Now Discussion of "Test Avlis XP and Loot"

[p0m]

I don't see how this helps with the PG "problem" unless you've gotten agreement by the rest of CoPaP to institue the same system and share the tracking. Those who wish to grind XP will go where the XP is.

So the only people this punishes are those who aren't in it for the grind.

This is of course assuming that ALL CoPaP worlds are far far worse than Avlis at policing the XP powerhouses. Personally, people I catch PG'ing in general end up with a lot of intelligent reactions from NPC's and a lot of bruises to show for their effort.

That being said, I have tested the code and liked the XP cap that is put in place. The new loot system is interesting to say the least.. though I'm not sure of the ideas behind giving out Ogre Darts ...I don't want to know where I looted them from on its person

[Kerrick]

girlysprite wrote:
if I may ask; why is crafting and scripted experience not included in the cap? When I ask some superepics how they got so far, so fast, I often hear things as crafting and quest-collector experience.

If you take the 7k cap...and ONLY got combat XP. No crafting, no quests, no DMs throwing a cookie your way it breaks down like this:

(all weeks are total from roll-up and more or less rounded to .25)
Level 05: 1.5 weeks
Level 10: 6.5 weeks
Level 15: 15 weeks (almost 4 months)
Level 20: 27.25 weeks (almost 7 months)
Level 25: 43 weeks (about 10 months)
Level 30: 62.25 weeks (1 year 2.5 months)
Level 35: 85 weeks (about 1 year 8 months)
Level 40: 111.5 weeks (about 2 years 2 months)

This is if you got the maximum every single week.

If you could only make XP from crumping, that'd be great, but unfortunately, that's not how it works. Now, crafting doesn't give out tons of XP, and DM cookies are a definite wildcard - in a given week you could not see a DM at all, and the next you could be involved in a short event or something and get a few hundred in cookies. Quests, though... that's where the XP is, and every PGer in Avlis knows it. Champion's Keep alone has 6 collectors and 3 other quests that can be done over and over (1/reset). Penguin showed a screenie of her turning in an item to a collector - 101, IIRC, and she got 957 XP. I've made easily 15-20K off the book collector quest, and about another 10-12K off the bow collector, but those are the only ones I do regularly.

Don't get me wrong - I think putting a cap on per-week XP is a GOOD thing, and 7K sounds about right, BUT... the collector quests need to be nuked. Hard. Putting a cap on crumping XP will stop some people from levelling too fast, but the hard-core PGers will just turn to questing for the rest of their XP, and they'll still make 40 in 15 months or so. If the DMs are willing to smack them down for it, well and good, but this policy of "We'll just ignore them" doesn't work, and frankly, I'm surprised someone even mentioned it.

[KinX]

Don't get me wrong - I think putting a cap on per-week XP is a GOOD thing, and 7K sounds about right, BUT... the collector quests need to be nuked. Hard. Putting a cap on crumping XP will stop some people from levelling too fast, but the hard-core PGers will just turn to questing for the rest of their XP, and they'll still make 40 in 15 months or so. If the DMs are willing to smack them down for it, well and good, but this policy of "We'll just ignore them" doesn't work, and frankly, I'm surprised someone even mentioned it.

I'm fine with ignoring them because they don't affect me or my game time much. If they wanna run around and be jerk offs then there'll be repercussions IG, like being banned from the major cities or just plain being shunned.

It's when the Team has to go out of their way to make "rules" to limit the PGers that slightly annoys me. They should be making up quests and giving me uber phat l00ts and following me around singing praises everytime my char farts instead of wasting time trying to catch "PGers".

Let em PG to 40. when no one wants to talk to them or they've been banned from the major social hot spots they'll find Avlis pretty boring.

