"A member of your party..." (Writs feedback)

[Rwby]

I mean, I everyone's experiences are different and all. But I've been here for ten years, and that's never happened.
That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it's certainly not all prevailing. Maybe everyone just doesn't involve me in these flurries of tells where we bitch about other players...

well, yeah... dane cook said it best (opinions on him notwithstanding) "every group of friends has a karen. if your group of friends doesn't, guess what? you're the karen."

Is that a personal attack or a bad joke? I can't tell.

[BegoneThoth]

I feel that this thread is extremely important, and would prefer if people would lay off the personal attacks and stuff, so that doesn't get locked and we are at all forbidden from speaking about it again.

[thingsicantdo]

Is that a personal attack or a bad joke? I can't tell.

i believe "dane cook" was mentioned.

but it's not untrue. there is some overlap between "people i find annoying" and "people i consider friends"

edit: i'm being unclear here. the point is that you dont' talk to certain friends about certain things because they tend to get annoying. i don't mention how much i don't like PUBG to my friend (let's call him J) because he'll get defensive about it. i won't mention dnd to my friend (let's call him D) because he'll immediately call me a nerd.

some people you can talk about efficiency in gaming with, and others not so much. it's true for most topics, i think

[Rwby]

So you're saying what Cortex actually means is that in parties of gamers who are all friends and care deeply about XP efficiency should a high level player mess up their farming they'll all send a 'Flurry of tells about it', but any other party will not discuss it and just carry on gaming and playing their characters?

[Liareth]

So you're saying what Cortex actually means is that in parties of gamers who are all friends and care deeply about XP efficiency should a high level player mess up their farming they'll all send a 'Flurry of tells about it', but any other party will not discuss it and just carry on gaming and playing their characters?

Though I see why this change was made and agree with the idea in principle, I don't like the execution - I wish there was some system in place to replace what was taken - like it or not, people were using writ boosting as a social tool, so I think taking that toy away without offering a replacement (like a -mentoring system) kinda sucks. Anyway, I'm stating this to make it clear I'm not on any side of this furious debate, so that it's hopefully clear that I'm unbiased when I say that I think a lot of people don't enjoy high levels playing with them in dungeon runs (before the writ system, and now again after this change). It's not just Cortex and his secret cabal of thicc radioactive grinders. It's really lame to get a party together then find out one of your party members is 5-10 levels out of range and now you're basically wasting your time (because let's be real, not much RP of relevance or interest happens the tenth time you visit a dungeon to grind it, no matter who you are). And yeah, I think most people try to come up with an excuse to ditch the thirty year old who wants to hang out with teenagers because he ruins the experience. I think that's one of the best things the writ system accomplished; it allowed low levels to play with high levels and still get rewarded. But at the same time, that's the biggest issue facing the system, because the content is trivialised for everyone attending and the exp per kill still sucks.

[ReverentBlade]

I think the change is a bit restrictive. I've found that power level of character doesn't really correspond to numerical level anyway, especially around the levels where writs are relevant.

My fiance's level 11 spellsword can solo areas my level 15 fist monk could only dream about. Yet we can't help each other with writs on the edges of the bracket, because I'm "too strong", even though his build would wreck me every day of the week. It's a bit silly. It's just not a very realistic system and it causes more issues than fixes problems. There has to be better ways to fix the problems this was targeting.

I prefer to group with people through organic RP instead of playing the game of "how do we describe level in IC terms" mini-game. Just leads to a lot of artificial feeling play.

[thingsicantdo]

So you're saying what Cortex actually means is that in parties of gamers who are all friends and care deeply about XP efficiency should a high level player mess up their farming they'll all send a 'Flurry of tells about it', but any other party will not discuss it and just carry on gaming and playing their characters?

more like "some people get salty about things, so we don't include them in conversations about those things."

[Rwby]

So you're saying what Cortex actually means is that in parties of gamers who are all friends and care deeply about XP efficiency should a high level player mess up their farming they'll all send a 'Flurry of tells about it', but any other party will not discuss it and just carry on gaming and playing their characters?

more like "some people get salty about things, so we don't include them in conversations about those things."

How can you know someone gets salty about something when you've never met nor spoken to them before?
Not to mention Arelith has always existed with people using different alts for different purposes, and now people change names every session.

