Fame System Overhaul

donfolstar3

donfolstar3

Dalayan Master
The fame system is a really cool idea which is more or less ignored or forgotten because the system is so broken. Fame is rarely available, dolled out in very very small amounts relative to the cost of rewards, and bloated with fairly pointless filler rewards.

This is unfortunate because most of the rewards are pretty neat- a little something flavor that makes the server a marginally more enjoyable place. Seeing someone with a title is a conversation piece- did you choose that title or was it earned? Why? Some wacky race/class combo? Well on a server where every character can pretty easily access [pretend I inserted links here] Erudite, Froglok, Dwarf, Wood Elf, various Elementals, and Dark Elf illusions and then a laundry list of other illusions later on that isn't really a big deal, but still pretty cool. I bet it makes you, the player, happy to be able to roleplay that combo you wanted. SWARM PETS LOL!

Here is my proposal- fix it. Make fame acquisition something people can actively work toward and rewards "affordable" so acquiring fame is something worth working on. Let's look at the system as it is now:

Current means to acquire fame points:
Give money to the server during account drives $1 = 1 fame (2 fame for the first $100)
Maybe the typo thread? = 2 fame per typo
...maybe some other outstanding project?
Rewards for events which are rarely held, though with high frequency around account drives
Lotteries, which happen much more infrequently than you'd think given the lottery master just sitting there

Current fame rewards according to the Wiki 5/15/15:
  • 200 points: Level - 1 Level
  • 50 points, must be level 51: AA - 1 AA
  • 5 points: Money - 20 platinum
  • 500 points: Race Change within class restrictions (/petition to claim).
  • 1000 points: Custom Title (/petition to claim).
  • 1500 points: Race Change (/petition to claim).
  • 5 points: Portal Passage (Mansion of Portals Only)
  • 10 points: Illusion: Iksar
  • 10 points: Illusion: Skeleton
  • 10 points: Illusion: Human
  • 10 points: Illusion: Half-Elf
  • 10 points: Illusion: Barbarian
  • 10 points: Illusion: Erudite
  • 10 points: Illusion: Wood Elf
  • 10 points: Illusion: High Elf
  • 10 points: Illusion: Dark Elf
  • 10 points: Illusion: Dwarf
  • 10 points: Illusion: Troll
  • 10 points: Illusion: Ogre
  • 10 points: Illusion: Halfling
  • 10 points: Illusion: Gnome
  • 10 points: Illusion: Taldorian
  • 10 points: Magic Resistance
  • 10 points: Cold Resistance
  • 10 points: Fire Resistance
  • 10 points: Disease Resistance
  • 10 points: Poison Resistance
  • 15 points: Minor Illusion
To review, that is a limited time only $1400 Race Changes (during account drives), find 375 (if the cap were removed) typos for a pet clickie, or win 5 streaming giveaways (which hasn't happened 5 times yet) for a lower end 65 xp zone drop. Is it any wonder that people are not actively engaging with the fame system?

This is the part where somebody says "well, it is meant as something extra that blah blah blah" which raises the question of why even have it? What is the point in having a fairly elaborate just-for-fun system that is for all intends and purposes unusable? "Well, this one guy earned a race change after earning fame in a way that could probably never be repeated like winning back to back lottery fame rewards back when GM events were 5X more common" ...the exception that proves the rule?

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Here are a few changes which I think would make earning fame something that would actually motivated people to participate. Feedback, your own ideas, and telling me how stupid I am for caring about something are all appreciated!

1. Reward donors with fame, since they keep the server going and should be at least a little famous for it.
Yeah, that^.
Awards of 1 fame per $5, so:
Silver = 1 fame per month
Gold = 2 fame per month
Platinum = 5 fame per month (rounded)
Even with the drastic cost reductions I am about to suggest it will still take years to flat out buy most rewards. This suggestion is just something nice for supporting the server.

