Leveling rates/ Highest Levels currently in ALFA/PrC's

[Heero]

Or we can all shun the players that dont share a similar play style to us while playing with those who do?

[kid]

There has to be a line. and the line is not clear.
its never clear.

if we want to have some regulation as to the speed in which people level (and yeah, people who play more would still level faster, gain more gold, be involved in more things and generatly would have more fun)

We need to establish some rule we can all easily follow and understand.

RL limitation is the only thing no one can cheat on.
You could only level after a reasonble time has passed.
seems easy to implement, easy to control.

[Xanthea]

I have been following this thread with great concern and I, like every other right-minded ALFA player out there am worried by the notion of people getting xp. Very worried.

But are all these weird OOC systems and policies really what the ALFA experience is about? It seems like an unimmersive waste of DM time to worry about home servers and xp limits and such. I think this fine server can do better and be able to restrict xp and other undesirable and unALFA behaviours in much smoother and IC ways. With that in mind I have the following list of suggestions:

1) Why cut off xp from statics after a certain point? That’s silly and OOC. Instead, if someone does too many statics in a certain amount of time perhaps the local NPC adventuring population can become fed up with this uppity person stealing their jobs and band together to beat and rob/kill the offending PC, depending on the severity of the offence. I think people would be a lot more careful about farming statics if they knew it might mean a little visit from Hulky the Half-Orc.

2) Another source of too much of xp is the RPXP script. While it serves a noble purpose in rewarding virtuous RP while DMs are otherwise occupied, people abusing it has become a problem. With that in mind, I suggest changing it slightly. Roleplaying xp ticks can continue as they have before, no problem there. But I also suggest changing the location ticks to subtract rather than add xp. If you’re not roleplaying then you’re probably either abusing it by practising doing the world’s slowest shuffle dance in a corner of your room or you’re out abusing statics or killing things alone. In either case, get off the server, you power gaming scum. Location xp serves no purpose other than exploiting the system and it should be utilized to penalize rather than encourage deviant behaviour. Come back when you’re here to RP.

3) While we’re at it we might as well take a good hard look at combat xp too. Or as I like to call it, the most abusable of the xp. While I grudgingly accept that the noble D&D system does force us to reward murdering things, there’s no reason we can’t make it a more unattractive prospect. I propose that every time your character takes damage in combat they lose a small sum of xp to represent the chance of serious brain injuries damaging their hard earned skills. If every hit subtracted 1xp or so then people would be a lot more cautious about engaging in combat, lest a goblin bullet impact their skull and cause them to forget how to cast fireball. We can simultaneously cut down on people getting xp and make the server more hardcore and realistic by making combat a thing that people engage in only reluctantly because of the danger it represents.

4) Finally, the issue of server hopping. While obviously it would be desirable for ALFA to be divided up into little fiefs which people never moved between or interacted with each other at all, unfortunately there do sometimes exist legitimate reasons to travel so we can’t shut it down entirely (though we all know why MOST people travel between servers*). Nor does penalizing xp for not staying on your home server make IC sense. Why would killing an orc in the Marches teach you less than killing an orc in the Moonshaes? Obviously makes no sense.

Instead of this let’s find an IC way to discourage travelling except when absolutely necessary. I suggest that every time someone transitions between servers a script rolls a 1d100. On 2-99 you’re fine and off on your merry way. But on a 1, ill-fortune rears its ugly head. Bandits attack your caravan. Slavers raid your boat. The kraken strikes! Whatever happened off camera, your time is up. Travel is dangerous and this is a harsh unforgiving server.


Time to roll up a new character, server hopper.

If we want to, perhaps we can even give DMs the discretion to save Good Roleplayers from the perils of travel, while letting the scumbag power gamers die. If they feel the character in question is deserving perhaps they may choose to spin their misfortune into a plot involving a daring escape from the slave pens or whatever.

*to get xp

[Heero]

Those ideas are dumb.

[shad0wfax]

Any time you take an existing system and impose a limitation upon it, the people who meet that limit will be seen as "pushing the limits" and become the new public enemy.

