Armageddon Brainstorming - Get it while it's hot/

[nauta]

On character reports:

1. Make leaders handle some of the minion reports, the bits of the minion reportage that makes sense for the leader to know.  Leaders would then decide whether it is important enough to pass on upstairs, sort out duplicates, and so on.  Minions can then still report things their leaders shouldn't know (that are important) to staff via their own character report, and staff can still learn about how Runner Todd felt on that mission by peaking at the bio of Runner Todd.

2. Have staff update the clan documentation / thread with some of the answers that they give in reports.  This probably is already done, but have it done more often.  For instance, I've asked things that are pretty obvious - where this or that is at the compound, what this or that NPC is doing, what some of the workflow is.  In general, if the information is out there, we then won't have to ask about it, thus saving you from having to give the same answer to it.

[Dresan]

Well in the spirit of brainstorming, hopefully thinking outside the box and steam lining things; lets take a look at one thing everyone is interested in, well at least I am and that is skill bumps and extended guilds.

Players: We want more choices, and not have to train every single time for 10-40 days before becoming decent.
Staff: Sounds good. Here is CGP, along with skill bumps and extended sub-guilds.
Players: We want to see this automated.
Adhira: We do too.  

While an automated system of the current CGP ideas would be great, what if we were to modify the current skill bumps idea to more easily fit the coded systems that currently exist. First off in my mind skill bumps should only be for mundanes, don't think mages need any help training faster. Secondly instead of the player getting to choose the skill they bump, they instead choose a template that more fits the idea of a established(apprentice)-vertern(journeyman) character. We'll use ranger as an example.

An apprentice ranger would cost 2 CGP, or maybe three depending how generous you are with the skills boosts. Arguable the apprentice ranger could easily be set up as just one bump for every skill. However, to make it more interesting the staff can then ask themselves, what what is an apprentice ranger, what a more established ranger look like? Would they really need to ever practice ride? Probably not. Archery should probably be journeyman at this point. Bandage might be at journeyman or maybe just under. What about other skills? Perceptions skills? Other combat skills? For convenience sake we'll say that dual wielding and two-handed are just under journey man too. As for weapon skills, well if they focused in one weapon its probably a little hirer then apprentice but if they focused on a weapon common to their area its probably just under journeyman. Lets give them that choice. Apprentice blunt weapons ranger; apprentice slashing ranger: apprentice chopping ranger; apprentice piercing ranger.

What about a journeyman ranger? He should probably cost 4 CGP or perhaps even five~. Again whats a journeyman or more veteran ranger look like. Archery mid journeyman, bandage, perceptions skills too. Dual/two-handed aswell. Well his weapon skills would be higher, but again maybe one over all the others, each weapon at apprentice while the others one journeyman perhaps. The choices could be split up again journeyman blunt weapons ranger; journey slashing ranger: journeyman chopping ranger; etc. Maybe instead of higher weapon skills he would have focused on archery, mid apprentice weapons, but higher archery. etc etc. Again template choices instead of individual choices.

Again skill values would be up to you but just to give you an idea of how a skill bump template could work.

After creating skill bump templates for each mundane classes you can open up options in the creations screen, if you have 2 karma, you would get access to apprentice mundanes, and journeyman mundanes. From then on your would have more choices depending on the guild and template. Again these would be three karma individuals and before they can create a character like this they would submit an special app ( if you want to be very sure no one is going beyond a three app limit otherwise trust your story tellers to check). In the same way we have to check to see if there is room in a tribe before we can create a d-elf.

Frankly you can do the same with extended apps too. just make them appear as people reach 2 karma. Again, before creating one, they would need to submit a special app request. The difference is, the staff checking the app would just need to confirm that the player's karma+3 can cover the CGP and that they haven't gone over the three character limit. After that, they can create it, the ST can double check the approval and poof everything is done without requiring more work. This basically works for d-elves.