[BegoneThoth]

How do I wrap my RP around a lower level character saying they need help with a specific Umber Hulk or Harpy boss when my helping them results in them not actually being helped

What is gained in this situation?

Can we revert the change please?

[susitsu]

Though I see why this change was made and agree with the idea in principle, I don't like the execution - I wish there was some system in place to replace what was taken - like it or not, people were using writ boosting as a social tool, so I think taking that toy away without offering a replacement (like a -mentoring system) kinda sucks.

This right here really stands out to me as why the change should just be reverted. I don't get this at all, because see I would think a social tool is pretty good on a roleplay server...

How I most recently got a level 30 involved with RP with a few level 16s was just by ferrying them through some writs, walking half the time and RPing the whole time. I made it clear in RP and with tells there wouldn't be XP to be gained from kills, but they accepted so they could actually get the writs done and RP while they were at it. Especially in a lax atmosphere because while I was gaining nothing mechanically, there was no danger and everyone was free to rp.

So, with someone in front of Cordor I didn't know at all asking me to help them with writs very suddenly, my character's roleplay had the opportunity to branch off quite a bit through the extended interactions. It was an over-all enjoyable experience.

This was my day all the way up until the change hit, luckily after I had already helped them.

So to summarize, I helped them level, gained nothing out of it except getting to actually roleplay with a handful of new people for a while who were all just chill with getting their writs done even if it was +1 xp +1 xp +1 xp +1 xp +1 xp, and simply had a nice time on the server instead of standing around in front of The Nomad for an hour doing nothing.

[BegoneThoth]

It may also just be that helping people lower level then you is not intended play and is in fact frowned upon in the same way urgently doing dungeons is; a subtle nudge from the game itself that such behavior is strongly frowned upon.

Will I be docked RPR for doing something unintended or undesired by helping a lower level person kill a tough monster? I want to know before I go and help anyone with anything.

And if not, then why is the artificial limit in place?

[PinataPlethora]

It may also just be that helping people lower level then you is not intended play and is in fact frowned upon in the same way urgently doing dungeons is; a subtle nudge from the game itself that such behavior is strongly frowned upon.

Will I be docked RPR for doing something unintended or undesired by helping a lower level person kill a tough monster? I want to know before I go and help anyone with anything.

And if not, then why is the artificial limit in place?

Continue playing as normal. Your RPR doesn't need to be docked, and the DMs don't need to intervene in any way, because now there's a mechanical barrier in the way of the part that they wanted to stop, which is high level characters doing all of the work so lowbies can farm high value contracts without risk.

In any case, there's a pretty easy way to work around it, but that might get you dinged if someone catches on.

[BegoneThoth]

How do I help them without getting 'dinged?'

I cant be in their party or I can't help them, but if im outside the party I may be 'dinged.'

So how do I proceed?

[MissEvelyn]

On-topic, I entirely support the reason why this change was implemented, because it's super frustrating to go to a dungeon alone or as a group for some juicy XP, only to find that someone or several someones has their high level buddy blasting through stuff which would blast your XP gain down to a pittance if you stayed to do the dungeon. I agree that there can be some smoother implementations (The level 23 wanting to adventure with a level 19 for instance, since those are in a similar level range for a lot of content) but that's all a matter of fine tuning.

At worst, an IC problem that could be solved IC. A simple "I do not believe I am learning anything from simply watching your superior powers in action, Master Wizard." is all it takes. And that's assuming this is even a problem for everyone. Hint taken from this thread: It's not. Some people actually enjoy spending time together, regardless of how much their experience gets cut.

[thingsicantdo]

At worst, an IC problem that could be solved IC. A simple "I do not believe I am learning anything from simply watching your superior powers in action, Master Wizard." is all it takes. And that's assuming this is even a problem for everyone. Hint taken from this thread: It's not. Some people actually enjoy spending time together, regardless of how much their experience gets cut.

then why are we up in arms about a change causing experience to get cut?

[PinataPlethora]

So how do I proceed?

Don't.

