Casual Game Play

[LoD]

One of the threads in Player Announcements recently touched upon the desire of a few veteran players, not currently playing a character, lamenting the fact that the achieving success and having fun, admittedly by their personal definitions of those terms, cannot realistically accomplished in current design of Armageddon.  The argument appears to be that the current design mandates a time commitment to maintain relationships, develop skills, and further plot lines that becomes prohibitive for the casual gamer.

What I would like to explore in this thread are ways that gap could be bridged, or at least shortened, so that casual players (~1 hour/day) would have a better chance of enjoying the game.

Initial Questions

1. Do you feel it's possible for a casual player to achieve coded success, clan leadership, and manage a detailed social network without fundamentally changing certain aspects of the game (e.g. how skills advance) and standard policies (e.g. limitations on OOC communication), or is that an unrealistic goal?

-- If that goal is unrealistic, would casual players be less interested if they couldn't achieve everything hardcore players could?

-- What are the most important types of activities casual players cannot do now that directly impact their "fun"?

2. How would you help facilitate a casual player's enjoyment of the game without trivializing the effort of people who simply have more time to play? 

-- Is there a middle ground to be found between casual and hardcore players, or would that form a rift with those that feel time is simply a requirement of accomplishing certain things in the game?

-- Does accommodating the casual player somehow cheapen or lessen the reward received for accomplishing some of the tasks currently being labeled as "impossible without devoting 4 hours a day"?


Suggestions/Ideas

1. Provide casual players with an improved in-game method of receiving and delivering messages.

-- Create an in-game resource that would hold messages for other characters, allowing them to convey IC messages without resorting to OOC channels such as email, IM's, or chat rooms.

2. Increase the number of tools available for supporting and maintaining the day-to-day business of a clan.

-- Add the ability to hire NPC guards, merchants, and support-staff for their clan, which would allow them to occasionally log in and perform routine maintenance on a shop keeper, reposition a guard, or resupply a bin with food.

-- Allow clan leaders to allocate certain funds to be spent upon virtual resources/day, so that they might have a cistern that gets virtually filled with water once a day for 'x' coins, or a cook that will dispense 'x' meals per RL day until they are out.

3. Consider a character option choice for players who will never have time to practice their skills.

-- Perhaps players could opt for a special character-option (karma-related?) that allows them to begin at a medium-skill level, but with an inability to improve those skills.  They would be able to perform at an average level, but might never be able to branch or improve those skills past that initial point.

I believe many of these changes, if ever implemented/adopted, would likely be added to Arm 2 -- but I thought the discussion might yield other alternatives or ideas that could be more quickly implemented.

-LoD

[Gimfalisette]

Goodness, you read my freakin' mind today, LoD. (Or I read yours.) I was just composing a post about this very issue.

Stuff I was writing before:

WHY make ARM more casual-friendly? What are the potential benefits?

-- A more casual-friendly ARM would help us recruit and retain players from a greater variety of life stages, geographical locations, and playstyles. This means a larger playerbase over time.

-- A more casual-friendly ARM would help us retain veteran players as they transition from a college schedule (which often has many hours of free leisure time per week) to a more "adult" schedule (which often doesn't). This means a better-quality playerbase over time.

-- Casual players are less likely to suffer from "seen and done it all burnout" over time, since they simply play fewer hours. So encouraging casual play means a longer-lived, less-jaded playerbase.

-- For you, the individual player, this means that even if you have unlimited time to play, you will still benefit from casual-friendly changes: You'll get more quantity and variety of companion players over time, and better quality. Plus, see additional possible benefits below.

-- Possible side benefits to making the game more casual-friendly:
   -- Tools or systems or methods implemented might also help lift administrative burdens that suck IG time for leaders, which would increase leader satisfaction and improve leader retention over time.
   -- Tools or systems or methods which help casual players further plots would mean there are more plots happening, and thus there is more for all players to do.
   -- Tools or systems or methods which help casual players participate in the economy would mean there is more coin flowing, which benefits other players.
   -- Tools or systems or methods which benefit casual players might make the use of out-of-game communication tools less attractive.

