Rewarding active Players while handling skill decay

B

borriquito

New Member
For days now I've seen posts on Discord about people complaining about skill decay but no one really so far gave any idea on how to handle it besides just removing it. Which in my opinion is not a solution because once a Sim is Max in every skill it could destroy the economy and/or this player will be bored since he will be able to craft anything and also get max payout all the time without working for it.

Long story short i was thinking of a way that is implemented in a lot of games nowadays. It will have everyone coming back into the game and do different tasks.
How about we Implement some sort of "Daily/Weekly/Monthly Quests" into the game with some sort of Rewards after completing these?
Possible Tasks for a FreeSO game
  1. : reach skill XY in mech/charisma/cooking/ect.
  2. : have XY Sims active in your Lot for a total of XY Minutes.
  3. : rekindle your lost friendship with XY.
  4. : Tip another Sim in another Lot XY$.
  5. : Make XY premium Pizzas
  6. : Reach LVL XY at your job
I think you guys get the Idea of what I'm talking about. I'm also aware that the name Quest sounds dumb for a game like this but we can just call it "Tasks" or whatever u like...since English isn't my native tongue i appreciate any suggestions for new names.
Now to the Rewards. I was thinking that a person plays in average 1-2 hrs a day this game. a lot gets wasted on skill decay which isn't fun but necessary to keep people playing and at the same time, it is a frustrating system that makes us do the same thing over and over again.

Reward ideas:
  1. : XY amount of $$$
  2. : if owning a lot a boost in skilling speed or payout/greening ect. for a period of time
  3. : a personal skill lock (giving them away every 7 days doesnt sound fun to me since u can just leave it and get rewarded for doing nothing. this way active players actually get what they want).
  4. : a temporary break from skill decay
  5. : faster greening for a temporary time
  6. : having the spotlight flashing from the lot for XY hrs for free
  7. : exclusive items for a seasonal event Quest


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I just believe it is a good idea because as of now were all just skilling ->working -> skilling -> working...
with this idea i am very sure Residence lots, Casinos (when available) will be visited more frequently.
Also we don't have to make this just limited to a single sim.... we could make a lot working together with all roommates working on one goal for a certain reward. like in a period of 1 week a certain amount of jams have to be sold on this lot to get a certain temporary reward or a certain amount of skills have to be accumulated.

i'm open for criticism and any suggestions....
Borri.
 
You can make your own fun with the game already. Fun way to earn money are actually games and competitons that are, even with a lack of content, still here, made by the people. I am having fun at Iris Pub and that one game lot (I forgt it's name). You just need to let go of the stereotype that you can only earn money by grinding.

Also, I'm posotove there will be ocasional reward events. I mean, there was already that job one, and there was that St. Patrics day event.
 
What was the reward or gain from the st. Patrick's day event? Cuz I can't recall any.
I know there are by player generated mini games and I'm all for it. But since in this game aren't any exp or lvl to gain in any kind I didn't put this inter consideration. Here is my example :
Player A plays 14hrs a week... this makes 728hrs a year this person was loyal to the game and came back.
Player B plays 14hrs for the fist week and comes back after one year to play. This, as obvious as it sounds makes 14hrs player B played.
Both player will have after one year 71skill locks.
Now tell me if player A still feels encouraged enough after spending 728hrs to be as advanced in skills as someone who played 14hrs+(amount to lock skills).
Tso was out in 2002. Were in 2017 now and games are very advanced. They have to be to keep people playing specially younger generations. Back in the days there wasn't much competition or the technology didn't allow people to build complex online games. As far as I remember when I was playing TSO. People left and got bored because everyone was rich and gave money away left and right. There was no point in going to jobs cuz they didn't pay out as much as jams did. People created mini games like jams until u drop, paint poker or pet roulette.
I'm not saying people should get forced to do something else, but be honest and do me a favoure. Open freeSO now and check how many moneylots are open. Now check how many skill lots are open. Compare this with the numbers of any other lot category and tell me if we have diversity. No one bothers to visit them at all and that's sad .
I mean I'm an hardcore tso fan and installed bootcamp on my Mac just to play this game and I'm playing it a lot believe me.

This team here revived a dead game and I just think it's sad that after hours and hours of coding, emails and frustration people just leave because of lack of diversity in play style.
 
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That's what developers are trying to fix... this was already debated in discord channels, brought up by me. Economy has now been fixed and skill degradation reimplemented.
Please keep in mind that there is only 150 people on the server at a time and that this is only a beta. Half of the features are not working. Solo objects have been fixed and if people want more money they shoud actively play and chat now. With the new update of the economy I have also started to see the rise in other types of lots and interesting activities. If you really want to make the game fun, make it fun yourself, that's how online worlds work.

With this system the game is a mirror of the real world, so if you want to change something out there, do it. Keep trying! There is so much more that has to be brought into the game still.
 