Make that static quest cap 1,000 XP/week and in a few weeks or months, you'll have two or three players who get 1,000 xp/week regularly and the rest of ALFA won't be reaching the threshold of the limit. Those three players are then seen as an anomaly (at best) or become pariahs (at worst, and also quite likely). Then the angry hue and cry from the reactionary folks resurrecting old and tired ideas in this thread, which failed previously in ALFA, will come back to the forums armed with pitchforks and torches demanding the admin to make heads roll because those with more time than them to play the game are "pushing the limits."

Clearly, the solution, is to simply have a log-in timer and cut people off who play more than 20 hours in a week, deliver more than one package of mail in a week, or do more than one one-time static in a week. Then we don't even need an RP XP script, dimret on quests, or delay timers on quest resets. We also wouldn't need to have DMs validating any level-ups because no one would level any faster than anyone else.

The biggest enemy, of course, is the player who gets more than one DM session a week, so we'd better nip that fun in the bud too. If your DM RPXP exceeds any of your other forms of XP, you're clearly a DM favorite and you're doing it wrong.

This is all for the public good of the citizens of the world: anyone who logs in to ALFA to roleplay more than the average person (as defined by the most reactionary member of the staff with the loudest voice) needs the admin to babysit them and force them to have more of a real life outside of the game.

[I-KP]

Brainstorming often churns out far more chaff than wheat but this is pure Diamond...

I propose that every time your character takes damage in combat they lose a small sum of xp to represent the chance of serious brain injuries damaging their hard earned skills.

That lifted my mood by at least one notch. Thank you for that.

[kid]

1000 cap on statics is pointless and useless. no one would reach it more than maybe once or twice in low levels, while alot of statics are avilable. I dont know where that suggestion came from or what it wishes to accoplish but it would make no differacne at all.

either we make a real 1k cap per week (which tech wise, seems we can't really do) that would curve down XP gain for people who get much XP (including myself) to make the world make /some/ sense and not have people flying through the levels while thier fellow players who play equaly talented and capable toons level at a MUCH slower pace.
(again the deference would still be there, just would not be so silly)

Or we requier validation for certain levels baced on RL time the toon exists.

Or... we simply give up and let people level in whatever pace they want and leave the notion of ALFA as a realm where level advancement is moderated somehow.

[Ithildur]

I'd support the idea of an overall xp cap/week. If 1000 turned out to be too low ('everyone was guilty') then bump it up to 2000 perhaps. Why throw out the entire idea rather than try tweaking it?

Same with static xp cap, except make it x amount/day. That's what a lot of this hullabaloo was about to begin with isn't it (well, more than that I suspect, but one of the few concrete things someone in charge actually was able to point to and say 'this happened, not acceptable')?

[ElCadaver]

All these problems are symptoms of people not being in or not wanting to be in a good DM'ed player group. This is a complex problem.

[kid]

No. They want the DM game AND they want to play long hours.

Both are fine and good. people want to play more hours, more power to em.
People wanting to level too fast though, thats something we should moderate (as DM, admit, whathaveyou)

[Heero]

If you want your PC's experience to be defined by how much mail it carried or how many times it defeated the goblins in the cave on the edge of town, have it! If you dont, you dont have to have at, AND you can very easily shun those PCs with shoes worn thin from carrying mail.

I dont know why people dont take me seriously!

[Swift]

I wish we could give out titles like Lord of the Rings online. I would add in "Postman" and "Goblin Slayer of Rivermoot" in a heartbeat.

[Rumple C]

I expect it could be done, if you could float a "AFK" then I am sure it is possible.

[jmecha]

I think if we added degrading titles such as Goblin Ganker and Paper Boy


They maybe confused with achievements.

[Zelknolf]

The trouble is that we're a roleplaying world, so either the "titles" are out of character, and amount to more of the same bullying and vigilantism that folk already do, or they're in character and quickly become a footnote to a character's greater achievements-- the former doesn't work and the latter is likely to be answered with "lol that's so true." Seems unlikely to alter consumption of static content, in any case.