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BobbyWitDatTool

RPG suggestion

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All of this is my opinion:

My suggestion is adding a method to get combat EXP outside of spending productivity. I do like the cap, and the way it works now, but it also encourages people to log in, buy EXP, and log off. Give people incentive to stay on. It'll let people who don't have much time to play progress at a decent rate, whilst rewarding those who stay on. Another gripe I have is that most story-lines seem to be player-driven, which is great, but on a server where you start off relatively weak, most people TEND to wait until they're stronger to push anything. That's another topic all together, but it's worth mentioning because I've seen it on plenty of Neverwinter Night's (The old old old 2000 game) servers. People spend 3 months leveling until they're at a decent level, and will than begin to flesh out the character and push story-lines. Until than, they do dungeons and log off, skipping out on social RP because it tends to get boring in a relatively static world.

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I agree with the combat XP part. I think if mobs gave a small amount of combat XP, it would encourage more player interaction. This change would need to be done carefully though -- mobs can't give too much xp, or too little to give a meaningful incentive.

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It doesn't even have to be killing mobs. A cool thing would be if players were rewarded EXP for taking parts in events. It'd likely encourage people to contact Keepers about potential event ideas and things they can do for themselves, a group of people, their guild, etc. Events could be grouped by their difficulty: easy, challenging, hard, and XP would increase by each one. The difficulty could be the risk of death in the event, and the EXP could be allocated evenly to everyone participating. So if a hard event gave 500, and 2 people participated, they'd get a lot of EXP, but they also survived an encounter that likely should have ended in their deaths, so they earned it.

Edited by BobbyWitDatTool
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3 hours ago, BobbyWitDatTool said:

It doesn't even have to be killing mobs. A cool thing would be if players were rewarded EXP for taking parts in events. It'd likely encourage people to contact Keepers about potential event ideas and things they can do for themselves, a group of people, their guild, etc. Events could be grouped by their difficulty: easy, challenging, hard, and XP would increase by each one. The difficulty could be the risk of death in the event, and the EXP could be allocated evenly to everyone participating. So if a hard event gave 500, and 2 people participated, they'd get a lot of EXP, but they also survived an encounter that likely should have ended in their deaths, so they earned it.

Issue with that is both a combination of event hopping and favoring players that stay on all day.

 

I do understand what you mean when you reference NWN. So, I recommend some smaller events that don't need huge administrative oversight. For an example, Keepers have made use of the noticeboards. They slightly hide them in the ground next to points of interest. If you reply to the scenario on the noticeboard in some fashion (i.e. being first or with the "right" answer), then the Keeper who made it could award you XP. Mind you, these noticeboards could and should have consequences from replying to them.

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Yeah was just an example. Something like that wouldn't really work in practice. Regardless, not sure what can be done, but something should be done about player retention.

Edited by BobbyWitDatTool
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We've had people grinding XP24/7 when you could do it on Legacy. The result was an airhead human girl that ran around all day being able to one shot people. That's a solid 'no' from me.

 

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but something should be done about player retention.


Player retention is done through events and storytelling, not grinding.

 

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People spend 3 months leveling until they're at a decent level, and will than begin to flesh out the character and push story-lines

 


Players were fighting more at the start of the server, if anything. The biggest battle, about a 20 v 20, was done a few weeks in.

 

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then the Keeper who made it could award you XP.



Absolutely not. It's so easily abused. The XP cap exists for a reason, to ensure that older characters remain ahead and to LIMIT how much XP you can get a day. For GMs to give out XP arbitrarily defeats the purpose of the cap.

Also Keepers could be online during hours that favor some players and disadvantage others. Just no.

Edited by AlexV
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39 minutes ago, AlexV said:

We've had people grinding XP24/7 when you could do it on Legacy. The result was an airhead human girl that ran around all day being able to one shot people. That's a solid 'no' from me.

 


Player retention is done through events and storytelling, not grinding.

 

 


Players were fighting more at the start of the server, if anything. The biggest battle, about a 20 v 20, was done a few weeks in.

 



Absolutely not. It's so easily abused. The XP cap exists for a reason, to ensure that older characters remain ahead and to LIMIT how much XP you can get a day. For GMs to give out XP arbitrarily defeats the purpose of the cap.

Also Keepers could be online during hours that favor some players and disadvantage others. Just no.

