[MUD-Dev] moving advancement away from experience

[Eli Stevens]

I have been kicking this idea around in my head for a few months, gone
through periods of liking it, hating it, plugging the abuse holes, realizing
it will never work, etc.  Since I have exactly zero experience working as an
imm on an open MUD, I don't think that my speculation is worth that much.
Could a system like I describe below work?

The environment that I am envisioning is:
Level-free MUD
No restrictions (no min level, skill, stat, etc.) on equipment use
All non-consent activities skill/stat based
Political system (guilds, controlled territory, etc.)
Players would have accounts with multiple characters/alts.
Having more than one account would be against game policy (steps would be
taken to remove most advantages from obtaining a second account)
Alignment would be represented by "reputation stats" that the player can
modify
focus on RP rather than GOP

Players would be able to increase their skill levels by obtaining what I am
going to call "rolecredits."  There will be additional ways to increase
skills as well, but I am not really sure what form they might take (I would
like to stay away from use-based increases, I like the thread recently on
using offline time).  The official line would be that RCs should be given
when a player thinks that another character has done an exceptional job of
roleplaying their character.

The base of the system would work like this:  If you have a rolecredit, you
can give it to someone else.  When someone recieves an RC, it actually
spawns three things.  The first is a skill increase point.  Second, a
reputation modification point.  Third, the character now has a rolecredit to
give to someone else.

Now, just like that, the system stands wide open for abuse
</understatement>.  My question is, can it be done?  With the right rules
coded into a rolecredit, might the system work, or will it just degenerate
into endless "only rolecredit your guild" thought processes?

Rules to help slow things:

0.  Characters cannot RC themselves.  Different characters under the same
account can, however.  I had wanted to disallow that, but it would just make
players want to have multiple accounts.

1.  Characters keep a list of the last X characters (and that character's
political faction) they have given rolecredits to.  No character/faction can
appear more than once on that list.  This helps with the "only credit your
friends" mentality.

2.  Rolecredits also keep a list of the last X characters (and that
character's political faction) they have been given to.  No
character/faction can appear more than once on that list.  This prevents an
RC from bouncing back and forth between groups of members from two separate
guilds (A gives to X, X to B, B to Y, Y to C, etc.).

3.  A time delay is introduced between the giving of the RC and recieving
it.  The delay is proportional to the inverse of the time the RC was held,
squared.  The minimum would be something like 3 hours, and going up to
perhaps a few days or a week.

4.  The system keeps rolecrediting annonymous.  Coupled with the time delay,
people trying to trade RCs will have to trust one another that they did, in
fact, RC the other person.

5.  There is only one RC in the system per player.  On character creation,
the RC gets added to a pool of RCs available to be given out by the
administration as rewards, etc.  When characters are cleaned up, that pool
is decremented.

Other ideas that might work, or might not:

6.  Cap the max number of RCs a given player can hold at any one time.  If
someone tries to RC someone with the max, they get the RC back after the
delay period.

7.  Make asking for an RC against the rules (with whatever punishment).  No
ifs, ands or buts.  Log conversations that have the strings "role",
"credit", "rc", etc. to help prevent disputes.  Allow players to have
conversations on any channel/tell/say committed to official log files with
an automated command (actually, this command would be way nifty anyway - no
more he said/she said :).

8.  Require a one line description of the reason the RC is being given (even
if it goes unchecked, it makes them think up something IC, which is a step
in the right direction).

etc.

<//> Silence is golden           RUIN, v.  To destroy.            <\\>
 ||  Eli                         Specifically, to destroy a maid's ||
 ||  wickedgrey at wickedgrey.com   belief in the virtue of maids.    ||
<\\> www.wickedgrey.com            -- Ambrose Bierce              <//>






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