Barriers for casual players:

Sending messages

Example of the problem: Amos really needs to talk to Malik in game, but it seems like Malik's player isn't logging in at all, or isn't logging in at the same times Amos' player is. Currently, Amos' player has four basic options: 1. Log in and hang around, spamming contact, and hope to eventually catch Malik; 2. Log in and attempt to find a friend/lover/clannie/boss/minion of Malik's and get them to pass a message along; 3. Use an out-of-game communication method to say "I need to see you," such as PM or IM or email, if that contact information is known; 4. Give up. Sometimes these methods work, and often they don't; generally speaking, they all increase frustration and sense-of-fail for players. Using an out-of-game communication method often carries an additional psychological burden of guilt, even when intentions and usage are totally virtuous; not to mention that such contact is a slippery slope of OOC info-sharing.

Potential solution: Create messengers who wander the streets of the cities and will take messages for coins, then repeat them to the designated recipient. Allow messengers to be bribed in order to spill their secrets to third parties. For extra added bonus casual-play friendliness, allow messages to be sent from a web browser--with checks to make sure your PC is actually in the city/village/encampment in question.

Completing transactions

Example of the problem: Same situation as above, except that Amos wants to purchase something from Malik. Multiply the problem times the number of meetings the characters will need to have in order to complete the transaction, which is minimally two--but could be as many as four or five. This is part of why trying to buy stuff from GMH merchants is so frustrating, for both parties in the transaction. It's also why indie merchants aren't used more often; merchanting to PCs in general is just not a casual-friendly role.

Potential solution: Same as above. Allow small items to be sent by messenger. Messenger could be attackable, or items could be stealable, though this should be pretty difficult to do. (You'd want a good balance between items sometimes being taken, and more often being delivered--else players won't use the system.)

Skilling up

Example of the problem: Talia's background is moderately-seasoned, 25-year-old warrior. Unfortunately, the character's starting skills suck and have to be explained away with the transparently-lame excuses to which we're all accustomed. And, since Talia's player only has one hour per day to devote to logging in, the character's skills will suck for a long time to come, which does limit character options (you don't get chosen for the quest if you're not up to doing it). The frustration of long-term suckage is compounded by the fact that sometimes when Talia's player logs in, she manages to catch downtime for the clan--a day off, spontaneous outing that she missed out on, or other--and isn't able to get any practice in at all. So, no skill gain for that RL day. Now she feels like a twink for caring about her skills, but damnit, skills do matter! She is also tempted to do stuff that's OOC for her character (leave the city, go into the 'rinth, spar with someone outside of the clan), or to forego social roleplay, because she just wants to make some incremental skill progress. Frustration, guilt, and lower-quality play all around.

Potential solution: Other games have tried a variety of methods to solve this for casual players (see EVE, LotR, etc.). The basic idea is to un-nerf casual play somewhat, while retaining the overall greater skill-profitability of playing 24/7. Perhaps the most simple implementation of an offline skilling functionality for ARM would be to allow skill points to accrue in a single player-chosen skill during the PC's virtual life. Characters who are logged in for greater quantities of time would still be able to skill a greater quantity and variety, but those who cannot be logged in so much would make some progress as well. This is similar to EVE's system.

Making money

Examples of the problem:

Amos' player logs in to do his one hour, goes 'sid mining, has a pretty good haul, comes back to the city and...finds that he can't sell his 'sid because other players have been there first. Daily profit: -50 for the water he had to drink. Logs off frustrated.

Talia's player logs in to do her one hour, heads for her usual forest grove, but her skills suck so much that she only manages to chop down one tree before she must head back to the city. Daily profit: Break even. Logs off frustrated.

