Important change that impacts who moderates xp- pls review

[Regas]

Related to the BG house rule to moderate xp by capping it at 60 xp per hour I am a bit perplexed and maybe a little stunned? I might be convinced its time to let the servers have more autonomy, strip authority from the admin and let the alfa servers effectively "fork" into their own rules sets- it might be just what ALFA needs as a shot in the arm. If that's what we're doing, I missed the memo. I am not sure if we need a charter amendment to do so but I would at least like to see a bit of discussion before it happens. I am certainly willing to go along with whatever the remaining stakeholders want to do.

Meaning no disrespect to the BG team or their efforts- I am baffled as to how this rule could be reconciled with ALFA's current framework? My understanding of the way ALFA has divided the authority relating to moderation of xp and rewards is that the DMA alone is responsible for setting the rules on moderation that apply to all alfa servers- has this policy changed? How would we know what parts of xp attributed to a character report from the dm tools were earned on BG as opposed to other alfa servers? If HDMs can now write their own xp standards how do we reconcile conflicting standards between two or more alfa servers?

I am confused as well if the policy intends to penalize players with limited time to play in ALFA that log in usually only for campaign styled dm sessions? These sorts of players may play infrequently but could easily earn more than 60 xp an hour if engaged in combat styled sessions. Is it the intention of the policy to penalize these players? Likewise, the policy would seem to reward players with large amounts of time to commit online that could build large "cushions" of time sufficient to absorb regular campaign styled play as well as regular static and combat xp associated with solo time. Based on Foam's post this seems like a hard cap of 60 xp an hour with a vague implication to exceptions made by SF? The BG dm team? I am not sure what counts for exceptions or from whom they would come?

Admin has long debated the idea of a hard xp cap per hour and has consistently decided against going this way. I would hope at a minimum, any moderation policy comes from the HDM and applies to all servers; or, we as a community change our rules to allow individual servers to write our own standards.

First, let me state that RP XP is a very misleading name. "RP XP" is just something you get for being online and active. Spend an hour on the road? 15xp. Spend an hour killing goblins? Bonus 15xp. Spend an hour trying to hit on that barmaid? 15xp. Spend an hour chatting with other players? 15xp.

Now, granted that I havn't been online for a week or so, but is there a way for a player to see how much xp he or she has received from which sources? Also, will this be grandfathered? I mean, players who not white, middle-class, and within acceptable living xp-parameters, are they to be reported to the player admin for farming violation as soon as they set foot on the Sword Coast?

I mean, I like a good persecution of our players as the next guy, but that just sounds like a lot of work.

Regardless of race, class, or nation, we tend to keep RP XP percentages and wealth obscured from the player. Generally they don't need to know. That said, most DMs are willing to tell you that kind of information if you ask them.

What exactly does this mean, especially the bold? Are you referring to the RPXP ticker? So is BG saying it is preferable to earn free XP by just standing around and chatting 25% of the time than going out and adventuring? I am totally confused.

The RP XP thing is a measure of your "XP:time spent in game" ratio. Keep in mind you still earn RP XP just for being active. So when you're going around killing goblins for 1xp each, you'd have to spend an hour to kill 45 goblins, assuming you logged on just before combat, and logged out exactly after.

RP XP % is a measure of XP density, basically how much XP you get per hour you spend in game, taken in the long run. 25% means you'd have to maintain 60xp/RL hour outside of DM activity to be considered a farmer. Spent 50 hours playing a character? Your XP, not including significant DM XP, should not be over 3,000, 750 of which comes from just being logged in and active.

Say it takes you 2 hours to go killing goblins, and goblins give you 1xp each. In that 2 hours, if you kill over 90 goblins, that's under 25%. Take 3 hours to travel the road, and go kill goblins? You'd have to kill 135 goblins to go under 25%. Spend 2 hours RPing with a friend, then go travel and kill goblins for another 2 hours? You'd have to kill 180 goblins together to go under 25%.

The only real people under 25% are people who log in, go kill stuff, then log out, who seriously farm their balls off, or who see a significant (in terms of character play time) amount of DMing. The later of those two are exempt from the rule.

Basically, 25% means you should not be earning more than 60xp on average, for the entire life of the character per RL hour. This seems high if you are someone who logs in for concentrated bursts of XP, but drastically eases up later. 25% was decided on after parsing logs to see what your average players are at. You'd have to be a heavy campaign DM (such as from Ronan's crew on TSM) to be under 25%, and thus exempt, when you step foot on BG.

[FoamBats4All]

See my post here.

This was meant to be a house rule for DMs, not "HDMs can now give strikes."

The goal here, in talking with shad0wfax, seems to be to protect players, not to punish them. It's supposed to be, "Hey, DMs, if someone is over 25% RP XP after level 3, please do not report them for farming, or make us pull logs on them. Only players under 25% may be reported to the PA for farming. Significantly DMed or grandfathered players should not be reported either."

It's asking that BG DMs do not report people to the PA if they are over 25%. This is fine for an HDM to do.