2. Drastic cost reductions of fame rewards costs.
For the most part this consists of the hyper complex formula of dividing by 10, with some more nuanced changes detailed below.
Also, removing a lot of the filler rewards. Whoever "fixed" the fame system by adding a bunch of garbage without addressing the horribly broken economy of fame [Economy of Fame, coming to your course catalog soon!] was missing the point. Remove illusions, consumables, xp/levels, and junk items. Keep plat if people just want to dump fame, the unique stuff, and the chance for players to acquire level restricted gear after the fact (either due to lack of knowledge of things added after they leveled up). The new list would look something like:
  • 1 point: Money - 20 platinum [keep this dump for people who don't care about fame]
  • 250 points: Race Change (/petition to claim). [which would mean a Platinum donor who did nothing else to earn fame would take 50 months, over 4 years, of generously supporting the server to afford this reward which again, isn't that big of a deal when every raider is an iksar, skeleton, scaled wolf, black robed dark elf, etc...]
  • 500 points: Custom Title (/petition to claim). [a custom title is something special, more special than a superficial race change. titles should be earned or prohibitively expensive, but still obtainable. EDIT: titles would need to be mutually agreed upon by the player requesting and a dev, and reflect to some degree how they earned the fame to buy a title]
That list is by no means exhaustive, but gets the general idea across. You have really special rewards that people would have to donate/PAD toward and the opportunity to obtain gear which is not normally accessible to 65s. Suggestions for other items and nitpicking some minor detail on this list to death appreciated!

3. Open threads under Player Assisted Development (PAD) for fame rewards.
Little things like correcting grammar/spelling mistakes which are more easily fixed through crowd sourcing, contests for quest ideas, testing new stuff, and whatever else devs can think of should be much more common. 1 fame for helping to correct a little language goof? 5 fame for aiding in the development of new content? Open threads for crowdsourcing work, they're a good thing. First person to find 500 grammar/spelling errors gets to be "the Lingest". Thereafter,"Gramer Not'Z". [EDIT: I made those titles 3720X better]

Some Details not worth including a #4 because lists should come in a prime number of items or maybe that is just some weird psychosis I have.
- Keep account drive dollar to fame the same. If someone wants to drop $150 on a race change that is (a) good for them, (b) good for the server, (c) orders of magnitude more likely to happen than someone spending $1400 to buy one.
- Grandfather in all current fame levels. OMFG THAT WOULD LEAD TO A SPIKE IN PEOPLE USING THE FAME SYSTEM!!!! Which is a bad thing because... (a) it would be a nice 10 year anniversary gift to the playerbase, (b) would get people generally more excited about the fame system which can be leveraged by devs to crowdsource work [my pinky finger just touched my lips], (c) maybe, just maybe, give someone out there somewhere the extra push to log on which is a good thing for the server.

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TLDR; Encouraging players to aide the server and actively participate in exchange for mostly superficial rewards (neat titles, race changes, swarm pets) seems to be the original intent of the fame system, so how about making it do that... please?
 
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Great ideas! I remember when I first joined, I was hunting grizzly bears in Hearlands and GM Krista popped out of nowhere, spawned a crate in front of me and asked if I wouldn't mind helping test the new GM event they were going to do. It was a lot of fun and I got 5 or 10 fame for it. Later in the week they did the crate game but I have seen it maybe one or two more times since then?

Also might not be a bad idea to be able to consolidate fame? I have like 50 fame spread over my Cleric/Warrior and I think my Ench from being near the GM treasure chests.
 
i think it would be cool if there was like a one time quest that was really long and difficult/tedious where you could get a race change or title or whatever but that is because i do not want to donate $2800 just to be ogres on both of my toons or donate as platinum for 50 months if that got implemented otherwise good thread
 
I would love to see the fame purchases reworked in such a way. My main account is sitting at something like 350 fame (though I think I'm still owed some by one of the newer devs). A chunk of that is simply from a donation made in my name during the last drive. For all my years having played the game on and off, my total fame accrual wouldn't even buy me half a Crate of Pissed Gnomes (which I'd gladly trade my Halfling box for). :( If I were to continue earning fame at a similar rate annually based on the date I created my account, I calculated that it would take me between 25-26 years before I finally earn the right to a race change. Ain't nobody got time for that!

The need for a rework is pretty self-evident just by pointing to the list of illusion effects. All they do is inflate the rewards list. Who in their right mind would luck into 5 coveted fame points and then decide to spend it on a 54-second illusion to get them safely through the Mansion of Portals one time?! Sometimes that doesn't even cover an entire MoP run, but even if it lasted infinitely until the player zoned out, nobody would ever contemplate this "reward".

