Thank you for the feedback! We understand your concern, but we'd like to go over our reasoning for the imprint/influence system first to put things a little better into perspective.
When new characters arrive, they will already be getting an imprint on the setting right off the bat at no cost. We originally aimed for all new character imprints being added within 1 month of joining, but for the first app round this will likely be extended to 2 months if we get a large number of apps. With a 35 player cap, that's up to 35 unique imprints to mix into the setting with the potential for another flood once 2nd character apps open.
Then we have additional imprints that can be purchased. If we allowed new characters to submit a second imprint after their first month in the game, the imprint queue would undoubtedly become massive and continue to grow in length. We would either have to reduce the overall impact of each imprint in order to implement more of them at once, something that we feel would take even more away from the fun of the system, or players would be left waiting months for their imprint to appear in the game. If we went with the latter then we would still have the same issue you're concerned about, the difference being that players would be left waiting for months between submitting an imprint of any kind and actually seeing it in the game.
This is most going to be an issue within the first few months of the game, so after we've passed that initial flood of characters we may very well adjust the numbers or add new ways for characters to earn points. If you're only looking at imprints on an individual character level then it may seem like it takes too long to earn anything, but you need to also remember that there's going to be 30+ other characters in the game who are also submitting imprints, and that all of these imprints need to be processed and worked into the game and given space to breathe. We don't want to overwhelm players with too many imprints at once, and we definitely don't want to overwhelm ourselves either.
With concepts in particular, they're valued much higher because concepts are meant to have a much wider impact on the game as a whole. We want players to think hard about the kinds of concepts they want to introduce and to allow each of those concepts room to have a real impact on the setting. We also want to encourage players to work together when making concepts rather than continuously building on the same idea by themselves. Even if you can only submit 3-4 concepts a year, you can plot with other players to build upon those concepts together rather than only through your own submissions.
We'll look over the points system further before the game opens, and we may make some small adjustments to the numbers to make it a bit easier to fit in smaller regains while saving up for imprints. The overall wait time between imprints at the start is going to stay as-is for now, though, for all the reasons stated above.
no subject
When new characters arrive, they will already be getting an imprint on the setting right off the bat at no cost. We originally aimed for all new character imprints being added within 1 month of joining, but for the first app round this will likely be extended to 2 months if we get a large number of apps. With a 35 player cap, that's up to 35 unique imprints to mix into the setting with the potential for another flood once 2nd character apps open.
Then we have additional imprints that can be purchased. If we allowed new characters to submit a second imprint after their first month in the game, the imprint queue would undoubtedly become massive and continue to grow in length. We would either have to reduce the overall impact of each imprint in order to implement more of them at once, something that we feel would take even more away from the fun of the system, or players would be left waiting months for their imprint to appear in the game. If we went with the latter then we would still have the same issue you're concerned about, the difference being that players would be left waiting for months between submitting an imprint of any kind and actually seeing it in the game.
This is most going to be an issue within the first few months of the game, so after we've passed that initial flood of characters we may very well adjust the numbers or add new ways for characters to earn points. If you're only looking at imprints on an individual character level then it may seem like it takes too long to earn anything, but you need to also remember that there's going to be 30+ other characters in the game who are also submitting imprints, and that all of these imprints need to be processed and worked into the game and given space to breathe. We don't want to overwhelm players with too many imprints at once, and we definitely don't want to overwhelm ourselves either.
With concepts in particular, they're valued much higher because concepts are meant to have a much wider impact on the game as a whole. We want players to think hard about the kinds of concepts they want to introduce and to allow each of those concepts room to have a real impact on the setting. We also want to encourage players to work together when making concepts rather than continuously building on the same idea by themselves. Even if you can only submit 3-4 concepts a year, you can plot with other players to build upon those concepts together rather than only through your own submissions.
We'll look over the points system further before the game opens, and we may make some small adjustments to the numbers to make it a bit easier to fit in smaller regains while saving up for imprints. The overall wait time between imprints at the start is going to stay as-is for now, though, for all the reasons stated above.