And getting huge xp amounts from the collector quests is pretty hard i've found. Or maybe i just haven't been trying hard enough

[jordenk]

I dunno I initially thought it was a great idea for the xp cap, but i waited off on responding to give it some thought. I think an xp cap is not really necesary, if tis truely for the purpose of stopping powergaming, then stop it completely by dealing with turn in quests and whatnot. Otherwise, its just encouraging people to ... instead of going out with parties and doing fun dungeon crawls... which does involve rp.... it encourages the p'gers to run around by themselves collecting things to turn in. If someone wants to spend 24/7 getting xp thats their problem and like the person above said.... they will be shunned.. and get bored/banned/whatever. I think there are natural consequences which have been working.

[Tigg]

Eh, no spoilers please.

Though I do think most who agree with the cap would also agree with the cap applying to NPC quests. The only issue, as was mentioned, is the massive amount of work it would take to do it. However, who knows- maybe there would be people willing to chip away at implementing that.

[Jorik Ambrose]

Just curious if the 7000 xp cap is including the 20% penalty?
i.e. can you only get 5600 for the week, or effectively 8750 worth of kills which drops to 7000 for the cap?

Either way it seems a great idea and I hope the feedback help the team implement these changes.

[aquasoup]

I guess I'm hardly high profile enough around here to warrant replies but...

XP cap per week seems limiting, when for weeks on end I can manage 2-3stolen hours per week, and once in a while I get a week where I can play as much as I like all day everyday *shrug*


Alot of the questing stuff already seems to be setup weekly. I'm actually honest enough to admit that part of the attraction of playing NWN is that I do want to see my character develop and evolve, aswell as using RP opportunities. Knowing that the same amount of hours doing the same balance of rp and adventuring but just spread less efficiently might mean achieving a quarter or less progress mob-wise will be a downer when it's already like that for quests.

Anyway... all the rest of the changes look good

[Tigg]

You seem to want a reply so I'll be honest enough to say my own opinion, which is that the cap is set up to account even for people who play a lot every day, and that I disagree with the appropriateness (for this server) of your thought that when having a block of time to play, you need to catch up in xp for all the time you couldn't play. Basically then you're saying that you either are barely playing at all, or you're looking to get a shitload of xp. Wrong idea.

[aquasoup]

Just pointing out, per week, whilst comfortingly neat for remembering, is mathematically compromised in certain situations.

Do you think 20 hours spent rp-ing in one week is worth less than 5hours spent RP-ing per week over 4 weeks..... I'd never assert that, I'm surprised you can. How about if I outsource some design work to you, 50hours each month lets say, but you get paid a quarter as much if you do the 50 hours inside 1 week as if you do it spread over the entire month. Equal time = equal reward should apply even to the evils of gaining xp *wink* 20 hours should remain 20hours - not be circumstantially changed to 10 or 5 hours, longer averaging periods do that far better, shorter do it far worse.


Each and every week won't always be a uniform timeframe for a proportion of the playerbase, it's not hard to extend the maths to a slightly longer averaging period, afterall computers do, do maths nicely!

I know suggesting anything that looks like it's promoting the "evils" of powerleveling will be seen as knee-jerk wrong - but that's not my aim, I'm just saying a weekly sample period for averaging barriers is too short, it's bad maths for some circumstances, people often don't play uniform amounts per week, for alot of solid reasons.

I really don't see myself as a powerleveller, my most played character on another server has never got into double levels (in 4years) despite most of the playerbase reaching 40 in a few weeks if trying, simply because it's appropriate to that character. Please don't misunderstand my criticising some maths parameters, with trying to promote some powerlevel agenda, I level slowly by nature and mostly RP, doesn't mean the logic flaws is incorrect thought.

[Simon Drat]

that should be 91k per quarter, of course it's 13weeks not 12 so 13x7k=91k

XP cap per week seems limiting, when for weeks on end I can manage 2-3stolen hours per week, and once in a while I get a week where I can play as much as I like all day everyday *shrug*


Alot of the questing stuff already seems to be setup weekly. I'm actually honest enough to admit that part of the attraction of playing NWN is that I do want to see my character develop and evolve, aswell as using RP opportunities. Knowing that the same amount of hours doing the same balance of rp and adventuring but just spread less efficiently might mean achieving a quarter or less progress mob-wise will be a downer when it's already like that for quests.

