Cormyr and the Dalelands

I fully support this idea as well! Really like the idea of it

I also like this idea!

For what its worth, I think that this may be a good idea. (Although I may be going on a 'hiatus' soon it may not be that relevant to me.)

I believed I searched the Forums, and read the CD: Experience & Leveling and it would appear to me that the limit could have been set to cease power-leveling or to establish a growth standard for immersion purposes to the best of my knowledge. Adalon may have a significant point where people can't be logged in for days at a time so they can at least catch up. In a persistent world, time moves as slow or as fast as the Admin want it too.

This isn't my 'House' but I cant find anything wrong with it, so.

At first glance this idea does look pretty cool, and for some folks it can be certainly very helpful, but it 1) was discussed before in the discord and dismissed and 2) has a couple drawbacks.

The biggest one is that it'd actually fairly likely result in an overall fall of activity, since quite a few people would end up maxing out their ticks e.g. on their free day and then lack an incentive to play their character for six other days. Yes, this may not apply to you, but it would certainly apply to quite a few who need the incentive of having ticks daily to login daily.

It would also change the overall progression on the server quite a bit. For one, getting your character to 12 would inevitably take two weeks, since it won't be possible to get from 3/4/5/6 (depending on ECL) to 11 in the time you get 1.1k exp, unless you maybe literally power level without any regard to rp whatsoever.

It'd change the whole journey behind the character development a lot. Just my thoughts on it.

The recent discussion on this is currently in the archive under forums.cormyrdalelands.com/index.php?topic=11388 for those interested in viewing that

So, people really think its better and more interesting to be forced to bunny hop between five pcs every single day, while cancelling the rping going on with one pc, just cause they maxed their ticks? I see people end the rp they're in literally mid rp just cause they reach the limit and switch to another pc to jump right in the same rp. And they do that 3-4 times. i refuse to believe that way is better, especially when there are no real draw backs to this proposal other then a few people being like "Oh, theres no reason not to have it but i just dont want it. So no". Especially when it would help more players then it would harm. as far as i know, every time its discussed nearly everyone loves the idea of it but it always gets rejected because... "fuck the players" i guess?. And the only real way to gain any exp past 15 is in events, but on this server there are so many super popular people who are in, like, every event and are also on daily meanwhile some players arent able to join any events and can only log on a couple days throughout the week. doesnt that seem just a -little- unfair to you?

1) I barely have that happen at all. I legitimately cannot remember when it happened to me the last time. And I don't do that myself at all either.

2) I (as I've stated in the other thread) don't play daily. I personally need the incentive to even login some days that daily ticks give.

3) Some folks are committed to just one character. Making them wait *an entire week* to have a rewarding feeling sounds just as unfair, doesn't it?

4) Honestly, mute discussion anyway since Admins did already decide against it not too long ago.

Edit: A lot of folks level up mainly through RP ticks. Admins, DMs and sDMs control quest queues. As someone who literally dropped from a quest final, maybe -don't- put forth such accusations, Autokilla.

So, for starters, it's not every player that simply reaches cap and cuts off RP. In fact, I've observed very few like that, myself. The entire intent is to play your character and have fun with it. While XP is part of advancing, the daily ticks are still not meant to be a full-fledged focus to rely on. It's something you gain by playing, and most will continue to play further past their daily cap, because they enjoy playing the character and whatever is presently going on, as well. To comment as well on the end point, about there being popular people, DMs across the board put up quests that even specifically state that we'll give preference to those newer or less quested, while alting those who've been in many plots. This is to give more opportunity for those less involved players to actually become involved. There are, likewise, plenty of events that even go completely unfilled despite these complaints.

I won't go further into the reasonings of not switching to this system, though, as it's been explained rather thoroughly through the past archived post as well, so I'd just be repeating what has already been said. But there really isn't any sort of "fuck the players" mindset in any of this. No system is perfect, but the daily system over a weekly system has far fewer detriments to consider.

I dropped from the quest final that one time because i did not have any enjoyment just sitting there being a viewer in an event im a part of. how can anyone enjoy an event where they arent allowed to do anything, hmm?

Let's keep this civil please. If you have a complaint to make, send it to the SDMs and admins via the posted forms. If you have already made such a complaint, stop bringing it up in public threads.

oh, im only explaining to jaz. just the fact that if i feel like im doing nothing and not having fun, im going to drop out. no point in playing when i feel im not making even the slightest impact

I like the idea. But it won't affect me as much as other people. I just play to play. 99% of my XP comes from ticks, and my play hours(a few after work every day) would remain largely unchanged.

