Scripted RP XP via ACR?

[psycho_leo]

The argument that's traditionally been made against a hard cap (say, 1000xp/RL week) is that it may be treated as a "target" rather than an unlikely-case high ceiling. Also, that it impedes binge players who do major gaming on things like spring break, etc, though that's comparatively minor I believe.

I don't much like that idea of XP caps. Mostly because it penalizes the honest player who just happend to play a lot. But I believe Dergon was referring just to non DM XP, either from static quests or some timer script. I hardly think anyone will scream foul play if you set a hard cap on a XP script. Not sure about static quests though. Eventually, statics become a very rare thing for a PC or simply cease to be an option, unless new ones get added or he moves to another server. And also, XP rewards from static quests tend to become irrelevant as you gain levels. 100 XP for a patrol may seem like a lot for a level 1 PC, but it's a drop in the ocean for a lvl 8.

[AcadiusLost]

Well, static quest XP is another issue entirely- what we're /hoping/ to do with NWN2-ALFA is incorporate "dynamic" scripted quests that can continue to be interesting and entertaining for PCs all through their development.

Keeping the focus more on the scripted RP XP though, does 1000 xp/RL week seem too high an allowable ceiling for a PC who is on for, say, long stretches through every day of a given week, but somehow doesn't match up with DMs or do any "traditional" questing? There is a tendency on the part of some (in some cases understandably) to be hesitant to give "too much" XP for gametime spent in a minimal-risk environment ("tavern-camping" is one of the usual terms, though in my experience very little non-DMed RP time ends up being spent that way). I think we can set the bar fairly conservatively, as the RP-centric crowd tends to be less picky about the exact amount of XP rewarded- it's more the complete absence of XP reward that gets contentious on that side of things.

So, we'd want to arrive at a number that's not insulting for players who are going to spend a lot of time IC RPing, but that's also low enough that it doesn't "feel" like an exploit to the more pessimistically minded subset of DMs and players. I'm thinking the ballpark of 500-750 xp/RL week max from the RP XP scripts would go over easier- though it's just a jumping off point for discussion at this point.

A separate discusion would get back to gain rate, though I think we can arrive at that after we've got the ceiling worked out. (decide how many RL hours a week is reasonable to award for, then use that to set up the rate). I think a "taper-down" approach would be good as well, though that fits more with the second discussion than the first.

How much is too much, for RP XP per real-life week? Opinions?

[psycho_leo]

How much is too much, for RP XP per real-life week? Opinions?

If average Joe manages to play 4 hours/day every day of the week, and takes the maximum reward you mentioned (8XP/ hour, right?) that would go to 224XP/week. Round it up to 300 I suppose.

500-750 seems a bit too much to me. Most weeks I don't make that amount, even with regular DM sessions.

[AcadiusLost]

I guess I need to clarify the question somewhat- the 8xp/hr was a maximum from the old scripts based on game-hours, which pass every 7 RL minutes. So, we'd be talking as much as 68 xp per RL hour, 272 xp for each of those 4-hour nights, 1904 XP for the week. On a rate like that, with a 1000 xp cap, the player would stop getting RP XP on thursday, if they started monday.

But this isn't what we're trying to answer, specifically. In some ways perhaps it's easier to come at it from the other side, from the RP XP gain per RL hour- but IMHO what we need to hedge against is the inevitable player(s) for whom ALFA is more a 40+ hrs a week habit. We want to encourage stime spent logged in to servers, without leaving the "1-2 times a week" choking on the dust.

Rejuggling things to the comfort area you're describing, we could drop gain rates to 8 XP / RL hour, though I think 32xp a night for 4 or so hours of RP would seem on the stingy side. What might make sense is a sliding scale- the first 10 hours earn at 15xp / RL hour, the next 10 at 8 xp / RL hour, next 5 at 4xp/hr, next 10 at 2 xp/hr. After that, no more XP from the scripts for the week. The maximum achievable from scripted RP XP a always-on player would be able to make would be 270 xp / RL week, but the once-a-week 4 hour player still makes 60 xp.

To me, these numbers sound pretty conservative. We can skew things to taper off more quickly, or play with the numbers in other ways- but basically, in order to be earning "better than DM sessions", someone's going to be looking at playing for many many more RL hours (and likely not getting wealth rewards during that time, either.)

Does this help frame the idea and discussion? With the sort of tapered scale I'm proposing, even if the "cap" is closer to 500 or 750, it would be set up in a way that it's not going to be a level of reward anyone is going to be getting consistently, as some kind of an "alternative" to DM sessions.

