RPR and Taboo

[CosmicOrderV]

If a DM approached you and said, would you prefer 20 EXP per tick, or 50 EXP per tick, you'd opt for the 20? I can't quite understand that mentality.

[RapidReload]

IMO Rpr has been made pretty moot by taking things like Palemaster off PRC token. Sure if you want to play a fey or a shapeshifter, I suppose it matters. However anyone who has been playing for sometime knows how to level. With writs it's even easier. I would suggest rather a deeper focus on preserving lore. In PnP a Palemaster who has achieved levels which can be gained on Arelith, would have replaced their eyes with that of a bodak, their tongue with that of a Death Slaad, so on and so forth, and I just don't see that being represented often. Rather than RPR business I would think the team would be better served when lore is being misrepresented, or not acknowledged at all, to step in, and if lore is being adhered to and properly represented, perhaps encourage or find a way to add to the story. If the team feels they have to get involved at all, Which should really only be upon request or if there is a serious rule infraction, then it should be in a positive way which adds to story.

[Sea Shanties]

If a DM approached you and said, would you prefer 20 EXP per tick, or 50 EXP per tick, you'd opt for the 20? I can't quite understand that mentality.

It's not hard to understand. The 20 has expectations that any average player can meet just by staying in character and not breaking rules. 40 and to a lesser extent 30 require much more effort than that, more than a lot of us are able to give. Not because we don't have the drive or skill but because you can only do so much in a day.

I'm pretty sure I could do better with my own RPR if I was in high school again (I had a 30 in 2008 when I first played) but now when I play it's always when I'm drained after work or thinking about a whole bunch of other things I need to be doing if it's a day off. 10-hour super-immersive RP sessions and leading factions aren't in the cards right now and may never be again, so I'll just take the 20 and play what tend to be side characters instead. It's cool, you have to choose your battles in life.

[CosmicOrderV]

Would you not say, however, that your quality of roleplay has only improved since then? As we mature and grow as human beings, that tends to be how it goes. And I thought RPR was meant to be a reflection of one's quality of roleplay. Not a reflection of how much free time one has to put into the game, as you seem to be describing, Sea Shanties.

[Sea Shanties]

I feel like time invested is a big factor when it comes to being noticed and doing things that make a larger impact. Not that some people can't do more with less but in general there's a lot of time involved in being a "major player".

Free time is the difference between things like, seeing some DM event starting that you know will take all afternoon and sticking around throughout or bowing out early. It's time to hang out in an inn and talk to whoever comes through, go on lengthy adventurers, campaign for leadership and actually talk to all of the citizens.. etc etc. With less time I hit the important meetings, try to go to lectures, try to keep up in factions but invariably I feel like a minor character in whatever I'm involved in with all the stuff I have to miss.

I think "mental energy" for me is also a factor, like I said I feel drained on days I worked and want to just check in for an hour, do some writs if still doing writs, craft and catch some news on my character. Engaging in tense conflict or PVP is off the table. If a DM is watching I'm sure that's not "30" or "40" behavior but what'cha gonna do...

This is just my opinion and experience of course, we're all different people, but I think unless you're exceptionally gifted at RP it takes a lot of time and a lot of mental energy to go for that 40. It's just not high on my list of life priorities, as much as I do enjoy the game and being part of the world.

Would you not say, however, that your quality of roleplay has only improved since then? As we mature and grow as human beings, that tends to be how it goes.

I don't know if my quality has improved, I think it has but I don't think that necessarily helps when it comes to RPR. When I was younger I played big, outgoing fantasy archetypes that were designed to fit into the world. I'm sure to DM perception they seemed like better RP'ed characters because they were heavily influenced by whatever books and movies I was into and were pretty effortless to play. Now I prefer smaller characters with more interesting concepts and I suspect DMs don't know what I'm going for, don't take notice or just don't care. Which is totally cool, I say again, this is just something I do and I'm happy with a 20. YMMV.

[Mr_Rieper]

20 RPR is the most you're going to get for being a great roleplayer. The best roleplayer the server has ever seen would still be a 20. Portraying a character isn't what gets you to 30.

Leading a chunk of people, helping to motivate them, doing things and causing a buzz of energy on a part of the server is how most people get 30s. You could be an absolute, boring, cardboard cutout of a character but if you succeed in creating a lively faction whose influence is felt on the server, you're probably going to get 30 RPR at some point. And you know what? By that point, you'll be having so much fun and enjoying your IC influence so much that it won't even matter. I'd give away my RPR if I could instantly gain that sort of reputation and standing with every other character/player on the server.

To me, 40 seems like the same thing, but on a server-wide scale. If you're causing ripples (in a good way, not stirring OOC tensions), you're a 30. If you're making waves and co-ordinating several factions across the entire server, you're probably worth a 40.

