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Share your creative ideas / Monetary incentives or costs
« on: December 15, 2009, 07:12:04 AM »
I suppose the administrators have already decided how they want to deal with gender and identity issues, however, I just though I would throw in my ideas here anyway.
It seems to me that various behaviors that people consider objectionable could be reduced to a manageable level by assigning a cost to them in A$ currency. This would allow people to do things if they really need to do so, but they could not do then repeatedly or casually because it would just cost too much money.
To pick some examples, and I am not saying that these are the correct costs, but suppose the game assigned a cost of A$100 to a gender change, and A$50 to a name change. So a person could do these actions if they really wanted to and they had the money in their account. But obviously no one would be able to shift genders 10x per night every night, because they would run out of money very fast.
Another issue is that many people especially women dislike "cold invites" and use various means to discourage this behavior. And I sympathize with their feelings. Suppose the game assigned a small "room charge" of A$1 to inviting someone into a room. (The person being invited would never pay, and if the invite was rejected perhaps that would also cost A$0.) This would tend to discourage "cold invites" and cause people to "chat first" which I believe is the desired behavior for many participants here. Chatting would always be free.
Certainly there are problems with this whole scheme. The main one being free members start with A$0 in their accounts. Well, they would have to make some friends to invite them, or friends who would gift them A$, or else even free members could get a small monthly "allowance" of A$25 or whatever, much lower than the A$1000 of premium members. And probably this would require both men and women to be able to give and receive gifts. Another problem would be if costs got too high for the average active player to cope with, but that could be adjusted by increasing or decreasing costs, income, or both.
I am just throwing this idea out for discussion. Thanks.
It seems to me that various behaviors that people consider objectionable could be reduced to a manageable level by assigning a cost to them in A$ currency. This would allow people to do things if they really need to do so, but they could not do then repeatedly or casually because it would just cost too much money.
To pick some examples, and I am not saying that these are the correct costs, but suppose the game assigned a cost of A$100 to a gender change, and A$50 to a name change. So a person could do these actions if they really wanted to and they had the money in their account. But obviously no one would be able to shift genders 10x per night every night, because they would run out of money very fast.
Another issue is that many people especially women dislike "cold invites" and use various means to discourage this behavior. And I sympathize with their feelings. Suppose the game assigned a small "room charge" of A$1 to inviting someone into a room. (The person being invited would never pay, and if the invite was rejected perhaps that would also cost A$0.) This would tend to discourage "cold invites" and cause people to "chat first" which I believe is the desired behavior for many participants here. Chatting would always be free.
Certainly there are problems with this whole scheme. The main one being free members start with A$0 in their accounts. Well, they would have to make some friends to invite them, or friends who would gift them A$, or else even free members could get a small monthly "allowance" of A$25 or whatever, much lower than the A$1000 of premium members. And probably this would require both men and women to be able to give and receive gifts. Another problem would be if costs got too high for the average active player to cope with, but that could be adjusted by increasing or decreasing costs, income, or both.
I am just throwing this idea out for discussion. Thanks.