weighting system examples + reminders

[unplug]

▶ WEIGHTING SYSTEM EXAMPLES

We are a week and change away from our first application round, and in the lead up, we'd like to demonstrate our weighting system by showing some examples of scoring with the below list of characters. If you yourself are planning to app any of the below, don't feel beholden to our interpretations!

Dependent on their experiences, their personalities, and general subjective affinities, the weighting system will be judged on top of a default ability to pick up general skills. All characters will be able to fully participate in missions, but whether they have particular talents will be judged by this system.

There are five categories, and everyone is assigned ten points to distribute between them (and all characters who have a canon superhuman ability must put at least 2 points in Anomalous Skills). During the game, we will allow everyone one chance to change up their weightings if it proves different in practice than in theory, as well as the ability to change it again for a canon update (with adequate justification).

Visit the Uploads page for the more detailed explanation about how the weighting system will be used.

▼ BILL CAGE (Edge of Tomorrow, post-movie)

Bill Cage was an officer of the United States Army, specialising in media relations. Before getting unwillingly transferred to the United Defense Force, he had never stepped foot on a battlefield. While caught in a time looped glitch, he vastly improved his combative skills, utilising mechanised power suit technology to fight aliens.

His partially complete application, submitted for demonstrative purposes, can be found here.

Anomalous Skills: 1, Martial Arts: 2, Projectile Weaponry: 3, Technical Skills: 2, Wildcard: 2

▼ HARRY POTTER (Harry Potter series, post-canon)

Harry Potter is a wizard in a world where magic exists largely in secret from ordinary modern human society. He is surrounded by myths come to reality and is himself prophesied to be the savior of the wizarding world, which eventually comes to be true. Through training and hands-on experiences in war, he developed considerable magical talent and tactical skills, especially in how to work within a small guerrilla team composed of his closest friends.

Anomalous Skills: 4, Martial Arts: 1, Projectile Weaponry: 1, Technical Skills: 0, Wildcard: 4

▼ SCOTT MCCALL (Teen Wolf, current)

Scott McCall starts out as a ‘B-average’ lacrosse player, C-average highschool student, and all-around good guy, and then becomes a werewolf. He is infected by lycanthropy through a bite and spends several months struggling to adapt to violent impulses and frightening powers, but eventually gains control. Furthermore, he develops into a rare form of werewolf with unusual skills and influence over others.

Anomalous Skills: 4, Martial Arts: 3, Projectile Weaponry: 0, Technical Skills: 0, Wildcard: 3

▼ KORRA (The Legend of Korra, post-canon)

Korra lives in a world where a minority of people can physically manipulate, or ‘bend,’ elements that are unique and specific to their four Nations. Unlike the others, she is the Avatar, a reincarnated force of light and balance, who can bend any of the four elements with unusual potency.

Anomalous Skills: 4, Martial Arts: 3, Projectile Weaponry: 2, Technical Skills: 0, Wildcard: 1

▼ BRUCE BANNER (Marvel Cinematic Universe, current)

Bruce Banner is a nuclear physicist whose life was altered forever when an experiment gone awry endowed him with the ability to trigger a transformation into an alternate form wielding incredible destructive power. Otherwise mild mannered and passive, he is a brilliant doctor and scientist with a foot in the unusual.

Anomalous Skills: 4, Martial Arts: 0, Projectile Weaponry: 0, Technical Skills: 4, Wildcard: 2

▼ PEPPER POTTS (Marvel Cinematic Universe, pre-Iron Man 3)

Pepper Potts was introduced as the personal assistant of Tony Stark, and later inherited Stark Industries as CEO. She is quick thinking and tactical, intellectually flexible, and adaptive. At a later canon point, she adapts to a genetic alteration that temporarily bestows on her super powers, suggesting a predisposition for anomalies.

Anomalous Skills: 1, Martial Arts: 0, Projectile Weaponry: 2, Technical Skills: 2, Wildcard: 5

▶ REMINDERS

Remember to Reserve a character if you haven't already! Doing so will give you the first five days of the app round to submit an application without competition. Reserves for February will close when reserves expire, on February 23.

Our Test Drive is still happening, and will continue to happen for the rest of the month! Be sure to check it out for new threads or post new threads yourself.

The first application round will open at 4 pm EST, February 18. All application rounds will open ten days before the end of the month, for future reference. For our first round, players will be allowed to submit two characters, so long as at least one of them is established, which we are defining as either unplugged for over a year, or a free born OC. After that, we'll be restricting this back down to one at a time.

Game play starts on March 1. We hope to see you then! Feel free to ask questions below, or use the FAQ page.

Further clarifications are here.

Comments

[ashing]

Should weighting be based solely on canon point or can/will time unplugged have any contribution? A character with no canon projectile weapon experience gaining points there through training, for example.

[unplug]

Good question!

Unless a character has spent more time in the real world than in the Matrix, we will associate more heavily people's time in the Matrix and their experiences there with how their brains will adapt to more advanced things in future Matrixes, once freed. Rudimentary training in itself probably won't count, but having a natural flare for it would.

But if a character is apping with substantial time in the real world, and has had focused training in whatever applicable area, those factors can and should have some influence on weightings distribution.

FURTHER CLARIFICATIONS

[unplug]

▶ How the scores for individual characters work as compared to the scores of other characters

One question we are receiving is how to judge scale in comparison to other people -- if your character is an expert in a certain area, but you have points allotted across the board, will it make sense if someone else has a higher score than you in that area if they've decided to weight it heavily, but aren't themselves more of an expert -- your character is Bruce Banner, nuclear physicist, with four points in technical (and other points in wild card and anomalies), and this other character, Driver, is a stunt car expert and mechanic whose entire life has revolved around cars and so has put in seven points in technical, lending him more access to advanced skills in technical ability than Banner can reach. Does that make sense?

