The Game, the Cabal, and You

[Trick]

12 hours ago, Valek said:

Man, this is horrible to read through.  

Ya'll got some issues.  

A lot of it is passion, I believe.

A few of the more.. aggressive.. posters here are very passionate about the game and it bothers them that this is even an issue. @Zrothum has an awful approach to how he presents it, but the issue he is citing has been felt across many players. I have talked to just about everyone here in some way outside of FL and almost all of them have mentioned sitting around at Veteran waiting.

@Kyzarius has a lot of experience here and has done a lot to help shape the game. He has had just about every reward the game can offer so you(general) can't say he is just disgruntled in his thoughts. He's literally gotten it all, but even he is saying there are some problems with the way it is run.

Most of my experiences mirror his in his above post. I've waited weeks for Trusted on one character and then I've gone from Veteran to Elder in less than 8 hours on a different character and that was by the same IMM. I will say it is an AWESOME feeling to jump to Elder because your IMM sees that in you, but its just as easily outweighed by the feeling of stagnation when you can't even get Trusted despite heavy PK, RP, notes, journals, plot involvement, or what have you.

There are times where it feels like you just have to wait "because". The game is fast as hell right now. Is that a contributing factor? I don't know. Its so easy to get trained/50 that you have a bigger wait timer for other things, does that play a role in this feeling of waiting so long? I don't know, but I sure as hell don't want to spend more time ranking alone than I do sitting at 50. If that's the trade off, leave it as is. 

[egreir]

I bring people together.

[English lad]

How about a compromise between automation and curated promotion.

Have 'promotion points' rather than hours till promotion. Promotion points would still be awarded passively over time, but also awarded for enemy cabal kills, standard takes, retrieves, cabal warfare stuff - but would also be imm awarded for appropriate cabal RP, alongside the possibility of taking away promotion points where necessary. This gives you a quantifiable system where people can understand and see their progression, while also allowing imms to guide and reward appropriate cabal behaviour.

[Trick]

11 minutes ago, English lad said:

How about a compromise between automation and curated promotion.

Have 'promotion points' rather than hours till promotion. Promotion points would still be awarded passively over time, but also awarded for enemy cabal kills, standard takes, retrieves, cabal warfare stuff - but would also be imm awarded for appropriate cabal RP, alongside the possibility of taking away promotion points where necessary. This gives you a quantifiable system where people can understand and see their progression, while also allowing imms to guide and reward appropriate cabal behaviour.

I actually really like this.

[English lad]

1 minute ago, Trick said:

I actually really like this.

And i wrote it on my phone whilst taking a massive crap. Imagine how good my ideas are going to be when i get going

[Trick]

2 minutes ago, English lad said:

And i wrote it on my phone whilst taking a massive crap. Imagine how good my ideas are going to be when i get going

The greatest ideas in the world happen in two locations:

On the can and in the shower. 

[English lad]

Save time and combine them!

[Fool_Hardy]

Just now, Trick said:

The greatest ideas in the world happen in two locations:

On the can and in the shower. 

I believe they also come from logical discussions held by intelligent people seeking a solution to a common problem.

Glad we were able to provide @English lad with enough content to complete his business. 

[egreir]

I'm only angry that I didn't think of this first. Great idea EL.  Only thing I'd add is some cabals/sub cabals will need to weight the points different,  i.e  Sigil wont be doing as much cabal enemy killing as Praet, so maybe their should get a higher weighted point gain in another area.

[egreir]

Also, you'd get to brag about how your PP is much larger....makes this idea a winner in my book.

[Trick]

I'd love to hear some IMMpinions of a "promotion point" system, if we could. 

[Wade]

38 minutes ago, Trick said:

I'd love to hear some IMMpinions of a "promotion point" system, if we could. 

"More admin work?"

[English lad]

1 hour ago, Wade said:

"More admin work?"

While I appreciate Wade is being Sarcastic - as the Australians and New Zealanders inherited that wonderful trait from the Empire - I'll address anyway.

The idea is to create a system with less admin for the staff.  Right now Staff manually promote - which means they have to keep some sort of track of who is doing well, who isn't etc.  You also have issues of staff needing to co-ordinate themselves across timezones - as some players don't match up well with their Cabal Imm, so need other Imms to corroborate what they have been doing.

In general I think the Staff here make work hard for themselves quite a lot through the route of 'its always been done that way'.  I don't think it is conscious - and this is in no way a dig at the admin, who i think do the best job I've seen done on FL.  The idea of adding an in game system to monitor and manage promotions is to take admin away from Imms as much as it is to give visibility to Players.  With a system like this any Imm who sees something the staff like to see from a player can reward a few points on to the player - with a quick explanation note - which would only be view-able by other staff.  If you really wanted to maintain more control from a specific Imm you could have these work like a journal, where the points don't immediately appear for the character, and have to be approved by the Cabal Imm the next time they log in, but personally I think we should be able to trust all staff to hand this stuff out.

So you end up with a system whereby a Cabal Imm doesn't have to track anything themselves.  They can pull up a 'Promote List' on a character and see a log of all their meaningful cabal actions - who they have killed / died to - when they have retrieved, when they have taken enemy standard, any awards they have been given by Imms for good Cabal RP etc.  This gives them a very powerful tool for deciding who and when to promote - and gives the players a way of tracking their development through the cabal.

[Anume]

The problem with this is negative awards. Woe to the Imm who dares award -1 rp point atm. It's causing 3 pages of prayer post bitching. Now imagine someone sees someone else log off from a cabal enemy though the cabal is under attack repeatedly (once or twice can happen just bc of real life stuff) without them having fought before. Award negative promo points and then discuss 5 hours on prayer. Urg.

I'd be a lot more willing to do this kind of stuff if players did not tick out so much over a negative award, it's not the end of the char, it's not the end of the world, it does not mean you have generally bad rp (in case of rp points). We've had players delete over -5 rp, yeah we're by now somewhat hesitant to give out negative awards.

[English lad]

2 hours ago, Anume said:

The problem with this is negative awards. Woe to the Imm who dares award -1 rp point atm. It's causing 3 pages of prayer post bitching. Now imagine someone sees someone else log off from a cabal enemy though the cabal is under attack repeatedly (once or twice can happen just bc of real life stuff) without them having fought before. Award negative promo points and then discuss 5 hours on prayer. Urg.

I'd be a lot more willing to do this kind of stuff if players did not tick out so much over a negative award, it's not the end of the char, it's not the end of the world, it does not mean you have generally bad rp (in case of rp points). We've had players delete over -5 rp, yeah we're by now somewhat hesitant to give out negative awards.

Yeah i hesitated to put that in purely because I've seen what you are talking about, but I thought it was important to have it in as an option.

Don't throw out the good due to the bad!

[Venom]

All those text does UNSPEAKABLE things to you.

YOU HAVE BEEN KILLED!

[Twinblades713]

Where’s L-A when you need him! Yea I get we wanna foster an easier environment for newbies but I highly doubt they’d be the ones to cry about a negative RP award. The game is meant to be played, not won. Taking lumps is part of growth. If that scares even more people away then maybe we didn’t mature through all the years FL has survived. As has been mentioned we have the best staff FL has seen in terms of both change and consistency. RP is better than its ever been but like much of the world we’re growing very entitled to easy lives and it’s unnecessary for enjoying the game. If I wanted all my abilities, promo ranks, and top power without working for it I’d stick with League or the moba of the month and just shoot people. I play FL for the development. Negative development still counts and is a chance to grow or change direction. Hearing that Imms are hesitant to award negative points (even and especially when appropriate) bums me out.