Now Discussion of "Test Avlis XP and Loot"

aquasoup · Post by **aquasoup** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:21 pm

Vett I wasn't meaning to offend you, even if it looked that way, but in these sort of debates there is nearly always a strong bias in overall viewpoint from the elite/vets element of the playerbase who use, post and dominate forum discussion. I've caught myself doing the same in similar discussion on other servers where I do have that staff/vet/elite viewpoint - there does need to be a little counterbalance to that.

It is in everyone's human nature to say "in my day" and "you kids don't know how easy you have it".

There is nearly always a popular push to produce rules to defend against the few obvious examples of powergrinders who don't RP, one can bring up. Wasn't X awful we must insure he never happens again.

Typically if you have 25 new players and 1 is a "bad seed", if you call for rules draconian enough to really deter the powergrind minded 1 bad seed, you may well lose alot of the good 24 players aswell - this can be a cure that kills the patient - and it needs to be kept in mind as a danger when discussing altering all the xp curves.

There is always an element of hypocrisy involved in discussing tightening up the xp mechanics once a large element of the playerbase has had the benefit of them.

I know, overall the proposed changes are good in that they allow an increasingly aging population to better interact in "Mobile RP" (D&D RP) not just "Static RP" (Elfgate conversational RP) with any newer players coming in. That is great and a good thing for continued population health.

For my opinions.

1) Weeks aren't always uniform, sometimes one does alot more Mobile RP one week and then alot more Static RP the next - I'd carry over any leftover to cap from just the last week to the current week - it gives better flexibility and makes people less concerned with planning their week.

2) The planning element may become a problem if it transpires that people are regularly reaching cap, is the intention really to divert people from Mobile RP which most people find a good source of RP and sociable to largely solo and antisocial activities like Fed-Ex questing, gathering and crafting? Because that is what the mechanics would be pushing.

3) I don't like static caps, never have. A 50% penalty to mob xp gained overcap seems far more realistic, just because a formula says you should have gone on this trip to a new place last week or the week before when you had spare allowance, would your character really learn nothing from it?

Katroine · Post by **Katroine** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:43 pm

aquasoup wrote: Typically if you have 25 new players and 1 is a "bad seed", if you call for rules draconian enough to really deter the powergrind minded 1 bad seed, you may well lose alot of the good 24 players aswell

7000xp cap a week from only killing monsters is hardly Draconian. If a player quits because he can't get xp for monsters over the 7000xp in a week (he can still kill monsters, mind you), he is likely on the wrong server. Seriously, not to sound rude but I doubt many players even knew how much xp they got in a week from monsters before this thread.

I am a vet player of a nearly 40th level character, but I also play a lot of other PCs who are all under 10th level.

aquasoup · Post by **aquasoup** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:44 pm

I wasn't specifically refering to the 7k xp cap, but more the general tone of some of the calls to cut that in half, and redo all the quest xp to lower that alot too etc.

aquasoup · Post by **aquasoup** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 8:01 pm

Also yorlik's position/maths as another example, I appreciate his sentiment but - when a brand new player comes into the server, and isn't powerbuilt or getting advice or help from existing friends, and like all low adventurers finds it hard to kill much of anything safely; If the newb tries to adventure and discovers it's going to take him a month to get to level 4, because his xp gets cut off - his reaction will probably be OMG if it takes a month to get level 4, how long will it takes for the higher levels?

That newb may well not be back, now you can say good riddance he wasn't masochistically RP enough, but his assumptions that adventuring is essentially pointless and all level gain has to be crafted or quested which is largely solo activity wouldn't be that hard to come by - alot of people would be put off by that.

Sinbadsam · Post by **Sinbadsam** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 8:11 pm

I have been here for a long time, not as long as others here.

I play alot of pc's here, as some know and others have noticed.

I think the closest any of mine have gotten to 7k was when Breggy was dragged along on some ventures with Ed and his gang.