Yeah, as I had said, all suggestions. At the moment, and you may not agree, but it simply is the case, people log on, dump XP, gather, and log off. The only people I consistently see playing are those who social RP among the port. You say player retention is done through events and storytelling, and while I agree to some degree, the server seems to be under the mindset that players should push all story. Players won't push story until they are comfortable with their character. The only time player pushing story actually genuinely works is when you have a big playerbase. See Phase C.

 

I think an overall flaw might be no balance between systems and RP. I don't find that the systems are conducive to RP since most people I see/know are gathering while alt-tabbed. The idea behind the system is great and I enjoy the crafting system in the way that I can see our base spring up, but I'd say they still need work. It could be the time it takes to see things come to, or it could just be a reliance on systems. Personally, and coming from a NWN background where I was very against it, I never liked the idea of taking 3 months of IRL time to see my character get to a decent build. If anything, it promotes character attachment, which is unhealthy for the environment, although it tends to happen regardless, just on a much lesser scale when you can just pop back in game. That's not to say I don't like progression, I just think there needs to be proper balance between systems + RP and time + progression.

 

Not really sure HOW to go about fixing this, especially considering they're already in place, but I figure its worth pointing out. Seems like you guys have a wonderful staff who are passionate about the server, so I've no doubts these things are fixable. 

Edited by BobbyWitDatTool

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1 hour ago, BobbyWitDatTool said:

but it simply is the case, people log on, dump XP, gather, and log off.

That is the fault of:

 

1. Themselves primarily, for not RPing and treating it like a grindy game


2. The Keepers/Storytellers/DMs, for not making stuff happen in an accessible way. Or if they do, it's kept quiet. I haven't seen an event announced in discord in a while, apart from the Midsummer Festival. People aren't going to be around 24/7 waiting for stuff to happen. We have an issue where a select group of people are part of multiple plots and the random players are left to do nothing. This has been going on for 2 months and the people logging on prove it. You'll see the Talon, Sanctuary and Caveat folks log in, while the other groups and random players who weren't part of anything important have stopped playing, or log for XP.

 

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the server seems to be under the mindset that players should push all story.


You can definitely suggest storylines, but as far as I know most storytelling is done by the staff through their own initiative.
 

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I never liked the idea of taking 3 months of IRL time to see my character get to a decent build.

 


It doesn't take that long. You can be decent at DPS/Healing/Buffing very early. Hell there are spells that don't scale like Hysteria, Blessing of Sanctuary, Battle Cry, Cripple, Attack Order that you can use on a 370 XP char and be decent.

 

Edited by AlexV

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12 hours ago, AlexV said:

Absolutely not. It's so easily abused. The XP cap exists for a reason, to ensure that older characters remain ahead and to LIMIT how much XP you can get a day. For GMs to give out XP arbitrarily defeats the purpose of the cap.

Also Keepers could be online during hours that favor some players and disadvantage others. Just no.

When you're trading a possible death to earn at most a day's worth of XP, I think the concept is fine.

Also, the only time Keeper availability comes into play with this idea is when they go and make the noticeboard. Even then, that doesn't matter, as players may not respond to the noticeboard in a meaningful way. For an example, the dwarven encampment noticeboard made by Kit; what she most likely intended was someone to take the diseased murderous monkey nearby, and test them for whatever was afflicting them. Instead, someone just outright killed the monkey.

My only concern is very random distribution of XP amounts and for what. Best way to avoid that? Have someone (like a person on the council) yay or nay concepts for these noticeboards along with how much XP is distributed and for what actions; we should reward people that push to expand on the roleplay.

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7 hours ago, hotdog99 said:

When you're trading a possible death to earn at most a day's worth of XP, I think the concept is fine.

Also, the only time Keeper availability comes into play with this idea is when they go and make the noticeboard. Even then, that doesn't matter, as players may not respond to the noticeboard in a meaningful way. For an example, the dwarven encampment noticeboard made by Kit; what she most likely intended was someone to take the diseased murderous monkey nearby, and test them for whatever was afflicting them. Instead, someone just outright killed the monkey.

My only concern is very random distribution of XP amounts and for what. Best way to avoid that? Have someone (like a person on the council) yay or nay concepts for these noticeboards along with how much XP is distributed and for what actions; we should reward people that push to expand on the roleplay.