- - - - -

Additionally:

But, to a player, this unresearched, magic number of 25%, which you have no way of checking yourself, seems rightfully scary. They have no statistics to draw upon, no 3+ years of RP XP history that they looked over. It's just a random number to them, with no context or way of self-checking.

25% for non-DMed players is not as big of a deal as you make it sound. I can draw up some charts and graphs if it'd make you feel better.

[shad0wfax]

HEEGZ had a house policy that farming was defined as 7.5% RPXP. That means, you could farm the heck out of statics and mobs and you could have 2,775 XP from mobs and statics, and 225 XP from RPXP which correlated to 15 hours of RL play.

HEEGZ standards, as a house rule, were so absolutely lax, that "Farming" couldn't possibly apply to any character ever, even when a character had 7,500 total XP, of which 5% came from DMs, 12% came from RPXP, and the remaining 83% came from statics and monster kills.

My attempt to codify the 25% change was not to go on a witch-hunt for players. It was to give BG DMs (who can see RPXP vs Lifetime XP % values with a single click of a button) a tool to overlook the less severe cases of farming and to focus on characters who derive a large portion of their XP from grinding mobs and statics.

Furthermore, the language was such that the HDM may refer that to the PA for farming at HDM discretion. The PA has the domain over this issue. And the PA would examine every case on an individual basis, and to the PA, the 25% limit was, and is, absolutely meaningless. (Just as HEEGZ 7.5% limit was absolutely meaningless to the PA.)

Since not everyone has access to the actual logs of character activity, I added language to clarify that anyone who had plenty of XP from DM events would not be reported, and of course, anyone that predates the house rule or that comes from another server would not be reported.

In the cases of characters that predated the rule or characters that came from other servers, the intent was that I would contact them (only if they did not have significant DMXP), and let them know that by my standards, they were out of spec. From that point, I would simply watch their behavior on BG over a period of time. If they exhibited signs of farming, documented by a further decrease in % RPXP (which means they're gaining more XP per hour from sources other than DMs or RPXP), that I'd then refer them to the PA, for the PA to investigate under their own criteria.

The 25% was not a number that was arrived at randomly. I searched through the lifetime logs for every single character every created on any ALFA NWN2 server, and I found that the overwhelming majority of older characters from 2011 were at the 50% mark, that the vast majority of characters from 2012 to mid 2013 were at the 35% mark, and that only a very few outliers were under 25%, with most of those being characters that I know to have been part of large DM campaigns, or heavily involved in multiple DM events.

I also looked through the past history of people that did receive farming strikes from the PA, and their % RPXP was anywhere from 12% up to nearly 50% RPXP. Obviously, the PA has their own criteria, as this is their domain.

The reason I posted this in house rules is that HEEGZ policy meant that on BG, absolutely no one could ever be farming, by his rules, because it was impossible to even achieve his threshold.

So no, I don't think that I'm the PA. I don't think that I can issue strikes or official ALFA warnings as an administrator. I don't think that I have the authority to change what is farming.

What I was trying to do was allow lower level players more flexibility in leveling (below level 3 are exempt) and to be more generous with my own criteria for reporting than the past DMs were, while also being more stringent than HEEGZ policy, which allowed players to farm like mad.

[shad0wfax]

For what it's worth, we have a flagrant farmer who has 12% RPXP, 5% DMXP, and the remaining 83% of 8,000+ XP all from goblins, goblin ears, a few random monsters, mushrooms, and bat poop. (in descending order of frequency of abuse)

HEEGZ policy, categorically protects him from any wrongdoing on BG. Period.

PA can override that if they want to. I was trying to fix a past issue, that didn't get any attention from anyone.


The solution is implemented. The entire reference to the house rule is gone. There's no further point in discussing it.

[Castano]

Flagging players for further review based on numbers is not a violation of ALFA policy. That's how we've been looking at things for ages here if anyone didn't already know that. Putting a hard number on it (edit it= the flagging for further review) is fine by me, doesn't mean the person is a farmer, cheater or AI abuser or otherwise violated a rule.

[Regas]

Posted from another thread-

What I read from Foam's post translated to a hard number- limit of 45 xp per hour from all xp sources except rpxp, which would yield 15. Combat and static xp are both moderated by scripting, (though I guess still be abused?). The only source of xp that isn't moderated via script is dm xp to my understanding- you can maybe see why I'm confused? It sounds like this wasn't intended this way, I'll take another look and see if I can understand what all the implications are to the rule.

I would respectfully suggest that any standard published to players and whose violation may be referred to the PA for enforcement, regardless of whether the PA chooses to enforce the standard- is a standard. Maybe others interpreter this differently, but this does seem to me to be a standard governing xp, and it does seem to me to need to be validated by the DMA and if so validated applied to all of ALFA. I really don't think you had any bad intention here SF. I am guessing this effort comes from the good intention to help clarify what's ok on BG related to farming and to address issues that apply to a very small number of problem players.

What I found in muddling through this as the PA before was that complex rules to address specific issues, especially those dealing with a small number of problem players, can overly burden ALFA's limited infrastructure and resources. I don't think it makes sense to have the 25% rule posted as formal rule for the players myself- just my opinion, for whatever that's worth.