Honestly, I feel the proposed numbers, such as 250 for a race change, are just slightly overgenerous. (I guess I prefer Gnome Druids and Dark Elf Beastlords to be rare, unexpected surprises when I stumble across them.) However, the current prices could be slashed and still be impossible to attain for all but the "SoD 1%" donators or the ultra-ultra-lucky....

Kedrin said:
They need paid name changes so I can change Agnis's name.
Click to expand...
I know you openly dog on your Cleric's name, but at least if you think of it as Latin, it means "to/for the lambs" -- not a bad meaning for a priest!
 
I personally like the fact race changes are rare. At least to race / class combos that are not available upon creation. I do however agree that they are not a huge deal.

I think they could do a lot more with titles. Someone giving you a title or you getting it as a reward for complication of a task is better then simply buying one however.

Perhaps a way to turn in fame to get Alignment hits could be a thing?
 
Kedrin said:
They need paid name changes so I can change Agnis's name.
Click to expand...

Amen. This has been brought up many times and seems like a no brainer. Raise server funds and allow players to quantum leap the mistakes of the past? I think the last thread to mention this idea people more or less agreed that maintaining a database of changes would be a good idea so people couldn't just buy out of their reputations.

Kedrin said:
Perhaps a way to turn in fame to get Alignment hits could be a thing?
Click to expand...

I think that would be another acceptable dump next to buying plat.

Kedrin said:
I think they could do a lot more with titles. Someone giving you a title or you getting it as a reward for complication of a task is better then simply buying one however.
Click to expand...

I completely agree, but I can only think of ... one for sure and two maybies of characters who have titles? There are probably more but I do not recall ever seeing them. Allowing players who earn enough fame to come to a mutually agreed upon title with devs/gms [editing OP to reflect this idea] would spice things up and how they earned it should certainly factor into the title. Whoever gets the first title through grammar/spelling posts (looking like Haenir) should definitely have a misspelled title, for example.

Grinkles said:
If I were to continue earning fame at a similar rate annually based on the date I created my account, I calculated that it would take me between 25-26 years before I finally earn the right to a race change. Ain't nobody got time for that!

Honestly, I feel the proposed numbers, such as 250 for a race change, are just slightly overgenerous. (I guess I prefer Gnome Druids and Dark Elf Beastlords to be rare, unexpected surprises when I stumble across them.) However, the current prices could be slashed and still be impossible to attain for all but the "SoD 1%" donators or the ultra-ultra-lucky....
Click to expand...

I'm willing to wager that you have earned fame faster, or roughly as quickly, as anyone else ever has. I would say that 2-3 years for someone as active as you are to get a race change is within the bounds of reason. Again, in game people can pretend to be any of a multitude of other races/species with ease so going from a few weird permanent combos to maybe a dozen power donors and hardcore contributors isn't ruining the game.

That said, the numbers I put there are certainly open to discussion! Some change done by somebody relatively sane (yes, that was a burn on whoever added fame for illusions) would be nice, even if they are not this thorough. Though, come to think of it Grinkles, you did say Kedrin's brilliant QoL post was "reaching too high" so :rolleyes:.
 
donfolstar3 said:
Grinkles, you did say Kedrin's brilliant QoL post was "reaching too high" so :rolleyes:.
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I did say that, but not disparagingly. :( (And given that his list of suggestions has inexplicably gained zero traction with the staff despite its creativity and popularity, it seems that I wasn't wrong.)
 
REDACTED

I don't even want to shit up my own thread with this tired discussion.

This poor decision of a post did end on a high note about T's handling of the Beastlord changes. There is some optimism for the future out of that, so hooray.
 
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I would like to see New Area Bonus reset be a point buy option. that would be a very good use of fame points.
 
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I think it would be a solid improvement to allow fame transfers between characters so long as both accounts (if on separate accounts) share the same email and the person petitioning can demonstrate that it is their email address. I think I saw this mentioned somewhere but can't remember where and also I can't read, this seems like an appropriate thread for it.
 
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