Having arbitrary XP gains defeats the purpose of the XP cap and punishes players that played so far with a cap existing.

 

And again, bias is a thing.

Edited by AlexV

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Problem with gaining XP from combat is that if there is a cap it makes it feel way more like a grind. If there is no cap people can grind all day and eclipse people that don't five fold. As well there isn't a large variety of mobs to grant varying XP amounts so if it wasn't done carefully you could grind raccoons for your XP safely or on the flip side force low levels into a corner where they feel like they can't progress because they can't take down panthers yet.

Plus I do enjoy spawning a good old fashion trash gauntlet in events from time to time. Embrace the chaos.

I will elaborate that I think we can and should do better than a button push daily XP system. It feels like a leftover testing mechanic and something that does feed into a log in, dump XP, log out mentality, at least for an incubation phase of a new character... But it would take an overhaul to fix, not a simple few lines of code. There's a lot of factors.

Maybe XP for especially challenging events could be used, but challenge is a hard thing to gauge at times due to the tendency for people to drop in on an event in progress. I am working on some custom dungeons in my spare time that would effectively lock people out who were not present at the beginning, so that might be a thing to consider. But for a normal event it's hard. I can have something devilish lined up for five people, word gets out and suddenly there's fifteen people curb stomping my mobs. Entertaining, yes, but challenging, no.

Maybe XP as part of a random loot table, for a very small amount could do. But then how long before each island is hunted to extinction?

Like I said, I'm all for a solution, but its a very very big question with a lot of pieces that move when you reposition even one of them.

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11 hours ago, AlexV said:


Having arbitrary XP gains defeats the purpose of the XP cap and punishes players that played so far with a cap existing.

 

And again, bias is a thing.

While I admit the first point is something to keep in mind, frankly how many of those players have characters they still actively play?

 

And yes, bias is a thing, however blatant bias will crush the server before any player that's bloated with noticeboard-based XP.

 

Despite what I've said, I'm not admitting that a lack of a way to earn XP outside of logging in once a day = a low player count. Also, I am not saying the plan is foolproof, but it's at least something more reliable and not necessarily grindable (as we can implement a cap on how many of these noticeboards can be active at once).

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4 hours ago, hotdog99 said:

While I admit the first point is something to keep in mind, frankly how many of those players have characters they still actively play?

Most of the people you see online daily.
 

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And yes, bias is a thing, however blatant bias will crush the server before any player that's bloated with noticeboard-based XP.



No need to add more fuel to that fire.

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I'm not admitting that a lack of a way to earn XP outside of logging in once a day = a low player count.



If the only thing keeping players around is running around the jungle to find noticeboards the server failed. It's the storytelling that does that, not a grind.

This is a role playing server not Vanilla WoW and people who nolife should not be able to get ahead by grinding.

Edited by AlexV

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To be honest I find myself constantly drained logging in every day and I'm so done with campfire RP that I just don't bother. The past week has been droll and you can say it is the player's fault all you like but it is clearly because of the direction and lack of actual presence that is really making it hard to justify even getting on. I think XP is a problem and so is the entire system but it isn't the only one for why people are so disinterested, we just have a system in place that doesn't support RP at all. I like the combat but I don't feel like I just got done with an epic battle or overcame something significant; it feels more like I just finished a battle sequence in Final Fantasy.

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6 minutes ago, AlexV said:

Most of the people you see online daily.
 



No need to add more fuel to that fire.

 



If the only thing keeping players around is running around the jungle to find noticeboards the server failed. It's the storytelling that does that, not a grind.

 

At most, half of the people around are players that have been around for a good while.

 

Not stating that is. However, it would serve as a supplement to the overall storytelling. It's like getting good service at a restaurant that serves good food. Will you probably still go for the good food alone? Sure. But you would probably go more often if the service is great.

 

Mind you, if it wasn't clear these noticeboards are meant to add to the storytelling. They're not just some random gimmick things.

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I would really like to see some incentive for building alts. A major reason things stagnate outside of events is that it's really risky to be daring. In a way that's a good thing, but who doesn't feel anxiety at the thought of their character dying and having to start over? It feels like a penalty to put your limited XP into a character that can't really do anything without at least a week of XP dumps because that's a week that your main is now falling behind which puts them at greater risk if they've made a few enemies. I know as well when I first started I was really turned off by dying to snails and crabs.

