Let's talk about org credits!

PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
I'm curious about what different cities and guilds do with their org credits, and also what people think they should do with those credits.

It seems like about half the orgs give out credits for all  library books, and all (I think?) of them hand them out for prestige wins. I'm particularly curious as to why different org leaders chose to give/not give credits for all publications. I'm guessing that Hallifax gives the most, since we give credits equal to the library points each book scores as soon as it gets admin approval. We break that pattern for prestige wins and only give 50 for them, since we (They, really, I was all for handing out the 100) didn't want to bankrupt Hallifax. I picked this scale lobbied for it because it's a convenient one, and to avoid incentivizing either very long or very short books. Didn't want to push long books because I figured new authors, which I want to cultivate, would probably start with short ones. Didn't want to heavily push short ones over long either, because long books tend to do better in prestige. None of the places I've gotten numbers for, which is not all of them, have this pattern. I'd be really interested to know why they have what they do have!

I'm in favor of handing out credits for culture things because culture is a sort of time intensive mode of conflict, supported by game mechanics. It's isolated from the others, but it's still definitely part of the competition. Combat is the other big form of competition, and it doesn't seem to get credits anywhere. It seems like it should, since if anything the combat people use more credits than the culture people, so I'd love to know why people don't give credits for doing revolts and things. The other main way to hand out credits seems to be credit sales, of which I'm not a fan. I prefer seeing credits handed out for doing things, especially since there's lots of other ways to do fund raising for a org if it needs it. Do you people agree?

Guilds seem mostly to do credit sales. The Institute hands credits out for culture, although you'd have to ask @Vivet why we use the scale we do, because I quite frankly don't remember it even though I was a person who pushed for handing them out in the first place. We dropped credit sales entirely in favor of handing credits out for doing culture things, too. Little bit of self interest in there, but it's also super fluffy to try to encourage the Institute people to do sciencey stuff. I'm not aware of other guilds doing anything like that, but I haven't been in very many. I think most guilds could really easily justify doing something similar within their rp, and some of them (ur'Guard comes to mind immediately, even though I've never been in it and so can't really say for sure) seem like they should be pushing combat credits as much as the Institute should be pushing culture credits. What do you people do, and why?

Please satisfy my curiosity!
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.

Comments

  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    edited July 2014
    Serenwilde's credit rewards [for books and stage productions] were not set by the org leader, the Librarian/Culture ministers were in charge of coming up with rewards and motivators, subject to approval. As far as I know, they haven't been updated in a long time, I'd keep poking the Librarian/Culture Ministers to look at the scrolls, but nothing ever came of it and the ministers eventually dropped away or quit.
  • Magnagora library/stage credit systems are set by the appropriate ministers. Library at least has a similar setup to Halli, where credit payout scales more or less linearly to book weight plus 30 at present for prestige. The city also hands out one credit per activity that would otherwise earn a favor, usually (aether)revolts, nodes, and domoths.
  • SilvanusSilvanus The Sparrowhawk
    Ontop of what Kalnid said, we also give 1 credit per 500 power, up to 10 credits possible per IG year.

    And, empowering Earth Lords, 10 credits per.
    2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
    2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    Serenwilde historically has given out credits in lieu of favors for anyone at max city rank, as well as for empowering aspects (only 5 each though, I think).
  • LavinyaLavinya Queen of Snark Australia
    edited July 2014
    I personally hate credit sales (especially city credit sales, but I'm talking guild level here). I much prefer to give out credits as rewards and incentives - competitions, designing for the guild cartels, that sort of thing. In fact I'm very much open for suggestions as to reasons to hand out credits that aren't every alt and inactive lurker buying them or paying a wage. Put a little effort in and get a little something for it is how I like to roll.



  • Obviously Cacophony needs to write songs/poems for credits.
  • KaimanahiKaimanahi The One True Queen
    For Celest publication awards, we scale off of the word count, so the credits awarded are proportional to the weight (i.e., the bottom of HELP GREATLIBRARIES). Some bonus is given for prestige submissions/winners.

    Similarly we give theatre rewards for scripts based on duration of the performance.

    The basis for the cultural rewards was set up before I was CL (the first time) but I pushed for the rewards to scale more based on value. I think, really, these rewards were created to incentivize an otherwise generally undesirable activity.