The thing is, it's not about math. It's about ambiance.

The 7000xp weekly cap on monster kills is is far superior to a quarterly system. Think about it this way, your system theoretically allows someone in one single day to generate 91,000 xp from killing creatures. (7,000 per week times 13 weeks) Sure, that's a LOT of pwnage to acheive in 24 hours, but even if a player spreads that out into 3 parts, they can effectively spend 3 sessions a quarter getting over 30K in kills. That kind of killing spree is simply bad to have around... you'd have to virtually eliminate any rp to get there, and your actions would spoil the world flavor for any PC or DM who observes it you action. Not to mention the fact that PG'ers will likely camp in certain spots to acheive such a feat, meaning that for 3 days those spots are effectively unplayable for the rest of the playerbase.

Not to mention the time-continuity of world events. You character starts as a pitiful lvl1 farmhand in the morning, unable to defend his homeland from an orcish invasion that's going on. By the end of the day, he's miraculously able to handle raiding parties all by himself. If my PC met you in the morning, he'd be saving your ass... then he meets you again in the evening and you're helping save his?

Besides, 7000xp is a whole heckuva lot to get in one week for kills alone. I'd like to hear from some playtesters to see how quickly they can reach the cap using the new system... I know it can be done, but I'm betting that doing so and maintaining consistent RP the whole time would be a lot harder than you would think. Anyone wanna take that challenge on the test server?

I do sympathize with aquasoup... very slightly. I am also an on-again, off-again player. More on than off lately, but I'm coming up on a rough spot soon. Instead of getting mad, though, I take a bit of pride in the fact that I'm not one of those all-day-every-day players... I have a life. That's healthy. But I fail to see the logic in suggesting that I am somehow owed xp for the time I was unavailable to play. I have a career that requires a weekend every now and then. I choose to go outside and see the sunshine sometimes. It's a sacrifice I make to keep myself healthy and alive. My PC hates it because he can't play without me, but I think he likes me better (and vice versa) after I've taken the break so neither of us bitch about the 'lost xp'.

Another thing, the fact that quest & cookies are out of the xp cap completely eliminates any cause for beef IMHO. As stated above, collectors' quests alone can push the 7000 cap much, much higher... and many of the things you collect require you to kill things as well. So your 7000k pwnage spree, if you plan it right, might turn into a 10 or 13K spree, who knows? Depends on how much of a PG'er you are. Me? I rp my butt off when I feel like it... I quest my butt off when I feel like it... I hunt my butt off when I feel like it... and I find the three pretty much balance out. There's so much to do in Avlis, why would you ever want to do nothing in a week but kill 7000xp worth of creatures? Craft, train animals, read the forums and pop into scheduled events (they're posted all the time), and if that isn't enough, then quest, quest, quest... you'll still get great xp without turning Avlis into an action server.

I, for one, am all for leaving the quest xp out of the cap as per the current test system. It will indeed continue to help players like me and aqua make the most of their on-time. Most of the quests are one-week cap, anyway, so at least you have to be somewhat savvy and do several quests over a week's time to quest-grind. As mentioned above, at least in the new system, PGers will have to use tactics to powerlevel their way to the top, giving their characters at least a semblance of intelligence rather than being simply mindless killing machines. It forces PG'ers to make RP choices! "Oh god, Thunk just killed his 7000th giant ant... now I actually have to make a decision... what do I do? Aaaaugh!"

I guess my biggest point is that 7000 rats is a shitload of kills in a week. Even 700 * 10xp kills a week is a lot in my opinion. I can't imagine getting 700 kills in a week with my main. Even if your character is a CN insane psychopath, there's more going on in his life than just killing things in some dungeon crawl. When your PC is on the way to the pwnage, stop and pick up dinner, take a crap, threaten somebody who walks in front of you... whatever, just rp it out... maybe you'll get a cap-free cookie, even!

