Change RP XP from per day to per week

[autokilla]

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.

[Fire Wraith]

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.

[lithom]

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.

[Nokteronoth]

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

[DubiousScroll]

Jun 5, 2021 23:56:07 GMT -5 Nokteronoth said:

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.

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.

[Sir Ven]

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.    

[DubiousScroll]

Jun 7, 2021 15:39:35 GMT -5 Sir Ven said:

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."  

[bracethyself]

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.

[TanoXeneize]

Jun 11, 2021 16:31:07 GMT -5 bracethyself said:

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 like this idea! Would be a nice middle ground in my opinion.

[Epi]

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

[Terallis]

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.

[Nymera]

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.

[The Red Mage]

Jun 12, 2021 23:28:48 GMT -5 Nymera said:

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.

[theyellowking]

Jun 5, 2021 23:56:07 GMT -5 Nokteronoth said:

First, a small fact:

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.

So honestly, someone that is just logging in to get their xp for a week then never logging in after that with the character, is that the kind of person you would want to run an ad-hoc for?

I think that is a bit of a bad argument because that is a problem with the player if they only login for xp, the style tick system will be irrelevant to it at the end of the day.

As for a week cap vs a daily cap.

I think it is overall a benefit especially to people who can't login every day, a week is a much more manageable unit of time.

The downside is that if you get it all early then you won't have any for later, so if you play a lot let's say monday/tuesday, and get all your ticks, then you have no gain the entire rest of the week. And that just doesn't feel as rewarding, and won't play into a positive feedback loop of keeping active.

A daily cap also means people with alt character have to swap much more often however, where a weekly cap would mean they could spend a day on a character then another day on a different character.

I think overall a weekly cap would be better, most people have alts from what I have seen it will make them much easier to manage on the tick system, and it is much easier on people who have obligations that make them unable to play every day.

[DubiousScroll]

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.