But we have how many worlds linked to Avlis today? IIRC about 5, so one could get 7k here, then go off world for 7k in each world, so technically a player could gain, 42k in one RL week.

Now if that is possible I do not know, but just playing "devil's advocate" here. At 42k per week reaching 40th is not that long.

To me, trying to stop those that level too quickly is like using an umbrella trying to stop a falling boulder from hitting you on the head. A interesting attempt but still does not work.

FYI I "had" only one of my pc's make barely into Epic levels, but she is retired due the IC reasons for her to be here or elsewhere are not available on Avlis or other worlds.

I have seen many efforts to "reduce" the rapid leveling over the years I have played here, it seems the "issue" still exists despite those previous attempts. Again another version of the rat trap, only makes a smarter rat.

Zar'roc · Post by **Zar'roc** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 8:54 pm

I give it a thumbs up....good work guys

yorlik · Post by **yorlik** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:40 am

aquasoup wrote:Also yorlik's position/maths as another example, I appreciate his sentiment but - when a brand new player comes into the server, and isn't powerbuilt or getting advice or help from existing friends, and like all low adventurers finds it hard to kill much of anything safely; If the newb tries to adventure and discovers it's going to take him a month to get to level 4, because his xp gets cut off - his reaction will probably be OMG if it takes a month to get level 4, how long will it takes for the higher levels?

That newb may well not be back, now you can say good riddance he wasn't masochistically RP enough, but his assumptions that adventuring is essentially pointless and all level gain has to be crafted or quested which is largely solo activity wouldn't be that hard to come by - alot of people would be put off by that.

I think the cap makes only sense, if it is combined with much easier XP gaining.

You shouldn't need to grind for 25 hours a week to hit the cap.

It should be possible with a relaxed playstyle in about 3-5 hours maximum.

Why ?

Because it would
a.) require still to do something for your XP
b.) still leave a lot of space for non XP-relevant playing

And rushing away wouldn't happen due to the cap.

I still think the more group friendly policy is a great idea, maybe it needs
a little tweaking, but the cap will prevent grinding. Even if one want to
call it towing - after the cap is reached its finito until the next period.

Whatever will happen - in any case no one can be urged to Roleplay,
but excess behavior can be stopped, and players who want to take their
time for non XP-relevant playing would greatly profit from such a policy.

aquasoup · Post by **aquasoup** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:17 pm

Well I was referring to your suggestion, which if understand it right, was that it take a minimum of a week to level. If I log on as a level 1 newb (with no idea crafting or questing is a way of gaining xp too - most servers do NOT have those options really) go adventuring for an hour or two and find I cap out at 1000xp making level 2 - my reaction is, wow 1k xp per week, is it worth playing here and how did anyone else ever get high level? massive DM nepotism?

So either your newb leaves never to return, or he/she finds out that solo and therefore largely anti-social activities like crafting, gathering and fed-ex questing is the main way to advance as the world is designed.

My point is, isn't that MORE harmful to the server - discouraging new players or convincing them that solo activities is the way you are supposed to be playing. We are afterall talking about measures that hurt everyone, and prevent sociable RP driven adventuring - which is a good thing, I'll say that again, RP driven going adventuring is a good thing, I have no hangup about that, if I only thought conversational RP had value I'd join a chatroom. Adventuring is what the game is designed for, it's D&D, it's the raison d'etre - and yet we're discussing removing any benefits from it just so we can annoy a handful of powergamers by hurting everyone?

So that's my thoughts on tightening the low levels further as per your suggestions yorlik, I think it will be quite discouraging to them

I like that high levels and low levels can go out together -with an increasingly aged population that's pretty essential - what I don't think has been thought through entirely is that if a low level goes out with high levels in a normal natural and good RP way, has good mobile RP which is frankly part of the game design more so than purely stationary RP at elfgate, they may then have nothing else to do for the rest of the week adventurewise. That isn't healthy.

