Busy and Not

It's been an unusual week, and this day (so far) epitomizes about how it's gone. As I was doing normal first-thing-in-the-morning tasks, I started getting hit by other stuff. A printer not printing, several people's email not receiving, a laptop failing to load explorer.exe upon startup, program installations, email setup... all sorts of stuff. Now it's about 2:30 in the afternoon, and everything is quiet again.

Hurry up and wait.

I actually expected to be fielding more calls during the evening, with my co-tech off in Vegas with a few others for an expo. Strangely, I haven't been called while at home, but I have been slammed on and off while actually in the office. It's draining.


Rather abruptly this week, Furryfaire instigated a new method for calculating experience points for characters. Officially, "we're just testing it for a week to see how it goes." I cannot remember the last time we "tested" something without adopting it, though.

Previously, there was a weekly reward with some base value and an additional amount based on votes received from others. This new method includes votes, but also calculates a "base" amount based on the hours spent non-idle in a room with others, and the more people the more points. The theory is, non-idle characters together are roleplaying, so this will encourage that.

Similar concepts were discussed before and discarded. Why? I'm not altogether sure. Probably because it's subject to possible abuse. If the system doesn't account for alts, someone can log their characters on in a room together and do nothing to accumulate points. The system is only so smart in determining when a character isn't idle, and some people are prone to leaving themselves logged in with a client-side de-idling script whether they're at the computer or not. Those are the main drawbacks I can think of to the general concept.

In theory, I like rewarding activity. One could argue that's the point of the vote system, though it has its own flaws. I like motivating by reward rather than punishment. But I'm still seriously bothered by this switch. Why? Well, let me ponder that:

- This is a complete shift in policy. I know these options were discussed a few times in the past, probably most recently when the MUCK was "reset" and switched sites. This isn't what was decided on then, so why should it be implemented now - especially with little or no discussion among the staff (seriously, I logged on and there was a "I coded this, it's active now" message as the first I've heard of it)?

- The abuse potential bugs me, though no system is perfect.

- I think one of the main problems with the MUCK as it stands is the large amounts of points people already have, and this appears to be giving out more points faster. The checks and balances in the rule system that prevent absolutely crazy shit from happening tend to break down at higher levels of power.

So... blar. I guess that's my rant on that. I could probably be summed up with my more general "If you can't prove to me a change is an improvement, I'm not going to like it."