Malik's player logs in to do his one hour, scours the resource shops in the city for cheap stuff he can use for crafting, buys a few pieces of said cheap stuff, is dismayed to find he can only craft one thing...and breaks all five attempts. Daily profit: -50 for the crafting supplies he borked. Logs off frustrated.

Note that in all the above examples, the PC also had no time at all for socializing. There was only sufficient time to attempt (and fail) to do some money-making. Profit is, in the present game, the luxury of those who have unlimited time to play.

Potential solution: Tune currently-available "jobs" in the game (dung collection, logging, 'sid mining, clay-digging, cotton-picking) so that they are profitable for casual players, while disabusing overuse by players with more time to play.

Meeting new people

Example of the problem: Malik's player wants to meet some new PCs--he's got ideas for plotty goodness that require hiring grebbers and crafters and sending folks on quests. Malik spends an RL week logging in at his designated available time every day, and for some reason there is just no one in the social areas of the city at that time. Malik really wanted to get some stuff happening in the city, and it seems like from GDB postings and the in-game rumor board that there are people playing there...but he just can't seem to meet anyone, or to meet anyone who is potentially available for the stuff he needs done.

Potential solution: Turn the bartender NPCs into message-takers for their establishments. Malik could pay 50 coins to get a short advertisement* placed, and that message would become a rumor repeated by the bartender for a set period of time. Rumors would still be available to anyone asking in that establishment--along with the keyworded name and description of the person who placed the message, to discourage lame attempts at automated political/social subterfuge. *Set a limit on the number of characters in the message, so that the use of an aide or a bard would still be necessary for a more complex or politically-intricate message.

Recruiting minions

Example of the problem: Jak has finally been promoted to Byn Sergeant, and Jak's player is dismayed and frustrated by the quantity of time she has to spend on being available for basic stuff like recruiting. It's cutting into the short hours she has for playing, and reducing her fun. She's not long for the role without some support on the administrivia side of things.

And on the other side of the problem: Thorg's player wants to get his PC recruited into the Byn, and has heard from the Troopers he's seen that there are two currently-active Byn Sergeants, and yet he hasn't been able to find one for the last two RL weeks, despite logging in each day and trying for his whole hour of play. The clan seems active and like a good choice for his PC, he just can't get in, and frustration is mounting.

Potential solution: Automate membership for the Byn. This would entail having an NPC take the recruit's coin and give them an aba and clan membership; while an alert email to the current Sergeants and imms would be auto-generated.

Possibly the Byn is the only clan for which a solution like this would really work, since it really has little requirement other than the initial fee. But a solution even for the Byn alone would help retain both the newbies who seek its nurturing breast, and the Sergeants who do all the nurturing. (For nurturing read: Good-natured abuse.)

[Gimfalisette]

I was also looking into our discussion history on the casual player topic, here's some threads I think are interesting, for reference:

Web interface for *doing stuff* Discussion of issues that affect leaders, and how to reduce the administrivia burden on them, as well as benefit minions.

Advice needed: casual player

Casual Gamers: Good or Bad

Accomodating low playtimes

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Rather than creating a moderately skilled PC class who could never gain further skills, I'd like to see a different solution.

While going with the moderate-skilled PC class is a great idea, I would simply suggest that a flag is added to the PC which multiplies timers by 3. This alone would allow anybody, not just the casual gamer, to start a character at a higher skill level, while not allowing them to more rapidly become super-classes.

Both veteran players not interested in going through the grind, and casual players interested in starting out at a level of proficiency, could take advantage of this. It would simply be a question in char gen.

Code Select Expand

Do you want to start out as a veteran? A veteran starts with every skill
advanced halfway to max. But in exchange, a veteran takes three times as
long to gain skills as a non-veteran. Type 'yes' or 'no'.


This would not be hard to implement, I don't think.

[staggerlee]

I very much like the idea of special karma roles, custom crafted by the staff and intended for low playtimes.

