Now Discussion of "Test Avlis XP and Loot"

Nob · Post by **Nob** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:56 pm

You're missing the point.

The entire point of having a hard cap is to remove any semblence of worry and get rid of ANY stigma to adventuring so that even if you do spend 16 hours a day playing and 14 of those in a dungeon of some sort you can't BE a powergamer because It's JUST NOT POSSIBLE to accrue more xp than what should be considered "healthy" from the simple perspective of character development.

Deider · Post by **Deider** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:59 pm

"Thank you for being a friend,
Travelled down the road and back again.
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confident.

And if you threw a party,
Invited everyone you knew,
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say,
Thank you for being a friend."

aquasoup · Post by **aquasoup** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:04 pm

Ah Grunt, I get your point but tbh I think you're kinda reinforcing my position, as a good RP-er you go on the new adventure despite getting 0 xp just as I would - meanwhile powergrinder JOE also easily has his 7k per week too and is spending the rest of the time fed-ex-ing, collecting, bulk crafting or off-world. Net result, powergamer JOE is racking up the loopholes and is still ahead.

Pure maths hardcaps don't attach RP commitment multipliers to a character's progression, only human evaluation can do that.

itsabughunt · Post by **itsabughunt** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:05 pm

aquasoup wrote:...how many people capped out for the week under the new system and then felt they weren't supposed to travel with friends for the rest of the week...

I'm probably not the only person who has no idea where you're getting this from. Its OK to go travelling and adventuring without getting xp and with the new system if you are higher level you won't be screwing your friends over.

Crunk · Post by **Crunk** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:05 pm

Now the real question is how would harry potter feel if you limited his XP to only 7k per week?

Ensoleille · Post by **Ensoleille** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:14 pm

Crunk wrote:Now the real question is how would harry potter feel if you limited his XP to only 7k per week?

Well, Harry Potter has had 7 whole years, that's 364 weeks, or roughly 2.5 million xp if he reaches his cap every week. I bet Professor Snape gives negative xp cookies though, so I'm not sure how it all balances out.

Deider · Post by **Deider** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:18 pm

You know who would be able to solve this XP conundrum?

Mr. Belvedere, that's fucking who.

darthmullet · Post by **darthmullet** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:36 pm

aquasoup wrote:Ah Grunt, I get your point but tbh I think you're kinda reinforcing my position, as a good RP-er you go on the new adventure despite getting 0 xp just as I would - meanwhile powergrinder JOE also easily has his 7k per week too and is spending the rest of the time fed-ex-ing, collecting, bulk crafting or off-world. Net result, powergamer JOE is racking up the loopholes and is still ahead.

Pure maths hardcaps don't attach RP commitment multipliers to a character's progression, only human evaluation can do that.

Yes, people will powergrind the fed-exes, and craft until they turn blue in the face, and if they're thay hard up to be JOE NOBODY 40th level cheese build, then hey...the team will see this.

What amazes me, is your consistent ability to miss the freaking point. Go back and read Nobs post, at least two more times, and don't post a thing until you've had a sufficient amount of time to mull it over.

Aeveras · Post by **Aeveras** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:50 pm

All right, let's all calm down and have some hot cocoa with Belvedere. Despite disagreements, I'm glad that this thread has been mostly civil, something which I dig â€”Â dig like coal miners dig coal.

- Aeveras

Ensoleille · Post by **Ensoleille** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:52 pm

Kerrick · Post by **Kerrick** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 4:38 pm

Whilst that thread is great for seeing the current system, my feeling is the future thread about, how many people capped out for the week under the new system and then felt they weren't supposed to travel with friends for the rest of the week is as relevant to the question of whether Avlis will be preventing powergrinding or promoting RP.

Nothing's preventing Bob the adventurer from doing collector quests, crafting, or sucking up DM cookies either. Just because he's hit his cap for the week doesn't mean he can't do ANYTHING else. And, to reiterate the point for the fifth time... IT'S MONSTER XP. IT'S ONE FACET OF THE XP YOU CAN GAIN. Got it? Are we clear now? *Snip* Horsolich doesn't like signs nailed to people's heads.