Mixa97sr said:
With this system the game is a mirror of the real world, so if you want to change something out there, do it. Keep trying! There is so much more that has to be brought into the game still.
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I don't get your criticism since I'm already posted what I'm trying to change and you're going way off topic. I never mentioned that you can't have fun by yourself or be creative for the community. We established that fact already. Still I get the feeling you don't understand the suggestion I'm trying to make.
 
Borri, I quite like this idea, it does add variety to the gameplay! However, a quest system of such complexity requires a lot of additional coding from the FreeSO team, since it never took place in Maxis' TSO - it'll be like adding a whole expansion to the game, so it'd be a long term project. Given that the FreeSO team is yet to bring TSO back as it was, and given that this isn't their full-time job to work on FreeSO, your idea, while good, is close to impossible to implement in the nearest time, unfortunately.

Also, great point about the skill locks being dependent not on how much effort a player puts into the game, but on how old the account is. Back then, it was kind of a reward for paying the monthly subscription, so in a way you paid for the privilege of locking your skills, but today... since having an old account is so beneficial, what could stop me from making 10 accounts on Day 1 with 3 sims on each, and then sell these accounts a year after, without touching them once after creating the sims? Even if I don't manage to sell them, I don't lose anything from creating them and keeping them alive. (Not that I'm planning to do that. I loathe account markets and people who make profit off them.)

In another thread, I posted an idea for slowing the skill decay down, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this too!
 
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The game is empty because it's a beta and because people are not creative... there are tools for making games, there are tools for having fun in the game. It's not games fault nor developers fault. It's our fault as players, that's what I'm trying to say. Challenges and quests are a great design point, just as you suggested. But they can happen once every so often as if they happened all the time, again, economy would be ruined. And there is only one person that's working on the game, and they are in college...

I'm sure he respects your criticism and suggestions, but keep in mind that he is alone, he is busy and that this is just a beta. We will come to the good stuff once the game gets fully released.

Also, you went off topic, from suggesting challenges to economy and playability matter in a split of second. Having more stats and levels will definitelly ruin the game. I don't need another indicator to keep track of. There will be network grid that will sort players by popularity in all kinds and there will be more jobs, more money items, more player made items. Wait for it. This version of the game is just for testing.
 
Mixa97sr said:
The game is empty because it's a beta and because people are not creative... there are tools for making games, there are tools for having fun in the game. It's not games fault nor developers fault. It's our fault as players, that's what I'm trying to say. Challenges and quests are a great design point, just as you suggested. But they can happen once every so often as if they happened all the time, again, economy would be ruined. And there is only one person that's working on the game, and they are in college...

I'm sure he respects your criticism and suggestions, but keep in mind that he is alone, he is busy and that this is just a beta. We will come to the good stuff once the game gets fully released.

Also, you went off topic, from suggesting challenges to economy and playability matter in a split of second. Having more stats and levels will definitelly ruin the game. I don't need another indicator to keep track of. There will be network grid that will sort players by popularity in all kinds and there will be more jobs, more money items, more player made items. Wait for it. This version of the game is just for testing.
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Dude I never said any of this! English isn't my native English but I feel like you're worse than me in understanding it.
I never criticized the game. All I did was giving an idea how we could get people coming back in addition to the game play we already have.
I'm also very aware that he's alone but neither you nor I are working on this code so it's up to the dev to decide if
Also what exactly do you know about the sims online economy? you were about 5 years old when we were playing this game! I heard you several times talking about how it's fixed but actually it's not if you do the math:

I make around 20.000k a day in my server job alone depending on playtime and the group I'm working with. I spend around 0-100$ on Gardner and maid (money that actually leaves the game). Now consider the money I spend for my objects and lot upgrades and tell me how I can not be a millionaire within 1-3 years. There is no money leaving the game in comparison how much is coming in.

Also where did I say to have more stats or more lvls? I can't recall that.
 
Ok, let's go over your suggestions one by one.

First and major one, skill decay, which lot of people have problem with. Yes, I agree that problems is the activeness of the player. One way to solve it would be once the afk counter is introduced, which means that counter can also count the maximum time of sims activenes and if sim was active for five days in total (all the time he played) he would be rewarded one lock point.

The other thing though, is reward system you are talking about. You need to be more specific. Yes, I agree that there should be active quests, but there shall not be afk objects involved. Rewarding players for afk-ing is motivating players to go afk. Also, you need to specify how the system works. Dailiy quests, like you just said, would ruin the economy if there were rewards every day, which means more money but nothing to spend it on. I'm more for the weekly quests in the weekend at the peak hour when most people are on.

And, I'm so sorry for missreading what you wrote. You basically wrote "as there is no stats and levels in this game" and I interpreted it as "as there is no levels and stats, maybe those should be introduced"... which pissed me off, but I was actually one at fault. Don't judge me please, it was 1AM.

