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The Reward Loop

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Mirikon

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« on: <03-13-19/2324:03> »
So, I was watching some youtube videos talking about some of the problems facing games like World of Warcraft and Anthem, and it reminded me of the main gripe I've always had with Shadowrun: the Reward Loop. Now, I love the lore of Shadowrun. The setting, the characters, the 'not a hero' approach that is so different from most games out there, all of it speaks to me. But ever since I started playing, I've come up against the same issue, time and again: there is no meaningful progression.

In other games, you do a thing, you get shinies (money or gear) and XP, which translates simply and easily to progression for your character. In D&D, this is whenever you get a new level, and you can usually count on leveling at least once or twice in a standard module. In M&M or Champions/HERO System, you get PP or CP, which you can use to improve your character. The costs are flat x amount of points equals y amount of improvement, depending on what you're doing. You get a couple fights under your belt, you probably already have enough points to improve something, maybe even one of your core abilities. Regardless, you know what the score is, and there is always a sense that your character is progressing.

In Shadowrun, that just isn't there. Unless you're looking for new shiny guns or need nuyen for something, your progression is essentially flatter than a coke that has been left open for three months. If you're a mage, or a technomancer, or someone wanting to improve your skills, you're looking at sometimes 10+ runs worth of XP to bump up a single die. There is a reason why people talking on the character creation section mention that what your skills and attributes are after chargen are pretty much what they will always be for the duration of a campaign, unless you're one of the really lucky ones who gets into a campaign that is going to last a decade or two. Standard run gives, say, 4-6 karma. That means a blade-focused street sammy needs to save up 10-14 runs worth of karma to go from a 6 to 7 in Blades. They actually have it easy, since they can also improve with nuyen, by getting ware, or new gear, and so on. Other archetypes, especially the ones that improve solely on karma (see: Awakened or Emerged), or their improvement relies on MASSIVELY expensive items (see: deckers and riggers) are looking at just as steep costs, and no progression in that time. The reward loop is broken for those archetypes, and advancement and progression feel stagnant. That is why so many people look at minmaxing their characters in chargen, because they know that they'll never be better than they are then.

Fixing the problem is easy enough. You just have to kill off a white elephant that has been haunting the game for multiple editions: the increasing karma costs for advancement. Reduce it to a fixed point per rank, and advancement becomes possible for people who haven't been playing the same character for forever. Make it a fixed cost per rank, and the minmaxing loses some of its steam, allowing people to try more varied character types because they can actually grow into their role, and be effective at it. With a fixed point per rank, the reward loop doesn't become an unholy grind that makes me start looking over my shoulder to see if EA has suddenly shown up and shoved a cash shop in the game to do RMT to buy your next skill rank.
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PiXeL01

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« Reply #1 on: <03-14-19/0002:58> »
That’s why rewarding karma per run needs to go and be replaced by per session with actual karma rewards increased.

The amount of karma needed by mage/techno’s is through the roof even with the Missions’ concert karma/yen trick.

I reward on average 8 karma a session with more for when they complete the missions.
 I’ve been thinking to use a little bit from Anarchy and just payout in Karma and have the players themselves convert to nuyen as needed.

But yes, the grind is horrid though not as bad as Crossfire
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Michael Chandra

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« Reply #2 on: <03-14-19/0120:32> »
I think flat would get boring too fast, and devaluates the high attribute and high skill characters since they're nothing special. Some kind of slow growth might be better. (As in, slower increase than simply x2). I like Witch's system, but that only works due to the low values. A change could be something like '4 to learn new skill, 2+Current/2 to increase'. But yeah, plenty of options to houserule. Definitely not right for all tables though.

There's also this one downtime thing I know, which I think belongs to an RP forum? Dunno exactly, but it hands out various kinds of karma during downtime activities. Can be found here
« Last Edit: <03-14-19/0123:13> by Michael Chandra »
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Overbyte

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« Reply #3 on: <03-14-19/0200:44> »
We don't play very often so I jacked up the rewards similar to what Pixel was saying.
And I agree with Michael also. You can't have flat or high levels mean nothing.