None of the capping really does anything to powergamers, people who adjust their tactics to find the most efficient means of levelling will, shock horror, simply adjust their tactics to the next most efficient form of levelling. Smarter ratraps simply build smarter rats as said above. The only people you end up hurting are the people who were naturally doing things in a RP vein, but now may circumstantially fall afoul of the rules that weren't designed to catch them.

Tigg · Post by **Tigg** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:54 pm

aquasoup wrote:I don't like static caps, never have.

That much is clear. But what's also clear is that the great majority of characters will not be affected by a 7k exp cap. For those that will be, the message is to slow down. The implication is indeed that if someone is on for a lot of hours in a given week, it is expected that a good portion of the RP will be more 'static' as opposed to 'mobile', as you term it. This has never been portrayed as an "all styles welcome" place to game, a fact which has now been reinforced more firmly through coding. Certainly it would be possible to find plenty of servers on the Gamespy list with a more laissez-faire attitude, however. When people find the place that suits them best, everyone wins, I think.

darthmullet · Post by **darthmullet** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:05 am

Aquasoup...are you arguing against Yorliks idea for xp?

If so, please stop. Thats not whats happening.

Second, if someone can't handle being able to make "only" 7k a week from killing monsters, they are on the wrong server and can take a hike. I'd be willing to bet a good portion of our community would agree with me.

Third, you make the assumption that crafting and quests are solo only activities. Please stop doing that, as well, and go see the AKN, the 4A, the Avlis tailroing Guild, or the Avlis Jewelers Guild. That is certainly not "solo crafting".

And can we please get back to talking about the ACTUAL XP SYSTEM that is going in, and our thoughts about that?

Darkfire · Post by **Darkfire** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:27 am

The "Elite and Veteran" players don't rule the boards. I've been here a long time and what I say usually doesn't hold much. Could be that I am a dumbass, who knows.

Secondly, no one is implying that gaining XP is bad, because it's not. I had no clue how much XP/week or month I was gaining until that XP calculation thread. Turns out, I gained right around the 7000 XP cap. No one (should be) implying that by them not gaining XP they are better then people that do gain XP, and the implications work the other way around. If they do, I don't really care about their opinion. The "elitism" that comes from both the power gamers and power RPers is there, I just tend to ignore it.

Anywho, I'm all for this cap, and yes, it does effect me greatly. I burnt through 7500 XP in roughly 2 scroll scribing sessions. (2 days worth). I could have kept going, but I ran out of XP. The times I scribe is usually when there are maybe a couple people on the servers. Solo'ing is no fun, nor as rewarding, so I haven't got anything better to be doing.

Too any one who scribed or has scribed, they know it's not an easy task to take on. Very expensive (both gold and XP-wise) as well as very RL time consuming. Any XP based type of craft (aka: costs XP) will be slowed down in it's progression quite a bit by this cap.

The rate of XP gain isn't slow, it's rather fast imo. (7000/week) And yes, I know that's about how much I gained myself, I thought it was fast as hell then and I still do now. I r teh dirty PGer. It's not an unreasonable cap, and it will actually (or rather, hopefully) put the EPIC back into the higher levels. (to get an example of what I mean by epic, see this thread.) The main XP gain during my playing "career" was while I was in highschool, where I could put in 30+ hours a week without blinking.

Timezones are no excuse to not be known by the community, at least part of it. I know plenty of people who have play times that greatly restrict their ability to interact with the greater part of the player-base, but that hasn't stopped them one bit. People shouldn't know you just as the guy who kicks the FoM's ass on Mon, Tue, twice on Wed, Fri and Sat. There are other types of character development that just gaining XP, although that is definitely one of them. Your level and your character development should coincide together.

Hell, I even wouldn't mind that you have to have some of the qualifications for the Heroes of Avlis just to unlock past level 25... As cool (to me) as that would be, I highly doubt that would happen.

