SFAD Change

[Belson]

I had a thought about changing the SFAD format and wanted to see what everyone thought. I fully understand it is a slave auction but encouraging player involvement and buy-in I think is a win win.

The concept is you would take all the coin from every auction so let's say 8k mehrial was the total for all the auctions. You then take that and divide it between the # of slaves auctioned + the auctioneers. You would then do a payout of that amount to everyone involved.

This solves a couple things in my mind:

1: It encourages people to show up and participate
2: It removes the issue with some people selling for a ton while others not much. Now if that happens everyone benefits including the auctioneers

[Sikyat`Pallaton]

I agree. That would be a good incentive to do SFAD.

[Sha`Ruse]

I think having some sort of reward would be worth looking into. Granted it's rp generation but having an incentive would be nice.

[Sanjin Koukyu]

I had to do some thinking and consideration about the possible pros and cons of making this sort of change to the SFaD auctions.

1. Does it create more work for Bel's Ace programmers (Ehl & Ame).
No, it doesn't, since all it will require is a payout by a moderator, admin, or someone with said capacities (Like Tawny!)

2. Can the process be abused in some fashion to distribute mehrial?
I don't believe it can be. Since the slaves and auctioneers involved will all get a cut, while the folks auctioning for said playthings will have to pay out of pocket, it's a pretty fair distribution.

Here's the caveat though, in my mind. SFaD is there to promote play, and typically, characters who are more active will typically get higher bids or more active participation between the people making bids. Characters who have next to no proper facetime, or are only brought out once in a blue moon and don't have any background with folks, will likely not get (either) many bids or high bids.

I'd want whatever mehrial I spend, however much or however little, to go to characters who are active and would make use of the mehrial (either for themselves or their masters/mistresses if the SFaD is collared/concubined). As such, I'd feel nonplussed about a character who's only been out for two days of the year and, as a result, had a top bid of say, ten mehrial, to get a 2000 mehrial cut because someone somehow dragged Lethtal, Belson, Allivia, (examples!) or another high profile character to be sold in the event.

If someone who is lower level, but incredibly active, gets sold and earns a nice chunk of the split proceeds, even better!

But.

There is always one massive elephant in the room (from what i've seen and what i've been told) when it comes to SFaD -- not everyone gets bid on, or it's the bare minimum.

How do we prevent people from feeling... dismissed? This is the biggest reason, I feel, why people don't participate - they don't want to feel as if they're unwanted, despite trying to help drum up roleplay (for themselves and others).

I don't think we can. This might help in that regard, but it'd be a band aid fix if nothing else. Best advice I could give in that, is create a reason for others to bid on your character. Develop character social networks, delve deep into the character's personality and let it bloom from there.

However, that's a very selfish way of thinking. In the end, I'd like to promote as much roleplay as possible, so taking a potential 'loss' for the sake of fun roleplay is always an avenue that I'll take. But I could see and had to voice the potential devil's advocate for such a change.

So despite that long-winded back and forth with myself, I think that it should better promote roleplay and SFaD participation. So I advocate this change! Couldn't hurt to give it a test run and see how it goes, as long as it's approved by the bosses!

Again, sorry for being so long winded!
:}

[Tawny]

Stormbringer said NO to that idea years ago and again just recently Belson so sorry but no. It is for rp and fun only Money is subbed and that is how it has to stay.

[Belson]

Can we get an explanation as to why? Was it the exact same proposal? my understanding is that he had said no to a cut of your auction not everyone getting the same amount regardless of their own auction was that not the case?

[Tawny]

Its like this... Stormbringer said no more paying anything because someone complained that is was too close to being paid for sex. Its not like I didn't try to show it wasn't. Its not like I didn't try even suggesting pay like everyone gets when they go on quest. He said NO money gets paid to anyone any more for SFAD auctions period years ago and way more recently than that. So I am sorry if you think I haven't tried to get it changed for the players but when he says no then its no. Its his game after all.

[Stormbringer]

I think I'm open to giving this a trial since there seems to be popular support for some form of payment but the original concern remains. We had a situation way back when certain players would only offer their characters in sex scenes if they got paid for it. This was before SFAD but it was easy to see that if the SFAD was getting paid, then the player could be tempted to ONLY role-play sex for money. That would ultimately be very bad for the game and destroy the spirit of it.

So any trial would have to be strictly on a temporary basis and if it turned out that any players abused the concept and turned it into what was, in effect, prostitution, then it would be dropped.

With that in mind, feel free to discuss exactly how it would work for a trial period of six SFAD auctions. Tawny can make the final decision on the system to be used or you can try different options at different times. As always HC can overrule if necessary and I'm not around.

[Tawny]

Thank you Stormbringer and I will cut paying if I see anyone using it in a way that takes it to being paid for sex only. I think offering a set pay for anyone offering their char to be auctioned is better than taking the total amount earned and judging payment from there. I will talk to a few people and see what a fair amount to offer is, but this is not meant to make anyone rich. It has been and shall always be to encourage rp more than to make money. Also if anyone is caught auctioning their char taking the money offered and not rping with the person who paid for them... they will never be allowed to auction any char again. If there is a problem with rping with said buyer then come to me dont just ignore them.
Again Thank You Stormbringer for rethinking all this and allowing the idea to be tried.

[Belson]

My thought for splitting the earnings was to encourage those being auctioned to encourage as many people as possible to show up sorta deal.

Thanks for being open to the idea!

[Tawny]

To be honest I am not so open to that idea at all. But I will leave it in the mix as I speak to others about it as well. As stated already this is not a event to make money as much as to generate rp. So what people will be paid for auctioning a char is yet to be decided though to be sure it wont be a lot of money. But there shall be some paid out and I will post here when its decided how much will be paid out to those auctioning a char.

[Belson]

Can we at least try it that way once? To see if it works out before just shutting the idea down? I have had no one say they didn't like the idea at all when presenting this in the ooc channel. So can we at least try it?

[DiasEesha]

Ive been keeping a casual eye on this for a bit at this point and I feel its necessary to chime in.

I frankly support the idea. There is multiple reasons for it but the primary reason that it boils down to is that our channel and game is in quite the different state than it use to be.

The biggest and most visible example of this is our ooc and ic channels. We do not have the player base that we once did, we do not have the engagement that we once did. These are not debatable issues, they are simple hard fact.

We -need- to experiment and make adjustments to encourage and support the channel to attempt to breathe more life, more interest, more attention.

Alternatively we can keep pretending that everything is fine.

I for one have never really been on the "not trying" side of things. That history here is well known. But Ill leave that alone and instead pull a couple quotes.

“The one who falls and gets up is stronger than the one who never tried. Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“Never give up.
It's like breathing—once you quit, your flame dies letting total darkness extinguish every last gasp of hope. You can't do that. You must continue taking in even the shallowest of breaths, continue putting forth even the smallest of efforts to sustain your dreams. Don't ever, ever, ever give up.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

[Kir^Trelander]

With that in mind, feel free to discuss exactly how it would work for a trial period of six SFAD auctions. Tawny can make the final decision on the system to be used or you can try different options at different times. As always HC can overrule if necessary and I'm not around.

Just noting that I'd love to see whether this revitalizes some activity into the thing. It ain't RP if no one's doing it. We should go ahead and get a date set for the first one where we can try out whatever the first iteration is.

[Twerlinger]

Just if we are working on the possibility of changes, is there any chance of getting an Auction thats at a slightly better time for those of us in the EU/GMT time Zones. I understand the majority of players do hail from the US time zone areas, but there are still a good chunk of us European's that might want to participate either in the actual auction or bidding, that we get cut out from due to how late these get run.