On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 09:44 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: > Did I *really* just come back from a weekend AFK and find out > that no-one wished Agora a happy 19th? > > For shame. > > Happy belated birthday, Agora.
At least this has given me an idea for some gameplay. I feel that the reason for Agora's recent slump (which it is currently coming out of, honest!) is the lack of any really noticeable rewards for doing anything; there isn't even a weekly action (AAA harvesting or whatever) to keep people engaged with the game (boring and grindy as those are, they seem to improve the game around them). I had more fun back in the era of Infinitely Accumulable Currency, and we haven't tried anything even remotely similar since (unless you count the current trick with the Cayman Islands). Yet, I acknowledge the intrinsic unfairness to new players that such a system can bring (it never stopped /me/ when I was new, although it took several months to catch up). Our more recent systems tended to have a decay on the order of a week (rubles, etc) or month (Caste). A month is quite a short time in Agora; it only covers around four or five proposal distributions, for instance. The ideal length of time for a decay would be, I think, one year (this would be a system that we'd keep in place in the background for several years, probably modifying after two and getting bored of by three or four). The idea is to have a currency that can be accumulated by interacting with the game (a small amount just for being here, rewards for officiating, rewards for CFJs, rewards for voting because with no real motivation I keep forgetting to do that, points from contests as long as it doesn't get out of hand), that can't really be used for much (I can see trading it for the same reasons as kudo trading used to work, and also using somewhat larger amounts as bribes, and perhaps we can have a donation fund for new players to give them a head start, but make it have no game effect apart from that). We could have achievement-like things that give big points boosts that are only available once a year per player, too (sort-of like Ribbons used to work; not sure if it'd be better with a Renaissance equivalent, or without, although I'm biased because Renaissance is my favourite win condition). Then once a year, we reset the whole thing to 0 and give rewards for people who did well (should definitely be wins involved somehow, might be better if it's for "anyone who did well enough" rather than "highest score", and perhaps a patent title for the overall high scorer). And the obvious date for the reset, especially as it's happened recently (giving us almost a year for the first cycle), is Agora's Birthday. Is this an interesting enough basic system that I should try to work out the details? It wouldn't replace the current economy, which works fine day-to-day, even if it is a bit boring; quick decay is probably better for that sort of thing. (Nor would it replace Promises, which are an awesome background currency to have around, and get more interesting the more things they have to interact with.) -- ais523
