Mission Maker Incentives

[Kissy My]

thanks for the compliment Ari

apparently, I haven't come across these 1 - 1 1/2 minutes missions... there are 2 that I have and do play that can be completed in 4 mins (maybe even less for ppl who do them a lot) and find them both to be entertaining.. Do the less then 4 min missions fall off approval or pay less?

Maybe it's a perspective/preference thing. I do and have played many life simulating missions and enjoy them. There's plenty of room for all kinds.

But if the payout system is changed to time based, that effects mine/others and would put mine/others others at a disadvantage. Just like the longer play missions are dealing with.
That's why I think a 2 tier system would work better.

But, back to the original idea of this post, rewards for making missions

[Icey Fireheart]

long and short of it is people want short missions now you forget alot of people work now and dont want to spend all there time on here doing long missions they want to enjoy the game before they have to log off because they have work next day

[Aribella Lafonte]

I don’t think you guys get it. The biggest part of mission maker incentives isn’t getting an item award for the numerous amount of missions they could make, it’s about what drives us to want to make one in the first place. For me, it’s about expressing myself, sharing that creativity for others to enjoy (or hope to) and to get plays. I think a lot of us mission makers feel that way. But to hear that our missions are undesirable because they are too long (again anything over 5 min is found to be too long) that really kills the incentive to make one. We already suffer less plays and don’t get any recognition or respect on the mission panel. I’ve already considered removing all my missions from the approved panel, including The Boogeyman. Thanks, Icey for your clarification. I think I just might follow up on that, they don’t get the plays anyway and there really isn’t any support from Staff trying to fix this problem.I won’t be creating any more.

[Noctus Silvet]

For those who do not see the need for change. It isn't just a token reward issue for makers/players, mission creators should be earning XP, in addition, to players earning tokens/XP.

Why? Think of Kissy, Aribella and Geno as landlords. Their mission space is their 'land'.

They are required to rent it out to you, for at least 5 minutes, but if they rent it out any longer, they will earn no more rent money. Landlord rent profit is currently capped at 100tokens/5 minutes (oh, and by the way, your landlord receives 0XP no matter how long you stay). Meanwhile, the renter can stay there all they want, if they wish, but I don't know why they would, as they won't earn anything beyond 1000tokens/250XP. So, why bother staying on the 'land' any longer than 5 minutes, right?

Landlords, are paid no more than 100tokens/0XP, as long as they allow you 5 minutes, on their 'land'.

In economics, this is called a price ceiling.

Let's consider, the price of gold is not going to go down. Do you think your landlords are going to keep making nice pieces of land, for you to occupy for 5 minutes, when they are earning 100 tokens and 0 XP?

Everyone, missions players and mission makers, should be earning XP and tokens based on the rate of time spent on the 'land'. Land should not be shoved into tiers or an unchangeable flat rate. Just like in real life, rent should simply be rented out based on the time occupied. This is just my two cents. Appreciate all the perspectives shared here and hope to see more.

[Kissy My]

Ari.. don't remove any missions .. your missions are awesome!

Icey, I won't lie.. your comment made me LOL .. I am an old time gamer. I worked 2 jobs (1full and 1 parttime), raised 2 kids and took care of my disabled mom for a very long time. and still found about 2 hours a day to play video games. 10 mins is not a long time for a mission and most times it only takes that long the first play.. when you play that mission again you will get thru it faster.

So, let me ask... if you got half the xp and tokens for a 5 min mission and full xp and tokens for a longer mission.. would you still play the shorter ones, and then need to play 2 to make the same?

Noctus... I agree that mission makers should be getting xp.. everything in the game, including arena have their own skills path. Making missions isnt even included in art.
Why, especially since it is directly connected with building levels and completing loyalty.

[Geno Lindley]

One thing I can agree on is the need for players to get XP while creating a mission.
You get XP for putting your head in a widget.
You get XP for sculpting.
You get XP for painting.
You get XP for playing missions.
You get XP for playing Arena games.

You do NOT get any XP while creating a mission!

[Jamie Bondason]

I like the idea of XP for creating a mission; maybe the team could add a "Storyteller" XP path? The XP tiers could be: LVL1-9: Novice Novelist; LVL10-19 Developing Dramatist; LVL20-29 Authentic Author; LVL30-39 Wonderful Writer; LVL40-49 Talented Tell-Tale; LVL50+ Perfect Pen(wo)man. IDK, just thought I'd follow the alliteration for funnsies! But my thesaurus was doing A LOT of hard work there.

As for tackling the discrepancy in the attention that story-based missions received compared to simulation missions (coffee shops, hair salons, etc.) I think a basic step could be to bring back Featured Missions in some form. Whether this be community-powered where missions can be submitted and then put to a poll, where the top 4 or so are featured for a month, then the process repeats, where previously featured missions are not accepted for resubmission. Featured missions also pay a premium in tokens and XP, incentivising a player to choose an 8-10 minute mission over a 3-5 minute one. This way, it keeps the missions on offer fresh, makes sure that quality is still recognised and rewarded, and shines a light on missions that may get buried in the 450+ list of approved missions. As it's community-powered, the only thing the SV team would have to do is put together the monthly poll. I understand reverting back to the old Featured Missions system from SW would be a large undertaking for the SV team, so community-powered initiatives alleviate some of that undertaking too.