    Celest used to have a system where we would consistently give out credits for revolts, aetherflares, etc. when you were not eligible for a CF, but that fell through after a while. Catarin also came up with a plan to give out credits based on your activity in the military/political organizations (e.g., our combat clan, village influencing clan, aethernavy, ministries), somewhat like a yearly stipend. The rewards system sort of fell to me to implement, but a lot of people really hated this because it was perceived as overly complicated (in comparison to credit sales) and could be prone to favoring people in power. So now we just give benefits for being in those organizations, which generally translates into a discount during credit sales.

    Aside from all that, I'm a pretty big proponent of creating city events where credits are given as prizes, or even just as a participation award. Being able to transfer org credits as bound did help to dissuade the practice of alts coming around and buying up credits, but you do still see some people (usually random old timers who don't play anymore) doing this.
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  • stop hating credit sales! I mean as long as they don't happen all the time it's probably all good right? I'm in favor of people getting credits by doing things like revolts,what about domoths or aether flares?
  • DaraiusDaraius Shevat The juror's taco spot
    Halli has a program for awarding credits to CR6 folks. It permits them to buy credits at a slightly cheaper price when they've reached a certain threshold of CFable acts. It was last used in January... 2012.

    Basically the only credits we give out are to Elanorwen every game year for empowering the air lords, and then stage and library credits. Portius did great getting the library rewards boosted, so next we'll have to push the MoCA to get stage rewards upped to better reflect the effort that goes into it. And of course our CR6 reward program needs work too.
    I used to make cakes.

    Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
  • That seems like a really long time to wait for credit sales to happen.
  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    Wait wait wait wait. What is this CR6 thing? Is that what the aldermen chelp is about? I remember reading that and getting a vague notion of that but not really being sure if it was whenever you got qualified for a cityfavor or if it was by nomination or what.

    Stage credits are an interesting thing, and when I say that I mean they're interesting in a way that makes me glad they aren't my problem. Stage recordings are worth way more culture than books in the short term, but they only last for the one cycle, and the scoring on them isn't nearly as clear as the library scoring is. There isn't an equivalent to the wordcount score, after all. I think prestige for them is pretty easy, at least; just set it equal to the reward for library prestige, since those points are more or less the same. But assuming you want to scale credit rewards to cultural contribution, the relationship you should have between length and credits isn't really clear to me. Plus you also have to account for paying directors/actors in addition to the writer, who might also be cashing in on library rewards. (This is the most culture efficient thing to do. Write a script, publish it, then record it. It's the way to go if you want to really max your rewards/cultural impact.)

    @Farlaris Domoths and flares should pay out rewards if revolts do! I classify revolts, domoths, aetherflares, and wildnodes together as limited time PvP events that have an org-level impact.
    Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
  • DaraiusDaraius Shevat The juror's taco spot
    edited July 2014
    Portius said:
    Wait wait wait wait. What is this CR6 thing? Is that what the aldermen chelp is about? I remember reading that and getting a vague notion of that but not really being sure if it was whenever you got qualified for a cityfavor or if it was by nomination or what.
    Yep, the ALDERREWARDS files in CHELP and BoD CLHELP. The program requires an official to maintain a chart of nominations, which an alderman receives by performing a CFable act at CR6, then the official messages the alderman when they're eligible to claim their reward, then the official the chart if and when the alderman claims their reward, which may or may not be the full amount they're entitled to, yada yada.

    Honestly I've never even really looked at the thing until now, so I'm not trying to bash whomever came up with the system. I'd be okay with cutting out the bureaucracy and just shooting one (or more?) credit(s?) to anybody at CR6 who would otherwise earn a CF. We're really good about noting participants in revolts and stuff, so it'd just be a matter of checking the logs and sending credits accordingly.
    Farlaris said:
    That seems like a really long time to wait for credit sales to happen.
    From what I gather, folks can claim their credits at any time, regardless of whether there's a sale running.
    Portius said:
    Stage credits are an interesting thing, and when I say that I mean they're interesting in a way that makes me glad they aren't my problem. Stage recordings are worth way more culture than books in the short term, but they only last for the one cycle, and the scoring on them isn't nearly as clear as the library scoring is.
    It's definitely tough to scale rewards based on cultural contribution for stage productions, since they either win prestige or they don't, and that can come down to whether or not enough people independently watched the recording. There is no divine review process for plays; the score is just based on a few numbers and a formula. Sure, longer works are more likely to win because they naturally have higher stats, but even a two-minute stinker can win prestige if no other org submits a play for a given cycle. Plus, the formulae for theatre scores (and theatre activity) aren't available.  