Whoa... I think we might be getting a little off topic here

Let me see...:

1) I barely have that happen at all. I legitimately cannot remember when it happened to me the last time. And I don't do that myself at all either.

I'm assuming you're referring to my comment about people jumping on and off of characters? I see that pretty often, but not everyone does it.


2) I (as I've stated in the other thread) don't play daily. I personally need the incentive to even login some days that daily ticks give.

Then don't get all of your ticks in one day? Play for a few hours each day, it'd be no different than what you currently do.


3) Some folks are committed to just one character. Making them wait *an entire week* to have a rewarding feeling sounds just as unfair, doesn't it?

Why would you need to wait? It isn't any more or less experience than what you currently receive per week. If you want to get XP every day then don't play for 18 hours straight on one day.

4) Honestly, mute discussion anyway since Admins did already decide against it not too long ago.

I'm not a fan of this attitude. Especially since the last conversation was seemingly ended with "no plans to do this" with no reason or discussion to the contrary given so it could at least be documented. Ignoring people asking for help so they can simply play like other folks is not constructive.


Now the others:
"So, for starters, it's not every player that simply reaches cap and cuts off RP"
I never said it was, but some folks do it and I have seen it.

" While XP is part of advancing, the daily ticks are still not meant to be a full-fledged focus to rely on. It's something you gain by playing, and most will continue to play further past their daily cap, because they enjoy playing the character and whatever is presently going on, as well."
I agree with most of your sentiment, and I do like to RP for extended periods on one character. That is why I was proposing this. But I think you're also looking at this from the point of view of someone that can log on every single day. Imagine if you could only log in 3 days out of the week and you had all the time you wanted those 3 days. Are you going to burn an entire day only getting 300 xp for one character, or might you jump around to 2 or 3 characters on one of the few days you get to play?

To your last point, I didn't see it explained well why this system would be worse than the daily cap. It appears that the thread was simply chopped off. Maybe there was discussion in the discord? However, things like Discord are not good for record keeping.

Only going to chime in on #3 here, which is explained a bit in the archived thread.

Switching to weekly slows down progression for new PCs and new players, which can be offputting. You can grind to 11 in 4-6 hours with a powerlevel (which is frowned upon) if you know where to go. Probably 8-10 if you're solo and know the best farms, which most people don't do because it's tedious. In that case, I can immediately begin getting RPXP and on my way to level 12 the next day. However, most people don't play this way.

A new player it might take 15 hours of dungeoning, and only dungeoning, to get to 11. If you do that in a week, that means you now hit your weekly cap and are at a stopgap until reset, rather than immediately working toward your next level the following day.

I think that is a legitimate downside for a brand new character, but I also believe it would even out as soon as you hit level 12. You can also do quests to push yourself over the threshold. There is no reason to wait a week unless you want to.

you could go from start to up to lvl 13 if you got all your quests in and the weekly rp exp in by day one if you really wanted to

RPXP doesn't carry over between levels, in order to reach level 13 in a day would require abnormally fast leveling not likely to be doable without powerleveling and/or some abuse/exploit, completing every available level 11-13 quest, and being carried through the gem of life quest. This would be against the dungeon etiquette guidelines as well as being likely to cause disruption for other players with the speed at which you'd have to be clearing dungeons

you dont need to do the gem of life dungeon as well for this. you can get about 2100 rp exp weekly, then get about 1000 by the quests for after lvl 10 (as well as about 500-700 from the rat and smuggler quest) so if you really wanted to rush through and get to lvl 13 in the first day, you could. im not saying you should, but just saying if someone really wanted to its possible. but the rp exp would be the exact same with 2100 weekly, or 300 a day. its not like making the exp value weekly lessens the exp you'd be getting from rp. and as it is right now, it takes over a week minimum to get to lvl 13 anyway from my experience so... literally wont take any longer then usual unless you spam rush through all of it as soon as you start out. I made my new pc about 5-6 days ago and she is still lvl 12. By how im doing it, it would take about 7-8 days since making her to even get her to lvl 13. So, about the same amount of time it would take if the rp exp was set to being 2100 weekly anyway.

RPXP doesn't carry over across levels, any RPXP you gain from ticks before level 11 will not count. The rat and smuggler quests also do not give xp past 10. This is why a weekly cap would put new characters behind compared to the current system, as you're more likely to cap your weekly allowance before you hit level 11 where rpxp becomes a requirement to level and then have to wait for the current week to end before you can start gaining ticks again

as i said, it already took me about a week and will take over a week to lvl my pc to lvl 13 if im smart about time management. and if your smart about time management with it being weekly ticks, will take about the same length of time

Also, jazz earlier said their only incentive to play here was the 300 exp a day. so... doesnt that mean people like that dont even like the server? if your only logging in for the 300 exp and thats hit, doesnt that mean you dont like the server or rping with anyone in it? lol

We're not going to implement the weekly XP cap per the reasons in the prior thread.  Thank you.

