On Wed, Apr 19, 2023 at 5:02 PM ais523 via agora-business <agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote: > In conclusion: the way the reset from a radiance win works has > something of a design conflict with the way that radiance is actually > rewarded. Get rid of the reset, and suddenly that conflict is gone, and > many mechanics that were previously broken (and are causing friction in > the gameplay at present) start working. As a bonus, the resulting win > condition has enough historical parallels to seem like it's likely to > function correctly, but few enough (and different enough) that it might > produce a new (or at least "new to most current players") style of > gameplay.
First of all, thank you for an excellent thesis draft. Your well-researched outlining of win types in Agora, and history/general analysis of radiance, are very thesis-worthy (and generally has my support for a thesis) whether or not subsequent discussions lead to changes in your final draft. However, I disagree with your solution, as a proposal. When I proposed the reintroduction of points back in Feb '22 [note: I'm just gonna use 'points' instead of 'radiance' in this discussion], it was a conscious experiment of "can we play with the old Suber win condition, which is rewards primarily for proposals?" And my conclusion, after reflecting on your thesis is: no, the game really doesn't support that any more, at least not for a simple "points based on voting results" mechanic (regardless of the exact formula connecting points to the voting results). The reason it works in Suber-nomic is because Suber-nomic is envisioned as a game that ends like a finite boardgame, with the single win condition protected by an immutable rules. Under that model, proposals are the only path to winning. This means that the play (by immutable default) focuses on cutthroat coalitions where proposals are primarily vehicles for points (e.g. straight up "this proposal awards this coalition points" proposals) and the mechanic leads into gameplay of last-minute coalition betrayals to come out on top. In that model, of course, only one person wins, and the reset is meant to simulate that dynamic. However, in our "multi-sector" Agora (which is as much a gaming community as a single game), the problem is deeper, and that model doesn't work - for two reasons. First, in a mult-sector game, people make proposals for all kinds of reasons, and having votes influenced by factors other than the ideas in the proposal is annoying. We have to ask, then: does the addition of simple "earn some points for regular activities like proposals and voting" cause people to act in ways that are "more fun" in terms of gameplay? The answer to me is no: people will either (1) just propose proposals and ignore the points they accumulate, resulting in the win being just a boring checkmark/consequence of things they would have done anyway, (2) good proposals will lose for bad reasons, or (3) people will spam proposals (or CFJs) to get points. None of this is desirable. Second, we, in general, have the problem of the over commodification of winning (making win types overly transactional). It's acceptable in Agora to say "I'll trade you a win in Subgame A for a win in Subgame B" or even "I'll give you a win for [some non-winning benefit]". This really hampers game design sometimes - with nix's current tournament for example, there's already a contract out there to trade in-tournament position for out-of-tournament benefits. While we consider this fine socially (unless the tournament explicitly asks us not to), it also hampers people who "just want to play the tournament as written" when other players are buying position with out-of-tournament commodities. As you've outlined, the accumulation of Stamps is a reflection of this problem - people have basically wins-for-sale to the highest bidder. If we remove the "reset" condition, this becomes worse, because it removes all cost of helping someone win. If you can help someone win without resetting your own position, there's basically no cost to kingmaking - you can help someone win, then you can win the next day in the same way - and again, the whole exercise becomes uninteresting. If we're going to allow trading between games, there has to be some cost within each game (like having your own points reset) or else the win just becomes another bit of dull trading of favors for free. We've had "rewards for proposals" work successfully in a few ways, that you mention in your thesis. Ribbons does this by making the rewards for specific, interesting proposal-related achievements, which reduces the commodification. For example, it's far more interesting for 4st to "donate" half-ideas to others in the hope of winning a co-authorship Lime, then it would be if e just put those proposals up for voting to gain points. On a more grindy-level, Glitter (small awards mirroring ribbons) was more interesting than points based on straight-up voting results - IIRC, voting based on glitter happened once or twice, but was really rare, so the glitter was a nice bonus for re-doing a clever ribbon achievement. Similarly what made AAA interesting was the speculation on crops (numbers that matched upcoming proposals), not the actual voting part. So overall, just a simple "remove the reset" would not make a good game - I won't say it would be "worse", but I don't think it would be "good". My suggestions would be either repeal entirely (preferably while replacing with something entirely different/unrelated), or a rather complete redesign of what awards points in the first place, along the lines of glitter, AAA, or something entirely new. -G.
