfect at all, it has tons of holes in it. But it does allow a flexible use of abilities without changing that much of the structures at all. In the end it's a random thought of my head, so some may not like it.
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Post by Greed on Aug 20, 2012 9:56:27 GMT -5
AND THEN TOK MADE AN RP THAT I HAVE TO JOIN ON SHEER PRINCIPLE.
FUCK.
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Post by SlvrNight on Aug 20, 2012 12:09:31 GMT -5
You don't HAVE to join, you know lol. I'm not gonna be joining : D
Don't get me wrong Tok, I actually really like your concept and I'm genuinely interested in it. But right now I simply don't have enough time to join another RP. Maybe I'll join later, but for now I'm gonna kick back and observe.
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Post by Greed on Aug 20, 2012 14:23:18 GMT -5
Pfft, we still count Kyril as an RP? The only thing even currently active is Sougenmou.
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Post by Tokrochiru on Aug 20, 2012 15:25:54 GMT -5
Yeah, sorry that Marble Labyrinth kinda came out of nowhere. The reason it did was because MK II told me she needed a break from running SWC, and I saw this as an idea to try out an idea me and Advix had been thinking about.
Hopefully it goes somewhere. If it doesn't though, it won't be the worst thing in the world. It'll be worth a shot for sure.
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Post by Shin RyuKen on Aug 20, 2012 19:08:35 GMT -5
Wtf are you guys even complaining about??
SWC is on hiatus, so joining this and factoring in Sougenmou would still be the equivalent of joining two RPs : /
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Post by Shin RyuKen on Sept 13, 2012 23:47:30 GMT -5
I'm going to bump this with something that's been on my mind recently. Now granted I have things to be replying to, but I felt I should get this off my chest anyway. -Choices-
Recently, I was running short on motivation in posting in multiple places in the RP because I've been really busy lately and had to juggle three other things at once, making it difficult to get a good post in when I can. I then turned to Greed's Pub of all places: The forum where the brunt of Ankaa took place, when we were still transitioning from our newly acquired RP styles to the old Sollius style of just doing whatever. Ankaa was a strange experimental RP in a lot of ways in which a lot of us were still trying to figure our RPing out, so...we didn't quite know what we were doing. As a result, Jisui and I were pumping out overly flowery purple prose posts, Sacchin and Tok were just kind of railroading everyone into their plotlines, Slvr was somewhere in the background trying to piece everything together, Grillz was using Kenan and Kel music...well, you get the idea. It was a superb example of an RP that would've made a great story to be written in its own right, and even Tok admits he wrote a whole story off his Ankaa cast, but as an RP, Ankaa didn't function the way it should've. Everything about the way Ankaa was structured was just off, hence the infamous TWELVE MORE MONTHS campaign, and the lack of a succinct flow eventually culminated into the eventual collapse of Ankaa, the RP, only for Ankaa, the story, to take precedence for some time after its end.
A lot of things could be attributed as to why Ankaa collapsed. It could be easily seen as a transition phase for us where we were still coming out of RP hiatus and tried to regress back to an earlier form of RPing which didn't amend any of our old habits. We were trying too hard to be "fair" and thus we ended up with the TWELVE MORE MONTHS campaign where we didn't know restraint and kind of let our RP infrastructure crumble at the seams. Personally, I agree with all of this, but that's not why Ankaa died for me.
Why am I bringing Ankaa up at all? I mention it because I needed to look back at it as an example of an RP that functioned solely as a good story, but not a good RP. Whenever I try to make my posts in Sougenmou I tend to go through two major quality control tests whenever I do any posts involving moving the story along. I first ask myself, "Would this be a good story?" Should I pass that test, I then follow up by asking, "Is this good RPing?" These are two fundamentally different questions that people tend to misconstrue because many of us, I believe, don't really understand the tenets of good RPing. And that's because we tend to write a good story that moves the player along, but that's not what makes a good RP. If my character is able to influence the environment by being there and actually matter to what's going on, that is what bridges the gap between a good story and a good RP. A good RP involves choices, choices that make a character matter.
Take R2C for example. Hell, take any of Lost's RPs on that note. Whether or not the player realizes it, every choice he or she makes in the RP matters. Jin has to manage diplomacy with other bordering nations such as Inganni to survive long enough to not get attacked, Caruso has to keep his wits about him in order to not have to confront Nova, people have to decide between whether or not to side with Velcan or Bastille, and the list generally goes on. We often don't realize it, but R2C was easily the perfect example of an RP rather than just a story. It involved a set of characters who made moral decisions which affected everything around them and sent them onto a branching path completely different than what would've happened five minutes ago. This is something we completely neglect because we're all too busy being upset that Lost kicked our asses, but he was arguably the only RPer that really understood what made an RP worth being involved in. I don't get this impression from our recent RPs. I just feel like our characters are being moved along.
I don't know how many people have noticed, but this concept of branching paths has actually been applied to parts of Sougenmou as well. Grant has to figure out how exactly to negotiate with the soldiers in front of him to see if he can get a free card out of dodge, people have to decide where to stand in the rebellion against the monarchy, what role they play; a lot of this really establishes the significance of a character in the story. We ignore this often, so we often produce characters or make stories that tread everyone along while other characters get a chance to make everyone ogle at how cool they are. Choices, and generally, just interaction is what makes the difference between an audience in an RP and the actors in an RP. Right now, I believe a lot of our characters in Marble, for example, are just members of an audience being dragged along, with a few select people serving as actors who progress the story.
There is nothing wrong with having most people in the RP be actors. Rather, that it what makes it worth RPing. I wish everyone would remember that and try to make their stories more open to the possibility of change, because realistically, that is how the world works; nothing is supposed to be static in reality, the world is dynamically influence by everyone within it. Our RP should be able to encapsulate that, so that we don't end up writing a bunch of stories we could easily just produce on our own without begging everyone to post for the past few days.
Thoughts to this discussion are welcome and in fact, highly encouraged. Please be respectful.
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Post by Tokrochiru on Sept 14, 2012 15:26:17 GMT -5
I agree that this is a problem, and I really appreciate you recognizing this and pointing this out.
Thing is though, it's a lot easier said than done, especially in freeform RPs where the factor of random chance is all but removed due to the lack of dice rolls (not that it's necessarily a bad thing).
I don't think any of us ever succeed completely in adding that choice factor, except for the Slvrs in SWC. In Sougenmou, sometimes I feel dragged, while other times I feel free. Grant's choices as of the "alchemy bomb" situation feel important, but on the other hand, I actually felt a bit pressured into having Grant work with Gregor Samsa. If I felt I could have gotten away with it, I would have had Grant be generally hostile with Gregor Samsa.
I think a big factor that we're missing here is an element of moral ambiguity. There's always a "right choice" and a "bad choice" but I find that we rarely ever run into any gray areas. Gregor Samsa are obviously the good guys in the Monarchy/rebellion conflict, while the Monarchy itself and Shemhazai/Shamhazai/Sheppardhallibut as of yet obviously seem to be the bad guys. I think some some less success/failure based choices would go a long way, though we need plenty of those too.
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