Thanks for the feedback Cast, I didn't take this as something informal when I saw it in the BG house rules. If it is then I guess that's fine. Realizing I'm not the brightest bulb in the box I'm left to wonder how this rule, even informally, helps to identify farmers? Having handled a fair bit of the farming complaints as an AR and PA I can say that rpxp isn't really helpful except as a measure of how long a player is logged in. How long a player is logged in may correlate but isn't necessarily a cause to farming. Some farmed while logged in for shorter times; others didn't farm that were logged in for longer times. RPXP doesn't seem to me to be useful as a flag for farming. As I understand it the only thing low ratios of rpxp are useful in predicting is the amount of time spent with a dm while logged in.

Anyway, sorry to get excited if this really isn't anything anyone is trying to enforce, glad to have you weigh in Cast.

[Castano]

It won't filter every farmer - it does filter a subset of toons which might (or might not) be a species of the most flagrant farmers - those who log in solely to quickly wipe servers of content then log out - by definition their RPXP % would be low. Obv. you can game that system by simply playing more on other days w/o wiping content, however then you get into judgements because if there is enough RP one can have used more XP granting static content.

If you look back at past farming strikes many were initially uncovered because the player was gaining XP at a very high rate relative to time logged in playing.

If you are looking for a perfect system, keep searching and let me know when one is found.

Anyways DMs are free to use any system they wish to filter toons to check on farming possibilities. They are also free to dock XP and gp earned in violation of the rules.

[oldgrayrogue]

I would prefer that, as a community, we investigate issues of alleged farming or cheating or other rules violations based upon observed behavior. The logs are good evidence to corroborate observed behavior, but with the exception of certain violations such as looting your own corpse, reveal little if anything about player intent and IC motivation. Even issues such as that which appear clear cut have been found to have explanations in the past. When I ran my Sons of Obould campaign on TSM, I spawned an invading orc army and PCs killed lots of them. Might have looked bad on logs but this was IC. The determination of intent is rarely made numerically.

We have become a relatively small community. I would also encourage all DMs to simply discuss issues regarding suspected farming or cheating with their players before commencing formal investigations. A brief chat can often address most issues without the need for formal investigations and sanctions under the rules.

Clipped from the BG Rules Discussion thread. With the exception of a few short periods where logs were heavily relied on to initiate rules investigations, this is how we generally did things in ALFA since I have been around. Observation can be made by a DM directly, or by players who report their observations. I know that both Castano and SF have the best of intentions, as do all of our DMs and Admin. I would just caution reliance on numbers on a log to draw conclusions before intent is considered. Any system of numbers, as Castano aptly points out, can be gamed.

[HEEGZ]

There has been a huge over reaction to this. Foam has done a great job explaining in both threads about the rp/xp reports that DMs rely on when evaluating PCs in game (other being wealth, etc.). There have been two changes made regarding xp gain on BG. The first being a significant change from xp gain per real life hour to the derived statistic of rp/xp gain out of total xp gain. The second change being a more strict value of xp gained from combat (farming) which was doubled or tripled.

My original house rules post was edited and I don't have access to my old posts. But there is not a major change happening here, just confusion about how DMs use reports to evaluate their PCs. I posted in the BG thread explaining the original house rule relying on xp gain per hour instead of the derived statistic and you can read my more detailed explanation there.

I'm not really understanding the point about a change to who moderates XP. The HDMs have always been responsible for xp gain on their servers and subsequent reports to the PA. I've not seen anything to indicate that this has changed anywhere.

[shad0wfax]

The thread's entirely pointless now.

HEEGZ: Your old policy only stated that characters should not reach level 3 before 15 RL hours, and that your limit of 200 XP / RL hour carried forward based on that.

I was going to change your policy. Folks thought it was causing the apocalypse. So about 14 hours ago, I removed my changes entirely, and chose to remain utterly silent on the entire policy.

It's all moot now.

[HEEGZ]

There is an important distinction, but will drop it now.

[Castano]

again since people want to find an issue here: using numbers to decide whether to take a second deeper look at a PC is not wrong. It's one of many good ways to look at things. Many DMs used % combat XP in the past and no one raised an issue.

Otherwise DMs would have to run logs on everyone (to be fair) and that's just not fun or a good use of the DM team's time.

[Regas]

I'm fine with the explanation, if its a tool to help screen as opposed to a fixed limit on xp (which would also be fine if that's what cast makes it ) no big deal. I just didn't want to see multiple xp standards on alfa servers.

[Mikayla]

The PA is enjoying her first weekend with her son in 5 months. After her son departs early Monday afternoon, the PA will read this thread in its entirety as well as the flood of PMs I've received. I will also be returning to my review of the dispute which prompted all of this. Until, everyone relax, enjoy the weekend and remember that in all my years of ALFA I have never made decisions affecting an ALFAns membership rashly. All will be well. Have a good weekend.

[kid]

Chillex, Njubs.