ALFA - for casual play or hard core gamers?

[dirsa]

i'm sorry if it sounds like i'm bitching... i'm simply stating the fact that there is nothing to do to equate xp progress of a guy who can play 5+ hours every day to someone who plays 3 hours once a week... nor i think it should be equated.

[DMyles]

The problem is not that some people are leveling faster then me. The problem is if I want to play the game 3 hours per week or even six the pace of progression is unbearably slow to the extent it makes the game unplayable.

We could continue to not worry about the casual guy, but as the game gets older more of the hard core people are going to be hardcore gaming on some other game.

[Veilan]

i'm sorry if it sounds like i'm bitching... i'm simply stating the fact that there is nothing to do to equate xp progress of a guy who can play 5+ hours every day to someone who plays 3 hours once a week... nor i think it should be equated.

I concur with you. We don't want to punish people who spend a lot of time in the community and happen to be successful.

But, we don't want to entirely demoralise people who have less time and think they always get second row only, do we? The system suggested means that everyone profits from the same xp boosters - but since they wear out over time, the relative effect is greater for casual gamers. Absolutely, the heavy player will still get a good deal more, and there won't ever be any "equalising". After all, the mucho-player still has to go through the same boosted periods as the casual gamer first, no? Just work it out as an example with the ballpark numbers posted before, and you'll see that you're worrying quite needlessly.

Cheers,

[Zelknolf]

The irony, of course, is that the same people defending this are also the people who rallied behind T-eyes the last time he complained of rewarding people for not playing when crafting was on the table.

So which is it? Are we supposed to reward people for playing less or for playing more?

[Veilan]

So which is it? Are we supposed to reward people for playing less or for playing more?

If you are referring to the "xp multiplier", then you must have somewhat misunderstood the proposal. There is no way in the proposal that rewards staying offline. It simply means that the first bit of playtime per arbitrary interval (or likely even more elegant than that with Ronan on the ball) gets rewarded the most, relatively. For everyone. If you play more, you get rewarded more. If you don't play, you get squat.

If you mean the "minimum advancement rate", then I'm actually, shockingly, in agreement with you. I do not think automatic advancement for not playing is something we should consider.

[Killthorne]

I understand the frustration here. I don't know.. maybe casual gamers really need to find some sort of consistent DM'age where the DM takes into account that they are not on all the time?

Hmm... I think we need some good mathematicians and script0rs for this one (like mentioned above).


~Killthorne~

[Zelknolf]

Well, the minimum advancement rate would be the one that rewards people for not playing. So, yeah. That one.

The other one changes a pretty complex thing. We do a lot with advancement as an assumption right now, and given the fact that scripted normalization of wealth is refused, the notion of throttling XP makes me a little nervous (as XP has an overt link to expected and acceptable wealth-- something would be very wrong if it suddenly became possible to hit the wealth cutoff just by being sufficiently active).

[Ronan]

I think penalizing people who play a lot is very unlikely to pass, regardless of whether or not its a good idea (and I don't think it is). They already have diminishing XP returns by the nature of the game and scarcity of sessions.

Rewarding people who play very little seems like something more likely to pass and probably a better idea anyways.

Doing both of these things (as in Veilan's post) probably won't pass because people are going to bitch about penalties.

Of course some people will say rewarding some is the same as penalizing others.

The math/scripting bit is easy. However, there does not seem to be a timestamp recording when a PC was created. We'd have to add that, meaning the change would not immediately take effect until time has passed and the system figures out how often people are playing.

[DMyles]

There is a static in the server I play on that is a repeatable fed ex type static. It currently pays something like 50 xp and 40 gp or something like that. I would like to see something where the fist time you do it per rl week you get like 200 xp and 200 gp. You can do it as much as you want after that but until the next rl week you get the normal 50 xp 40 gp. Both players get extra gp and xp from the one time bump.

The guy doing the static 10 times per week would make 650 xp and 560 gp instead of the 500 xp and 400 gp he is making now.

The guy doing the static once a week would make 200 xp and 200 gp rather then 50 xp and 40 gp.

[dergon darkhelm]

Repeatable static dim-rets are a bit of a separate issue, and already in place on TSM. A good idea, they are.

[DMyles]

The xp and gp gap in my example stays the same but the casual player is now earning 4 times as much xp and gp per week from the same activity.

Setting a limit on the one time large reward is required to keep the guy doing it ten times per week from getting 2000 xp and 2000 gp per week, but only because something has been turned up to begin with.

[Brokenbone]

If you've been logged out for any period of time, when you return to game, presumably you've been resting risk free, making a subsistence living (you ate, slept, whatever... but are curiously no richer).

Perhaps if you've been gone for more than... oh I don't care, 7 days, you get a dialogue popup called "Unfinished Business", indicating that in the boring times between high adventures and whatnot, your PC either:

(1) Kept out of the adventuring game.
(2) Took a task of limited risk and reward.
(3) Took a task of moderate risk and reward.
(4) Took a task of high risk and reward.