*tosses in his $.02*

Aeveras · Post by **Aeveras** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:05 am

Clarification:

- The new xp system currently being tested out would limit characters to 7000xp a week from killing stuff.
- Quest xp is not affected by this cap.
- Crafting xp (both craft and regular) are not affected by this cap.
- DM cookies are not affected by this cap.

You're welcome to discuss the existing revisions, hypothetical revisions, and completely imaginary revisions, but I think it bears repeating that the above-mentioned xp system is the one that actually exists right now.

- Aeveras

Dark_EK · Post by **Dark_EK** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:28 am

Can we add a 7 posts per week cap on the forums too?

That would thin out so much and leave plenty of room for cool IC posts!

Tigg · Post by **Tigg** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:40 am

Let me guess.. IC posts would not apply toward the cap.

Final Shinryuu · Post by **Final Shinryuu** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:13 am

It seems to me like the new XP system isn't to limit the top end of XP gain (Few people gain much from killing things, seriously), but to make it much easier for the majority to level at a more regular (faster) pace.
The new XP system makes it far easier to gain experience through combat, up to that 7000/week point, by individualizing the XP gain per character in a group. Any lower level in a high CR area with a group will get the maximum per kill, and will hit the 7k cap very quickly.

Sinbadsam · Post by **Sinbadsam** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:30 am

Ok I can as of right now grind out 15,500 xp kills per week in the UD. If I was able to get certain items in unlimited supplies, in Collectors Quests the number would be in the 1,000+ xp per week.

But since those pcs is a Seregs, and the UD is mostly empty of other pc's. Not much else to do down there but grind out xp's. The estimate above I have yet to do, just so you can know.

The above xp estimate is taking certain assumptions that I restrict my stable of alts to one or two.

Now the cap you mentioned is allow RPing, on a server like the underdark and playing a Sereg one's opportunities for RP are fairly restricted, if non existent.

So is it possible to not cap Sereg's playing on the Underdark Server?

Sinbad Sam

Chasnor · Post by **Chasnor** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:34 am

Jaybob · Post by **Jaybob** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 4:54 am

Marleh wrote: And you can still farm your way to lvl 5 in Elysia, you just can't do it all in a 10 hour grind fest.

yeah, ask Bern. it takes months.

Jaybob · Post by **Jaybob** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 5:00 am

Aeveras wrote:I've noticed it become quite common for PCs to reach level 8 in two weeks, or even one week.

one week? are you serious?

that's absurd. i have to believe you, but I'm just blown away.

Aeveras · Post by **Aeveras** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 5:18 am

It's completely absurd. I'm not even sure where the fun comes from. In any event, a 7000xp/week cap means that if you really, really push the system, you might make it to level 4-5 in one week, but I still don't know where the fun in that kind of grind comes from. :P

- Aeveras

KinX · Post by **KinX** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 5:21 am

Aeveras wrote:It's completely absurd. I'm not even sure where the fun comes from. In any event, a 7000xp/week cap means that if you really, really push the system, you might make it to level 4-5 in one week, but I still don't know where the fun in that kind of grind comes from.

- Aeveras

knowing you're obliterated an entire species of crop rats?

aquasoup · Post by **aquasoup** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:09 pm

I understand, because I am not all "yay flag waving" about weekly hard xp caps, some of you will never get past the misconception I'm an evil powergamer Satan sent from hell to destroy your way of life

I'll probably never reach you.

For anyone who can step past that misconception, please join me on a magical trip down logic lane, I've seen this argument play out and the effects on another RP server. You've got some flaws in your basic premises.

Your are increasing adventure XP substantially in effect, however you don't want people levelling too fast. In particular, you want to stop powergamed, i.e. bad, adventuring XP, in order to do that you're prepared to cut off all adventuring xp after a certain point per week, all the good IC RP adventuring can be stopped just as long as it gets the evil powergamed XP adventuring - that's your sacrifice.

