Cats as Ring rewards - suggestion

[apziro]

Title says it all - I've been thinking about a way to implement cats as rewards from Ring missions in a meaningful way.

In brief outline, the concept is to allow Ring event creators to add a certain amount of cats as a "permanent" reward to players when completing an event. As event creators receive positive feedback on his missions, the amount of cats he can award will rise.

- The rating system -
Obviously, you don't want to allow fraud. Only payed subscribers are allowed to vote, and only one vote is allowed per account per mission.
Any players who completes a ring event is prompted to rate it. Once enough people have rated an event sufficiently high, the event creator will be eligible for the next reward level. Furthermore, in order to advance a reward level, you will need to have made at least one event with a certain amount of unique votes in the upper end (20 people giving 3 out of 5 stars, for example).
As the event creator advances in reward level, he will need:
- An increasing amount of positive votes on his "topscoring" event
- An increasing amount of events with at least # of positive votes
- An overall increase in positive votes
They are being kept seperate to motivate the event creator to:
- Promote his favourite work to a larger audience
- Create more events that involve larger groups of players, or promote small group events more
- Just generally do good

- The rewards -
As the event creator advances in levels, he will get access to an increasing amount of cats of increasing quality.
It could be considered to allow brand new event creators to start at reward level 1. Alternatively, creators can be given squad till they prove themselves (level 0).
At level 1, you have access to level 50 cats. Say, 10? 50? Per player that completes the event.
I imagine you would unlock a higher grade of cats every 2 level, so that at level 10 you could reward say, 100-200 QL250 cats.
The even creator will be able to add his reward to one event every 48 hours.
You can't add rewards to events not created by yourself.

- The events -
In order for an event to be eligible for rewarding, all it's encounteres must be locked in the level ranges of the ordinary zones. Rewarded cats quality can't exceed the level of the event.
In order for players to be eligible for rewards, they must have gained a certain amount of event-exp.
In case of events consisting of several acts, the amount of cats awarded is increased. Half the original amount extra per additional act. The amount of required event-exp is also increased, but at a lower rate - to allow acts dedicated to storytelling.


Now, if items could be integrated somewhere along the road too...

Feedback?

[d29565]

Hm, from what my drugged mind (nitetime cold medicine, doh!) can gather from this, it sounds like a really through and goodly idea, along with a good way to impliment the rewards.

[xtarsia]

well.. that would promote ring use, its ballanced, and cats seem a reasonable reward considering its time spent not actually leveling, but u get to catch up again after

Fantastic idea imo

[aardnebb]

I like it, the only downside I can see is potential "farming" opertunities.

Basically the ring creater makes 20 nearly identical short missions. His guildies run thru each one and rate it 5* (and pick up their increasing ammount of cats as they do so...).

BUT as a potential solution: Make manual checks by perhaps the CSRs for "promotions"?

EG levels 1-3 you get automatically just for using the ring or whatever. Level 4+ requires approval by a CSR. Only downside to this is it requires more work by CSRs, and we know they are busy homins! :/

Glad to see innovation though, I would _love_ both Ring rewards, and a removal of the PvP monopoly on cats. (Other than the small number of q100 cats from christmas presents.)

As for the way the reward is handled, I think the "ring reward points" system as described in earlier "in developement" articles is a good method. Spent kinda like honour points from Ep2, basically talk to an NPC shopkeeper who takes reward points instead of dappers, and sells cats and items (Outpost mats / "generic raw materials", maybe even rare bossmats for high cost etc would be my suggestion, reward gear such as event shields devalue crafters).

[nephy13]

Some nice ideas there, but as I see it, the problem is that the devs have already decided how this will work, but they aren't rushing to get it implemented (They were busy with this takeover business and who knows what they will be given to do next...?). I do hope they implement some sort of points system before too long, or even the few keen Ring-users (like myself) will stop using it entirely...

As far as I am aware, you will get Ring points for all "active" time inside a Ring scenario. This neatly prevents all "fraud" activities (q250 loot on level 50 mobs as well as more subtle cheats) in the easiest way to implement, without having to be too controlling on what is allowed in the editor. It also allows you to get points for just talking to NPCs which allows for a lot more play options than the mainland (as long as you are clicking on something, you are "active" and gaining points at the standard rate). I think the author of the scenario will also get points at a much slower rate as people play in it.

These earned points would then be used to buy cats or whatever the devs decide to sell...

- The rating system -
Obviously, you don't want to allow fraud. Only payed subscribers are allowed to vote, and only one vote is allowed per account per mission.

Only subscribers can play scenarios (Trial can only edit/solo own scenarios), so this isn't really a problem.

Any players who completes a ring event is prompted to rate it. Once enough people have rated an event sufficiently high, the event creator will be eligible for the next reward level. Furthermore, in order to advance a reward level, you will need to have made at least one event with a certain amount of unique votes in the upper end (20 people giving 3 out of 5 stars, for example).
As the event creator advances in reward level, he will need:
- An increasing amount of positive votes on his "topscoring" event
- An increasing amount of events with at least # of positive votes
- An overall increase in positive votes
They are being kept seperate to motivate the event creator to:
- Promote his favourite work to a larger audience
- Create more events that involve larger groups of players, or promote small group events more
- Just generally do good

When I looked at the test server, I saw that there was a system of voting for a scenario in 5 different categories (Fun, Direction, Difficulty, Accessibility and Originality). This was disabled in the actual patch for some reason. The problem with attaching this voting system to rewards is that those with good scenarios are penalised compared to those people with lots of friends. An unscrupulous guild could get all its members to vote for all the other member's scenarios en masse (regardless of quality) and they would dominate. As far as I can see, the planned system, wherein results of voting is shown to players planning to enter a scenario but it having no other purpose, is a lot safer.

- The rewards -
As the event creator advances in levels, he will get access to an increasing amount of cats of increasing quality.

I think it is absolutely imperative that more popular Ring developers do not gain the ability to give greater rewards to players. Otherwise, you give a positive feedback loop that means that noone can break into creating scenarios once a few people are set up as "popular Ring writers". Once you start being able to give better rewards, your scenarios will become more popular than better written scenarios with lesser rewards. Just compare this to the positive feedback loop in the current outpost implementation (those who control outposts get special cats and materials which makes them MASSIVELY more able to defend that outpost from non-outpost owners).

** EDIT ** Sorry that I was so negative about your ideas. They were not that bad really; it is more that the addition of Ring rewards is such a difficult thing to get right (presumably the developers have avoided implementing rewards because it is such a difficult thing to balance. It would be nice if we got a rewards system, even if imperfect, before too long).