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Dec 30, 2021 4:10:46 GMT -5 trylobyte said:

Further, I've been on servers where you could rush to max level and when that was an option that's exactly what people would do - They wouldn't engage in any serious roleplay until they hit that maximum level, and at that point they had no way to distinguish themselves outside of their mechanical builds.  You wound up with a bunch of superpowered blank slates nobody had ever heard of who were effectively equal to the legendary heroes of the realm in mechanical combat because they were all the same level and you couldn't go any higher; there was nothing to distinguish those legendary heroes from a random character someone made a month ago as a joke.   As a roleplayer?  That sucks.  It's difficult to interact with a character who either doesn't have a story at all because they've never had the time to develop it or a character that's basically finished their story already and has no need or means to progress beyond the concept the player already had in their mind.  There was no need to grow and evolve the character's mindset and attitude, so they didn't, and the characters had no accomplishments to their name, but that didn't matter.  And people who did choose to take the slow path and not level up to the maximum right away?  They got left in the dust and most often ignored because everyone was expected to rush to the maximum.

This is a conflation; mechanical competency and 'legendary status' are not the same thing. On servers where you reach max level quickly, you distinguish yourself strictly through your roleplay. Or, put another way, if the only thing a character has going for her is a personally favorable level discrepancy, the player has necessarily failed to make that character interesting.

On conventional RP servers, of which CD is an example, it seems that there's a subset of people who unfortunately rely on 'time spent logged in' and 'proximity to DM attention' as indications of roleplay merit. Not the case, never has been the case. More obvious on places where these things are flattened or otherwise irrelevant.

["RP XP" does not encourage RP]

Like some other veteran players in this thread, I remember the days before the XP faerie was added. Then, reaching level 15 required a fair amount of time and fortitude. The upper teens were fairly rare, and the highest level characters on the server were in the low-mid 20s.

Needless to say, when I returned to the server after several years of hiatus with my own character, just shy of level 20, I was struck by a sense that progression is now trivialized.

But that's a good thing.

The introduction of the XP faerie was a boon. It absolved DMs of the need to monitor general RP and pass out experience, freeing more of their time up for plots. And it gave players a reasonable baseline progression mechanism so they didn't necessarily need to chase after limited slots in DM events that otherwise might not intrigue them. A win-win.

This conversation boils down to incentive structures. Any RP server's systems should, broadly, incentivize active and compelling roleplay while disincentivizing behaviors that are unduly disruptive or ultimately tedious for either players or staff.

With that in mind, here are my thoughts on the above, mostly in response to OP:

"RP XP" does not encourage RP

This is true in a strict sense; the XP faerie incentivizes people to log in every day and produce at a minimum tepid one-line emotes, or move around a bit, but nothing more. It's not clear to me that this is a preferable state of affairs to simply allowing people to remain silent and still get some of their XP. Certainly, I've felt that doing a dungeon, with a great deal of movement and area transitions, is a faster and more reliable way to hit the daily cap than standing in the square and chatting, where you might post too slowly to trigger the next tick of XP, or what-have-you.

I think that removing the checks for active chat events (and possibly movement, as well) would actually incentivize more of a willingness to engage in public RP, rather than less. It would put standing around and talking, with enough time to compose more detailed posts, on equal footing with other behaviors. Not a huge issue for me since I type a lot and rather quickly too, but definitely for some. Much more of an issue for me when I have a character in Yulash and there's no one around to type at, however.

It discourages activity

Disagree. One of the strengths of a server like CD is that you can log in and with some reliability find some public-facing character conversations. I say this having a lot of characters on a certain social server where I'll argue this kind of always-on popcorn entertainment is actually somewhat less accessible.

It severely restricts creating new characters
Agree. Alting on CD and expecting your alts to progress is something that is ultimately going to be a multi-year proposition, or maybe a bit quicker if you have nothing going on in your life and spend 16 hour stretches logged in. Maybe that's desired for some reason I can't fathom - but it's one of those things that strikes me as unduly tedious for players when it doesn't have to be.

It limits players' ability to create storylines
Disagree. The hard distinction between staff members and players is what really does this. CD is a very traditional RP server, much like others in the Myth Drannor 'family', and as such players really have no control over the game world without the explicit approval of staff. DM plotlines shape the collective narrative - and player initiatives only do so when they attract DM oversight.

There are arguments for and against, but it is what it is, and I highly doubt this norm is changing.

It splits already small playerbase
Somewhat agree, if we suppose that participating in dungeon crawls or joining the same events is the sole means of interaction between characters. It's a major one - but not the only one. Can RP with a high level on a low level and vice versa just fine. For better or worse, though, EE has given this creaking old relic of a game a new lease on life - and the slow decline of more niche servers has lead to consolidation. I think CD's playerbase is doing just fine right now.

It puts unfair and unnecessary stress on both players and DMs

So, in this case, we're not really talking about the XP faerie so much as the whole model. Broadly agree with this. The bottom line, IMO, is that DM'd events should be compelling on their own merits, and that they should not be a vehicle for cynical XP acquisition. There's of course a (valid - I mean, it's NWN) concern over favoritism, but there's also the more simple reality that good storycraft can stand on its own.

With that said, I doubt anything is going to change about the granting of XP as it pertains to events. I'll simply suggest that the staff might have an easier time distinguishing between sincere interest in certain plots and tepid involvement for the sake of experience if a change were made. And, as a result, reduce the possibility of humoring people who aren't there for genuine reasons.

In the end of the day, this is just a game and it should be easy to approach and fun

For me this is the most important point in the thread, and it's the one I'll actually make some suggestions about. A long time ago, a close friend of mine wrote the XP faerie script for CD - and as far as I can tell, it's remained pretty much unchanged since then. We went off to start our own server and made a few changes that were ultimately positive, in my view, and intended to make our XP system more approachable. The below are variations thereof - and they were mostly well-received, so they can work.

Suggestions:

1. Change the daily XP faerie cap to a weekly XP faerie cap. Aliana mentioned this above. Completely agree. Miss a few days during the week? No problem, people have jobs. Just catch up on the weekend or whatever. Can preserve the exact same rate of automated progression while providing players more flexibility. Easy win.
   
2. Make things easier for alts by having some multiplied XP weekends, or something to effect, where you can double or triple your faerie XP during that time period. This shouldn't hasten the pace too drastically for main characters, but may incentivize people to log in with their less frequently played characters and catch up. Not too certain of the details - would require a bit more thought. Could script it up such that the bonuses apply only to the lower level characters in any given vault, too, maybe.
   
3. Put combat XP and event XP on equal footing, with the XP faerie as the sole means to acquire what is presently referred to as "DM XP". Likely controversial and probably won't happen, but it strikes me as both a win for potentially overworked DMs and for players who either can't attend many DM'd events or ultimately don't have an interest in <insert current main storyline>. There's nothing wrong with that, IMO. Not every event fits every concept - and when players dogpile for the sake of XP, it can turn a plot that might be more focused into a less coherent soup.

Ultimately, I will say that the current state of affairs is hardly a deal-breaker. But I do come at this from the perspective of a veteran with some ideas, rather than a new player who might be shocked at this style of progression.