Am actually having a little nuyen problem now, but that's because one of the players received massive rewards from another GM and now has most everything (Cyberware) he could possibly get.

"Standard run gives, say, 4-6 karma. That means a blade-focused street sammy needs to save up 10-14 runs worth of karma to go from a 6 to 7 in Blades"

Math?
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Michael Chandra

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« Reply #4 on: <03-14-19/0216:47> »
The last season of my campaign ended up having a bunch of runs with 7~9 karma (on top of the max 3 karma in downtime), since they involved some nasty enemies which also immediately triggered the 'holy shit you're facing THAT big thing?!' karma bonus. One player ended up with 10 Magic, but skills weren't improved much, only the Decker got some boosts there.

The upside of the Downtime thing I linked is that it gives out different kinds of karma. Because that's one big problem here: Yes, it's nice to boost Longarms from 6 to 8, and get that shiny new Quality, and raise a Knowledge Skill but something has to give. You won't take up knowledge skills if that means you lose out on that desired extra skill level. So handing out Quality-only and Knowledge-only karma is a nice way of rounding characters.

(By the way, don't forget training times. The karma can still take longer to use than to gain.)

To come back to WITCH: Fated Souls, by the way, there your attributes and skills go from 1 to 5, and you start with attribute points that don't allow for heavy stuff (even my 4 Intelligence was pushing it, and while my odds would have been better had I gone 5, it'd have hurt to have 2 1s). To take a new skill there costs 3 exp, while it's Currentx2 to level. Since the highest you can get is 4, that's rather significant. If you want to adapt to Shadowrun, you'd have to do a /2 or /3. That way, the amounts don't rise as much, making it easier to get higher ranks while making new skills actually hurt a bit.
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Tecumseh

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« Reply #5 on: <03-14-19/0253:56> »
I personally prefer scaled costs. I find that flat costs promote more min-maxing rather than more diversification.

My personal experience is that the Awakened advance quickly: 5 karma for a new spell or 13 karma for an initiation has the mages and adepts off and running after a run or two. Mundanes are stuck in first gear, although Jack of All Trades can alleviate some of the short-term pain. Still, that's not a long-term solution.

Instead of trying to slow down the Awakened, I try to speed up everything else to avoid the flat progression curve that Mikiron describes. I have a few approaches to both benefit mundanes and also to incentivize the Awakened to do something other than advance their Magic:

1) I use Anarchy's prices for advancing skills and attributes (but not special attributes):
- Skill = 1 karma * new rating
- Skill Group = 3 karma * new rating
- Attributes = 3 karma * new rating

2) I use the Chummer rule "Treat Metatype Attribute Minimum as 1 for the purpose of determining Karma costs". If you are a troll with a Body of 5, which is the metatype minimum, improving to Body 6 only costs 6 karma (2 * 3 karma), not 18 (6 * 3 karma).

3) I award a separate karma award specifically for developing knowledge skills and contacts. Knowledge karma is generally be 1/2 the amount of the normal karma award. This lets players develop who and what their character knows without feeling like it's inhibiting the growth of the rest of the skills and attributes.

These are all popular with my players and I haven't found them unbalancing. If anything, I find that they can help right the scales between the mundanes and the Awakened.

I'll be interested to hear what other approaches people use in their games.

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« Reply #6 on: <03-14-19/0326:31> »
@Tecumseh: That downtime document has 1 big exception by the way: Small Unit Tactics is banned from their bonus karma for knowledge skills. Which makes sense, because it's practically a cheap practical skill instead.

I like your numbers and think I'll consider them if I ever start another campaign, perhaps combine them with the downtime spending stuff document. (So replace their karma system with yours, keep the rest for easy tracking.)

Do you use the same numbers in chargen, btw? And Qualities remain double after chargen?
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Marcus

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« Reply #7 on: <03-14-19/0748:15> »
bah the answer is obvious increase your rewards. Karma, cash, whatever the player will enjoy.