Now because powergamers by nature sacrifice the RP setting in order to chase progression for themselves irrespective of RP, they are simply going to go upto the cap, then switch to driving a convey of trucks through the loopholes you've got (going off-world, craft grinding, collection quests, fed-exing quests etc) they will still outstrip your RP-ers and have the "Flying Robot-Eagle Mounts to beat Frodo to Mount Doom with" - because they still will advance far faster, that is their raison d'etre.

The only people who will be caught by primitive caps will be genuine RP-ers, the people who go on 1 FEAT outing and then find the rest of the weeks normal RP driven and occuring adventures now teach their character zero about the world.

Second problem is what your cap system really does, it doesn't punish powergamers at all (they will just sidle past this cap), it punishes high playtime RP-ers. The algebra has incorrectly identified highplaytime=powergrinder, this is a big misassumption.

Under the proposed system, everyone agrees that 6 hours RP-ing, per week, of which 2 is spent in a cave somewhere with mob kill xp accrued, presents no problem. 60hours RP-ing per month with 20hours in caves, provided it's evenly spread across all weeks, still no problem because you're hitting around your 5hours max a week you've budgeted for adventuring. your problem case of course is a RP-er who spends 40hours a week doing Static RP and 20 in caves somewhere involved in Mobile RP.

Now everyone with low playtimes who's jealous of those with more time to spend will be secretly saying "awesome!! stick it to the evil powergrinders" - but that's just a very human bit of jealousy over the time they can or can't invest. Those high playtime RP-ers are still doing a very respectable proportion of playtime in Static RP, yet their Mobile RP is devalued by 75%. In fact the guy who does maybe 15mins per week of saying *waves* as he hurries past to the next dungeon but only has 5 and a quarter hours to spend weekly is getting a nice pat on the back for his 20:1ratio to powergrinding, while your high playtime RP-er may now be doing almost the exact opposite with a 1:12ratio because alot of his natural behaviour to travel with friends is now frowned on.

I am sure people will fixate on the figures of the examples listed, and pull apart the arbitrary hours I've chosen, but the fact remains, it's not X hours per week adventuring that is bad, it's X hours per week while not RP-ing and at the expense of RP-ing that is bad - and your cap system as proposed has zero way of measuring that, and does nothing to address that.

Why is it bad if your high playtime RP-ers get a bit disenfranchised? Well actually they are often your social lynchpins, unlike myself who's just some whiney peasant shouting from the sidelines - these are the people who run your major guilds and shops and plotlines, the people who invest above and beyond and the folks who are the recognisable stalwart pillars of the community everyone is used to seeing around all the time. If you encourage them to build alts instead, it's less cohesive for the community and their commitment to the world, if some leave because they find they don't enjoy being pushed to adventure a quarter as much for example, that's even worse.

I know it will be a rare sort who will publicly agree that they don't want their adventuring curtailed particularly when the amount of their commitment to community and RP perfectly justifies it's present level, yet they know they'll get called down as a Ebil Powergrinders out to get more XP, if they do say we want to adventure as many hours as was natural before, irrespective of some algebra thing. But trust me, we're all playing a D&D game, we like to adventure, it's like built in, if we're here, we like it.

So, how do you get a system that actually measures the amount of RP someone is putting out and then affords caps on that basis?? How does algebra measure RP effort? Well of course algebra alone can't, neither should you overburden your DM's - instead you use your playerbase to evaluate itself. You already have the structures for this largely in place with your player-run guilds. What you do is you use the existing ranks structures within the guilds. To simplify lets assume you go for 7 ranks, each rank covering 5 levels of progression, from level6 on. On getting a rank in a player guild and fulfilling the necessary RP hoops you get a new item or flag on your character that relates directly to the XP you get from all sources.

To illustrate you can belong to lots of guilds but your highest level in any of them is all that counts. Nobody has any penalty to levelling 1-5.

A 7th guild-ranked player has no XP penalty while in the 0-10 bracket, but 40% penalty to all XP sources while in 11-15, 50% in 15-20, 60% in 21-25, 70% in 26-30, 80% in 31-35 and 90% in 36-40.

