Cormyr and the Dalelands

Hey there, since this has come up in another thread in the general section, I felt that this would find better visibility here on it's own. I will be pulling my opinions from there and placing them in here.

The base idea: Once a PC has hit the 300 RP XP cap for the day, they earn a reduced rate of 1 rp xp per tick until the cap is refreshed the next day.

My thoughts:
Currently I've noticed a lot that some people log in to Arabel center or wherever, purely for the sake of getting their rp xp for the day, by doing seemingly meaningless rp. Once the quota is filled, they log off to presumably do something else, and I don't blame them.

When you reach the rp xp cap for the day you are essentially done when it comes to mechanical progression towards a lvl up, and it can lead to a feeling of being stuck. Now I do believe that roleplay can be its own reward, and should be it's own reward, and I do understand that the current system is much more advanced than the old one, but that doesn't mean it can't get better. There's always room for improvement.

The current xp system is decent, but it doesn't necessarily encourage good rp. It's actually not that easy to design a system that, on it's own, encourages good rp. So what could? Well going back to the base idea, this will encourage people to rp more, which in turn should help them improve their rp skills. I also think that the reduced tick of 1 rp xp would not break the servers pace of progression.

For example if it took you 2 hours to get 300 rp xp off of 15 xp per tick, that means that 1 hour is worth 10 ticks. Now if there was reduced rp xp after the cap of 300 has been reached, 1 hour would be 10 rp xp, and 30 hours to reach the same amount of xp as when you were earning it at the rate of 15xp per tick.

I do think this will not only encourage people to engage in better rp as they reach the cap, but in keeping up that rp, those who are not presently advancing their personal stories or faction related rp (heavier, super purposeful rp) would then still feel like they're being rewarded, and would likely put forward more effort to keep rp going, which would serve to enrich the atmosphere and server rp quality. At the same time, the amount you'd get isn't so much that you'd feel like you're missing out on a lot by not playing the game, which is a good, healthy thing.

Fear of missing out is never healthy, plus, this will also help others avoid the feeling that if they don't get into a DM quest or similar, that they can't progress more.

My answer:
I think the reason why something uncapped like this isn't already in effect is because you don't want people to be able to rush progression just by staying on the server for an absurd amount of time. If someone were to spend, lets say, twelve hours with this in place, they'd get (assuming 2 hours of rp is worth 300 rp xp) 300  + (5x10x10= 500) = 800 rp xp, which is impactful, and I believe this rate would vastly increase how people progress through levels, which is more likely to not be approved and therefore end up a hill which I would rather not die on to see any improvement.

It is a healthy thing to not feel bound to any one thing to miss out on purposeful progression. That is why I think if this were to be an implemented change, the most it should be is 2 rp xp per tick. The reason is that you don't want to end up with players thinking "If I go just a bit longer, I'll be able to progress more, and if I stop, I'll fall behind." Currently as proven by other threads in the forum, and players I've talked to, that is how some feel about DM Quests. They feel like if they can't get in one, they'll miss out, they'll fall behind, they won't progress as they'd like.

1-2 rp xp reduced after hitting the cap will still rack up after a while, but it won't be enough to where players will feel like they're missing out on a lot of progression by not no-lifing the game.

Overall, the base idea is something that I think would be really cool to see, ultimately it's up to you guys, and I understand if you want to preserve the rate of progression, but I do feel that this will help ease some players minds and hearts when it comes to fear of missing out.

I don't think it's a hot take but it's definitely a blanket statement that is not 100% true. The best RP will always come from having a well-fleshed out and presented character, however, people vary in all ways and manners, and it is true that people do have FOMO (fear of missing out) when it comes to DM quests on this server. I think the current 300xp per day for roughly 2 hours of play is a good amount, it doesn't demand too much time invested.

Ultimately this is a very small and minor point about this post, which is ultimately tackling the concept of the current xp system and how players do legitimately feel when it comes to it. If one does read my full post, they will see how I thought of the idea of there being 5xp per tick past the cap, versus 1xp per tick.

1xp per tick is small enough that a player isn't likely to agonize over missing 10xp per hour. FOMO isn't healthy, the suggestion I have given, in all respects should not create more FOMO.

As I mentioned before, I think it's a bit extreme to say that 10xp per hour is going to be agonized over by the majority of players. On the other hand, missing out on potentially great progression for character story and items from DM quests is much more logical to say that that would create more fomo.

Also, I think that boiling this down to "I want to level faster', very much disregards the thought and effort put into it, as I am not posting this not for myself, but for those I have talked to and seen agonizing over being unable to participate in things on these very forums and elsewhere. This is a suggestion created after listening to others.

The DM team is not limitless and even as active as they are, not everyone is going to be able to be able to be catered to, whether due to timezone issues or otherwise. This suggestion I wholeheartedly see can alleviate some of those feelings, and I think it would be an absolute shame to write off those feelings as inconsequential compared to making a small adjustment. I think that it's much too much to say that 1xp per tick will exacerbate for everyone, a problem created by the fact that there's just not enough manpower and time to help absolutely everyone, nor will there ever be.

That is my opinion, as is yours. Ultimately I did not post this in the general forum because I wish for the admin-team to see it in as pure a form as possible without too much dilution of peer debate.

I understand what you're saying and, don't worry, no hard feelings. I do think we're approaching this from two different angles, so I'll just try to give some clarity where I'm coming from.

I called it forward progression because it was an easier way to term it without going into other fields of research and study surrounding consumer-focused tactics. XP at it's most base is as you mentioned, used for levelling. However, what does the term "XP gained" feel, and mean for a player? These are things that should be considered if you want to cultivate a product that makes the consumer feel good, not just what it is used for.

So lets open the board for other considerations, though I do still feel that my original suggestion is a solid one still.

Going off the knowledge that there'll likely never be enough time and manpower to cater to everyone on a regular basis, aside from the well known saying "too many cooks spoil the broth," what systems or ideas might there be to engage players in a way that makes them feel happy?

Admittedly my imagination is lacking in this department where it comes to a wide array of ideas, but here's two I could think of:

More npc quests that maybe instead of rewarding just XP (or any at all), reward items instead that could be based on the characters primary class.

Something else might be a sort of gathering items for one off quests that could reward more trinket-like but useful items. Maybe like high level potions of spells that could be used to help in difficult dungeons or so on.

Things I tried to consider when thinking of these things were what would place the most burden on those who are working for no profit to make this server a good place for their players, and what would offer a stable, rewarding experience, now and into the future.

I really do like the idea of crafting xp. I've seen it elsewhere as well. It does seem like a lot of work to go into it but moving around maps to collect crafting ingredients to level up your crafting skills to me was a really good system that allowed players to invest deeply into it and be rewarded when they were able to make good potions and things like that.

I know that this server has the crafting skills as the usual levelling ones, but I much prefer a system based on ability modifiers where everyone can craft and get better at it so long as they put in the time and effort, they can get better and so on and so forth. It provided a really nice and rewarding time sink for players to progress in that was completely seperate to their character level.

Thank you for that!