That means that the only time staff need to get involved with giving access to a template or extended guild to someone, is when the person has less then 2 karma. I believe this will reduce the work greatly for staff while at the same time speed up the process for everyone.  The population seems to be slowly growing right now and the reality is that the game is always trying to attract new players, its one of those things that needs to be nipped in the bud one way or another. I don't think anyone wants to see less choices for skill bumps or extended guilds going away, or seeing things eventually being delayed even more due to ever increasing work load. That's why  I think this is a good way to maintain the system in a more efficient way WITHOUT needing to code new automated systems. I am not going to say its a copy and paste job but again the code to make this a reality already exists.  It is just a matter of adding the new template options to the character selection menus.  With this idea sub-guild skills and extended sub-guild skills will not be eligible for bumps of any kind since the templates should focus on main guilds only.This will suck for players wanting to invest four karma for hunt or bandage on rangers, or a specific craft on merchant but I think templates still keep in the spirit of providing a character that you don't have to spend days training before you can jump into the action .

[Riev]

My post may have had a tinge of snark to it, but Nyr, your response actually seems to have gotten everyone in a better track, thanks!

[Semper]

I think I have an idea about what staff is asking for now. Basically, players discuss what's important, what's not, and try to figure out what we're willing to cut out or give slack in so staff can get more time on their hands to animate and drive cooler stuff. Correct?

Account notes -- between 5 - 30 minutes per request.  Admin+ only.
No/Low Priority. I say we can get rid of this? Or put a limit on once every 6 months.

Description changes -- 5 minutes, maybe more if there is some discussion on it, but requires an admin+ to do it.  Admin+ only.
Low priority. Seems like it doesn't take too much time though, and there's a limit for players on once every RL year your character lives, so very infrequent.

Ext Subguild / skill bump -- 10-20 minutes, mostly because of math involved.  Admin+ only.
Staff said there's a tool in the making to streamline this more? I'd give it medium priority. Once a week or when the player is available.

Mastercraft Submissions -- 30 minutes to (at the very least) 1.5 hours.  Lots of review time here.   Some requests take longer that that, especially if there is something special being done, added, or approved that requires more consideration.  The more complex, the higher you have to go up with staff to get it reviewed, so the more time it takes.  On the upside, these are lower priority.  STs and/or Admins usually build, Admins approve.
Low Priority? It's nice to get a lot of new stuff into the game, but if you consider the greater impact of time spent here or on driving a plot along, perhaps reduce the time needed to get this done by a lot? Either limit the current amount of requests that come through, or put in more people to get this done in a faster process.

Reimbursement -- 5 minutes to 20 minutes.  Depends on length of request and whether any discussion is had.  ST+.
Medium Priority? Once a week kind of thing. I don't know what kind of requests come through, but I only ever request a reimbursement if it's something I can't replace (like a mount or item costing hundreds/thousands of coins).

Item orders -- 10-30 minutes.  We have a staff-side project for making this better but it needs to be completed.  I'm taking a look at that one.  ST+.
Medium Priority. Rotating wares for shops so staff can be even more hands off on this. Make items a limited commodity, so PCs have to actually do something IG to get these items other than put in an order and wait for weeks for things to process.

Question/request or Question requests -- could be a minute, could take an hour.  Depends on the content.  The former is ST+, the latter is Admin+.
Medium Priority.

Original submissions -- At least 20-30 minutes for reading and reviewing, then possibly double that if another staffer needs to approve something related to it.  ST+ resolution.
Low Priority.

Reviewing over the list, I guess there really isn't a high priority thing that I would consider to be something completed that very day, besides general character applications? But those go through so fast already, so I have no problem there.

As a player, I put certain priorities where others may have more importance over, but I think as staff it might be a good idea to just let loose on the reins a bit, and let us players wait around for some things which are deemed too important.

I would much rather see world plots, character animations for driving plots, necessary items needed to be built for a big plot, and such things that impact a wider scale to become high priority, and take a hit on how quickly everything else gets completed.

[wizturbo]

Here's an idea, why not let players flag their requests priority?  Some things might be critical to the player, some things might not be.  I know most of my requests aren't time sensitive, but the rare few that are I'm feeling the urge to wish up because it's timely.

[bcw81]

Here's an idea, why not let players flag their requests priority?  Some things might be critical to the player, some things might not be.  I know most of my requests aren't time sensitive, but the rare few that are I'm feeling the urge to wish up because it's timely.

