"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Redesigning Evoke as a game
One of the things that have struck me the most since I joined EVOKE about a week ago is how much it does not look like a game. The only game-like mechanic here are the EVOKE Powers System, and it feels a lot more like a tweaked "like" button on any run-of-the-mill online community/blogosphere application.
EVOKE; indeed, resembles an online community rather that a game, with the people who are a part of it and why they joined it being the only thing setting it apart. Furthermore, this Powers system is unbalanced and unfair as it has been discussed in numerous posts.
So therefore, I propose a full overhaul of EVOKE and how it works, and here are my first ideas. Mind you, I am brainstorming right now and I am only typing as the ideas come to me, so they will be unfinished/unpolished/not fully thought through. :p
First, a few key points to make it look and feel more like a game:
The Powers System should be reworked. As far as systems are concerned, this is the core of the EVOKE game as such. However, it is obviously unbalanced and tipped in favor of the most active posters and the agents with the biggest friends list.
So I submit to you the following changes should be done to it:
- All mission and quest rewards should be increased to x5. As a game, completing the goals should have a much stronger impact on score than post spamming.
- Rating other's posts AND leaving a comment should be counted. After 10 rate + Comment actions, the player should get a freebie power point.
- Not everyone has the ability to log on very day, and therefore are left with no hope to catch up. For every 24h of not logging in, players should receive a bonus +1 freebie power point for completed missions and quests, including Agent Quests. (more on those below)
- Signing up to help an evocation should yield +10 freebie power points. (more on this below)
- Signing up for an EVOKE Unit should give +1 freebie power point. (more on this below)
- Completing an Agent Quest should give 1-3 power points on whatever skill was assigned by the project administrator. (more on this below)
- Creating an Agent Quest should yield 10 Collaboration power points. (more on this below)
- Submitting an evocation should give up to 20 power points, assigned by Alchemy/Admins (more on this below)
- Completing all missions and quests for the week should give +5 freebie power points.
- Supporting and commenting on an evocation should give +1 freebie power points (not stackable with #2)
Now to explain some of the main ideas on redesigning how stuff I mentioned previously should work.
Rating and commenting for Power Points.
At first I thought that maybe the Power Vote should have a 1-3 rating so users can fine tune how much they like or dislike a post, but that would come with unwanted GUI issues, so let's stick to the one Power Vote per post idea.
Giving away Power Points per comment+vote can led itself to cheaters and people wanting to game the system, so a "Flag" (as cheater/system gamer/spammer) link should be added to every response. When clicking the flag link, the moderators would be made aware of a possible breach of protocol and investigate the issue. If the user is, indeed, found guilty by the moderators, the player could face a punishment from a 20% reduction in Power Points for each stat or deactivation.
Creating an Evocation.
As explained on this post, players can make evocations to others in order to realize their goals. This is supposed to be the end game, however, some people already are evocating different projects, like Ursula Kochanowski's database project.
Drawing inspiration from James Benoit's post, players should only be able to post evocations after gathering 100 Power Points and completing all runes for any 3 missions and quests. All evocations should be admin-approved and the admin/Alchemy would assign a maximum of 20 Power Points as a reward.
Players should not be able to Power Vote in evocations, but they can instead either support or sign up as evocation assistants. Supporting an evocation would simply mean that the player stands behind the cause but doesn't have the skill set needed for that evocation, and the supported evocations should be show in a sidebar on each profile.
Signing up as an evocation assistant, on the other hand, means you plead to help the agent that created said evocation, and are both willing and able to answer their call (be it to brainstorm or perform a specific task) whenever the evoking agent asks you to. When signing up for an evocation, the player must indicate in detail what he or she can bring to the project, and the evocation starter will have the power to accept or remove any player from their team.
To complete the implementation, all profiles should have a tab where players can have easy access to updates and messages from the evocations they have signed up for.
Additionally, an easy to access menu option should be added to the page header, where players can peruse all available evocations.
Agent Quests
After achieving 150 Power Points, players should be capable of creating their own quests. These would be subject to the same approval rules as evocations and should also lack the ability of being Power Voted.
In order to log the evidence, the drop down should include the "Agent Quest" option and then the blog post/picture/video should include the tag AQXXXXXX, where AQ stands for Agent Quest and the XXXXXX stands for the custom quest's ID. Player profile should have an extra space next to the runes indicating how many Player Quests have been completed.
