Suggestion - Players can !credit SCPs

[benjifoxyy]

What does this suggestion change/add/remove:

SCP Credit ability for Foundation Staff (!credit)​

Add the ability for SCPs to be credited by Foundation Personnel for good roleplay.

Each SCP would of course need contextual credits to avoid abuse. And instead of it being every 5 minutes the credits should most likely be every 15 minutes.

Passive SCPs should be able to be credited by C2 personnel, and Dangerous SCPs by their clearance on the door. 682 creditable by CL4 for example, and 049 creditable by C3.

Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?:
I am unaware if it has.

Possible Positives of the suggestion (At least 2):
- Adds incentive for people to flag on SCPs when asked.

- Helps new people playing passive SCPs, Passive SCP Breaches and such to actually have an XP reward.

- Helps newer players level up SCP Quicker.

Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
- Could result in XP Farming but I'm sure there is already a solution to this with the regular crediting system.

Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
I feel this suggestion should be accepted because currently there is very little to do as an SCP while waiting to breach, and being asked to flag on is basically a 99% of the time boring sampling, 0.5% of the time a test, and the other 0.5% a breach. At least add a way to get SCP XP for the time.

Thankyou!

 

[Emilia Foddg]

-/+ Whatever Outcome Auburn Thinks Is Best Since I'm Basically Just Copying His Stance Wholesale On This Issue At This Point

So first off -

Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?:
I am unaware if it has.

This has been suggested to death and back, although I don't blame you for not checking, since XenForo search has a lot of issues with it - As well as an entire domain name change happening recently, but there have been in fact so many suggestions, that the FAQ was changed to filter out simple changes to !crediting; I distinctly recall suggestions such as "let X job credit Y job" (It's worth noting that I also did one of these that was just "Hey, you know all these jobs that can't credit D-Class? Let however many you deem fit to credit D-Class, credit D-Class," to which the summary response was 'none'), "add a menu for crediting," etc. Just a lot of little frivolous things which is highly likely to be the reason for the FAQ change. So I'll try and lend you a hand when it comes to making - Starting with a suggestion I wrote back in April on overhauling the entire crediting system, which in itself was a re-opening of a prior suggestion I wrote in January on making SCPs creditable, and that was a re-opening of Mirai's suggestion from last June on the same topic. What a tower of duct tape this is turning out to be.

Let's work back through these relevant past suggestions from the start -

Spoiler: Mirai's Suggestion

As I stated in a previous suggestion, this is the earliest discoverable suggestion that tackles the concept of crediting SCPs, with earlier discussion potentially being back before the suggestions subforum was even a thing, back when they were a Discord-only thing - The literal first reply even states that it has been denied several times prior (Which in itself was disputed as, as I said, it's very hard to find. I love suggestion archaeology, don't you?), so it's highly likely. Could also be a case of people publicly bringing it up to relevant staff and them just saying 'no'.

It was denied with the following reason:

Content believes this would be very complicated to do - due to most SCPs being hostile - the !credit wouldn't work - Plus we believe this system could be very easily abused - worse than the current set up

I'm still half-half on this - Again, I recognise the technical challenges; Fun fact, you can flag on to an SCP from any faction, whether it's Foundation, CI, GOC or Civilians; This may conflict with how crediting works (For example, a CI flags onto an SCP for a test as asked for in OOC, system would probably have hang-ups about cross-faction crediting as even though the CI is on an SCP, they're on their CI character and are therefore in a separate faction from the researcher who would likely be crediting them)? I'm not particularly sure how to navigate this?

I know in that thread, Auburn had a pretty good idea, in which he said:

Could just make it so crediting the box credits the person

Which would most likely require an implementation on that front, having a specific interaction of some kind, having some kind of UI pop up with the containment box, etc.

Anyway, about abuse... Eh? I'll admit it's a concern, but weighed against the non-combative/combative divide as i bring up later, not really enough by itself to justify not exploring it further. I'm aware that there's some extant abuse with existing crediting systems for D-Class and such, but that in itself isn't really a 1:1 comparison here as I also bring up later, but as far as I'm aware, most tests, people do seem to generally behave and when someone isn't, it's usually the SCP; Which would be an example of a situation where not crediting them when we normally could, would server to help small-scale - Normally you'd just call a sit for FailRP or w/e.

As things stand, people presently tend to throw money at SCPs that co-operate in tests and such anyway (I don't know if /give is still doable, I recall /giving 106 money for some 106 juice in the past), but it would be nice to be able to credit them.

Spoiler: My Prior Suggestion on Crediting SCPs

In which simply re-opened Mirai's suggestion more thoroughly, asking for a way to credit SCPs as a way to incentivise people to roleplay more on SCP jobs - To the point where I went into detail (as I am wont to do, if it wasn't already obvious from the sheer length of this post) exhaustively listing all SCPs (at the time) that I believed should be considered to be eligible for this change, listing the jobs that I believe would be eligible to give credit (Although for some reason I didn't include any GOC jobs in that list, which I guess was because at the time I wasn't aware of the GOC job and progression structure, so as a result I wasn't confident enough to provide an opinion on the matter?) and attempting to speculate on methods with which this could be achieved, as well as exploring reasons why this change is needed and what issues it may have.

And that was denied for:

The Content Team has chosen to deny your suggestion because SCP levels are purposefully made to be hard to obtain and a credit system would make it easier.

