Shattered Kingdoms

It is definitely not worth dulrik's time to devise mechanisms to slow down leveling. This is not a big issue and certainly should not be taking coding priority.

Slowing down leveling? Can you explain how you came to this conclusion? This is about rewarding exp for Role Playing, arguably it's increasing leveling.

But more importantly it's increasing the viability, and therefor the incentive to engage in role play on the mud.

If anything this is a quality of life improvement to the game, and I think should be given DUE consideration in terms of coding priority.

I was responding to your post before mine. The OP of this thread seems like a fair enough idea to me.

My post prior to this was a cautionary consideration to be given before coding starts about the initially suggested mechanic.

There are potential abuses that using a character's age increases to increase one's RP rank could cause, that would be potentially rectified if switched to hours played.

The post tried to identify those abuses, and explore pros and cons of each.

Using Age Alone

Pro
---
Better for casual gamers

Con
---
More easily abused


Using Age with some conditions

Pro
----
Better for casual gamers
Has some means of capping rewards for characters absent from the game

Con
----
Still abuseable by players who want to learn how to scam the system


Using Hours Played

Pro
---
Better for dedicated players
Not scammable (based on time invested versus character creation date)
Favors dedicated players

Con
---
Casual gamers will not receive as much from the system as dedicated players


Honestly at this point, I doubt you'd be adding that much code to add one or two lines of code that would likely only require a check of the last login date, and since I doubt they've started coding this yet I don't really think it's time wasted. This does not even ask for a method to slow down leveling, it's highlighting a means by which a character could scam the system. (By making and allowing a character to age some before starting to play them).

Being that the first age tick isn't for 20-30 weeks or longer it would take someone very dedicated to abuse that, especially given the small return for the 20+ week wait.

I'm not sure I understand everything 100%, but it looks like it's just a new mechanic for earning XP with non-combat commands and for earning XP faster through combat if your XP MOD is high. In principle that is fine, but I do think this misses the mark on the most important aspect of rewarding RP, which is that GMs currently get virtually no benefit from RP rewards and would get no benefit from this. If you can tie this to some sort of system of benefits that GMs get something out of, then I think it would be more effective.

I think a more streamlined version of what you suggested would be appropriate. Greet should not be tied to XP MOD at all. As I mentioned in the other thread, there are still plenty purely RP reasons a character may not want to go on a greet spree, and there are still some tactical asymmetries with greet as well. I definitely like the idea of giving an XP MOD bonus for things like joining religions, factions, getting higher favor, becoming a faction leader, getting paragon, and for age ticks. It is slightly unbalanced toward shamans, since they generally do not join religions, but, aside from that one minor gripe, it's pretty good. Putting in minor XP MOD awards for using basic communication commands seems like it's setting you (the immortals) up for a major headache trying to police it. It also seems like it would be a large amount of completely new code work.

On the XP VAL side of things, I guess it's alright, but I don't see a huge value add to the promotion of RPK in general. I also think some caps would need to be put into place, or people could literally mudsex their way to GM via emotes. IC months upon months of mudsex might make your character great in the sack via all the elite triggers and aliases you would develop over time, but I don't see why this should lead to you becoming a high level character that uses a completely different set of skills. By the way, if you insist on a full-blown XP MOD and XP VAL system, you should work out the kinks in the Duelist Guild system and include that in the formula. I absolutely do like the idea of newbs using the DG to actually learn some of the basics of PvP and to get some XP in the process, but the DG needs to be fixed up a bit first. I see that you also started an arena thread. Maybe the DG just needs to be overhauled into a more robust arena system so that arena matches/tournaments don't require imm involvement. Then maybe you could go build a new area instad of overseeing tournaments, because, man, how long has it been since the last new area went in? And how long before that!?

Ultimately, your overall idea is not a bad concept. I don't think it would represent an optimal expenditure of time from the staff to implement and oversee this, but, if streamlined appropriately, the concept is at least not going to hurt things, and may make things a little better. At the very least, it helps people who are terrible at pleveling by giving them some alternatives to the traditional methods of leveling. I believe that you proposed the idea as a way of rewarding/encouraging RP, but I think it misses the mark on that front compared to other ideas. XP awards, no matter how you tweak and package them, are not effective at rewarding RP beyond GM or encouraging longterm character development. Additional measures would have to be taken to link this system to other types of awards to make the RP reward system tie better into longterm character development.

Aelandron, using hours played is far more "scammable", to use your words, than conventional age is.

The number of hours played before any significant reward is given would probably be 100, 150, or even 200+. If anyone wants to idle somewhere and do nothing for 200 hours just to gain some experience, or gain it a little faster, then by all means, let them. They deserve it.

I just want to bring this back in focus.

This is but a tiny part of the proposed system. I simply wanted to raise some possibilities / considerations for the developers, whether they use them or not.

Whether age or hours used for the most part isn't going to affect the average players experience if this proposal is developed.

It's certainly still worth some discussion, but it's not the end of the world, either.

I'm kind of curious to see what results would come out of a discussion about longterm character development, which by the way, I think despite what you may believe this may have some trickle effect into helping. (With more people roleplaying it's easier to continue to RP after you reach GM, but I'll leave that as a to be seen).

BUT as to some ideas of how you could still improve your skills and RP at the same time:

Two friends go off to a secluded room, maybe in a fort, or somewhere.

They turn on mode stun.

And they take turns dueling each other, using practice weapons, aka low damage wooden weapons.

They RP as they're dueling complementing each other, or maybe one is acting in an instructional role, whatever.

It's RP and they get points for their conversations, and emotes, while they provide themselves opportunities to increase their prowess.

BOOM that's a fun time, that doesn't involve grinding NPCs. (There are lots of possibilties for similar situations).

You might need to petition the imms to design some practice weaponry that actually does low damage, but whatever that shouldn't be too hard.