[psycho_leo]

Rejuggling things to the comfort area you're describing, we could drop gain rates to 8 XP / RL hour, though I think 32xp a night for 4 or so hours of RP would seem on the stingy side. What might make sense is a sliding scale- the first 10 hours earn at 15xp / RL hour, the next 10 at 8 xp / RL hour, next 5 at 4xp/hr, next 10 at 2 xp/hr. After that, no more XP from the scripts for the week. The maximum achievable from scripted RP XP a always-on player would be able to make would be 270 xp / RL week, but the once-a-week 4 hour player still makes 60 xp.

My bad. This is what I get for trying to do a dozen things the same time.
The numbers you're talking now sound good to me. What I was thinking was more along the lines of presenting the system in a way that you can't get more than, say a third or half of what you would be awarded if you were using that time to play with a DM.

[Runestaff]

I'll propose a very simple solution. Award every player 3 xp per in game hour, awarded every game hour. Assume that if you're an ALFAn, and you're in game, then you're IC and spending the bulk of your time interacting with the game world in an IC manner. Taking your example of 7 minutes per game hour, you'll earn 26 xp per RL hour in this case, or 104 xp in a four hour session. That seems like a reasonable total. Your hypothetical 40 hour per week player (which I think is probably more the exception that the rule) would earn 1040 xp in that span, fairly close to your initial proposal of 1k/week.

With this system, there is no need for chat monitoring, xp banking, or any other complex scripting. For added flexibility, permit a DM to adjust a player's gain rate up to 8 xp per hour, with the proviso that the rate resets itself to the base rate when the player logs off. This should mitigate the potential for abuse and the accompanying drama it brings. It also requires active DM participation each and every time a player earns more (or less) than the base rate. For example, a DM could set the rate to 0 for players in a DMed event.

If possible, you could set the rate to 0 when a player toggles themselves AFK, though in this event I would suggest provding some other benefit to the AFK switch to encourage players to use it rather than leaving themselves idle.

[Rusty]

What is our ability to monitor activity?

[HEEGZ]

The argument that's traditionally been made against a hard cap (say, 1000xp/RL week) is that it may be treated as a "target" rather than an unlikely-case high ceiling. Also, that it impedes binge players who do major gaming on things like spring break, etc, though that's comparatively minor I believe.

Generally, I think the preference was for a "soft cap" which starts diminishing XP returns when you get above a certain amount per week- though that's more challenging to accomplish script-wise.

Sounds like we're generally in agreement about the other aspects of the system, though. Even if it's not much, getting a little scripted XP each time one logs on for a long, un-DMed stretch goes a long way towards assuaging the emnity towards the "haves" from the "have-nots".

Interested to hear from others, though- differences of opinion? What rate would be reasonable, if it was a flat-rate per RL hour? And what sort of cap would we be looking for per RL week? 500 xp max scripted RP XP per RL week? 250, 750? DM granted and quest XP likely wouldn't count against a scripted RP XP cap, soft or otherwise.

I tested our old scripts on BG when I was HDM and DMA. I found the levels of 4 and 6 xp per hour to work out really nicely when I awarded them later on. At the end of about two months using the different levels, I felt comfortable with the 2, 4, 6, 8 settings that were available, and found myself giving players 4 or 6 the majority of the time after that. As for a weekly cap I think 1000 or 1200 per week would be pretty good. At one point while DMA I had made a complete chart to use, but I can't be bothered to try and find it now.

If you want something simple though, based on my testing as HDM, I'd recommend using 4-6 xp/hour and a cap of 1000xp per week.

I have never been to fond of the plans that adjust rate over time and such. The amounts I awarded to Alara on the 6 or 8 setting were well under 1000xp per week and he played on a fairly regular basis. Hope this helps a little. Also I don't check this forum much anymore so if someone asks me a question please PM a copy of it to me.

Nate

PS. It just occurred to me that I don't remember the specific details of the old scripts. I think it was xp per in game hour. If that is the case, then whatever ratio we use in the future would need to be considered. I think the rate of 4-6 that I suggested worked out to around 1xp per 1 RL minute.

[AcadiusLost]

Yes, those were by ingame hours, so 4-6xp / IG hour equates to 34 - 51 xp / RL hour, less than 1 xp/minute, but still pretty generous, really. Especially when DMs in the XP polls are talking about 50 xp / real-life hour being on the generous side for DM-observed RP.

I'm inclined to go more conservative and script a weekly diminishing return as suggested above to aim for a system that DMs don't have to worry much about.

