We had that problem. We had our background sim, we had things we wanted done. We had players. But we needed to incentivise players to actually do the missions. Good will and begging only get you so far.
We gave our players missions for BGS activities:
The above is from our public missions today, but it works similarly to what we had. The problem was our players each had their own agendas, goals and reasons for being in the Prismatic Imperium, not all of which meant a player wanted to work our BGS. So we started adding 'diamond prizes' to missions.
We quickly needed these to mean something so ranks and reputation were added based on our new 'diamond currency'. Diamonds can also be earned through roleplay or players gifting to each other or even hiring one another to do missions for their own agendas. Our different branches also started using diamonds so if you do Guardians missions or visit Sag A* you also get diamonds as a reward.
They can also spend these things in our market:
To buy things for their character. These things are decorative, bragging rights or used in roleplay or all three.
It's a complex system, built up and layered over time, each step having its own reason, but the Prismatic Imperium has built a game within a game all around our Background Simulation.
So that's how we do things and it began over a discussion about how to get players to do missions, but involved a lot of people (planners, website, artwork) and still does to this day. What it allowed us to do was involve our players more, take the stress off the three members actually doing the BGS and gave us a reward system outside of BGS, we even use it for Power Play.
I hope this helps inspire others or give an idea as to what can be done.
We gave our players missions for BGS activities:
The above is from our public missions today, but it works similarly to what we had. The problem was our players each had their own agendas, goals and reasons for being in the Prismatic Imperium, not all of which meant a player wanted to work our BGS. So we started adding 'diamond prizes' to missions.
We quickly needed these to mean something so ranks and reputation were added based on our new 'diamond currency'. Diamonds can also be earned through roleplay or players gifting to each other or even hiring one another to do missions for their own agendas. Our different branches also started using diamonds so if you do Guardians missions or visit Sag A* you also get diamonds as a reward.
They can also spend these things in our market:
To buy things for their character. These things are decorative, bragging rights or used in roleplay or all three.
It's a complex system, built up and layered over time, each step having its own reason, but the Prismatic Imperium has built a game within a game all around our Background Simulation.
So that's how we do things and it began over a discussion about how to get players to do missions, but involved a lot of people (planners, website, artwork) and still does to this day. What it allowed us to do was involve our players more, take the stress off the three members actually doing the BGS and gave us a reward system outside of BGS, we even use it for Power Play.
I hope this helps inspire others or give an idea as to what can be done.
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Very Nice!! It's great to give players a sense of purpose to do stuff in the game, specially when you reach the end game point. I think the game could really benefit from some in game mechanic that does this, and I hope it gets implemented with the player group "Squadrons" announced at FDev Expo. Something like the community goal system, but internal to groups and that can be setup by the Squadron leaders would be very nice indeed.