These could be cultural roles or characters for plots. Trainers for the Tor Academy, prisoners languishing in cells, gith raiders... roles created and crafted for experienced players with low playtimes to hop on occasionally and bring the game to life for everyone else.

It's not a solution... but it's an exciting idea, I think. Though it would require a fairly high level of staff support and trust.

[AmandaGreathouse]

7DV, that idea is awesome. I would love something like that with about 7 out of 10 of my pcs.

[brytta.leofa]

My biggest problem has not been skills or 'sids; it's being around enough to be a part of important shared events.

At a given time, there are, for instance, only one or two Byn sergeants who interact with the PC population.  But those two have to interact with ALL of the relevant PCs.  If you're a Byn sergeant, you're gonna be sergeant of a PC unit, and that means being around for at least most of peak most of the time.  Achievement-oriented folks who can't do this will be deathly bored; others will find themselves in ownership of the oldest Perpetual PC Trooper.

Two ideas:

- Promote off-peak or low-playtime characters into virtual units.  If Trooper Malik's been around for a year longer than anyone else and has adequate abilities, give him the option of becoming a sergeant in command of no PCs.  Maybe it'd be a boring role--but a side benefit is that it reinforces the fact that there are many Byn sergeants and units, not just the PC-populated ones.

- Create slots for non-leadership advancement: sort of a warrant officer rank, for people who've accumulated a lot of experience but can't handle management responsibilities.  Sergeant Hardnose may be in operational command of Expert Tracker Quickeye, but he doesn't actually outrank him.

[Gimfalisette]

- Create slots for non-leadership advancement: sort of a warrant officer rank, for people who've accumulated a lot of experience but can't handle management responsibilities.  Sergeant Hardnose may be in operational command of Expert Tracker Quickeye, but he doesn't actually outrank him.

This is similar to something I tried ICly to do whilst leading in the AoD. Basically I wanted to create an "elite soldiering" team, where members would get advanced training, and then some clearance to not have to stay inside the walls all the bloody time. The plan never went past discussion with the templarate, however.

I do think the very rigid types of clan roles we have right now aren't all that functional for casual players, unless you happen to have one of those unusual leaders who will put some creativity and flexibility into things. (Fathi appeared to do this well for her players in Salarr.)

[MarshallDFX]

Rather than creating a moderately skilled PC class who could never gain further skills, I'd like to see a different solution.

While going with the moderate-skilled PC class is a great idea, I would simply suggest that a flag is added to the PC which multiplies timers by 3. This alone would allow anybody, not just the casual gamer, to start a character at a higher skill level, while not allowing them to more rapidly become super-classes.

Both veteran players not interested in going through the grind, and casual players interested in starting out at a level of proficiency, could take advantage of this. It would simply be a question in char gen.

Code Select Expand

Do you want to start out as a veteran? A veteran starts with every skill
advanced halfway to max. But in exchange, a veteran takes three times as
long to gain skills as a non-veteran. Type 'yes' or 'no'.


This would not be hard to implement, I don't think.

Question:  Would this promote the obliteration of all newbie characters who -don't- start as veterans, as there would be so many more capable PCs out there?  Or will the newbies simply have to be more careful, and be forced to do the grind more stringently.

Or perhaps we're assuming that these non veterans have time for the grind?

[Gimfalisette]

Or perhaps we're assuming that these non veterans have time for the grind?

My personal preference would be to have boosts to starting skills be a perquisite of karma--say, I've got 5 karma, I can either play a magicker or HG of my choice, or I can maybe choose to play a mundane PC with a 5 x 5% boost to all starting skills.

And then implement a slow, virtual-skilling component so that those who are playing casually can make progress over time, even though it will still be less progress than that achieved by a player who simply plays more hours.

But as brytta pointed out, let's not get entirely derailed into a discussion of how to keep up in terms of skills and other hardcoded stuff. There are many more issues which casual players confront, and the involvement barrier is IMO the biggest deal.