The powergrinders will always find a loophole - no system is perfect. That's what the DMs are for - to find these people and slap them down, either by spawning uber monsters on their dungeoncrawling asses, or deny them cookies, or exclude them from events, or whatever. The best system is one that closes the largest loopholes while having the smallest effect on the populace as a whole, and as folks have pointed out, 98% of the playerbase will be unaffected. The other 2%, the people who can somehow hit 7K crumping XP a week, week after week, can go fuck themselves.

Yes, people will powergrind the fed-exes, and craft until they turn blue in the face, and if they're thay hard up to be JOE NOBODY 40th level cheese build, then hey...the team will see this.

Not to mention a) you can't do fedexes after 4th (?) level, and b) you don't make a hell of a lot of XP from crafting. Once you get to the high levels, you're losing XP to make stuff.

yorlik · Post by **yorlik** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 4:54 pm

Just an example with the current discussed system to make it ...proof:

A level 10 player, playing 4-6 hours per week is going into the warren
undercaves with a high level group.
He will hit the single kill cap of 10 times level = 100 XP per kill.

From killing 70 critters of that CR together with others he will get his
weekly cap of 7000 in relatively little time.

After that, he has a lot of time of developing his PC, continue introducing it
into the world, chat with others, do guild stuff and so on.

He will not have to fear to be called a PGer, since theres a cap.

He can even go into another dungeon if he desires, and still have fun
surviving and RPing his PC. He just will not get any more XP.

He can -very relaxed- continue to do so and have a lot of time for non
XP-relevant playing, without needing to care too much for levelling.

But he still has to do at least something, or he won't level.

I like the basic principle of this new system very much, and I hope it will
be introduced to whole CoPaP, because its just good.

Of course some fine-tuning might be necessary after some testing,
e.g. the cap for the single kill XP might need reviewing, or the
levelling speed at the lowbie levels 1-10, but the
combination of easier XP gaining together with a cap is just the right thing to do
in my opinion.

Tangleroot · Post by **Tangleroot** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 4:59 pm

combination of easier XP gaining together with a cap is just the right thing to do

Yes.

aquasoup · Post by **aquasoup** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:35 pm

Does this really have to degenerate into name calling? I'm just as frustrated as you are that, from my perspective, a fairly simple couple of truths just zipp right by some of you, without so much as a flicker.

I'll try this another way - you are talking about in the old xp system 7k is alot... but that's going to be totally irrelevant because in the new xp system 7k isn't alott in fact in just a couple of hours you, me, and everyone else in this thread can hit 7k monster xp - and just flat stop.

Kerrick wrote: the people who can somehow hit 7K crumping XP a week, week after week, can go fuck themselves.

That is everyone you are talking about.

My point has always been in very simple terms, what happens after that 7k, why flat stop, why not either have a law of diminishing returns so you get steadily more xp penalty upto and over the 7k, what's called a soft cap.

Additionally why not discuss having a system in the future that perhaps ties an actual evaluation of peoples RP (via their progress in player guilds seems one better way of tracking this) to how their XP caps works, for everything, not just the monster XP. In short, the better your RP is recognised by your peers, the less grind to advance. This would actually be a proper discouragement to powergrinders, and endorsement for RP, in a way that the current proposed changes will never be.

All alot of you keep saying is 7k monster XP for everyone every week is great and solves it all, and well any loophole problems the DM's can somehow fix. I'm saying well hey the sentiment is nice, it's a better system than currently for alot but not all people, but it could be less abrupt a cutoff with a minor tweak. Moreover a comprehensive capping system in the future could cover XP as a whole entity, and relieve alot of the issues that bother folk i.e. people focusing on levelling more than rp-ing.

The current proposed system does nothing about powergrinders because it has too many looholes, it also suggests that all adventuring beyond the first couple of hours a week be worth nothing in XP terms, which is too restrictive in my view, those trips didn't fail to happen, your character didn't develop short-term amnesia afterwards.

Now bring on the nailing stuff to my forehead so everyone can be equal but lowplaytime vastly more equal than others.

