Rewards for participation

[Colfer]

Why did I make this?: So the Double Round Rolls project idea has gotten me thinking about alternative ways to go about player rewards, securing your roles and such, and I came up with this idea:

Players are given tokens for participating, or attempting to participate in the game, heres how it works.
Players have progress towards their tokens, if you join the game on roundstart, you get 30% progress and gain 30% progress if you finish the round without cryoing (builds up over time, such as 15% after 1 hour), if you attempted to join the game on roundstart, but did not qualify (AKA, your role was taken (OR) you became an offsite antagonist such as merc, techno, raider) you gain 50% progress.
Once you hit 100%, your progress is reset and you gain a token for the role you joined/tried joining on.
If a person cryos, joining on that role will give you token progress. If you late join under an hour, you will also get token progress. If the person cryos after an hour, you will still get token progress if you join on the role but only for limited roles, such as journalist, warden, heads of staff in general, merchant and chef, you will not get a full 30% extra bonus for any of these though.

What can you do with tokens you might ask?
You can expend as many tokens as you have, doing so gives you essentially VIP access to the role. You will be given a 100% guarantee for the role over somebody who is not using tokens. Using a token will prevent you from gaining token progress.

If 2 people use tokens on the same slot, they are competing at normal 50/50 odds again, meaning you will have to expend 2 to get 100% guarantee.

Lastly: If you still fail to get into the slot after using a token, the token is refunded. Additionally: Players should not be able to see other players using tokens, this can only lead to tensions or competition.

What does this bring: This brings a mechanic that directly rewards players for attempting to, or actively participating in the round without directly punishing players who cannot do it, or were blocked from doing it for some reason. This allows players who play extremely frequently to build up a massive storage of tokens, and then expend them all at the next server event to guarantee their slot and be able to have fun as their character and job during the event.

Consern 1: (This seems annoying to deal with outside of events. What if people just keep spending tokens to get their role with a buildup of like 400?)
Players cannot see the token amount, if you really want to join on a role you can simply fail to join twice and then spend a token to have equal odds with the person who might be doing this. Plus, this would be a passive incentive for people who dont have the time to constantly try to roll the dice to get their investigator slot (such as people who work and only have 3 or so hours of relaxation after work), so they fail a couple times and then are almost guaranteed to succeed the next time.

[Korinra]

This sounds like a good way to make sure casual people still don't get the roles they want while people playing 2+ shifts a day will almost always get them. No I think it should be 100% random who gets it, just preventing people from getting it too regularly to avoid issue.

 

-1 from me

Edited November 13, 2021 by Korinra

[Marlon P.]

This rewards frequent players and gives them an advantage over casual players. The most impacted will be new players who will have no tokens whereas intermittent players may have at least a few.

This problem will longterm lower player retention as new/intermittent players chronically unable to get a high demand job will play their desired job on another server.

[Carver]

I like it. It entirely solves the issue some people have of 'players who only come for events getting limited slots', in addition to letting people prioritize particular rounds they may want to play a role.

[Colfer]

13 hours ago, Korinra said:

This sounds like a good way to make sure casual people still don't get the roles they want

 

11 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

This rewards frequent players and gives them an advantage over casual players

These are good interpretations, however, this would only be the case if people were using tokens almost every time they played and if these tokens worked across all jobs in which case they do not. People are most likely not going to be putting down tokens at every single opportunity that they have to do so, and even if they do, the player who failed to qualify still gets rewarded for attempting to do it in the first place, AND can spend their own earned tokens on getting into the same odds as the better rewarded player, or save up and use multiple.
The intent of these are to reward players who play frequently to allow them to join at specific times by spending alot of tokens for a round they really want to play, or rewarding casual players by not only leaving the random system mostly unaffected, but giving them a comeback system incase they have bad luck. It can be punishing to have multiple people using tokens when you have none, but thats why you still earn tokens even if you fail to join the game so that everybody can get a turn on the xbox. Its not like casual players are being given no way to play the game in their role anymore

[niennab]

The biggest issue I see is how it can be misused by the players who have the availability to play 3 rounds a day. Even worse for those picking the more desired and consistently fought over jobs. As a result, these players are going to quickly acquire absurd amount of tokens and dominate anyone who is trying to get a leg up. I believe these changes would only make the issues surrounding Investigator worse.

[DatSamTho]

Yeah, I feel like some people will just build up a sizable number of tokens, which would end with the people that don't play all that often either being at a disadvantage, or being in the same position as before the change.

-1 from me

[Marlon P.]

If I only play once a week, what are my chances of getting a high- or moderate- demand job against people with more tokens?

[Faye <3]

I am not in favor of this, as it would only make the people who play a lot able to dominate their roles better, whereas someone with less time would see their role much less often. In short, Nienna summed my point well. -1.

[Colfer]

2 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

If I only play once a week, what are my chances of getting a high- or moderate- demand job against people with more tokens?

Probably the same, if maybe very very slightly less so. As I said in my previous clerification to Korinra

15 hours ago, Colfer said:

this would only be the case if people were using tokens almost every time they played

Tokens are gotten at maximum every time you played 2 rounds full to the end, this could probably use some tweaking though. This means in the (optimal circumstances), you are given a token and use it immediately on your third round to get a higher position in the queue. 

 

1 hour ago, Faye &lt;3 said:

as it would only make the people who play a lot able to dominate their roles better

I can see that this suggestion is mostly overwhelmingly negative with this point being the main point against it. I can admit that I'm a bit tunnel vision and only considered my argument in which that A player who will play alot will choose to save up their tokens, partially forget that they have tokens most of the time, and generally not use them unless they particularly want to play a job on a certain day which is what I would do if this was in the main game. I didn't consider other points such as (optimal circumstances). Thank you for your feedback everybody.

[Korinra]

On 14/11/2021 at 11:57, Colfer said:

Tokens are gotten at maximum every time you played 2 rounds full to the end, this could probably use some tweaking though. This means in the (optimal circumstances), you are given a token and use it immediately on your third round to get a higher position in the queue. 

Ok but what you're missing is, the casual players won't be getting more than a single token every other day, meanwhile multiple people will be getting one to two tokens a day. There will always be SOMEONE using a token, so the casual player is now guaranteed NOT to get a high-choice role but once every three days MAXIMUM, assuming they won the token roll against others using tokens. You seem to be thinking of it like only one person will be collecting and using tokens vs a casual player, but there are tons of regulars who play 2+ rounds a day, all of them will be collecting and using tokens against the casual player who plays one or fewer times a day. That casual player will never get the role they want.