Depending on the quest and it's complexity, the admin that approved it should assign a Power Point trait and value, raging from 1 to 3 points per completion, using the suggested value the submitting agent provided as guidance.
EVOKE Units
Not all agents have the same sets of skills. Some are good at science, some at philosophy, some at *cough* system analysis and design.
This mechanic takes on the idea posted by Floatstone, but takes it a bit further.
Some 30 or so EVOKE Units should be created, representing the main fields and sciences involved with this project. Depending on the skill set, players would be able to sign up for an Evoke Unit for every 40 Power Points they have achieved, so it will become important to chose the right Unit for you.
These are not like guilds, clans or inns, where there is a clan leader. EVOKE Units should be controlled by a council of 10 voluntary moderators. Being a moderator should give no Power Points or control over the Unit members.
Again, a "Units" tab in each profile page should give quick access to updates and messages from every Unit an agent has signed up for, but here is the twist. All players should be able to post to each Unit's profile on a special "Evocation" field. Why? So players with certain projects and that lack the skill set to make them a reality can have easy access to the people who can help them.
Nobody can be expected to be able to read every post, evocation, profile or evidence, so it is important to offer a way to connect people with those who need help or can help them.
Other considerations
EVOKE says all over the place that whatever journey you chose, it will be your own. That is why I am basing things off total Power Points achieved instead of the type of Power Points. For instance, it would make sense that, in order to create an Agent Quest, a player would be required 10 Creativity or Collaboration, but they may not chose the collaborative or creative paths. All players should be allowed to participate on all aspects of EVOKE, regardless of what specific EVOKE Powers they are developing.
Also, all tools and means of bringing the right teams, ideas and projects together should be available within EVOKE itself. While looking kindly unto spin offs may seem like a good idea and a way to spread the love around, in reality it only helps fracture the community into different websites, actually pulling them apart instead of closer.
If anyone is working on a derivative project/website because EVOKE is not providing the tools or means for them, then they should be implemented as quickly as possible.
Now, about Citizen X. Nobody really knows much about them or what they are all about, so I don't have much to comment, except: It would be interesting if that would play a bigger part on the game.
Hmmm... I am sure I will have a lot more later and will come back to revise a few ideas. Again, keep in mind this was just a quick brainstorming that came over me, so like i said before, a lot of this ideas may and most likely are unfinished/unpolished/not fully thought through.
Views: 26
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Comment by Samiran Roy on April 8, 2010 at 7:25pm
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'Rating other's posts AND leaving a comment should be counted. After 10 rate + Comment actions, the player should get a freebie power point.'
I agree, but people can spam this, atleast I can. I would think of 100 short comments, just on the edge of spam, like 'That was a great post', 'that was really inspiring','cool thoughts man!' and so on. Then I would write a computer program that would post these comments one by one on random blog post's and wait for a day or two, and voila, I am on top
If I fail and get banned, I change comments, account and try again.
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Comment by Julio Cesar Corona Ortega on April 8, 2010 at 7:44pm
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This is correct, hence why I added:
Giving away Power Points per comment+vote can led itself to cheaters and people wanting to game the system, so a "Flag" (as cheater/system gamer/spammer) link should be added to every response. When clicking the flag link, the moderators would be made aware of a possible breach of protocol and investigate the issue. If the user is, indeed, found guilty by the moderators, the player could face a punishment from a 20% reduction in Power Points for each stat or deactivation.
There's also ways to autodetect this server-side.
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Comment by Yumna Moosa on April 8, 2010 at 7:49pm
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I think these ideas will really enhance the game. And I'm not just saying that :)
But, it seems a bit complicated to do... I don't know that it can be implemented soon enough to make a difference to the rest of the game.
I hope I'm wrong, though!
+1 Creativity
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Thank you, and no, it would be extremely hard to implement most of them in 4 weeks, but they could certainly be done by next year's season.
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Comment by PJE on April 9, 2010 at 5:25pm
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I guess this will run again next year, next month ... who knows, and some of your ideas will happen.
When I heard Jane's TED talk I knew it wasn't designed for me but I couldn't resist her brilliant idea.
IAnd now I am learning so much and feel energised by everyones ideas and research.
I suspect the social entrepreneur thing is comming up with an irresistable idea like this. One that makes everyone jump up and down and have to join in. And if you come up with something like that it won't matter if you have 2 points or two thousand, it would just be sublime. And the points system might well provoke some of those irresistable ideas so I am with you on the benefits of getting it right.
Thanks and best wishes
PJE
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