One question though: do we still want to include a place for DM-granted RP bonuses? The proposed system removes the "RP Quality" slider that we had in ALFA's NWN1 scripts (the 0,2,4,6,8 setting)- would we want an "RP bonus" option that a DM could fire off, maybe at most once per RL hour, to specifically reward high quality RP? Could eaily make it log and inform the player what it's for, I'd make 20 xp as a suggestion for something like this- low enough that DMs can drop them freely to encourage RP, high enough to be significant. even on the untapered end of the RP XP spectrum proposed, (15 xp / RL hour), scripted XP plus an RP bonus would still weigh in pretty conservative when compared to our "up to 100 xp / hour" standard.

Disadvantages: Direct, personalized DM incentivizing of RP may bias players' ingame actions- if DM X always gives the RP bonus when your PC is stirring the pot, temptation may be to stir the pot whenever DM X is onserver. Also slides us back towards the stratified/favortism model, whereby the PCs the DM(s) are watching get the scripted XP, the bonus XP, and the quest XP/rewards- rather than making RP XP a universal constant.

Advantages: DMs don't have to keep track of how long PCs have been RPing for (or whether other DMs have already given them a bonus), as it will only "take" if the PC in question hasn't already received a bonus within an hour. Also helps encourage players and let them know which DM is looking in on them, without interrupting the RP and immursion.

Thoughts? Could make this a separate topic in brainstorming if that's easier, or if a wider slice of the membership wanted to weigh in on it.

[HEEGZ]

I liked dropping xp bonuses on players as a DM. I rarely did it, but it was nice being able to award particularly brilliant RP moments from time to time. I think 20xp is as good an amount as any, I know I used that amount more than once.

Also, thinking back to a weekly cap... Back when it was being debated pretty heavily I remember finding myself liking a monthly cap much better than a weekly one, but also that there was no real consensus made at the time. If there is an xp cap for scripted RP it should be lower than a total xp cap from all sources. I'm sure this has been considered but I haven't kept up with the topic much in the last few months.

I agree with going conservative on scripted xp systems. Once things are going strong hopefully it wouldn't be too much work to adjust the values in either direction if that is what people want.

Nate

[Amar]

AFK or Idle doesnt neccessarily mean they arent roleplaying

My last PC was a scholar, there were times when I sat in the bar, watching the screen for someone to come along. There were other times when I alt+tab over to Wordpad and started writing fiction for the character, or even wrote what he was writing in game.

Both of these appear to be idle but really arent IMO. Im not going to log on and roleplay alone. I can write fiction for that. I play to share the experience with others. Solo questing can be fun, solo roleplay however - well thats just playing with yourself.

If im online, im ready to play and just waiting for the opportunity. Dont give me less for apparently being idle rather than wanting to sit there and emote to myself.

[AcadiusLost]

The way this will likely work will check for movement as well as emotes/spoken words, so the occasional change to a more comfortable chair, or trip to the bookcase to select a different book, or a *flips to the next chapter* emote will be enough to verify that there's someone at the keyboard (both for the scripted XP system, and for any DMs who might be watching you idle, wondering if anyone's actually home). Depending on the polling interval, you will likely accrue more slowly by being 95% AFK, then being engaged in active RP, that seems fair enough for me.

Unless someone wants to make the case that a totally AFK player logged in (asleep at the keyboard, went to the store for groceries and forgot to log out) is somehow entitled to XP for the RP they haven't been doing? It is still RP XP, not "being logged in" XP.

[AcadiusLost]

Initial test framework in place on the OAS2, with activity monitoring and 15xp/RL hour gain rate set (no diminishing returns yet).

Currently it's running one "check" every 7 RL minutes spent ingame. If the PC has spoken, moved, or emoted at least once in the course of those 7 minutes, the bank is incremented. This is a fairly generous window for activity monitoring.

Award of XP is automatic, 1 minute after login, with some explanatory text.

[HEEGZ]

Nice. Will be interested to see how this works out.

[Magonushi]

Let's reward those stalwart PC's (like Mizbiz who for a while would be the only one logging into DD for hours hoping other players would stop by and keeping the server alive when there were virtually no DM's) who wait for players to show up patiently keeping the numbers on Gamespy attrative with Exp that they have definitely earned and forget about the abusers who are most likely an insignificant number to worry about.

Surely, you must realize that all ALFA members are guilty until proven innocent.

Sarcasm aside I agree completely with Rick. Even in the cases where a PC isn't RPing mindlessly with non-responsive NPCs, at least they are on the server trying to encourage a PC population. I'd think, especially considering the drop-offs in ALFA player numbers that trying to encourage higher server numbers would take precedence.