The main book is always been just a guidelines.

You don't need change progression just do the math and figure out how much karma you need to make advancing meaningful.

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Fedifensor

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« Reply #8 on: <03-14-19/1000:20> »
Shadowrun is a bit different from other games in that the default character is pretty competent.  Rating 4 in a skill is "professional level for most jobs", and rating 6 is "you could easily sell your skills on the open market".  To compare to something like D&D, you're looking at 5th level characters instead of 1st level characters coming out of character generation.  Because you're not going from zero to hero, the leveling is a bit slower.


The big issue is that skills are expensive to buy up compared to many other things.  For the cost of going from 6 to 7 in a skill and getting 1 extra die, a character can initiate for the first time, or buy up to a 7 point positive quality.  Both of these things are going to have more impact than that extra die.  I've never seen a character have more than a skill 8 in anything, even in game with 400+ Karma...the points are better spent elsewhere.


Also, the original poster is just flat out wrong about time to raise skills.  Going from 6 to 7 in a skill is 14 Karma, and you should be getting 6 to 8 Karma per run if you don't flub the mission.  That's 2 to 3 runs, not 10.  The only way it will take that long is if the GM isn't giving you sufficient downtime to train.

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« Reply #9 on: <03-14-19/1037:14> »
We've been playing our campaign for about 4+ years twice a month/ 24 times a year.

Karma payouts are based on mission objectives achieved and handed out at the end of the campaign leg or "run".

They tend to work out to be @3-6 karma per session depending upon what the PCs do.

I also hand out bonus knowledge skills based on what the characters did during that leg of the campaign (so they might pickup "Ghost Cartels 1" or "Street Drugs 2" etc.).

It's worked out fine for us.

PCs are now around 200-350 karma depending upon when they joined the campaign.

Marcus

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« Reply #10 on: <03-14-19/1155:08> »
Look it's not a problem the concept of high reward isn't new and there is nothing wrong with it. Start at 10 karma as a base and go up from there. Not enough cash? Double that too. There isn't any wrong with changing rewards to fit your game. It's your game, do what is right for your table.


 
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Marcus

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« Reply #11 on: <03-14-19/1159:57> »
Add other reward mechanics, let the characters make money of the stock market as a resulting from the characters missions. Or give them a chance to drop karma into a service trip that rewards them with a pile if karma. Do favors.  Accept services in barter.
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« Reply #12 on: <03-14-19/1608:05> »
I for one enjoy the system Shadowrun, for the very reason that it is NOT a leveled system. Leveled systems as used by many games and CRPGs have always had an artificial feel to them. "Kill X number of bad guys, and suddenly you are stronger, you hit better, you fear the enemy less, and your survival increased by a factor of n/l...

But built into such a system is a progression of never ending stronger bad guys, that in the end breaks the very world everything happens in it. Take any mid level DnD game... "Stop the WHATSISFACE from doing bad things"... well that "whatsitsface" is usually the same level as you (if not higher to its a challenge to the party).. which means, and I really have to ask: How is there anyone left to even ask for help?!!?? That mid level monster is powerful enough to ROFLstomp an entire army.. and the only reason it as not left its lair is.... plot device.

And then there is the other side to the leveled system, which is the perpetually decreasing awards for the perpetually decreasing threats. Going back the the classic DnD example: the lowly Orc. At first level, armed with his greataxe, he makes even Barbarians wet themselves. ("attack that orc?!? Are you nuts?!?! He could one shot me with that thing!). And by level 10, you have fighters placing bets with each other over who is going to have the highest kill count, the fighter with two weapons, or the fighter with Great Cleave feats, while charging entire TRIBES of orcs...

