Progress or Contribution: What Really Counts on a Server

Ask any player what "progressing" means and almost all of them will say the same thing: levelling up, better gear, a higher rank than someone else. That's only one way to measure progress, not the only one. There's another that almost nobody builds seriously: measuring progress by what you gave to others, not by what you accumulated for yourself.

Two players can put in the same hours — one levelling up, the other helping and building for others to enjoy. Both progressed equally, but only the first has something to show on a stats bar. Status is easy to measure; contribution has no number, so it becomes invisible to the game even though it isn't invisible to the community that receives it.

You don't need a complicated system to measure the opposite: you need to decide that helping also counts as progressing. That the player who gives the most, not the one who hoards the most, is the one who truly feels valued.