That ability has been on emails since 1995. Tell me how many times you've found it useful.

[aeglaeca]

Account notes are already limited to once every six months, I thought?

If we're talking plots: Personally, I would prefer to see more small, one-off world flavor animations that have potential to snowball than plans and a lot of building for large plots.

IMO, the problem with large plots is that they are easy to start and hard to finish, and in addition anything that involves a large amount of PCs in one room will result in spamfest-- this is my experience with RPIs in general, anyway; I can't say I've played Arm that long or been involved in any large scale RPTs yet. Thinking big is great but exhausting, where stringing together small plots and letting the pieces fall into place themselves might be better/easier for anyone in an ST position.

[Riev]

Here's an idea, why not let players flag their requests priority?  Some things might be critical to the player, some things might not be.  I know most of my requests aren't time sensitive, but the rare few that are I'm feeling the urge to wish up because it's timely.

That ability has been on emails since 1995. Tell me how many times you've found it useful.

Emails and Work Requests (Regardles of the system) are not the same thing. Of course they aren't useful on emails... everyone has a tendency to read the email, regardless of its priority, and decide on what to do later. When it comes to something so informal, its hard to leave it up to the sender to decide what is important.

Request tool submissions are more like Work Requests. While I see a lot of people setting "low priority" on things, and otherwise defaulting to "medium" priority... maybe it would be interesting to have a weighted list of what is and isn't important.

Semper's idea would work well, if staff could set what they think the weight of individual requests are. Then staff could see the tiers, and decide "I just want to work on low-priority tasks  today, I only have an hour or so".

[Semper]

Account notes are already limited to once every six months, I thought?

If we're talking plots: Personally, I would prefer to see more small, one-off world flavor animations that have potential to snowball than plans and a lot of building for large plots.

IMO, the problem with large plots is that they are easy to start and hard to finish, and in addition anything that involves a large amount of PCs in one room will result in spamfest-- this is my experience with RPIs in general, anyway; I can't say I've played Arm that long or been involved in any large scale RPTs yet. Thinking big is great but exhausting, where stringing together small plots and letting the pieces fall into place themselves might be better/easier for anyone in an ST position.

Hmm, you're right on both accounts. I think there's those world-spanning plots, but also those little ones that are just as important, and I didn't mean to discredit those. I'm just saying the staff should spend more time on those plot-line things rather than catering to an individual player's mdesc change or adding yet another 10-line food item.

When my character is immersed in their story and busy doing this-that and dealing with the next big thing, I don't think I would mind having to wait a couple weeks for my description change, or other minor request.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Something relatively easy to do (in the scheme of things) is adjust the prices of really cool things to the high high end of the scale. I have no issue at all with a sword that is blah blah blah ruby and diamonds being 15k. Or a helmet that adds x ac being 5k. I think this would make those things a lot more valuable, and worth dying over.

Yes, a merchant can warp the price, but then whoever comes after him sells it for the price it's actually worth, and then you have to worry about people going what, huh, ur bad merchant. I'd like to see the -actual- worth shift.

[Nyr]

So what processes do you think you need to know about in order to be more efficient in brainstorming about how we can be more efficient?

Well, if Arm runs like any other process driven work engine, I'd bet that 80% of your workload is covered in 20% of your available tools.  So, where does staff feel the biggest amount of pain with regard to administrative duties?  That is where the brainstorming should be focused.

I created a separate thread slightly before this one covering one of those areas:  character reports.  They have a purpose, but actual utilization is something that we feel needs to change.

[Nyr]

On character reports:

1. Make leaders handle some of the minion reports, the bits of the minion reportage that makes sense for the leader to know.  Leaders would then decide whether it is important enough to pass on upstairs, sort out duplicates, and so on.  Minions can then still report things their leaders shouldn't know (that are important) to staff via their own character report, and staff can still learn about how Runner Todd felt on that mission by peaking at the bio of Runner Todd.

Leaders already do this, from what I gather, to some extent.  The complaints and concerns of their IC underlings filter up to them, and if they feel it is important, it comes to us (one way or another).