Which leads to a second problem with leveled systems in general: Everything in an Experience Pinata. To many players, floating in the back of their heads is the thought "If I kill this thing - not matter what it is- how much closer does that get me to my next level?"
And lets not even talk about the meta of the leveled game (adventure-loot-level-adventure-loot-level)... At least SR tries to break that mold. But sadly this is just re-enforced by the current trend of CRPGs and MMOs which use that exact same formula (I have a feeling I know which youtube video you watched, but there have been tons recently), and heck has been the standard for almost 20 years of CRPGs and MMOs (warcraft anyone?)

In Shadowrun, a Ganger with a pistol is just as much a threat at 0 karma as he is with 1000 karma. The only difference generally is in the options you have to remove that ganger. SR has tried to fix the issue that you are talking about when they brought in limits. I think the theory was that if only "X" number of successes counted, then why improve the dice pool exceptionally past that point? (if your limit is 4, why improve your dice pool to 30 for that test?). But that kinda of fell apart when they started including fifteen different options to increase your limits.
Improving an attribute is the new rating x5... which means increasing a weak attribute is easy, but increasing an strong attribute is very hard... just like in real life. Took me a long, LONG time of training to get my reflexes to the point that I could compete in a professional fast draw tournament (like 5 years of practice everyday, for 3 hours a day, 50+ thigh  slaps from quick fires, hundreds of split thumbs and jammed wrists.... and I still didn't break the top 50 competitors)
Improving an active Skill is new rating x2.. which makes improving a weaker skill easy, but an established skill harder, again just like real life. I came out of trade school knowing how to do a High Voltage Slice (HVS), it took me THOUSANDS of HVS's to get that down to a 10 minute job that is perfect every time.

Shadowrun tries to mimic the challenges of increasing exceptional attributes and skills, as it is in the real world. And it IS difficult to increase exceptional performance in a human being; Look at the hours a day an Olympic Athlete spends on diet, exercise, training, and technique... They Spend YEARS training for a single event.. and generally only maintain their performance levels, not increase them. (if you loo at athletes that compete Olympic after Olympic, there is generally no increase from the previous year. In fact they usually drop a bit as age takes its toll..)   And make no mistake; when you are talking bout increasing an attribute from 5 to 6 or a skill from 7 to 10 range, you're talking Olympic level skill and attribute...

What I find as a bigger problem is how some GMs seem to approach SR world. They seem to have a leveled system mindset when they GM Shadowrun which leads to some..."Strange" constituencies which has several problems.
What I mean by this is that man GMs get into a head space that says to them "If the players can roll 20 dice on an attack, I need to have enemies that can roll 15 to 25 dice to challenge them!" which leads down the road to the gutter punk ganger whose in the top 0.0000000000000000000000001 percentile of the World's elite shooters with his dice pool of 30, "just because"...
And this in turn has the effect of making the character feel cheap, and ineffective... and leads to fustration as they feel their characters are not "good enough" and can't improve fast enough to be "effective and cool"..
(And really go look in the GM section, you'll see what I mean)

IF the GM stick to constant and "real" level of expectation in their NPCs, the players don't feel as "weak". (and NO, a dice pool of 20 for a ganger NOT is realistic!) Take a gander at the NPCs in the NPC section of the book, and compare that to the dice pools being used in your games....
 
« Last Edit: <03-17-19/1754:28> by Reaver »
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« Reply #13 on: <03-14-19/1925:19> »
...granted for the last few years I have only been involved in Missions play (for some reason where I live Home Brew campaigns tend to be somewhat sparse or fizzle out in a couple months).  With Missions I have at least been able to satisfy my weekly SR "fix" even if I have to deal with the limitations imposed.

OK in Missions, rewards generally are between 6 - 8 Karma and and 9,000¥ - 12,000¥ per run. Because most missions groups meet on a Weekly basis, these rewards can add up quickly if you run a single character consistently. There are also some special rewards for completing certain goals as well like being able to get a high availability item with no markup, higher grade augmentation at basic grade price, or a favour from one of the Missions NPCs/Contacts. Also there was a rule adopted which allowed a character to apply one tenth of his/her total Street Cred (rounded up) to reducing availability on a 1 for 1 basis (which came in really handy in the Season 8 missions). The downside, individual characters are only allowed to keep up to 5.000¥ in swag or money from sale of loot found, so yeah you can keep that Yamaha Raiden you found after a firefight as part of your swag "payment", but not the Ares Citymaster the oppos left behind.