The answer is: sure, why not?

The important thing to remember is there is some separation between the real world skills your character has with their Matrixy predispositions -- no matter what ranking Banner has in technical skills, he will still be a world class nuclear physicist even before he gets any fancy uploads.

But everyone has limits, both as a part of human nature as well as our way of putting a cap on awesomeness while still allowing awesomeness to exist -- someone's mind can only stretch so far in so many directions. A prospective player could in fact pile their points into technical, for Banner, but they would then be choosing to ignore his other skills, like his ability to adapt to cultures and pick up languages, or having a good sense for the strange even beyond his own Hulk powers. Either weighting would be acceptable for us to approve an application because they can be justified, because it also matters what you, the player, want to do with the character.

As for the comparison with Driver, it's just a matter of accepting that Driver's life was a result of untapped brain potential for advanced technical skills beyond the call of duty, but remembering he also can't turn into a giant green rage monster or pick up Elvish on the fly.

(Quickly, we'd like to emphasise and reiterate that the weighting system has no bearing on how your character functions in the Real, as this mechanism is only in place to help manage Matrix uploads.)

▶ A sense of scale

The other query is how to judge scale individually. Is a 5 super advanced, or mediocre as compared to the upper 10? The answer is that this system is designed to be super flexible and changeable. To emphasise, all characters, no matter what they're ranking, will be able to get some 'basic' uploads -- heading into an Earth world, you can pick up some proficient knowledge of an automatic rifle and a handgun, some crazy kung-fu, some basic hackery, all of which is enough to participate in missions.

So a 0 in any category does not equal incompetence or inability, it just means that for a given mission, you won't receive bonuses in that area. If an operator needs to quickly upload a new skill into someone's head, he or she will look to the person most apt to receive it, too.

But to give an idea of scale, here are some examples for each category, as well as how we might ask you to use your weightings.

• For anomalous skills, if you're entering the Harry Potter Matrix world, then you can assume that your character is equipped with a Hogwarts recent graduate's working level of magic, one of average proficiency. We might then say that if you have two anomaly points, you can also be an Animagus of your choice, or perhaps you can have a masterful grasp on potions and alchemy. If you have one skill point, you can have sick, Quidditch Championship-level broomstick skills. Three points could lend you Occlumency, or being an Animagus and a sick broomstick skill-haver. We will approximate difficulties and make suggestions, but you too will be able to make suggestions if you happen to know the canon well.
  
  In this case, points are being temporarily spent on both amount of extras you can pick up as well as how many points certain skills cost.
  
  
• Martial arts can be treated similarly in terms of having a diverse array of added skills. While everyone might know kung-fu, maybe you decide to use your extra one to become a good swordsman, or two martial arts points to become a crazy good swordsman. People with more martial arts points would also just be better at martial arts -- as depicted in the movie, basically everyone responded to the presence of agents by making a frantic escape, except for Neo, because they are basically in the upper tier.
  
  One to two points would be able to fend off but not overcome an agent. Three to five would be able to potentially take one out, incurring significant injury, but would have varying degrees of difficulty against a group. We'd approximate a five to be around Morpheus levels of competency, remembering that he still needs to beat a hasty retreat when it gets messy.
  
  
• Projectile weapons works in a similar fashion to Martial Arts -- the amount of points you have affords you the ability to pick up a more diverse array of weaponry (picking up Legolas-levels of archery talent in Lord of the Rings world, for example, or being especially adept with advanced military grade weapons, or basically acting as Cougar from the Losers by sniping Agents from on high while your team scurries) as well as how well you hold up in an advanced gun fight.
  
  
• Technical skills will probably be similar to anomalous skills in terms of being able to 'spend' points on bonuses, but also assessing difficulty levels. Mods will provide and be available to discuss relevant, creative, and fun options based on the mission and the Matrix.
  
  For example, a mission might involve hacking into a machine-run computer system that controls a building they're invading to break someone out, and we will ask that only people with a level four apply for that role -- or, if none are available, someone with a level three, with the help of a friend with any amount of technical points. In a long haul stay in Pacific Rim world, you need at least five points to modify and breakdown the brain link technology to take back for simulation and further study. We will make judgement calls as to how many points will be required for tasks, but players are also welcome to submit suggestions.
  
  
• Then we have the wildcard points. Like anomalous skills, this can be judged by spending points on bonuses of difficult degrees, bonuses that don't fit in the other four categories, but it can also be expanded to be more fluid. For example, someone with one wild-card point could pick up a new language, or someone with three wild card points could get a new language, learn how to tango, and be able to recite Shakespeare off the cuff. To look at it another way, someone who has opted to put in five wildcard points could credibly be excellent at a sort of cultural con-artistry -- though they might be from modern New York, they could blend into a Dothraki horde seamlessly, mastering their language and their customs and some of the skills necessary to pass and carry out a spy mission. (How good of a spy they are practically is up to them.)

▶ Play them off, keyboard cat

We want to emphasise flexibility and variation in the way the weighting system can be used. It is a new and untested system, and so we will definitely be monitoring its effectiveness as the game continues, and see if it can be adjusted or better defined as needed. We also allow players to change their weighting distributions once in game, if their current set isn't working for them, and you can do that any time, and also upon canon update if it calls for it.

Please feel free to ask additional questions or seek assistance if you're unsure about anything to do with it.