My struggle with XP lockdown

[trylobyte]

One more thing to toss in here is that level is actually somewhat irrelevant when it comes to CD.  DM events scale to the average level and abilities of the characters in them (or at least the DMs try to make sure they do) which means that gaining levels doesn't win you any power in those events; as you get stronger so too do the foes. You get access to more dungeons and better gear, yeah, but honestly once you hit level 18 you can access all the mechanical content the server has to offer.  Level 15 is the 'biggest' level in terms of unlocking content and gear, and is probably the most interesting dungeon-wise.  Blowing past it just means you'll get bored faster.

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.

[Edge]

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 was definitely my experience on the one server that I played on that was balanced around the "all significant RP happens at level cap" paradigm. Having never played on such a server before I (and those I played with) took our time, built up our characters and pursued RP concepts as we leveled, and found ourselves regularly blown past by characters who came after us who were power-leveling up to 30, and often had to sit out of events because we weren't at endgame level.

But in turn, we got to 30 eventually and had solid, thorough characters and concepts, and it was definitely noticeable between the characters who had been there for years and had had the time to build up backstories and characterization and the brand new folks who had blasted their way to 30 only just recently and hadn't really fleshed out yet.

[snorriht]

Dec 30, 2021 10:00:53 GMT -5 Edge said:

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 was definitely my experience on the one server that I played on that was balanced around the "all significant RP happens at level cap" paradigm. Having never played on such a server before I (and those I played with) took our time, built up our characters and pursued RP concepts as we leveled, and found ourselves regularly blown past by characters who came after us who were power-leveling up to 30, and often had to sit out of events because we weren't at endgame level.

But in turn, we got to 30 eventually and had solid, thorough characters and concepts, and it was definitely noticeable between the characters who had been there for years and had had the time to build up backstories and characterization and the brand new folks who had blasted their way to 30 only just recently and hadn't really fleshed out yet.

I had a contrasting experience playing on a hardcore server, in that the roleplay happened before level 20.

This was because the epic level content was content so brutal, only cookie-cutter builds were needed, and were welcome in parties.

It took me two years to get my caster cleric to epic level, with a rich history of roleplay, relationships, plots and fun for all. And after epic level, she was a heal-bot. It was a total let-down for me.

And I was one of the lucky ones! Melee-oriented Clerics were almost non-viable in epic levels, due to the amount of dispel, and dispel-on-hit spam. 

Most roleplay-oriented characters retired there early teens, because it was extremely difficult to level, and soloing was near suicidal.

[Edge]

I've admittedly never played on a hardcore server, so I can't really comment.

[snorriht]

Jan 9, 2022 0:38:34 GMT -5 Edge said:

I've admittedly never played on a hardcore server, so I can't really comment.

I wouldn't play on a hardcore server again. 

CD has got it right with the wild ride to 11th level, slow braking with RP XP, and plenty of gold. More time to experiment, explore and be social in the fun teens.

[Wolfgar]

Jan 8, 2022 22:17:59 GMT -5 snorriht said:

I had a contrasting experience playing on a hardcore server, in that the roleplay happened before level 20.

This was because the epic level content was content so brutal, only cookie-cutter builds were needed, and were welcome in parties.

It took me two years to get my caster cleric to epic level, with a rich history of roleplay, relationships, plots and fun for all. And after epic level, she was a heal-bot. It was a total let-down for me.

And I was one of the lucky ones! Melee-oriented Clerics were almost non-viable in epic levels, due to the amount of dispel, and dispel-on-hit spam. 

Most roleplay-oriented characters retired there early teens, because it was extremely difficult to level, and soloing was near suicidal.

Ah yes, you can either play on hardcore server or have fun but not both.

My experience with a hardcore server was a lot of Rp happened all over, however, everyone chose to level up quickly to get the good stuff.  Good roleplay happened, but never seemed to stick if you were not in the right group.  A lot of corruption and that brought the whole system down.

[Eruheran]

Dec 30, 2021 1:28:11 GMT -5 forsetis said:

Just an idea here. But I think it would be nice if after the tik hit 300, it switched from 15xp, to 1xp. That way if you're on and playing, you still experience forward progression for your roleplay/activity.

I actually think this is a decent idea. 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 quoted post, 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.

Hope that makes sense, and it's my two cents about this.

[Running With Razors]

Dec 30, 2021 1:28:11 GMT -5 forsetis said:

Just an idea here. But I think it would be nice if after the tik hit 300, it switched from 15xp, to 1xp. That way if you're on and playing, you still experience forward progression for your roleplay/activity.

I'd personally switch it from 15 to 5. You'd be still lowering it significantly without turning it into something as meaningless as earning a single exp point every once in a while.

[Eruheran]

Jan 12, 2022 6:05:58 GMT -5 Running With Razors said:

I'd personally switch it from 15 to 5. You'd be still lowering it significantly without turning it into something as meaningless as earning a single exp point every once in a while.

I think the reason why something uncapped like this isn't already in effect is because the Admins 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, if not just 1. The reason is that you'll 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, 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 the admins, and I understand if they 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.

[Philosophy]

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.

[trylobyte]

Jan 14, 2022 14:52:00 GMT -5 Philosophy said:

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.

Correct, mechanical competency and 'legendary status' are not the same thing.  However, there are two points I would like to mention.

'Time spent logged in' and 'Proximity to DM attention' are major factors that drive a character's reputation regardless of whether or not they come with levels unless DM events aren't a major part of the server.  If you wanna build a legendary reputation you need to get involved in legendary things, and that means spending a lot of time logged in, meeting a lot of people, and getting involved in a lot of events.  Great roleplay helps, certainly, but if you're not around and not doing things you're not gonna get much of a reputation.  All that mechanical equality does is allow mechanics to damage those reputations (Elminster would lose a lot of his specialness if every other wizard could beat him up and take his lunch money) and diminish consequences for bad roleplay.

Let's talk about those consequences.  If leveling is quick and efficient and everyone caps at the same level, then there's not as much of a consequence for losing a character.  Not only does this diminish the dramatic impact of a veteran character dying (they are, mechanically, easily replaceable) but it changes the dynamic of the whole server's roleplay.  This gives a lot of power to disruptive evil factions and outright griefers because there's actually not much consequence to getting caught.  Lost your evil necromancer?  Eh, roll up another one, no big deal since you'll be max level again in two weeks.  I've seen this happen a lot, creating huge swings in a server's roleplay and granting a surprising amount of power to OOC cliques, since they can all agree to roll up a big group of related characters who become a powerhouse faction overnight.  Alternatively, it can encourage DMs to turn plots into meat grinders ('Why're you upset about losing a character, just roll another one') or create problems getting attached to characters because they might wind up being dead in three months (See also, Game of Thrones).  None of these things are exactly good for a server's long-term health.

Edit:  Ultimately, we have different experiences when it comes to this sort of thing and indeed it depends largely on the community.  I'm glad that you were able to find a community that could handle it.  I've been a part of some of them, too.  In my experience, though, all those communities had one thing in common - They were small.  I've not been in a community the size of CD that this has worked well in for the reasons I mentioned above, and even in the smaller ones they could cause problems.  Having fun with your paladin?  Well, half the community decided it would be fun to roll up drow this month, so now you have nobody to interact with and if you try to be too paladin around them they'll kick your butt!