[valeria]

Since I usually only play for three or four nights a week, for a couple of hours, I'd consider myself a casual player.

The main thing that I can't do now, that I would like to do, is RPTs.  However, because RPTs are primarily on the weekends, and usually take several hours at a slice, they are totally out of my range.  This is not something that coding could change, but it would be nice if leadership would accommodate.

As far as leadership roles, I have seen leaders who are on a lot more than me, and then tried to find some who are obviously not on when I am, or are on less than me, and I think if you wanted to make it work on a limited schedule, you could do a leadership role.  As long as you don't try to bite off more than you can chew.  When you have a limited time to play, you kind of have to realize your limitations, and pace yourself accordingly.

I'm not daunted at the possibility of not being able to attain everything hardcore players probably can.  I just think it will take me longer.  I think this is fair, because they put a lot more time in than I do, even though I wish I could play more.  Starting skills are really painful, though.  And improving skills seems to take a lot of time, which is not always time that I have.  I don't feel entitled to accommodations, but if some were available, I would probably take them at least once, to see if they help the frustration with this any.  Contact was a prime example, before they boosted it.

A lot of the tools Gimfalisette has suggested sound to me like they would be very helpful, not just for limited time players, but for people who play off peak, and people who play regularly too.

A potential problem I see is trying to tie everything in to karma - such as having special casual roles available at a karma cost, or making you able to play 'veteran' players at a karma cost.  I'm not positive, but a big factor in getting karma seems to be how often you catch the staff eye.  And that can be a direct function of time - the more you play, the more interesting you are to watch, because you're more involved, and so the more eye you catch and karma you get.  So making casual-player accommodations tied to karma roles or karma would probably not do much.  It's the new casual players that you'll have the hardest time retaining anyway, due to feeling overwhelmed, and like they can't get anywhere in the game.

[brytta.leofa]

Or perhaps we're assuming that these non veterans have time for the grind?

I think my record (IC and RL) is about 15 days played over nine months.  I'd in many (most?) cases be pretty glad to play "days" 15-20 over the same time range; on the other hand, our real power-players would be unlikely to be satisfied with that limitation.

Touching the idea of karma limitation, I think this is sufficient: require zero-karma players to start without any skill boost.  I think we want to be sure that people understand the setting before letting them drive an even moderately skilled-up dwarf warrior.

(And, like I said, I'm okay with skill progression as it stands.  I just know that I'm never going to play a really powerful human mundane.)

[Salt Merchant]

Potential solution: Tune currently-available "jobs" in the game (dung collection, logging, 'sid mining, clay-digging, cotton-picking) so that they are profitable for casual players, while disabusing overuse by players with more time to play.

1. I think this is already the case to some extent, at least for magickers practising spells.

2. Why punish players with more time to play? Sounds like after an hour of doing whatever, they'd might as well just sit in a tavern for the rest of the RL day according to this scheme.

[deviant storm]

Potential solution: Automate membership for the Byn. This would entail having an NPC take the recruit's coin and give them an aba and clan membership; while an alert email to the current Sergeants and imms would be auto-generated.

Possibly the Byn is the only clan for which a solution like this would really work, since it really has little requirement other than the initial fee. But a solution even for the Byn alone would help retain both the newbies who seek its nurturing breast, and the Sergeants who do all the nurturing. (For nurturing read: Good-natured abuse.)

Uh....no.

The Byn is the clan that has the least strict guidelines for recruiting. However it's up to the sargeant's discretion, last I heard. There are people a sargeant will turn away. Being made to have to take those people in even though realistically there's no way in hell they'd ever get in just seems really wrong.

I'm sympathetic to the casual player, but perhaps we should come up with another solution instead of vending machine Byn recruiters.