I don't think this is an unfair system. If the staff and DMs don't incentivize the creation of factions, energy and activity on the server, then the RP ecosystem might collapse. Players who cause the tide of RP to flow as well as understand it and not harm it - are invaluable to the server. Basically, if you want 30 you need to stop being overly concerned with yourself and your own RP, and focus on helping others to build factions.

[Iceborn]

RPR is not a crooked system by itself. In paper it sounds nice - reward the good players with a little cookie.
But we are roleplayers, and our great gift in life is to twist everything to untold levels of moral and ethical complexity.

Some people are going to irrevocably see it as a goal to work to.
Some people are going to irrevocably see it as a badge of honor.
Some people are going to irrevocably brag about it.
Some people are going to irrevocably complain about it.
Some people are going to irrevocably complain about the people that talk about it.
Some people are going to irrevocably praise it.

It's just a system. Like many other systems, it will manage through the mysterious working of the social creature that is the human to shine a light on some of our best and worst traits as a race. You can tell a lot of a person by simply seeing how they react to this kind of things.

Ultimately? Just play the game to the best of your ability. Have fun, try your best. Experiment, make your choices.
Not all lines of roleplay, not all manners of stories get the same attention. The most popular stories are not always the best ones.
The best ones are not always the most satisfying to play. The most satisfying ones are not always the most popular.

[Berried]

My main takeaway from this thread is that everyone needs positive feedback from time to time and we should all do more to make sure conscientious players know that we appreciate them. We don't have to be DMs to reward other players for going the extra mile.

[MoreThanThree]

I will attempt to fight the taboo by including my RPR in my signature and inviting others to do so with me.

[Jagel]

My main takeaway from this thread is that everyone needs positive feedback from time to time and we should all do more to make sure conscientious players know that we appreciate them. We don't have to be DMs to reward other players for going the extra mile.

+1

[LittleWeasel]

I think Grumpy Cat provided a very good DM Point of View on the topic, and Berried absolutely nailed it!

Also, in addition to just straight up telling your RP partner that you enjoy them, player recommendations of other players do go a long way. DMs cannot be everywhere, cannot watch everyone, and often DM time on the client is busy with quests, or fielding questions, requests, following up on reports, etc. A DMs roster of duties isn't a short one and unfortunately that means, that efforts can be non-witnessed for a good while. Help the team out, by pointing out those efforts (plus, it's always making us giddy reading "positive" reports We like them).

[Magni]

I wanted to raise my issues / concerns regarding the RPR feature in the recent server meeting however there was just far too many people raising their hands (even when instructed not too...) and unfortunately I didn't have all night to wait. I figured i would post my thoughts here and now that I've seen this thread I'll just add to it.

Firstly, I should state, that my experience and what I'm about to bring up come mainly from a 'surface' servers perspective as this is where i have spent most of my time playing.

So I have been on Arelith now for the best part of 3 months. This, i know, is a very short amount of time in comparison to some of you veterans here. In these 3 months I have clocked over 480 hours of playtime, averaging out at about 5 hours per day. I currently sit at 10 RPR. Now before you all start thinking I'm moaning, I am not.. I understand the feature and its implications and also how taxing it is on the DM's to try and keep up with the ever expanding player base (especially with the increasing numbers).

I have a solution to help get people noticed and bumped up to their deserved rating.

Create more 40RPR players and promote the most recent feature of allowing these players to -recommend others in game for their efforts.

Quote taken from the wiki regarding this feature:
To broaden Staff reach, we've added chat command "-recommend", usable by 40 RPR players. It lets these players recommend others around them for good RP, and has two effects.
*Firstly, if the recommended is currently 10 RPR, they get raised to 20 RPR. This will help us get new players into the system faster, and broadens the pool of people who can notice them.
*Secondly, it logs the recommendation and broadcasts it to the DMs (both in game and to Discord). This is both to monitor use of it, and so that DMs get more input on who is worth reviewing for a higher rating.


I would like to see more 40RPR players on the server.. ideally, some in each community/server and hub (as long as its deserved of course) so that they can operate as a filtering process for the DM's to help the individual communities grow and feel rewarded for the RP they create.

I have spoken OOC (mostly Discord) to a few friends on the server regarding this as I wanted to run it by them before bringing it up in the server meeting.. I was shocked to see that some of the players who I would have considered to be a dead cert 40 player are not even close to this. I think the feature and the community certainly needs some TLC when it comes to the RPR Feature.

Thoughts are welcome!
Thank you

Ro Hammerhead & Raegor Hammerhead

[Sartain]

Alternately, or maybe in addition to, let the RPR 30 players recommend as well except these recommendations don't automatically raise RPR 10 to 20, but has to be DM approved.

[CptJonas]

Do you want to stop like 70% complains?
Rename RPR to Fame...bcs it afterall represents more what it actualy is...