Grunt · Post by **Grunt** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:38 pm

FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD SOMEONE PLEASE LOCK THIS MOTHERFUCKING THREAD

Thank you

gutemensch · Post by **gutemensch** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:40 pm

*walks around ringing a bell and shouting "Beware the Horselich, it approaches" in the distance the sound of a gallop can be heard as it gets closer*

Tangleroot · Post by **Tangleroot** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:44 pm

Nah. Just move it to rants so we can all just say what we're thinking about.

Aeveras · Post by **Aeveras** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 7:15 pm

Regarding loopholes:

- Quest xp, particularly Maria Torin's infamous xp-o-matic, are being reviewed and modified to be fair but not so much exploitable.
- xp yielded from crafting is low. This won't be modified.
- Off-world; the linked CoPaP worlds all have their own xp systems which have been tested for fairness and a competent DM staff. Also, we communicate often with other CoPaP worlds.

As for the potential locking of this thread, it will stay unlocked as long as the discussion is relevant and constructive. However, I will be summoning the horsolich to eat posts that I do not feel belong. Those trolls look like a good start...

- Aeveras

* BAMPF! *
<img align=right src=http://gallery.avlis.org/d/466-1/horso.gif></img>

itsabughunt · Post by **itsabughunt** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 7:20 pm

aquasoup wrote: Additionally why not discuss having a system in the future that perhaps ties an actual evaluation of peoples RP (via their progress in player guilds seems one better way of tracking this) to how their XP caps works, for everything, not just the monster XP. In short, the better your RP is recognised by your peers, the less grind to advance. This would actually be a proper discouragement to powergrinders, and endorsement for RP, in a way that the current proposed changes will never be.

Yeah since we don't have enough players judging each other's RP, lets make it official. Afterall, I have nothing better to do with my scant playtime than pull out my RP ledger and record who is impressing me or not.

Aquasoup, seriously can you explain why is this such an issue for you? You joined the boards over a year ago and make almost no posts up until this topic arrives and then you're all over it. Why is it that out of everything happening within Avlis this new xp cap is your primary concern?

Jaybob · Post by **Jaybob** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 7:29 pm

aquasoup wrote:I'll try this another way - you are talking about in the old xp system 7k is alot... but that's going to be totally irrelevant because in the new xp system 7k isn't alott

okay, i see your point, and it's actually one that occurred to me. We may just have to wait and see if it becomes an issue, then see if the team will make further tweaks.

aquasoup wrote: My point has always been in very simple terms, what happens after that 7k, why flat stop, why not either have a law of diminishing returns so you get steadily more xp penalty upto and over the 7k, what's called a soft cap.

that's not a bad idea, but it may require so much work (i have no idea) for the team to implement, that it may be better to try the planned one out for a little while first. Although the planned change is being tested by us, there's really no way to see how it will work with our real characters and in the real-world Avlis until it gets implemented.

aquasoup wrote: Additionally why not discuss having a system in the future that perhaps ties an actual evaluation of peoples RP (via their progress in player guilds seems one better way of tracking this) to how their XP caps works, for everything, not just the monster XP. In short, the better your RP is recognised by your peers, the less grind to advance. This would actually be a proper discouragement to powergrinders, and endorsement for RP, in a way that the current proposed changes will never be.

Problem with this idea is this: if you go the guild route, people like me and others who belong to guilds dominated by people in drastically different time zones will lose (see: Australia). My main belongs to ACE, and i never see anyone else from my guild IG. Does that mean my main shouldn't be a carpenter? illustration of my point is Bern is ready to take the journeyman test for carpentry, and has been for some time. Scheduling that test has been very difficult because of timezone issues. That's just a fact of life. If your measure of RP is advancement in guilds, then I'd be screwed, because little of my RP with other living people is centered around my guild. The people i DO rp with are in no position to set my XP scale, so where does that leave us? the problem is that RP is such an objective thing that it's near impossible to measure effectively to weight XP gain on. Plus, there'd be a lot of "My RP is just as good as X's, why does he get more XP than me?"