[jhunter]

I like 7DV's idea but agree with Gimf that it should be a karma-required thing and not an option for non-mundane classes. I think it should be placed at three or more karma. Also to make it more realistic there should be a minimum age limiit (by race) when creating a veteran character.
Once there, you can create any pc that you'd have the karma for, plus have the option of making a mundane class that starts with fifty percent of their max skill level and a penalty to their progression from there on out.

The first nice thing about this idea is it would help with the casual player not having to spend their precious time grinding skills or be "skillwise" a green character for their entire lives and it would free up what time the casual player has for other types of interaction. The second nice thing is that it would allow more experienced and trusted players an option to create that "veteran" character that doesn't have green skills. I've heard people complain about that several times over the years.

I would say tweak some of the "jobs" in the game to pay out better than they do now but not as well as they once did.

Those are my suggestions and agreement to some of the proposals.

[Twilight]

50% of starting skills would be way, way, way too powerful, IMHO.  I would approach it a bit differently, to allow players to scale themselves somewhat, by changing how subguilds work.

Subguilds are supposed to be your background.  However, despite however many years you did something in your background, you are just a little better than total suckage at your subguild skills when you start.  I would suggest that starting subguild skill level scale with the age of the PC.  So for a 13 year old human, subguild skills start at the current level.  For a 35 year old human, subguild skills are maxed.  A 25 year old human would get skills points on each skill equal to 6/11 of the points between minimum and maximum.

Add in a new subguild, lets call it "profession" (or a series of subguilds, ie profession warrior, profession ranger, etc).  The profession subguild would work like subguilds above, but contain a subset of the starting skills of that guild.  So a warrior might get slight bumps to some combat skills, a merchant might have better haggle/crafting starting levels, a magicker might have a branch spell or spells that they can use more effectively from the beginning.  The trade off being that this subguild would only impact skills you would already get, and to comparable levels as other subguilds.  And it would be tied to age, so a 35 year old warrior with subguild profession would be better than a 20 year old warrior with subguild profession.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

That's not bad, Twilight.

[Rotten]

Establish a, "courier service," running out of Nenyuk.  A PC leaves an item, sets a price (could be no price at all) for pick up, sets a target for pick up, and then has the option of leaving a message.

Every dawn, the courier service contacts people with outstanding orders and calls them to pick it up, and who it's from.  The target PC comes to the service, pays the price, which goes into the original PC's bank account, gets the message, and goes about his merry way.

Simple as that, really.

[Riev]

Rotten, which "Malik" is the right one? And what stops someone with the same name coming by and picking it up? Would it need truenames? And what if you said "Give this to Ames" instead of Amos, can you get it back?

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I have always liked the idea of 'quests', doable once a RL day. This would allow those who play an hour a day to do something fun, and would be newbie friendly too. There are literally hundreds of possible quests. Thousands, if you take the whole world into account.

Not to mention, of course, the 'jobs' we have now.

[Is Friday]

I only like the idea if it were limited to a strict special application process. Players who deserve the skills and can act responsibly with them will have some karma already and have proven their trustworthy selves to a few people.

[Delstro]

I usually only play one to three hours a night, if I play at all, and I feel like I get a lot out of it. With one of my recent characters, I got a lot completed and had sooo much more to do before I was smitted(sp?) by cruel immortals. (Don't read into it. I love them. I am just angry.)

I think as long as you play every day, you wont be written off as dead 30 times like I usually am.

[Zoltan]

Potential solution: Automate membership for the Byn. This would entail having an NPC take the recruit's coin and give them an aba and clan membership; while an alert email to the current Sergeants and imms would be auto-generated.

Possibly the Byn is the only clan for which a solution like this would really work, since it really has little requirement other than the initial fee. But a solution even for the Byn alone would help retain both the newbies who seek its nurturing breast, and the Sergeants who do all the nurturing. (For nurturing read: Good-natured abuse.)

Uh....no.

The Byn is the clan that has the least strict guidelines for recruiting. However it's up to the sargeant's discretion, last I heard. There are people a sargeant will turn away. Being made to have to take those people in even though realistically there's no way in hell they'd ever get in just seems really wrong.