Moust people complain bcs it hurts their pride...its like if you said them they dont RP well enough...

Simply name it right...

[Chair]

Well, in essence thats all it really is. A big popularity contest so your not wrong.

[Queen Titania]

Well, in essence thats all it really is. A big popularity contest so your not wrong.

This is false, we don't evaluate people based on their popularity at all. RP quality comes to mind, doing their own player run stories and taking the weight of narrative story-telling off of us a bit. Being a good, respectable player. Creating compelling conflict, supporting other characters, being OOCly friendly. These are actual criteria. Popularity is not.

Again certain obligations/responsibilties come with higher RP Rating, and I do not think /every/ player should want to constantly make compelling narratives and shake the server. 20 RP Rating fits the most for this reason.

Finally, any player can recommend anyone to us via PM, even if they are not a 40 with the -recommend tool.

~DM Titania~.

[CptJonas]

Well, in essence thats all it really is. A big popularity contest so your not wrong.

This is false, we don't evaluate people based on their popularity at all. RP quality comes to mind, doing their own player run stories and taking the weight of narrative story-telling off of us a bit. Being a good, respectable player. Creating compelling conflict, supporting other characters, being OOCly friendly. These are actual criteria. Popularity is not.

Again certain obligations/responsibilties come with higher RP Rating, and I do not think /every/ player should want to constantly make compelling narratives and shake the server. 20 RP Rating fits the most for this reason.

Finally, any player can recommend anyone to us via PM, even if they are not a 40 with the -recommend tool.

~DM Titania~.

Just a small question...are there any 30-40 RPR people who are not in any faction and never joined any? (No ill intent..just asking)

[Hin_Justice]

I feel like I need to tell a story...

Ages ago, when I first started this game. A time when Wharftown was run by Banites, Grendle (I may of butchered the spelling!) the Banite monk scared a lot of folks ICly, I started to RP here.

I never knew the RPR system was there until an event Watchtower started in Cordor. So I'd been playing almost three weeks. Was told by players in tells I didn't know crap about the race I played (and I didn't. I didn't research and didn't know better then so fair point, but still rude), was left out of a lot of raids because I wasn't high enough. They bragged about being 30 RPR and having fey toons (the one race I long to play).

But I tried my best not to focus on their accolades and not be jealous of them. I persevered and joined a faction (Cordor Guard). Now I was part of something and really enjoyed the RP it brought to me. And when Watchtower's RP event hit, I wasn't hamming up or showing off to get their attention. It didn't matter to me because the story aspect is what I had fun with. So I just focused on the story, reacted how my character would, and allowed my character to take a very devastating consequence, and you know what?

By the end of the week, without noticing, Watchtower upped my RPR to 20.

I will not say what my RPR is now, but I will say this: Generally when you focus on the story and not the "Awards", good things will eventually happen. And if you see someone you know is 10 RPR, and they do well, send a message to the DM channels IG. Let them know. Or write kudos threads on the forums.

[MalKalz]

Well, in essence thats all it really is. A big popularity contest so your not wrong.

This is false, we don't evaluate people based on their popularity at all. RP quality comes to mind, doing their own player run stories and taking the weight of narrative story-telling off of us a bit. Being a good, respectable player. Creating compelling conflict, supporting other characters, being OOCly friendly. These are actual criteria. Popularity is not.

Again certain obligations/responsibilties come with higher RP Rating, and I do not think /every/ player should want to constantly make compelling narratives and shake the server. 20 RP Rating fits the most for this reason.

Finally, any player can recommend anyone to us via PM, even if they are not a 40 with the -recommend tool.

~DM Titania~.

Just a small question...are there any 30-40 RPR people who are not in any faction and never joined any? (No ill intent..just asking)

The answer is yes. Though I won't list names. But, you do not need to be exclusive to a faction / settlement to obtain the RPR.

[Borin Drakkmurl]

(Warning, wall of text).

Since I haven't been and won't be active for a good long while, this wont matter much, but perhaps it can shed some light on how the whole rpr thing has worked for at least one person:

I started playing in 2006. There was only one server, the max player cap was around 50 (maybe 55?), and the game world was much smaller.

- It took around 5 or 6 months to get a 10 rpr, which I did during a small dm event. Up until this point, I had spent most of my time killing monsters (or more accurately, getting killed by them), playing a good 5 hours a day, from monday to friday, and easily 14+ on saturdays and sundays. My roleplay was little more than me speaking like myself through my character and mimicking other people's emotes.

