Rewarding player loyalty without upseting game balance

[paan]

Hi all,
I am considering a way to reward beta testers. After all, they did work for free to help me test my buuggy piece of mess .
I figured that I would give them some sort of in game currency( lets call these 'Divine Blessing') that they can turn in for a reward of their choosing.
It should not be possible to earn these blessings through normal gameplay. But they are handed down manually for doing things that help the mud grow. Sort of like a token of appreciation from the mud owner.

I am rather torn on what item they should be able to get for turning in the blessings. In game items (e.g weapons/armors etc) are nice. But I dont want to make them too powerful. But then again if they are not powerful then theres no reason to get them over the random loot from the game.

I can see that in an MMO these can be cosmetics items. However I am not sure how these would work in a mud. I've thought about giving a generic item that the player can customize the description of. But then again when was the last time anyone examine another players items in a mud.

I want to give something that the player values, something that make other players go 'uu.. I want one of THOSE". But I really don't want to just give them a +25 uber sword of orc killing.

Any ideas?

[Kernal]

Have you considered convenience items?

For example, something akin to a bag of holding. Such an item wouldn't be likely to make the character more powerful (better at certain tasks perhaps, but there's no overpowering benefit), but could be hugely convenient and, therefore, desired and coveted.

Cheers,
Kernal

[Tonitrus]

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and what I came up with was expendable points that give temporary bonuses. Power levels in games accumulate over time, so giving permanent benefits will skew your power level in the long run, so any benefit should expire with time. Another concern of mine was people hoarding the points and spending them all at once, so I decided I'd put a cooldown on expenditures that doubles the costs each time they're used during the cooldown. This isn't an issue if you're not concerned about hoarding. An approach like this, though, gives people a benefit that they can spend over time without giving them the ability to dump points to gain short bursts of ridiculous power.

In my case, the points will give larger (or longer duration) bonuses that typically available. For example, if an ability gives +2 for 30 seconds, spending a point will give you +2 for 150 seconds. If, while training a power, you can normally increase a power by 1 rank, spending a point will let you raise it 5 (still effected by the same maximum), et cetera.

If you have leveling, another good use would be something like KaVir's boost points. 2.5 times XP for 10 kills, or whatever the actual ratio is. I believe KaVir has reported that, at least in this case, people get really used to these bonuses and come to regard them as the norm, however.

[paan]

I never really thought of convenience items.
That would really be useful. Some sort of limited charges per day teleport device or something similar would be really great. Thanks for the idea.
Dont know why I didn't think of that.

A limited boost to xp sounds nice too but I dont want these things to be something that is comsumable. I will like it to be something that is permanent . Maybe I could work in a x charges per day of free(extra) boost. But that sounds like just unlimited free xp. I'll think abit more about it.