I'm sympathetic to the casual player, but perhaps we should come up with another solution instead of vending machine Byn recruiters.

Just wanted to throw another "hell no" on that one. Please, no auto-recruiting for the Byn, or any clan for that matter. *shudder*

I'm torn on all of this. I feel for the people that can't play as much but still want to get all the Crackageddon-y goodness. I guess I've finally reached that point where I'm afraid of changes like this. As much as the skill grind annoys me, I'm kind of -glad- it's there. Established characters can be truly powerful. It'd be so weird if casual player character x popped out of nowhere from time to time, able to slaughter newbs. Anyway, I don't think that's the main point.

The problem I see the most when I cut back on my playtimes (and mind you, I'm certainly not "hardcore", I maybe average a little more than two hours a day, if no RPTs are going on) is the general disconnect from other PCs. I don't think any amount of code wizardry or skill-tweaking can fix that, and frankly, I like it that way. You need to be involved to be involved. Rather than have blanket go-arounds for having a skilled, well-connected character from the get-go, I think it should just be handled by spec apps.

"But Zoltan!" you exclaim, "that's easy for you to say. It's not like you're one of the casual gamers in question." No, I'm not. But this kind of balancing stuff as it relates to Arm just kind of... fills me with dread for some reason. I can't really specify, as I have a splitting headache right now and I'm pretty sleepy. I'll be sure to jump back in on this discussion when I have something more substantial to add. I will say, though: in all reality, the day I stop playing this game regularly is the day I start playing much more innocuous roles, or the day I finally throw in the towel. And that's not saying anything bad about the game structure or anything else -- it'll just be that time. I like Arm how it is, and any serious changes to its progression and structure give me pause.

[Fathi]

I like the idea of being able to start a character off with higher skills, provided they meet certain requirements such as age.

I would also like to see more low-level "sponsored" roles offered by staff. Not sponsored in the current Armageddon sense of the word--leaders that get staff support--but postings more like:

Wanted: Senior Servant, House Oash
Location: Allanak
Minimum Karma Requirement: None.
You are a lifelong servant of Allanak's illustrious and mysterious House Oash, trained in how to better serve the House's nobility for as long as you can remember. The role of 'servant' can be anything from aide to cook to guard. Email allanaki_nobles@armageddon.org with a brief outline of your character concept. Depending on background and guild, your character may be given a slight skill boost and will be granted one set of Oashi livery armour or a House uniform.

Wanted: Human Tribal Elders
Location: Varies.
Minimum Karma Requirement: 2.
You are a venerable and long-lived member of one of Zalanthas' human tribes, either the Arabet, Al'Seik or Jul Tavan. Unlike many of your blood, you have retained both the skill and presence of mind to persevere--perhaps even flourish--despite the harshness of nomadic life. You are at least thirty-five years old and you may choose from any profession, though please keep your chosen tribe's documentation in mind. Mages considered as per tribal docs. Depending on your age and guild, you will be given moderate boosts to certain skills as well as a selection of tribal gear.

Two other RPI games that I've tinkered around with use a system kind of like this, and personally, I really like it. It allows casual players to app right into a role in a clan without necessarily having to take on leadership, kind of like how the Tan Muark is currently handled rather than a call for a noble or templar.

[Cowboy]

I do not like the idea of increased stats and/or skills for casual players.  Way too easy to twink such a thing. "Oh, my life just changed and now I have 10 hours a day to play"!?!?!  Who would keep track of hours played? Maybe some coded thing...you play more than 10 hours a week and your player drops dead automatically?  In my experience, a player that has an hour or two a day can produce a very viable character.  Will you be as buff as some other character?  No...but nobody is.....you can play 6 hours a day and someone else can play 10...you play 12 and some will be able to play 16.   It never ends.   Play whatever time you have and have fun!