2. Have staff update the clan documentation / thread with some of the answers that they give in reports.  This probably is already done, but have it done more often.  For instance, I've asked things that are pretty obvious - where this or that is at the compound, what this or that NPC is doing, what some of the workflow is.  In general, if the information is out there, we then won't have to ask about it, thus saving you from having to give the same answer to it.

We do this already.  If you are in a clan that has not had a clan documentation revamp yet, then that is probably why you cannot find the answers you seek in the documentation.

[Nyr]

Well in the spirit of brainstorming, hopefully thinking outside the box and steam lining things; lets take a look at one thing everyone is interested in, well at least I am and that is skill bumps and extended guilds.

That template idea is neat.  I'm not sure if it would be more or equal work to finishing the CGP automated spend/regeneration stuff (or rather, coming up with a replacement that works in the way that it was envisioned), but it's a neat idea.  Thanks.

[Nyr]

Account notes -- between 5 - 30 minutes per request.  Admin+ only.
No/Low Priority. I say we can get rid of this? Or put a limit on once every 6 months.

Description changes -- 5 minutes, maybe more if there is some discussion on it, but requires an admin+ to do it.  Admin+ only.
Low priority. Seems like it doesn't take too much time though, and there's a limit for players on once every RL year your character lives, so very infrequent.

Ext Subguild / skill bump -- 10-20 minutes, mostly because of math involved.  Admin+ only.
Staff said there's a tool in the making to streamline this more? I'd give it medium priority. Once a week or when the player is available.

Mastercraft Submissions -- 30 minutes to (at the very least) 1.5 hours.  Lots of review time here.   Some requests take longer that that, especially if there is something special being done, added, or approved that requires more consideration.  The more complex, the higher you have to go up with staff to get it reviewed, so the more time it takes.  On the upside, these are lower priority.  STs and/or Admins usually build, Admins approve.
Low Priority? It's nice to get a lot of new stuff into the game, but if you consider the greater impact of time spent here or on driving a plot along, perhaps reduce the time needed to get this done by a lot? Either limit the current amount of requests that come through, or put in more people to get this done in a faster process.

Reimbursement -- 5 minutes to 20 minutes.  Depends on length of request and whether any discussion is had.  ST+.
Medium Priority? Once a week kind of thing. I don't know what kind of requests come through, but I only ever request a reimbursement if it's something I can't replace (like a mount or item costing hundreds/thousands of coins).

Item orders -- 10-30 minutes.  We have a staff-side project for making this better but it needs to be completed.  I'm taking a look at that one.  ST+.
Medium Priority. Rotating wares for shops so staff can be even more hands off on this. Make items a limited commodity, so PCs have to actually do something IG to get these items other than put in an order and wait for weeks for things to process.

Question/request or Question requests -- could be a minute, could take an hour.  Depends on the content.  The former is ST+, the latter is Admin+.
Medium Priority.

Original submissions -- At least 20-30 minutes for reading and reviewing, then possibly double that if another staffer needs to approve something related to it.  ST+ resolution.
Low Priority.

Reviewing over the list, I guess there really isn't a high priority thing that I would consider to be something completed that very day, besides general character applications? But those go through so fast already, so I have no problem there.

As a player, I put certain priorities where others may have more importance over, but I think as staff it might be a good idea to just let loose on the reins a bit, and let us players wait around for some things which are deemed too important.

I would much rather see world plots, character animations for driving plots, necessary items needed to be built for a big plot, and such things that impact a wider scale to become high priority, and take a hit on how quickly everything else gets completed.

I looked at everything you posted in that post and it is this way already, right down to players not being able to file for account notes every six months and right up to where we have the same priorities you do in terms of what is important to do.

[Semper]

That's... Pretty cool.    I think the staff are doing a wonderful job and I hope you guys can get more time to do what you want through all this! I'm also in the group that says maybe hiring another ST to even out the load, and perhaps consider organizing teams not based on location or type of clan but on an agenda (like Rebel and Loyal Factions) and allow players/clans to line up into these divisions all with a somewhat similar goal. Would that perhaps streamline plots and how things are completed?

[Kankfly]

This just popped into my mind. What about nocturnal animals? So there will be some switch outs or something. Dunno, just a thought. Would make hunting and such more interesting.