Player Control over City Metrics

[Kinaed]

In the OOC Chat today, a player stated, "It can also be discouraging when your metric tanks and it seems pretty daunting to try and affect that IC."

RIght now, everyone knows they can use IP to affect the focus of the city metrics, right? (City SUPPORT <METRIC>/CITY SUBVERT <METRIC>), right?

Beyond that, what other ideas do people have about how we can engage people so they feel like they have some say or control about where the city metrics fall at the end of the month?

[Andruid]

I'm not sure. I've never felt daunted, but then again, I play a member of the city council and therefore can spend a free action each cycle.

Maybe give everyone a free vote, but just make council members' votes worth more?

[Andruid]

I should add that, as a personal strategy, I took an inverse of one of my assets, so that no matter how bad one tanked, the other would make up the difference. Dunno if that'd be useful to anyone else, but it made sense for my own character.

[Taunya]

I've been pushing for my metric for months, and it doesn't budge (though perhaps it is keeping it from going even further down at least!). As a freeman, it can be daunting to try to try convincing others to support it, especially if they've their own metrics they need to back.

I'm also a little concerned about players with inverse metric assets- The drawbacks to gameplay tend to be not worth the small bump in silver you might get, and everyone will tend to vote it back up in the rare cases you do get it low. Inverse economics for sure will likely never see the light of day- everyone wants their cheap goods and rare restocks. Some balance better than others perhaps, like lawfulness.

[Kinaed]

I'm thinking about a POLCA system where a character can spend their IP to directly increase a chosen metric throughout the month. Something like:

Code: Select all

                         Influence Preparation

Metric        : Inverted Lawfulness 
IC Event      : Rumor has it that someone has left free bottles of booze on every doorstep, resulting in increased violence in the streets.
Rumor         : Some rogue is going around putting vials of booze on doorsteps.   
IP Expended   : 1 (Lawfulness shifts down from Pathetic to Pathetic.)

Type "submit" to create this IC Event or "cancel" to abort.
WARNING: Policy requires that the action be within your character's means.

Of course, if we do this, we need to rethink how the city council works a bit, or just increase their sway or something. *ponder*

[Voxumo]

Hmm... While I like the idea, it does seem like it would change metrics far to easily, especially for people who have alot of ip. I mean it would be a great use for IP... But eh. Seems too familiar to when people could spend ip to take down or build up GLs, and we had an abundance of gls being outed because people had the ip. Or those who sucked at their job but were kept in power due to the ip of their allies.

[Kinaed]

Just a note on restocks - they're not always or even extremely weighted to high economics. Restocks can be linked to other metrics, including inverse metrics. For example, the Order restocks when Piety is high.

[wimple]

I suppose this works if your character has IP? My character is routinely at 0 influence. Maybe I fluctuate up a bit, but it is never over say, 4. I'm a Freeman in Physicians. As a returning player, I don't really know how metrics work, but if it is based on IP, and I generally do not have any, then I'm not exactly sure how I'm supposed to vote for metrics since I have no IP to spend. All of my character's influence is entirely IC and metrics themselves do not often come up in my RP.

I'm not sure who brought up the issue at OOC chat, but influence seems entirely built upon guild rank/class status/etc per the helpfile, so I could see how Freeman characters may feel the inability to influence it and have it be daunting and saying to use IP isn't particularly helpful for them. Then again, Freeman aren't supposed to have influence, so that daunting feeling is part of being freeman - so I don't think there is really an answer there.

[Andruid]

On my Freemen characters, I don't fuss about metrics. Living in less than stellar style is part of theme for that class, and I enjoy the struggle. Also, the roster assets are a huge help for anyone who eschews guilds.

Where I see things getting a little more difficult is for folks who want to play gentry, especially as their first character. They're going to be tempted, as many players are, to raise their character's appearance, which is a huge XP sink. Add to that an extra asset or more expensive asset to support living in style, and and you've barely any XP left for skills, let alone purchasing wealth. I wonder if it doesn't make sense to allow gentry a bigger discount on their first asset, rather than just the mere cost of a tier 1 (which, if the metric is poor, can be devastating on their income). A tier 2 would make more sense for most gentry backgrounds, probably, and would give them the capital to live up to the gentry lifestyle. By comparison, purchasing wealth is such a limited return on investment that I would never even recommend it to a first-time player.

The only other thing I can think to suggest, to make this whole system easier for new players, is to devote a whole room in chargen to assets, metrics, and money. Right now, I think assets are just tacked on to the end of a room as a help file, which until recently wasn't even up-to-date with roster information. There's already an overwhelming amount of stuff in the "Help Purchase" room. The topic of making money via assets and metrics should get its own room, I think, and players should be well-advised that if they spend too much on assets, they won't have enough for skills later in chargen.

[Kinaed]

Regardless of social class, IP comes primarily from support - so if a friend supports you, you gain influence points. (HELP SUPPORT) You can gain some good ground just by having two people support one another in a pact.
A secondary place to get IP is through social class and guild membership.
A tertiary place to get IP is to just purchase it with silver.