[Dirk Cutlass]

Awesome changes, imo.


Dirk: As Deider posted a page back, there may be more changes than is easy to understand just by reading the info. about the overall change. In other words, it may be worth finding out by testing whether Fred has an easier or harder time getting xp now, even solo. Maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised.

OK, I'll give it a shot on the test server

BTW, I applaud Team's intententions and motivations on this one (see Alex's post too). And I can imagine it is very very hard trying to juggle the formula so that it does exactly as you want, given all the variables of different CRs, classes, game-styles, etc. etc. etc. Not easy.

I just got very frustrated with current XP system, because I was getting nowhere with it. Let's hope the new system puts some of the fun back, without leaving the doors open for PG style.

(BTW, I don't really want to kill 7000 crop rats per week, that's just silly They're much too dangerous )

[aquasoup]

Craft, train animals, read the forums and pop into scheduled events (they're posted all the time), and if that isn't enough, then quest, quest, quest... you'll still get great xp without turning Avlis into an action server.

Quarterly was just an example of how simple the maths was in terms of multiply/divide by 13, 13 periods of 4weeks (rather than calendar months) would be just as simple maths and possibly be better psychologically.

28k every 4 weeks.

[aquasoup]

bah no edits!

Not saying I want an action server!!!!

But typically after 3-5weeks on set/post production, stressed out to the gills, often 100+ hours each week, I can easily spend the 6th week or whatever just bimbling around at home, cooking meals that aren't microwaved and have actual vitamins in them, and sitting in the garden with the laptop and books/papers catching up on some reading, RP, sleep and adventures - usually in that order.

I can sometimes rack up quite a few hours in one of my recharge weeks, most of it RP - but if some formula says sorry, some of your dungeon trips should have been done last week my natural reaction will be, I barely could find time to shave last week or the 3 weeks before that, now when I do have the time... quit nannying me


Anyway I'm sorry to reply so often, I'll try not to be drawn again, but really it's not a powerlevelling agenda on my mind, and I wanted to clear up not everyone who doesn't propose negative xp for everyone purism has evil designs, just my opinion that not everyone lives uniform weeks, so caps over a longer period make it as fair for them as anyone else.

[Deider]

Just curious if the 7000 xp cap is including the 20% penalty?
i.e. can you only get 5600 for the week, or effectively 8750 worth of kills which drops to 7000 for the cap?

Black or white, male or female, single- or multi-class, long dong or pencil-dick, your max combat xp is 7000xp/week.

[gwydion2]

Haven't had a chance to test it yet, but I love the idea.

Most importantly, my epic can now party with lowbies and show them round, without them getting 0xp for everything we meet. Slightly higher level characters doing mid level dungeons won't think "oh no, if he joins us we'll be getting 1-3 xp for everything".

Weekly XP cap is something I've been in favour of for a long time. 7K a week is massive as the team clearly allowed a safety margin for those who do play a lot of hours. I don't think I've got that much from monster kills in a week, except maybe once or twice several generations of xp system ago. The only people affected by this will be those who spend most of their play time, tearing from one dungeon to the next.
A couple of thousand a week is more typical of the way most people level so even those who play in intermittent bursts will not be 'falling behind'.
Of course there will be those desperate to get their 'quota' of XP for the week, but at least there's a limit on the serious campers.

In general, people will be getting more xp for doing the same thing as with a cap in place, it's possible to have a more generous system without producing 3 week epics, like we used to see.
It sounds like the exp you get will change in this manner.
Soloing - about the same
Partying with lower level PC's - Maybe less in dungeons you could easily solo yourself but more in dungeons where you get more than the minimum xp for some creatures if you solo them.
Partying with same level PC - about twice as much, assuming more than minimum xp for the creatures.
Partying with high level PC - A lot more.

Nobody has to worry about towing / exploiting etc, ever again, just do what comes naturally and have fun. The cap will stop people from exploiting more than a limited amount, so players don't have to think about it.