Pick a dialogue option to either end up with (1) no static thingy in your journal, or (2), (3) and (4) lead to either three different statics (or maybe randomly 6, 9, 12, 18 different ones, yeah right!), or maybe just one of scaling difficulty. Could be bring a random MacGuffin to somewhere a decent far distance from your login location, could be go find a MacGuffin from a cave with a goblin, an orc tribe, or 12 ogre mages (say, in a scaling option), and return it wherever.

I do not mean to do full design here.

All I'm illustrating is that if people haven't been around, a SMALL incentive to "do something", even if you cannot manage to meet a DM when you peek back in, is a possible option. It may also encourage congregation with others (hey, if you have a "rare-ish" static, perhaps it will be cause to party up with those who play lots and lots).

The little "incentive" might have to be somewhat randomized so that it doesn't actually ENCOURAGE people to "hold out and not play", as in "well I was going to log in Saturday but if I wait til Monday I will get a chance at 200xp static...", could be that after X days there's a low % chance of a special static, after 2X days it's moderate %, X days it's almost guaranteed that a static will be on offer.

I also recognize that statics do not grow on trees, and that "statics for all = happiness for all", but if wondering what might enhance "casual" enjoyment, maybe think up not-quite-numerical things that can be a pleasant welcome-back type experience, kind of "targeted" at what may be a disaffected population. People who are already playing lots and lots, are already doing it for a reason (friends and fun IG, maybe steady DMing, don't know), those playing less might enjoy having a chance to right away "do something" rather than just walk around some streets, bump into no-one, and log off for an unknown period again.

[I-KP]

Devils do dwell in the details but I like the premise quite a lot. Nice one.

[t-ice]

The guy doing the static 10 times per week would make 650 xp and 560 gp instead of the 500 xp and 400 gp he is making now.

Is repeatedly doing a fed-ex static really what the game should be about? Is that what we want to encourage people to do, the kind of gaming we're after? If said progression is what you want, just give PCs the points when they login, and don't demand they toil chore X, which is likely to be at best borderline IC for a character to repeat, N times a week.

This is the key, isn't it:

The problem is if I want to play the game 3 hours per week or even six the pace of progression is unbearably slow to the extent it makes the game unplayable.

Dirsa's right about virtual e-wieners when comparing how much power and stuff characters have, "Johnny has a bigger toy than me, unfair!". But what matters greatly is every player being able to participate in the game, and contribute something meaningful with their characters. That your game style doesn't stick you with a character sheet that makes it strenuous and un-fun to be part of the game.

I am not going to dwell deep into what is "fun" and what is not, we all know that depends a lot on who you ask, and certainly it's at responsibility of players who can only play very sparsely to be as creative as possible to create characters that would be "fun" even when level-impaired. But a general idea would be that a character that is more a liability than an asset to a party is so low in level as to risk being left out or reducing the gaming experience for everyone. In an ideal gameworld inclusion would depend more on IC factors, not char sheet numbers, but we all know what can happen when a lvl 2 joins a party of 4 lvl 8s. It would take unusual IC circumstance (crafted by DM likely) for the game to go down smoothly. And sparse player numbers make inclusion of as many PCs as possible a top priority.

It follows that we're talking about allowing low-level characters to advance faster even if played sparsely is desired. The player with a lvl10+ PC doesn't need the extra advancement boost to be relevant in the game even if playing sparsely, do they?

The simplest way to do this is of course to up the start level. We all know the "asset/liability curve" is particularly steep at the first couple levels due to the way the base game rules are. Considering past discussions, that's unlikely to happen, I suppose.

A "multiplier" for timed rpxp might be a reasonable way to go about it, even though it really is just a smoother effective way to up the start level, depending on the details, even just a facade. Additionally, if the multiplier is reduced for all xp gained, including from DMs, it might balance out the grievances of less DMd people. A rpxp multiplier has the benefit of not giving anything for just RL time. The multiplier should obviously be capped, and look for only a limited time in the past, so that creating a PC and stepping away from the table for a year won't send your PC zooming up the advancement curve for the next year.

The only real benefit of the complicated "early xp booster for sparsely played PCs" over just simply raising the starting level is that it allows heavy duty players to play the low levels of new characters out in full, while sparse players would see low levels zip past, landing them faster to "level feasible" where you can get involved more easily. The downside is the involved complexity, which for a large part is unnecessary since you're just having the same in a soft manner as opposed to hard. At worse the system will force people to chore and bore away statics and rpxp for the first couple levels, only being taken into the "real" game by others after they survived the noobie stage (and the system actively fights going past this stage in faster RL time by playing more), since we've increased the "expected" level of PCs.

[ElCadaver]

I've played on a few NWN2 gameworlds that have +hitpoint backpacks which give the new PC an extra boost in survivability in the first few levels. I've found you naturally want to get rid of these items as you level, as the things you could put in the slot become more important than the +5hp after a certain point. Why not do that. simpler than scripting, more acceptable to hard core players who insist on a lvl1 start, as they are free NOT to purchase them if they don't want to.