P.S. What I meant by "economy has been fixed" I meant current economy problems have been fixed. No more heaps of money lots. I see that lot of people quit the game, but just as rhys said: "were they even playing it in the first place?"
 
Mixa97sr said:
I'm more for the weekly quests in the weekend at the peak hour when most people are on.
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Not sure if that would be "fair" given the playerbase is from all over the world. If, say, you decided to have something at 7pm EST then that's midnight in the UK and I'd likely be long tucked up in bed so I'd miss out. Same with Thai players. If you had 7pm UK time, that'd be like lunchtime to early afternoon in the US when many people might not be able to play due to other commitments.

I'm all for making challenges and things to stop people being AFK ... but it needs to be something that everyone can participate in due to the nature of timezones.
 
Weekends are peak days, so the quest shall last whole day, or even whole weekend. It is only fair to do it at weekends as most people play at that time.

That's what I wanted to say.
 
ajdown said:
Not sure if that would be "fair" given the playerbase is from all over the world. If, say, you decided to have something at 7pm EST then that's midnight in the UK and I'd likely be long tucked up in bed so I'd miss out. Same with Thai players. If you had 7pm UK time, that'd be like lunchtime to early afternoon in the US when many people might not be able to play due to other commitments.

I'm all for making challenges and things to stop people being AFK ... but it needs to be something that everyone can participate in due to the nature of timezones.
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My idea would be to do it like "clash Royale" where your daily is like their chest system. You have to collect 10 of them every 24 hours independent from when you start. So let's say you start at 5pm and finish at 7pm. Your next daily will be at 5pm again. Since you battle against player all around the world I think that's a fair system they have. If you are to busy to finish your daily for that day it will carry over to the next day up to 48hrs. And the timer resets as soon as the first daily is done. I'm a little bad in explaining the system they have but I hope u get what I mean. This way people in Asia have the same amount of time as someone in the US.
 
I personally don't like the idea of daily quests, because, as I stated already, everyday rewards would actually ruin the economy and it wouldn't be fair.

Let's take a look at this scenario:
- Player A is extremely active player that actually plays FreeSo 6 hours daily, every single day of the weekend (Yes this is a realistic scenario).
- Player B is not that active, but is still passionate about the game. He plays the game 4 hours a week on weekends, on work days he has work to do.

Consequence of this scenario is that player A would have all the benefits over player B as he would have chance to win daily challenges every single day, while player B only has chance to win daily challenges on weekend. After a longer period of time (say 6 months), player A would be so ahead of player B in challenges that player B would not even bother with them anymore.

That's why I'm saying that we should implement weekly, monthly (specific holiday/special day of the month) and annual challenges. All of them should be available on weekends, when it's only fair.
 
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Mixa97sr said:
I personally don't like the idea of daily quests, because, as I stated already, everyday rewards would actually ruin the economy and it wouldn't be fair.

Let's take a look at this scenario:
- Player A is extremely active player that actually plays FreeSo 6 hours daily, every single day of the weekend (Yes this is a realistic scenario).
- Player B is not that active, but is still passionate about the game. He plays the game 4 hours a week on weekends, on work days he has work to do.

Consequence of this scenario is that player A would have all the benefits over player B as he would have chance to win daily challenges every single day, while player B only has chance to win daily challenges on weekend. After a longer period of time (say 6 months), player A would be so ahead of player B in challenges that player B would not even bother with them anymore.

That's why I'm saying that we should implement weekly, monthly (specific holiday/special day of the month) and annual challenges. All of them should be available on weekends, when it's only fair.
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It's not about your personal experience if you started already or not. That's why it is a BETA!

also are you just stating to us that you're not a competitive spirit and this looks to me more like an personal problem as well.

I have the feeling that you're just not liking the idea and try everything you can to sabotage it. If you don't like it just move on and let people improve it instead of just bashing it like you do.
Have a nice day mixta
 
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Wtf... I'm just trying to make the idea appeasable to everyone. You may not like it but some people have lives and they can play the game only at certain time. This game is not all about comptetiton. If players were bombarded with quests, would this still be The Sims game?

I am not bashing you nor saying: "His Idea shall be overlooked, his post deleted and he shall be banned from the forum because I don't like him!!!". I was just stating my look on things. Have you ever heard of the debate? I am saying that quests are a great idea and are a fun way to get people to do different things than just money/skill, but that it's not fair if they were deployed every day. Think about the scenario I wrote in my previous post, and then tell me why it is not a feasible argument over your idea. Look at it from the gameplay point of view. Not if you or me are going to benefit from it, but if the game and community is going to benefit from it.

And also, it is not my personal problem. I am playing the game every day for few hours. I'm just thinking about everything and everyone because I know few players that despite being busy still find time to enjoy FreeSo.

I am not going to reply here anymore after this. There is no reason to argue over something so trivial.
 
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