Reasons like... it doesnt effect you specifically so even though a majority of players support it, you dont care? or...? I just want to hear an actual reason that outweighs all the positives this would do, as i cant see any real issues with this suggestion

And what reasons were those exactly? I didn't see any reasons in the prior thread other than "some things were talked about on discord so nope not doing it". That isn't exactly a reason and it'd be nice to have that documented, or you're likely to see another one of these threads pop up as the idea seems more popular than not, from the posts so far on this thread. I also haven't had anyone specifically talk to my reasons for wanting this change. Are players like me with limited time just not desired on this server? I'm just curious what the official stance is here.

The reasons have already been mentioned in the thread.  Let me expand on the three primary reasons a bit, since I was around for the last discussion too.

1)  It makes it harder for new characters, especially those of new players who don't know how the system works, to get out of the early levels.  This means powergamers and well-connected players like veterans will be able to race ahead of new players because they will have the knowledge and experience to fully take advantage of the system, moreso than they already do.  You think you're having problems keeping up with people now?  You ain't seen nothing yet.

2)  Every kind of persistent game needs a carrot to get people online and active, and there's nothing better for this than a daily perk.  Most major MMOs do something like this because they're aware of the 'death spiral' - If a game has a low player count, then people won't log in, and if people won't log in because there aren't many people online, then, well...  The daily XP ticks are how CD helps to subvert that.  Want to level up a bit quicker?  Well, better log in and be active for a bit every day.  Otherwise you have people who will only play one or two days a week and simply no-life it, whih drops player count, which means fewer people log in, which means fewer new players show up...  There's a reason it's called a death spiral.  This is a simple case where something that the majority of players support would actually be bad for the long-term viability of the server.

3)  The fairy isn't really supposed to be the primary source of XP on the server, quests and events are.  The fairy is meant to be a supplement to that.  This gives players a motivation to get involved in the stories being told and work with people they otherwise might not meet, encouraging socialization and making new friends (or enemies).  I've met a lot of interesting people because they happened to be in a quest group with me, and I've had characters grow and change in major ways because of quest events.  The XP is a big carrot to encourage people to share in this experience.

OK thanks for posting them. I just don't see how it affects early leveling to such a degree. It might make a difference of a couple days worth of leveling at most in the early levels, but that is small compared to the weeks you'll spend in later levels.

Yeah, I do think you need some sort of carrot to keep people logging in and maybe some folks would get all their XP in a day or two. I'd likely be one of those people, not out of choice, but out of necessity. I like how people just throw out "better log in every day and be active!" I mean, cool for you, but I can't.

Maybe the fairy isn't supposed to be the primary source of XP, but I miss most events and don't even bother signing up because of my time restrictions, so for me it is the main source of XP. I appreciate that that is not the case for you and obviously others, but no one seems to be considering that not everyone has the ability to do this.

It sounds like this will just get tossed anyways, so I suppose it doesn't matter. Feel free to close the thread if you want. I'm out

1) It would be hard for new players with daily rp ticks or weekly. When i first started out, i did the beginning quests like slaad, the mirror, the painting and what not all at lvls 10-11 when i barely even needed rp exp in the first place so still screwed myself. New players who dont even know about the rp exp limit will do the exact same thing anyway and almost all new players i meet and talk with when i explain the rp exp to them, its such a turn off a bunch say thats a major turn off for them, while a bunch of others have even said its not worth it and decided to leave due to how unliked the rp exp cap is.

2) They can still do that without making a massive limit like needing to get a certain amount of rp exp, or at least so much. like, right now Demi needs 20k rp exp to lvl to 20. and thats exp that will largely be gained only by rp ticks as i cant do ad hocs because i dont like being in giant crowds of 10-20 people, and most events get filled up so fast on the forums a lot of players, like myself, dont have time to even sign up for them and therefore my only source of any meaningful rp is the daily ticks. but as i have a life, im not on the server all day getting the max rp exp and constantly swapping pcs to get everyone the max amount in the day like so many other people do that i've personally seen.

3) Pretty much answered this in part two. some people like myself cant do ad hocs for one reason or another, and cant sign uj for every event thats posted for one reason or another so the daily fairy ticks are the majority of the exp im able to gain. and when im not able to jump on every single day, for the entire day it makes it very hard to make any meaningful progress

You have been warned not to attack other people personally.  This is your final warning.

