Standards: XP Award Rate

[Veilan]

It seems to me that standards are usually shaped by the extremes, in this circumstance meaning the players that tend to get the most xp. Of course, the implication is that everyone else ends up with less than that. Until standards are shaped to be the norm rather than the limit, I don't see things changing that much.

This won't change until such a time that "policing" becomes a viable and effective option in ALFA.

[fluffmonster]

It seems to me that standards are usually shaped by the extremes, in this circumstance meaning the players that tend to get the most xp. Of course, the implication is that everyone else ends up with less than that. Until standards are shaped to be the norm rather than the limit, I don't see things changing that much.

This won't change until such a time that "policing" becomes a viable and effective option in ALFA.

That actually understates it...there has to be a willingness to undertake corrective action against the big outliers, not just keep them from becoming outliers. The dramatic potential for such a proposal is fairly obvious. Regardless, these tradeoffs are basically the reason why things are the way they are and are unlikely to change and, to repeat myself, it is the outliers (or concern about outliers) that are driving policy and not everybody else.

[Lokan]

Ok, so i would fit right in with the US Senate. I have changed my vote. I am for shortening the time between level 1 and level 3, but not by artificially just marking the PC up to that level right off the bat. I think it could be done with a couple simple static quests that can only be done at level 1 or level 2 and are non-repeatable. They would give enough xp to "quicken" the pace to level 3, but not start the PC at level 3. That also give the player the choice to advance themselves or not. I also don't approve of anything that puts administrative work on the plate of DMs. I like them to use their time in PC/plot line, and world development.

[fluffmonster]

Ok, so i would fit right in with the US Senate. I have changed my vote. I am for shortening the time between level 1 and level 3, but not by artificially just marking the PC up to that level right off the bat. I think it could be done with a couple simple static quests that can only be done at level 1 or level 2 and are non-repeatable. They would give enough xp to "quicken" the pace to level 3, but not start the PC at level 3. That also give the player the choice to advance themselves or not. I also don't approve of anything that puts administrative work on the plate of DMs. I like them to use their time in PC/plot line, and world development.

accelerated xp would probably be most efficiently accomplished by scripting a double or triple rate xp gain at first level. this can be fully automated, no requirement that DMs do anything different at all.

[Lokan]

accelerated xp would probably be most efficiently accomplished by scripting a double or triple rate xp gain at first level. this can be fully automated, no requirement that DMs do anything different at all.

+1 Ok, I'm for that, but it does take away the advantage of letting a player decide if they wanted to advance quickly or not. I imagine that much of the time the player would choose to advance quicker, and do the quest, but I can also see almost as many choosing to hold of a little or not doing them at all.

[oldgrayrogue]

IMO a level 2 or 3 starting level makes sense for a variety of reasons. First from an RP perspective it allows for a PC concept that is much more developed in terms of skills, abilities and even multiclassing so as to support an interesting backstory. Second, the PC is much more survivable at early levels which provides new players especially with many more options to enjoy everything the server has to offer right off the bat. We have amazing content and beautifully built areas that, as it now stands, many new players do not get to experience until a few months after they log on with their first PC. From what I have seen, the progression from level 1 to 3 is already extremely rapid, so I'm not sure what is gained by a level 1 start except lots of corpses and wasted character concepts. Progression after level 3 is fairly slow in ALFA, so I don't think a level 2 or 3 start would threaten our measured progression model. There is no greater buzz kill than spending a lot of time on a new character concept only to have it wasted by a lucky kobold crit hit. Indeed, my first ALFA PC was killed by a kick from a pony the very first time he strayed from town. A more pathetic end to the begining of a story there never was.

[Brokenbone]

I'm having trouble seeing just where "inconsistent awards from certain CRs" veered into start level turf, but hey. DMs in PnP dictate the start level of their campaigns.

ALFA DMs have done the same in very small pilot pockets before, NWN1 Sembia was a reference point, doubt much data was collected though. Long debate about campaign PCs, whether multiple PCs okay in that framework, do and don't type rules for these specially minted PCs mixing with others, travelling, etc. Since on a virtually static-free server, virtually all XP was awarded via DMs, and with level validations at 4th and each level onwards, it's not as if DMs would "mint" a level 3 PC then not notice somehow if two days later they were 6th.

I doubt things can have changed much even in absence of level validations and whatnot. Yes, there's an RPXP trickle that comes to all, but it would sound to be a starvation diet if you cannot link into a campaign with regular DM interaction. This is to say, someone MIGHT get 1st to 3rd easily without DMs, but you probably won't go 3rd to 4th to 5th without.

Additionally, if your traditional "started at 1st" character gets offed at or before 3rd, your options seem to be to roll up another PC and possibly do the exact same statics just with a new character, boo. Boring. Hard not to metagame things like not getting "lost" on a mission from point A to point B. Yes, you could die on TSM and start anew on BG, which would make you maybe "forget" the typical play patterns for new PCs on TSM, but it might also be a dumb choice if it messes up the ability to group w/ friends of good time zones for you. Oh well.

Anyhow, PnP, you start at the levels the DM tells you, with $ and a shopping list for DM approval. ALFA you don't, though we've bent those rules before. I assume technical mojo could be applied against any doomsday scenarios of level 3 corpses just being 2000gp loot bags waiting to happen by sticking some kind of "no drop pilot campaign token" into PC inventory that somehow instantly spoils their corpse container to knock the first 2000gp worth of value off of them, or something like that. The 2000gp is just an example of what might be the starting wealth for a PC of that level, no tables are in front of me

[Swift]

It is entirely irrelevant to the actual topic of this thread, but leave starting level and the speed you can cover 1-3 as is. Fleshing out who your character is and their motivations are better done at those levels so by the time you are 4 or 5, the character is well defined and well set, rather than being a level 6 who you are still rounding out.

Starting level is fine kthx