    So all we have to look at for plays is length. Then we have to account for actors who all put in their time and energy to make the play happen, and sometimes the director isn't the writer, so we have to consider that too. Halli's rewards are pretty low, I think, considering the RP value we put on plays, and they don't take the length of the play into account at all. It's just a flat rate for director, writer, and actors. I'd be very interested to know how other orgs deal with all these factors.

    I'm wondering if it might be better to bump up the rewards, have them scale with the length of the play, and give all the credits to the director to distribute as he or she sees fit to the rest of the cast, crew, and writer.

    EDIT: Looks like I've mastered quotejutsu.
    I used to make cakes.

    Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    edited July 2014


    I'm wondering if it might be better to bump up the rewards, have them scale with the length of the play, and give all the credits to the director to distribute as he or she sees fit to the rest of the cast, crew, and writer.

    I'd be worried that would run the risk of unreasonable distributions, or the perception thereof, making people sad and reducing stage participation. It kind of just shoves the problem of deciding how to reward each role onto the director. It'd work fine for the standard lecture, where one person does everything (although it'd probably seriously overpay them, not that that really bothers me as a person who is likely to get overpaid!) but it might have scaling problems that lead to underpaying in plays with big casts. I don't know how it'd work in the middle cases. I'd also be curious to see how all the not-Hallifax places resolve that complexity!

    EDIT: I, apparently, have not mastered quotejustsu. The quote is taken from Daraius' previous post.
    Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
  • Lavinya said:
    I personally hate credit sales (especially city credit sales, but I'm talking guild level here). I much prefer to give out credits as rewards and incentives - competitions, designing for the guild cartels, that sort of thing. In fact I'm very much open for suggestions as to reasons to hand out credits that aren't every alt and inactive lurker buying them or paying a wage. Put a little effort in and get a little something for it is how I like to roll.
    Actually I like that idea, credits as rewards for stuff instead of credit sales. And I've always have found said sales annoying, but a far cheaper option than buying credits off the market. But what sort of tasks do you set up for said shiny credit awards? I.e. advancing through the ranks of your guild, or just little whimsical things like writing a song or forming a small hunting party? And  I suppose its time to wake Vuris up, grab his chicken and annoy someone for a few hours.
  • LavinyaLavinya Queen of Snark Australia
    edited July 2014
    In the Nihilists when I was GM, I had implemented a scheme to give credits for designs. I stepped down and took a break from Lusternia before I brought in new ideas, though I was working on a proposal before I switched guilds to bring in credit rewards for reaching ranks within the guild as incentive to actually progress past GR3 (because other than GTS at GR5 there is really no reason for people to bother advancing, and we have so many shiny ranks! Why not reward the people who want to slog away and work on otherwise meaningless ranks?). I might adjust it for the Cacophony now, hmm. I know Nymerya would also give out credits sometimes when she was GM to guild members who helped defend Nil during particularly painful/hotly fought raids.

    I haven't implemented any new credit rewarding schemes in the Cacophony yet but perhaps eventually. They didn't leave me many to play with. ;)



  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    Here's a thought I've just had. Based on your experiences, do you think that having credits for culture/combat things meaningfully encourages people to do those things? Especially relevant are the cases where somebody's been around from a switch from nothing/gold to giving credits.

    Personal experience is that people besides me publishing has shot up since we boosted out credit rewards in Hallifax, but I think that's incidental rather than being caused by the increase, especially since we didn't change the 1k word bracket. It's a little recent still, so it's hard to say. I can say that it made me more willing to write long things, which have better odds of winning prestige and are thus generally more useful to us.

    I can also say that offering credits or not does effect publishing on my alts. This may very well be just me, of course, but I can say that there are orgs that would have epics from me in their library if they offered credits for it. I like them for getting alts set up.
    Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    No.

    It will help people who were on the fence about finishing or finalizing work, but if someone was not going to write a book before, adding a higher (but still reasonable) reward alone will typically not motivate activity. Just as, when trying to lose weight  you need both exercise and diet, credits need to be paired with a lore atmosphere and appropriate roleplay to motivate writing, in my experience. 

    What you said about wanting to write longer and more competitive books strikes me as a general truth, for those already inclined to write library books. 
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