For the record, I would benefit by the "per week" cap over the daily cap since I log in at most 3 days a week during the school year.  So watch your tone and attitude when addressing others.

I mean, i dont feel i have attacked anyone personally, despite having been personally attacked early on by another person in the thread unprovoked and no one caring.

Auto, you outright accused her of not caring because it doesn't affect her. That's neither polite nor does it contribute positively to any discussion about the matter.

Now, let me move on to the core matter of this:

Our goal here, as a server team/admins/etc, is not to get you, the player, to level 30. Our goal here is to give people opportunities to roleplay and tell stories, and to get involved in ongoing storylines that involve multiple characters or even the entire server. To that end we try and incentivize such behavior, with participation XP being an important component of leveling. The reason that the RP XP ticks exist is as a supplement to that, because we realize that peoples' ability to get into events and plots can vary greatly based on things that may not be within their control, and we also want people to be on and interact even outside of DM events.

But that said, we are not interested in making it easier to level solely via such (because that's not the goal - we want to help get you all into events). If someone feels forced to stop playing a character and switch to an alt just to keep getting XP, rather than continue a fun roleplay interaction... honestly, that's on you and not us. The point of this is to have fun roleplaying, and if you're concerned more with XP, let me tell you that all that awaits you at level 30 is more of the same. Either you're involved with fun roleplay and stories/quests (that no longer award you anything but fun and personal satisfaction), or you're not. My primary PC (and I rarely play alts) is and has been level 30 for some time, yet I still spend all my time as that character - because it's fun and interesting for me, and I care more about that - advancing the story of the character - than I do the notion of mechanically advancing a character.

Ultimately we're not interested in making it easier to level without story/event participation. If someone has trouble getting to participate, we'd much rather look at that than incentivize leveling without such participation. There are implications to this which, however minor, lead us to conclude it's less ideal than the existing setup, as we've explained. And if you think that's not a good reason, then to quote a wise Dude - "Well, that's just like, your opinion, man."

Also, given what I've heard, if someone's interest is so fixated in leveling that they feel compelled to cut short RP to switch characters because they're out of RP ticks, I'd honestly suggest considering whether this is the server for you. It's not a paradigm for everyone, and if you have more fun gaining levels than you do with RP/Story bits, there might be other servers better suited to such you could consider.

Alright, didnt think this was some touchy subject.

I have a general idea of how it's all treated. I'm much more partial to RP then just mindless grinding so to each their own.

Nobody should get worked up over something like leveling on an RP server. They have action servers for those.

I dont mind staying a mid level PC for a few months but it's sort of confusing with how many alts that Froli has met and hard to keep track of sometimes but kinda have to go with it.

First, a small fact:

Everyone can, and are absolutely free, to sign up for quests even if the signup 'looks' full. We DO keep track of who is quested, and how often in a given month/year. We have Excel sheets for way, way, way more shit than most any players realize. Quests? Yes. Items? Yes! Login numbers every day? Yes. Items given out as DM rewards? Yes. Compliments given to aDMs? You betcha.

DMs are encouraged (but not required) to bring in newer or less-quested players. Sign up if you find a quest interesting! You might get thrown in to make the party balance good, or because the DM has a good idea for your character. In the past, the server was mostly first-come first-serve, but we've been keeping track of way more metrics and we're trying to solve the issue of fairy XP being so important by training more DMs, having more quests, and overall increasing story interaction.

Now, for opinion:

I don't think I'd care much for a weekly cap. Already, if I see people online late at night, they're either off in an inn room or idling hidden somewhere to get their 'ticks'. Them doing this once a week and then not logging on ever again makes it really hard to get a quest or ad-hoc going.

I understand that there's some people that have daily jobs, weird hours, or family obligations that keep them from logging in every single day, and that they will likely fall behind their friends who do have that kind of spare time. But, I also don't think there's any great solution to both of these issues. It's picking the best of two somewhat bad choices. 

The only thing I could maybe think of (though it might be a bitch to code) is the sort of rested-XP system like WoW uses, where someone that doesn't log in can get a small increase that would NOT get them to the same as the daily ticks, but help them catch up to those that do. Something like 60-70% might be reasonable. No idea how much of a bitch this would be to code, though.

~BR

As a total aside, can I just add that this makes for finding RP at those hours incredibly frustrating too.  I usually login late in the PM, see there's no one around, and log out.

Wish people were less 'tick' driven and more 'let's engage each other' driven.

I will confess to being tempted to "chase" ticks, especially when my characters are closer to a level.    It's a trap I've fallen into a couple times, but I legitimately find I have more fun and tell better stories when I play to have fun, rather than to chase xp.    

I've done it too.  It's really easy to become goal motivated and "have to get your ticks in."  