 

Account wide productivity and XP caps are meant to keep the system from being abused, but I really think a better system would help breath some new life into the server, it'd feel a lot less like Game of Thrones: Survivor Island Edition if there were new faces, even if they were the same players that we already know.

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15 hours ago, hotdog99 said:

At most, half of the people around are players that have been around for a good while.

 


No, not really. The most active ones are Trained or Veteran by now.

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37 minutes ago, AlexV said:


No, not really. The most active ones are Trained or Veteran by now.

I honestly don't see that many trained or veteran characters. Look at the Ironbound. They're mostly inactive, and that's very old characters as far as I've heard. Also, trained isn't that long. I've been here close to 2 weeks and I'm nearly trained.

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18 hours ago, Lanela said:

To be honest I find myself constantly drained logging in every day and I'm so done with campfire RP that I just don't bother. The past week has been droll and you can say it is the player's fault all you like but it is clearly because of the direction and lack of actual presence that is really making it hard to justify even getting on. I think XP is a problem and so is the entire system but it isn't the only one for why people are so disinterested, we just have a system in place that doesn't support RP at all. I like the combat but I don't feel like I just got done with an epic battle or overcame something significant; it feels more like I just finished a battle sequence in Final Fantasy.

I've spoken on this with friends a lot. The systems don't feel conducive to RP at all, that much I can agree with. I do like the fighting, but the only time I've gotten to use it is against worthless NPCs. At the end of the day, players tend to avoid PvP, especially when you've got such a big investment in a highly trained character. It only adds to the issue when the world feels stagnant due to lack of inclusive plots, and so we have a great deal of campfire RP. I've found myself logging on for RP on weekends, and using free time on weekdays to gather and dump XP.

Edited by BobbyWitDatTool

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1 hour ago, BobbyWitDatTool said:

I honestly don't see that many trained or veteran characters. Look at the Ironbound. They're mostly inactive, and that's very old characters as far as I've heard. Also, trained isn't that long. I've been here close to 2 weeks and I'm nearly trained.

The Ironbound have been inactive due to infighting. The leader killed one of his men, causing 3 members to leave.

 

Veteran is 3K xp.

 



That is the main issue. The plots.

It only adds to the issue when the world feels stagnant due to lack of inclusive plots, and so we have a great deal of campfire RP.

Edited by AlexV

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1 hour ago, AlexV said:

The Ironbound have been inactive due to infighting. The leader killed one of his men, causing 3 members to leave.

 

Veteran is 3K xp.

 



That is the main issue. The plots.

 

I still think that a lot of the systems aren't very conducive to RP, and XP just outright takes too long to get anywhere. It's sort of unhealthy for the server as well if the ONLY defense toward changing XP gain is that it's unfair to players who played through it because if it is an issue, it'll only continue to be an issue and be unwelcoming to incoming players. It promotes an environment where the old stay the strongest and when you've things in place like a 1k EXP restriction before executing, it further enforces that. Just today I saw someone brag about their 3k EXP character and boasting about how they would beat an entire group of new players.

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IT's a poor means for progression. You have paladins and death knights, and people with Heroic Clan backgrounds starting as Untrained. There's not even any roleplay involved. You log on, buy XP, and log off. 3 months later, you're a veteran.

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59 minutes ago, BobbyWitDatTool said:

IT's a poor means for progression. You have paladins and death knights, and people with Heroic Clan backgrounds starting as Untrained. There's not even any roleplay involved. You log on, buy XP, and log off. 3 months later, you're a veteran.


One would argue that if there's nothing keeping players keeping when they log in the issue isn't the RPG system, it's the RP or lack of it.

This RPG system is a crutch to enhance roleplay. You log in and it  COMPLETES the experience. But it is -not- the full experience, it enhances. If you have no reason to play other than logging in and getting XP something is wrong.

 

You can find whatever explanation you want for why your death knight is weak, the setting allows it. If you come and tell me that your new character should compete with my old one that had 20 days played after a while then no sir, we're gonna have a problem. Roleplayers tend to want their characters to be the baddest mofos around, we have XP caps to limit that and keep it realistic and objective, just like we had RP PvP on Prologue.

Edited by AlexV

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