[TripleAught]

*wades in*

I want to address the point that aquasoup is making in, what I hope, is more constructive discussion.

Your point about sporadic playtimes is probably one of the biggest considerations when making this kind of change to the XP system. The point of a PW is make a world available to players 24/7 that is fun for them to play in. Now, on top of that noble ideal is the concept of what kind of community the world should appeal to.

In the case of Avlis, the world was designed to appeal to a community with a role-playing focus. The stated purpose of Avlis is RP. All your character actions in the game and on the forums are supposed to be In-Character. That is significant, though often overlooked as a priori without realizing that it drives decisions like this current XP code. Because players are expected to role-play, the world should reward players that are able to engage with it more frequently.

I know that from an individual perspective, you want to be able to do as much as you can when you can. From a world building perspective, you have to consider the players that are logging in every day. Those with an eye towards role-playing will not be affected significantly by XP caps because they are dividing their time between systems that give them experience (Adventuring and Questing) and activities that don't (Standing around Elf Gate). I am, of course, disregarding DM Cookies for the sake of convenience.

Now, if you have players that are not interested in spending a significant portion of their time role-playing but they still log in frequently, you begin to hear murmurs of PowerGaming. When level advancement outstrips character development, other players take notice. In a PW that is available 24/7, one way to deal with his is implement XP caps. Avlis has worked very hard over the last 4 years not to go this route. Now that they have, the reality is that the simplest way to achieve the goal is with a short time-frame for the caps. It allows role-playing oriented players that log in frequently to continue playing in their normal habits but limits players that log in only for the sake of gaining XP. Unfortunately, for players that fall outside the realm of 'frequent' they cannot make up for their backlog of missed XP. This is just a reality that needs to be accepted and understood by less-frequent players.

Granted, under the Avlis system Quests are not regulated. I haven't been part of the discussions for the Avlis1 system so I don't know the reason for that. Most of my perspective on this topic comes from developing a very similar system for Avlis2. It's tricky and certainly not something that we take lightly.

I hope that helps.

[AyounTheDark]

As what Grunt and Gwydion said, I like the fact that I don't need to bail because of the lessened xp of lower lvls, when partying up.

I don't mind an xp cap at all, and like the more party-friendly xp-mods alot.

[Calzier]

A slight aside from the thread, but to pick up an earlier comment...

there's more to role-playing than standing around elf-gate chatting. In fact, for some (probably many) PCs, this kind of action (particuarly with the motley collection of assembled PCs) is decidedly *not* in character, and so is no more 'role playing' than is hacking through a dungeon. It is perfectly possible to have a PC for whom it is completely in character (ie proper role-playing) to hack through dungeons, and completely out of character to chat to other PCs - of course most PCs will fall somewhere in between, but we should not equate 'role playing' and 'standing around chatting'.

Returning a little more to the topic of the thread, what seems most lacking in the XP system is that it doesn't reward role-playing for many types of character. e.g if might be more IC for a PC to sneak past the goblin guards, but to gain any XP from the encounter he is forced to hack them to pieces. This is a relic from 1st Ed. D&D (but at least then you got 1XP for every GP found, so the sneaky types could still benefit) but was dealt with in 2nd Ed DnD, if not the central code of NWN.

I have no idea whether it would be possible to directly reward PCs for using their skills abilities etc (ie staying IC in the way the P is played, not just in dialogue with other PCS) but something might be nice (OK, I know it is possible, but is likely to be heavy on scripting and open to abuse). One simple idea for one example might be to reward reading in libraries (character is area designated as a library, displaying the reading animation) at a rate of, for example ( 0.5 * INT ) / game hour, with a daily, weekly cap - or just contributing to the overall cap. After all - if you can only gain 7000XP per week, then why not open up the avenues to gain XP that -and this is the essential point - stops forcing PCs to go and hack things to gain XP.

[Zar'roc]

Hey,

I tried it out, it was freaking awesome. I didn't see any bugs on it or anything. It played as it would if I was playing my own characters. Awesome job guys.