I would benefit as well, but I think there is an activity incentive piece that comes into play in terms of keeping the server numbers up to attract new players that is a legit admin strategy. However MD struggled with the difficulty of alienating players who couldn't log in every day to chase the fairy. Even with that I wouldn't be in favor of straight up going weekly instead of daily.

My thought would be some sort of hybrid, where you could get 300xp per day for maxing out the fairy each day. But if you didn't max out the fairy each day you could get some portion of the difference. Lets say (just to have an example) 50%. That means within a 7 day period I could earn 2100xp by knocking out my tics daily, or I had gone 6 days without getting max daily xp I could get up to 50% of whatever I had left.

Sticking to a straightforward example, lets say I didn't log in for 6 days when I logged in on the 7th day I could potentially earn 1200xp in tics [(300/2 * 6) + 300]. That might be a way to even out those who have more burst playtimes.

However this would likely be difficult to implement.

I'm not sure about the back end part of this, i.e. how hard is it to script? Also, from what I have heard it can be a blessing to stay in the mid to late teens/early epics, because more stuff happens there (quests and dungeons and stuff). No reason to chase ticks. That said, I'm late to the discussion and I didn't read all of this, so I might be totally out of the loop

PS: I just created a fresh character, and I've had fun with that. No reason to rush to the teens, even. People need to chill. <3

As far as I'm aware, the back end of keeping intricate track of unacquired xp like that and moving them into the next day... would require a ton of work at the very least. Vince or Fire can likely chime in better on this, but as far as I know, it could potentially require a complete rewrite of most of the xp system to accommodate something like that, and it would add a lot more that the server would need to keep track of in a more complicated way.

As it is right now, when the new day rolls around, it simply resets to zero and you can gain that daily 300 xp again until the next day rolls around. Having it keep and add what's left on to the next day, even at a 50% rate (actually especially at a 50% rate since that's even more calculation and tracking) would be a ton. Since it would need to figure out how much is left and only reset parts of it that doesnt include that extra that wasnt acquired, and so on.

I have no particular horse in this race but I'll chime into say that daily login incentives are good for the health of the server as a whole, even if inconvenient for the individuals who cannot play every day.  Daily XP-Fairy is not a perfect system for everyone, but it's the most reasonable one proposed.  

Those who chose to chase XP ticks aren't super relevant to the conversation because people who wish to maximize their XP gain will do so in any system.  Everything can be optimized, and there will always be a disparity between those that choose to do so and those that do not.  More complex systems both demand extra scripting work from staff that have other interests and priorities, and may cause anxiety in players by overcomplicating the system and making them worry they are "missing out" due to rules they don't understand.

Since the purpose of the server is a place to roleplay and tell stories, then it stands to reason that the progression system that encourages and facilitates roleplay the best without being obtrusive should be favored, and in this case, daily XP both encourages a healthy population to log in and is simple enough to understand for casual players to not have to worry about or stress over.

Those are good points. Well said.

I don't necessarily think everyone on every alt needs to have max ticks on each character in a given week either.  Like, part of making an alt is that you're diverting time/attention = XP from one character to another and that, to me, seems like the appropriate price to pay for having a lot of alts.

I'd much rather see more scripted quests as opposed to changing the tick system (which is not perfect but is fine) or reduced, but more, combat XP.  Anything that encourages people from sitting in the middle of Arabel to going out and making their own fun in the beautiful dungeon areas the server has so many of.

I love the bounties, for example, because so many RP trips are one person saying; "Hey, I have this list of things Arabel needs me to do" and then a bunch of people replying: "We'll help, let's go!"  Anything to encourage more of that and less Arabel Potato People seems like a huge gain in my opinion.

That being said, the systems we have in place right now are fine.  I can routinely get a character to 15 with minimal DM interaction and I think that's the sweet spot for where you'd want to cap a character before they should need to start engaging in the stories of the world to a further degree.

Selfishly, I wish there was more to do/less DM reliance in the hours I play (where there are both very few players online and usually fewer DMs) but that's more a consequence of playing during the off hours than any of the systems being bad/broken.

From what I'm aware, at least, there are more scripted quests in the works. However, there's no ETA on when. As always, Soon™

But as for the topic of this thread, the admin response on the matter has already been stated, either way.

So just thinking about this, Perhaps a good solution would be to keep the daily cap as a soft cap, Where you still earn RPXP after the 300 limit however it goes into a second bank as such where the next day, that bank is used to fill up the daily limit this keeps leveling to the same amount as before, without punishing those who have a lot of time to play one day and none the other days. I would also consider making this second cap transfer through levels as it were though I can see why that would be frowned upon.