Throughout the entire Chicago arc (seasons 5 - 8 + CMPs) I have primarily run two characters My namesake KK and Leela. Leela (who I have played the most) is a JoAT character, and currently sits at 449 career Karma. For her, the most time spent is improving skills, or an attribute. At most, it is 5 - 6 weeks of downtime (skill above 4 or an attribute.  In spite of her TKE, she is not all that powerful with respect to dice pools, her highest being Urban Sneaking at 17. Most others are, at best, around 12 dice.  For her, financial rewards are more important as she likes "new toys".  Being a JoAT, she not only saved Karma on skills but has an impressive array of both Active and Knowledge skills which pretty much take up a full page on a Chummer character record. Her one fault, she has Neoteny and PTSD (which I express through Distinctive Style as Neoteny is a prohibited quality in Missions) so people don't always take her seriously as she has the appearance, personality, and outlook of a young teenager (even though she's a genius who is in her 20s - long backstory).  Being a mundane, in a Home campaign she would be just about as diverse as she is in Missions, particularly as skills take rating x days up to rating 4 (so, for only three days downtime and 4 karma, she could have a base pool of 12 in a new combat or Agility based skill).

On the other hand, my Gunbunnny Adept, KK who is around 370 karma, is much more focused. The character is currently a grade 7 adept with a 7 Magic (she began with a Magic of 4). A good portion of the TKE she has came through the "Working for the People" option (money for Karma) which she used after just about every mission, while the total number of missions she's been is less than what Leela has gone through.  Even so, she pretty much spent a lot of time on her calendar, and funds for lifestyle on initiating (along with training to increase her Magic) as the process to achieve a new initiate grade is the new rating x 28 days (effectively one month intervals).  Her last initiation took five and a half months to complete as in missions all downtime functions must be done through buying hits.  Prior to that it took her 7 weeks to increase her Magic so a total of around 7 months between the two.

Now the one benefit of how Missions works is that outside of the actual sessions, downtime is considered "fluid", so matter how much downtime a character uses between sessions he/she can be played the very next week just as long as the time is marked off on the Missions Calendar and lifestyle costs are deducted from his/her available resources.  Not so in a home campaign. Unlike training to learn a new skill or "increase an attribute, Initiation has one more restriction, it cannot be put on "pause" while you go out on a job as once the character interrupts the process, she has to start all over again beginning (and the karma is still spent = eg. wasted).

So the issue is how to handle this so players of both mundane and awakened characters o the latter don't feel "held back" because of the longer amount of time it takes to make the improvements that are important to their "profession"? 

This is where not only Missions, but other game systems tend to be treat all character types more evenly so players of any Class/Archetype can see their characters grow at a reasonable rate.  Were KK in a Home Brew campaign, she would be lucky to have made it to initiate grade of 3 maybe 4, and possibly might have improved her magic to 5.  I would also have needed to develop a secondary character to play while she was out of action to remain involved for the other characters.
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Mirikon

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« Reply #14 on: <03-14-19/1936:50> »
I think flat would get boring too fast, and devaluates the high attribute and high skill characters since they're nothing special.
As it stands, they're already nothing special, because they are almost always NPCs, unless you either start at 200 karma after chargen, or you have been hauling the same character to every Missions event you can get to for a couple years. Might as well say that people having money devalues billionaires. It doesn't really matter if you're on the streets.


"Standard run gives, say, 4-6 karma. That means a blade-focused street sammy needs to save up 10-14 runs worth of karma to go from a 6 to 7 in Blades"

Math?

Going from 6 to 7 in an active skill is 56 karma. 6 x 9 is 54. 6 x 10 = 60. So 10 at the shortest. 4 x 14 = 56. So 14 at the highest.
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