Zar'roc

[bolo]

I'm still a bit in shock that a 7000xp cap is considered a lot. Who the hell is able to get 7000xp in a week? Hell, personally I'd call someone getting that much a powergamer!

I'd think something like half that would be more in line. Back in the "old" days wasn't the norm considered to be like 500xp a day from casual play?
I like the idea of a cap just from the standpoint that I can go nuts and have fun exploring a new area and not have to worry about some asshat saying I'm a powergamer because I spent most of my day off in a dungeon or on the platforms.

And I like the tweak to party xp that lets high and low levels party up and everybody gets something. Kudos!

[Seka]

I'm still a bit in shock that a 7000xp cap is considered a lot. Who the hell is able to get 7000xp in a week? Hell, personally I'd call someone getting that much a powergamer!

I'd think something like half that would be more in line. Back in the "old" days wasn't the norm considered to be like 500xp a day from casual play?
I like the idea of a cap just from the standpoint that I can go nuts and have fun exploring a new area and not have to worry about some asshat saying I'm a powergamer because I spent most of my day off in a dungeon or on the platforms.

And I like the tweak to party xp that lets high and low levels party up and everybody gets something. Kudos!

Agree 100%. 3,500 max weekly xp and relative freedom from PG'er accusations sounds like Shangri-La.

[bolo]

Don't get me wrong - I think putting a cap on per-week XP is a GOOD thing, and 7K sounds about right, BUT... the collector quests need to be nuked. Hard. Putting a cap on crumping XP will stop some people from levelling too fast, but the hard-core PGers will just turn to questing for the rest of their XP, and they'll still make 40 in 15 months or so. If the DMs are willing to smack them down for it, well and good, but this policy of "We'll just ignore them" doesn't work, and frankly, I'm surprised someone even mentioned it.

I'm fine with ignoring them because they don't affect me or my game time much. If they wanna run around and be jerk offs then there'll be repercussions IG, like being banned from the major cities or just plain being shunned.

It's when the Team has to go out of their way to make "rules" to limit the PGers that slightly annoys me. They should be making up quests and giving me uber phat l00ts and following me around singing praises everytime my char farts instead of wasting time trying to catch "PGers".

Let em PG to 40. when no one wants to talk to them or they've been banned from the major social hot spots they'll find Avlis pretty boring.

And getting huge xp amounts from the collector quests is pretty hard i've found. Or maybe i just haven't been trying hard enough

Ditto. I think when you start trying to make code to deal with exploiters you get in a no win situation and just start chasing your tail.For every new rule you come up with or code you write, they will find a way around it, then you have to come up with yet another fucking rule, or another fucking piece of code. Meanwhile, things that could use some attention, like the Underdark server, get tabled.
One thing I've learned though. I need to find out more about these collector quests! Why doesn't anybody tell me these things! I couldda been levelling...twice a year instead of just once. Damn powergamers

[Grunt]

Powergamer [pou-er-geym-er]
noun
1. Anyone who levels faster than YOU do.
2. See 1.

[KinX]

I'm still a bit in shock that a 7000xp cap is considered a lot. Who the hell is able to get 7000xp in a week? Hell, personally I'd call someone getting that much a powergamer!

I'd think something like half that would be more in line. Back in the "old" days wasn't the norm considered to be like 500xp a day from casual play?

Well, if you decide to do the entire nightfang in one day you can easily get about that much xp in a day. although i've only ever done that once and it took approx 6 hrs and it's likely i'll never do it again.

I know of at least one other area that's like that as well. But again, it took the better part of a day and will most likely never do that again as well.

I guess if you had plenty of time on your hands and nothing better to do with your life, you can aim for 1K xp a day. One thousand crop rats a day isn't as bad as trying for seven thousand in a weekend.

[Pathos Street]

Powergamer [pou-er-geym-er]
noun
1. Anyone who levels faster than YOU do.
2. See 1.

http://www.blackdagger.com/viewtopic.php?t=19070