Another simple fix that could help for the future is amending the approved panel to show the newest approved missions first. Talking from experience, my mission was recently approved but was randomly dumped somewhere in the middle of the 450+ approved missions, meaning that you'd really have to be looking for a new mission to play to find it; otherwise, people will just continue to play the missions they're aware of. By showing the newest approved first, at least future new missions would be easily acknowledged- whether they get plays is another thing, but the current algorithm or way new approved missions are listed makes very little sense to me, and the fate of your mission is effectively left to chance, where it can be buried amongst missions that have been approved for months now.

Loving the discussions surrounding the mission community, though! Very positive that we have people putting forward creative and/or logical solutions to incentivise mission making and reward creativity!

long and short of it is people want short missions now you forget alot of people work now and dont want to spend all there time on here doing long missions they want to enjoy the game before they have to log off because they have work next day

Of course, there will always be people who play missions for the grinding aspect, so they want to maximise the amount of XP they earn in their limited available time; no matter what incentives exist for people to make good missions, there will always be those who chose their time over their engagement/enjoyment. But there will be people who enjoy a good mission, who maybe have more spare time to engage with missions, or who are totally fine using their limited available time to play decent missions. I think a huge part of the discourse is that finding these decent missions can be difficult amongst all the "simulation" type missions. Additionally, I think that there are a few things that can be done to make playing good missions worth the time, such as premium payouts. But you do raise a valid point, Icey, that if you're short on time, you would absolutely choose a 4-minute coffee shop mission over a 10-minute story-based mission under the current system.

[Sarah Spunda]

Such great points made here and I agree with many of them. SV did say in comments in another mission changes/incentives post that there are changes coming soon. This was a couple weeks ago. Hopefully they are listening to all of these suggestions and whatever changes they are planning will be worth the way. I am baffled that in the year (?) that SV has been up and going that there haven't been any improvements or rotation or something in the approved missions panel. Fingers crossed they are putting a lot of thought into it and something will change soon.

[Penguin Disco]

I guess I'll put my two cents in here....back in the early days of SmallWorlds, there was some kind of algorithim that was used to determine XP and token payouts earned from playing missions. There was a thread on this very subject with a lot of us making guesses as to what the formula was to determine the rewards. The Devs were mum on giving any hints either. Then, enter Lap missions.........someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe after the Lap mission craze, SW changed the mission arena. Your missions had to be approved, and payouts became static. There was no incentive for mission creators to build missions with any kind of substance and storyline. By the time this was introduced, there were many people who played SW that enjoyed missions and continued to play some of the more involved (translated: longer playing) missions. But for newer players especially, the anticipation of playing a "good" mission kinda fell by the wayside. If one reason for playing missions was for the monetary reward and not to "enjoy" the story, then the bigger reason for playing missions was to farm XP and tokens.
Fast forward to SmallVerse. This game is lightyears ahead of where SmallWorlds was this early after releasing the game out of beta. So as the masses sign up to play, wanting to play missions for the joy of what that entails change and becomes an exercise mainly concerned in gaining XP and tokens, and as fast as possible.
I would like to see the game revert back to using the algorithim SmallWorlds used back at its inception, or something very similar. That way the payout was based on something other than just being "approved".
I'll also add this.... I think the creative and imaginative minds of mission makers is still out there wanting to be unleashed. I'm not so sure as to the real interest of the general SV population to play missions. I think at this point in time there is sort of a consensus (among some) that playing missions is drudgery (because of the focused interest in reward and not enjoyment) possibly from a lack of intuition and no desire to use what little they have. So creating missions that pull the player into the story is something that quite a few have no interest in. They only want their XP and tokens. Making incentives is a good thing for mission creators and players alike. The suggestions above show some promise. Not sure about the amount of effort coming from the Devs to make these kinds of major changes. Sorry, not trying to be a negative Nancy, but my feelings probably stem from the game of old and not considering the new Team in place.

Ahhh the lap missions lol. I remember doing those when I was low on tokens because the payout was decent because of their popularity (the popular a mission was, the greater the payout). I don't think you got 1000 tokens in most cases though, so that was the nice part of them switching to the approved missions system. uilding off of what everyone else has said though, I am totally on board for a tiered system, and it could be based on average completion time or testing time. There could also be some moderator discretion too, since they have to test the missions out anyways for approval.

As for incentives, I totally agree that this needs to be a thing. I'm itching to start creating, but I can't buy anything with real money at the moment and I'm slowly working through some offers to get enough gold to buy a space or two. I don't mind the initial hustle and investment, but it would be nice to get a kickback after my efforts. Again, this could be awarded based on moderator discretion, so long as they're clear with the criteria of what they're looking for (story driven, nicely decorated, time of mission, etc.). Mission making contests would also be super helpful!