A 6th guild-ranked player no penalty 0-15, 40% inside 16-20 etc etc

Also until you get more comfortable with the idea, you may want to attach some monthly caps to adventure XP based on whatever guildranking characters have, it's a failsafe to ensure no1 grinds out despite the xp %'s.

I realise that's a whole new can of worms, quite possibly something to look at once this system is implemented as a possible next stage, but if you actually want to address the core problem, RP versus powergaming, as opposed to creating something that looks like it's high minded on paper but hits the wrong targets in practise, arbitrary hardcaps can't do the math for you, they simply never have been able to and never will be able to. Computers cannot calculate RP commitment and assing it a value, you have to add human evaluation to measure a character's RP commitment and then factor that back into how fast they can or can't level, there's zero effective maths to get around that.

Finally if you're still convinced that my motives are evil, factor in that such a system for an unknown fella (except for being gobby on the forums) will disadvantage me far more than an arbitrarily exploitable hardcap, if I truly am an evil powergamer. All of you who are old hands will do great out of it. Plus being honest rather than shutting my mouth and saying "hard caps work, I've seen it work before", will probably get me remembered as an Ebil Powergrinder for any guild participation.... wasn't that aquasoup wanting instant 40 or something? make sure he never promotes!!

Aeveras · Post by **Aeveras** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:36 pm

First, I don't see anyone calling you a powergamer. Second, peruse the xp/month thread. It shows that most players are below the cap, so in fact, the new xp code will help players who don't dungeoncrawl 24 hours a day, because they will earn more xp and yet they're currently under the cap.

- Aeveras

Grunt · Post by **Grunt** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:54 pm

aquasoup wrote: For anyone who can step past that misconception, please join me on a magical trip down logic lane, I've seen this argument play out and the effects on another RP server. You've got some flaws in your basic premises.

I'll take the ride, and point out where you took a wrong turn on Logic Lane and ended up far off track.

You're talking about Powergamers grinding until they hit the cap and then finding something else to grind, while poor RPers won't get any XP.

False.

The fact that the Party Level XP is being REMOVED in place of Individual Level XP helps the occasional adventurer.

Scenario: Joe Powergamer goes out alone and grinds out 7k XP on Monday. He gets no XP for the rest of the week from killing.

Bob Roleplayer RPs all week and hits a dungeon with a group. Because he is lower level than some of the members, he is able to adventure in an area he would never solo. Bob gets the same XP as if he had soloed.

Thus in a comparison of Area CR vs Level, Bob is getting more bang for his buck.

Bob earns MORE XP on this outing than he would under the old method.

If Bob did not get 7k, Bob can get more XP on another adventure later if he so chooses.

Advantage: Bob.

Also, I don't see the logic behind how this will "hurt RPers". Shit, if I'm getting 0XP for an adventure because I got my 7k...I won't turn down an adventure later in the week. Why? BECAUSE IT IS IC TO GO ON THE ADVENTURE.

Under the old system, Bob may have pulled down 0 XP for the night because he was travelling with epics, and Joe PGer would have kept grinding until he hit 10k.

They're putting in a hard cap on combat XP. They're also making it easier to GET to that cap. The combination of the two means that people's averages will go UP for 90% of Avlis and DOWN for the 10% that are clearing 7k per week in combat XP.

This isn't about crafting. This isn't about quests. This isn't about DM cookies. If the team sees a problem with those 3, it will be addressed. If the incoming system does not work well enough it WILL be tweaked.

Stop worrying and just have fun

aquasoup · Post by **aquasoup** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:55 pm

Whilst that thread is great for seeing the current system, my feeling is the future thread about, how many people capped out for the week under the new system and then felt they weren't supposed to travel with friends for the rest of the week is as relevant to the question of whether Avlis will be preventing powergrinding or promoting RP.