- About another 6 months later, I got bumped to a 20 rpr. By this point, I had a much clearer idea of the server rules, what roleplay was actually about, and I had taken a greater interest in the setting. I was also learning a whole lot by watching how other, much better players than me did things. This bump also happened after a slightly more complex dm event, in which my character was actually marginal. What I recall of it was that, for some reason, Daedin and Erik Silverarms had chased a dracolich to the ruins of Stonehold. Once there, they got their asses handed to them, and were just running around, screaming and crying, which the DM (I think it was Anne of Arelith), found endlessly amusing. I remember her telling me that it was not often she saw people roleplay weaknesses and failure like that,so boop, I got a 20 rpr.
By this point, I was also spending considerably less time in dungeons, and got involved into "spy" rp and was constantly involved in other players' plots and storylines.

- I got bumped up to a 30 rpr when I had been on Arelith close to two years. By then I had played a few months in the UD, got involved a little bit in Grond, experienced the different sort of rp the UD had these days, which I learned a lot from, and then came back to the surface and got very involved in Myon. I ended up leading a minor faction within the city, the Scouts. I never organized very large events, or was one for overly complex machinations and plots, but that role did allow me to do one thing, which was to do small scale stuff on a near daily basis. Patrols, small meetings, "military" style stuff around the forest, ranger stuff, again spy stuff,and I was always on the borders of the city's politics as well. I was always busy and rarely alone. I also became very, very slow at leveling up, because most of my time was spent in the same few areas (Myon, the forest around Myon, other settlements). That 20 xp, and later 30, was a godsend in a way. At this point I had also come to realize that the more I focused on trying to entertain and do fun stuff for those immediatly around me, the more that fun would come full circle back to me. And the quantity of people I interacted with on a daily basis grew because of it.

- The 40 rpr came when I had been around for about four years. I played in the UD for several months, and then made another elf, Urebriwyn, that I played for close to two years. This was a character based mostly on stealth and being skittish and isolationist. However, with him I spent a whoooole lot of time wandering around, mostly the Forest but not just, and taking advantage of his high stealth to interact with people in ways that made it feel like the environment was alive. In a way, what I wanted other players to feel when they randomly met my character, was that they were interacting with a very well written npc in a singler player rpg.
I'd drop out of stealth to help people about to get killed by monsters, I'd go hostile and threaten and harass others that were threatening "the balance", I'd guide people who were lost back to safety, all the while trying my best to, through rp, maintain the feeling that we were suddenly inside a book, a story, and something special was happening, even it was just three characters walking from point A to point B.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, boop, a DM sent me a tell saying something along the lines of: "Hey, so a few of us have been talking, and seeing what you were doing, and we decided to raise you up to a 40 rpr. Congrats!"

And that was it.

From that point until today, my rpr has stayed at 40.

I have played a Knight of the Road, an orog warlord, a one eyed shaundakulite dwarf and a wandering bard since then. You will notice on my signature that all of these characters are either unknown or meaningless now. However, the base notion behind what I have tried to do with my roleplay, through them, was always pretty much the same: to add to the world. To be a plus in the other players' experience of the game when they log in. That when they run into a character of mine, they
don't feel like they are just playing another mmorpg, but something different. Because that is what makes Arelith special.

Now, an important question:

What has a 40 rpr done for me?

The greatest boon I got out of it, was that it eased the burden of getting xp. It made it so I did not feel I'd be stuck at the same level forever, or lagging too much behind, because I had spent most of my time heavily involved in roleplay that involved more than killing stuff. Add the Mark of Destiny to it, and that rpr became a real blessing.
And in my head, I always thought that was what the RPB was for. If someone spent less time in dungeons getting xp because they were too busy generating roleplay for others elsewhere, than at least they got a little reward for it. And if you did go exploring and kill stuff, WHILE making an effort to continue that level of rp...than you'd get the best of two worlds.

On the other end of the spectrum, a 40 rpr has also always felt like a responsability. Like I can not slip up. That I have to stay on my tip toes. That if I am not doing something AMAZING every single time I log in, that I am somehow failing that rpr. But a 40 rpr is also a good thing. It is a reminder that, on Arelith, a very big part of what makes the Roleplay on this server great, is that most of it rests on our shoulders. And, to be honest, not only the roleplay, but the general ooc attitude towards the server and each other. Even though I have never been a DM or part of the Dev team (which is a good thing, because I lack the qualities to do either thing well), I do feel a sense of ownership towards this game.

The thing is, that ownership does not, and can not, translate into entitlement, or feeling like I am owed something. For me, it has always been about what I can give back to it.
Many times I have not been at my best. Failed, even. Been overzealous or full of myself. I tried to learn though, and to always stay true to that sentiment.

So, to conclude a silly long rant: The rpr is only as important as you want it to be. From my experience, the more you do cool stuff without even thinking of it, the more likely you are to see it go up. The less you worry about what others are doing or have, the more you are bound to enjoy this game and see the benefits of it.

*Disappears back into the void of Real Life*

[MissEvelyn]

That wall of text

I very much enjoyed reading about your experience, it was very refreshing and inspiring to read. Thank you for sharing~!