Then there's the people who choose not to join a guild, or are such lowbies (lvl 1-5 or so) that they haven't found their direction, or haven't seleceted a guild to join yet.

another thing we seem to be forgetting, or at least failing to mention, is that XP is not the only reward for going dungeoning. Loot (which is also changed in the new system, i believe) is a good draw. It's not as if there were NO reason to go after you hit the cap. By limiting the amount of XP gained from monster-keeling, the team seems to be attempting to close the most egregious of pg-ing oppurtunities. Sure, there are others, but this is the biggest, and i think would eliminate a lot of the problem.

darthmullet · Post by **darthmullet** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 7:42 pm

Aquasoup wrote:My point has always been in very simple terms, what happens after that 7k,

You roleplay, you get DM cookies, you help out your fellow players who want to go dungeon crawling, and perhaps get DM cookies while you do that....etc. It isn't a hard concept.

aquasoup wrote: Additionally why not discuss having a system in the future that perhaps ties an actual evaluation of peoples RP (via their progress in player guilds seems one better way of tracking this) to how their XP caps works, for everything, not just the monster XP. In short, the better your RP is recognised by your peers, the less grind to advance. This would actually be a proper discouragement to powergrinders, and endorsement for RP, in a way that the current proposed changes will never be.

I've seen this utilized, in many ways on other servers...and it sucks.
When you put the power of giving rp rewards to players in the hands of the other players, except in the case of an rpotm vote, it will be abused faster than a red headed step child.

aquasoup wrote:Moreover a comprehensive capping system in the future could cover XP as a whole entity, and relieve alot of the issues that bother folk

Now, you just told me caps are bad, and detrimental...which is it?
Wouldn't this be a good start?

aquasoup wrote:it also suggests that all adventuring beyond the first couple of hours a week be worth nothing in XP terms, which is too restrictive in my view, those trips didn't fail to happen, your character didn't develop short-term amnesia afterwards.

Now you're just being ignorant for the sake of it. This is not PnP, look past the "I killed X, so I get Y experience" Your growth is not dictated by the amount of monsters you kill, hence, you can't look at "adventuring" as the only defining factor of growth. Have you ever looked at what you learn as a player from RP'ing? What you know, and your character knows about other characters, is absolutely vital to the proper integration of your character into the world itself. Even more important than, yes, experience points.

So, adventuring, while you may not be getting xp, is still a vital part of getting to know the other characters around you. And THAT, is what should be happening when you have reached your cap.

As far as the Powergrinders, like I said, they will always find loopholes, no system is perfect. And no one ever said this will solve all of our problems. All you can do is make steps towards that perfection, and all we can do, is hope the team makes the right calls when it comes to those types of players. We are too set in this "every play style is welcome" mentality, when that is not the case, this is an immersive World, based around awesome concepts and wonderfully thought out history, and everyone here should be focused on RP, not how fast they can hit a million gold, or 40th level.

Katroine · Post by **Katroine** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 7:44 pm

aquasoup wrote:...stuff...

Have you tested any of the changes on the test server, aquasoup? Since you haven't left any feedback, I will assume you have and found nothing wrong with it, or you haven't and are basing all your comments in this thread on possibilities. If it is the former, then why argue a system that you find no fault with? If it is the latter, why not try it out and see how it goes?

Jaybob · Post by **Jaybob** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 7:49 pm

darthmullet wrote: So, adventuring, while you may not be getting xp, is still a vital part of getting to know the other characters around you. And THAT, is what should be happening when you have reached your cap.

agreed. a good example, under the current system is this:

Bern has a personal, intense dislike for vampires. He could not handle going into the Forest of Midnight alone. Instead, he went in with Moira, who volunteered to show him a bit of it, so he could get a look at how they act, how they attack, and the sorts of things he needed to have (equipment-wise), etc. Because Moira was level 40 and Bern was level 7, he got 0 XP from the adventure. Still totally worth it, and I'd do it again, even for 0 XP.

Under the new system, there will still be times when you go and monster-keel, but get 0 XP. the situations under which that happens will be different, but the value of going is certainly not nil.

Marleh · Post by **Marleh** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:38 pm

Yep, and I can't wait for the new code to go live so I can drag Bern back in there and glower some more.

Ensoleille · Post by **Ensoleille** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:44 pm

Yeah! How about less arguing about xp and more earning xp...

/me shoos everyone IG while she gets back to "work"...