To which I initially just thought "Ok, well then just raise the EXP requirements for SCP levels to accommodate a new source" before going over it some more and thinking that you probably can't just change levels for one specific thing in vWar without going over and addressing everything else - Which made me then think about all possible sources of EXP, where you get it, how you get it, etc. And realised that the server environment as a whole would need a complete re-evaluation of the entire system if it was going to be able to support this and potentially other changes, as well as maybe smoothing out other issues present. It's a whole can of worms, but it prompted my subsequent suggestion:

Spoiler: My Prior Suggestion On Overhauling the Levelling & Crediting System Entirely

It was very focused on trying to allow for SCP crediting, but the idea was there - The suggestion was just "Go over all the level categories, what levels are needed for jobs, improve incentive for roleplaying, make it easier/simpler for everyone, optimise crediting and approving credits, make it more RP-friendly and conducive, maybe rebalance how much EXP is given for what, what EXP is needed for what levels, what levels are needed for certain jobs? Then allow for SCPs to be credited in accordance with that."

The idea being that you'd have more methods to get EXP, but you'd potentially need more EXP for a level, and/or more levels for a job - So it would balance out.

Which was denied for:

This change to the overall crediting and levelling system would be very time consuming for something that isn't deemed necessary right now. Additionally we do not think making SCPs creditable would be beneficial for RP since we don't want credit to become a driving force behind SCP roleplay interactions. We have also recently taken a look at crediting systems on the server and are actively monitoring it for potential changes.

I disagree that it's not necessary - Maybe not urgent per se, but the fact of the matter is that it is a well-known staff position that the non-combative/combative balance is skewed heavily in favour of combative behaviour, especially since the release of Dimensions which ended up being a giant raid buff and is generally primarily used combatively. Which means that, since I can't imagine Dimensions would be removed, incentives for encouraging roleplay are needed even more than before Dimensions released and its impact on the roleplay environment was realised.

Although I do agree that having a giant audit of the whole thing would be too time consuming for this purpose - What might be more reasonable, is just a small scale version wherein the levels needed for certain SCPs are increased and crediting SCPs is added at the same time, that way you get virtually the same thing, a new source of EXP that encourages roleplay without accelerating the intended rate of progression too much. That's really my only gripe with this right now - Everything else has largely been thoroughly discussed.

Crediting should be a tool to fuel and positively reinforce roleplay interactions, which would greatly help with this whole server-wide thing I mention above where the non-combative/combative imbalance needs to be addressed.

I'd like to bring up a couple things raised in a couple of the suggestion denials I've linked above, that even though they're for not specifically for SCPs are still particularly relevant here:

We also feel it would dilute the credit system with it being much easier to give them out en mass.

Relates back to what I was saying above, with the issue of another source of EXP making it easier for people to climb through levels quicker, and how that interferes with progression.

SSL do not believe more ways to receive XP would be beneficial for the new player experience, and would be a detriment to someone learning how the server operates.

This is pretty relevant when you consider 999, 073, 912, 173, 457, 860; The very start of the SCP gameplay progression loop where new players typically start out when playing as SCPs - I would like to point out how combative-oriented things are with this currently; For starters, the server listing for both US and UK directly advertises the breach queue as a selling point, which attracts people primarily wanting to do breach gameplay. This is fine from a fiscal perspective, but is concerning when it comes to the non-combative/combative server balance. Then you've got the fact that even though yes, non-combative roleplay with the SCPs is entirely possible by virtue of tests and events and such, the primary and largest source of EXP for SCPs is from combative actions, which further incentivises and encourages breaching and combative actions on SCP jobs.

So while "It exists" is a thing, there's not a whole lot of "Why would I do it?" when compared to MRDM simulator. Ergo, I argue that even though again, this particular point is aimed at jobs in general and that having more ways for them to earn EXP would be detrimental to them learning how the server operates, which I agree with - Thinking about this from an SCP perspective, when virtually their only method to earn EXP is from killing, I think that's also detrimental to someone new to the server learning how it operates.

 

[Niox]

-/+ Whatever Outcome Auburn Thinks Is Best Since I'm Basically Just Copying His Stance Wholesale On This Issue At This Point

amazing

 

[Guts]

encourage roleplay, discourage sampling

invent a button on each entrance to an SCP that when pressed, begins a cooldown for like 5-10 minutes

after that has passed, everyone participating gets rewarded with XP depending on their job

 

[Dayumian max]

I thought this was getting implemented already

 

[auburn wick gramme]

pls get that da,m ralsei pic out the suggestion thank u also +support

 

[Douglas]

+support
scp xp the hardest to get

 

[werta600]

This is pretty relevant when you consider 999, 073, 912, 173, 457, 860; The very start of the SCP gameplay progression loop where new players typically start out when playing as SCPs - I would like to point out how combative-oriented things are with this currently; For starters, the server listing for both US and UK directly advertises the breach queue as a selling point, which attracts people primarily wanting to do breach gameplay. This is fine from a fiscal perspective, but is concerning when it comes to the non-combative/combative server balance. Then you've got the fact that even though yes, non-combative roleplay with the SCPs is entirely possible by virtue of tests and events and such, the primary and largest source of EXP for SCPs is from combative actions, which further incentivises and encourages breaching and combative actions on SCP jobs.

So while "It exists" is a thing, there's not a whole lot of "Why would I do it?" when compared to MRDM simulator. Ergo, I argue that even though again, this particular point is aimed at jobs in general and that having more ways for them to earn EXP would be detrimental to them learning how the server operates, which I agree with - Thinking about this from an SCP perspective, when virtually their only method to earn EXP is from killing, I think that's also detrimental to someone new to the server learning how it operates.

Then SCPs should be able to be credited on tests.

The very start of SCP gameplay is a such a slog... you barely get XP from playing with non combative SCPs, and then the first combative one you can play is 035 which isnt even combative unless someone with a gun gets possesed. The real progression starts when you can breach with 173, which is the best SCP to farm XP due to instakills.