[MissEvelyn]

At worst, an IC problem that could be solved IC. A simple "I do not believe I am learning anything from simply watching your superior powers in action, Master Wizard." is all it takes. And that's assuming this is even a problem for everyone. Hint taken from this thread: It's not. Some people actually enjoy spending time together, regardless of how much their experience gets cut.

then why are we up in arms about a change causing experience to get cut?

Because it is punishing to roleplayers, among the sea of other reasons already mentioned here.

[thingsicantdo]

Because it is punishing to roleplayers, among the sea of other reasons already mentioned here.

how? how is it punishing role players? because they don't get an extra cookie?

[R0GUE]

Because it is punishing to roleplayers, among the sea of other reasons already mentioned here.

how? how is it punishing role players? because they don't get an extra cookie?

Its not that you don't get an extra cookie, it's that a Roleplayer must change the way they play their character based on a new game system, rather than how they would really act IC.

[thingsicantdo]

not at all. they can keep doing it however they want. it's only the extra cookie that changes

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

For clarity; I get the game design 101 concept of 'gaining XP should be somewhat challenging.'
However, I also agree that there are social situations IC that hit a very unpleasant brick wall as a result of this.

Susitsu and TroubledWater are both good examples here, where both have higher level characters that might be asked for help completing a task, and would give it IC, but despite the RP of the situation, they cannot help them. This is an RP opportunity that the mechanics are saying no to.

You've accepted the writ. Presumably, you aren't going to just not complete it. This means you can't have the higher level in your party. It's easier for this interaction to not happen, even though both people may want it to- because you can't succeed if it does.


Moving through a dungeon and RP'ing while fighting in a group is the ideal scenario for dungeon-leveling by design- let's admit for a moment that if you have time to emote at length during a monster encounter, that is not a challenging encounter. Challenging encounters are the one where if you click the ground and go flat-footed for three seconds you're at near-death, perish the thought of taking your hand off the mouse for fifteen whole seconds to put down an emote.

So if a higher level character gives you the security to take your hand off the mouse and RP more, is this really a bad thing to reward with Writ XP?

I feel the middle ground here is to find some implementation of a reduced XP capacity, just like you'd get if a level 15 walked you through the bugbear fort. The problem isn't that you get "less" that people are focusing on- the problem is that you can't, at all, and if you could but not as well, I think people would be less upset about lost opportunities.

I feel this way about both combat and exploratory writs; because I've been playing here for four years and I still get lost trying to navigate the wilderness. Having tour guides is basically mandatory for some of us.

[Kriegos]

I feel the middle ground here is to find some implementation of a reduced XP capacity, just like you'd get if a level 15 walked you through the bugbear fort. The problem isn't that you get "less" that people are focusing on- the problem is that you can't, at all, and if you could but not as well, I think people would be less upset about lost opportunities.

As one of the people who is unhappy with this change because of how it artificially changes IC interactions in non-sensical ways (ie: we know the bugbears are super dead, but the person who helped kill them was too strong, so it doesn’t count), I would be perfectly okay if the above was how it worked.

Some sort of check on group levels when an objective is met or progress made that gets recorded, then referenced when the writ is turned in. If everyone was in the range to take the writ? No change in XP awarded on completion. If people are higher levels, give out less xp based on the disparity. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d even be fine if at a certain point where if the level difference is just enormous, there would be no xp, just a paycheck. This would give us RP-focused people the same IC recourse we currently rely on: “You might not learn much if I come with, but if that’s alright with you, I’m willing to help.”

I know it’s a more complicated way to go about this, but I think it’s pretty clear right now that this is a complicated issue.

[Rwby]

I feel the middle ground here is to find some implementation of a reduced XP capacity, just like you'd get if a level 15 walked you through the bugbear fort. The problem isn't that you get "less" that people are focusing on- the problem is that you can't, at all, and if you could but not as well, I think people would be less upset about lost opportunities.

As one of the people who is unhappy with this change because of how it artificially changes IC interactions in non-sensical ways (ie: we know the bugbears are super dead, but the person who helped kill them was too strong, so it doesn’t count), I would be perfectly okay if the above was how it worked.

Some sort of check on group levels when an objective is met or progress made that gets recorded, then referenced when the writ is turned in. If everyone was in the range to take the writ? No change in XP awarded on completion. If people are higher levels, give out less xp based on the disparity. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d even be fine if at a certain point where if the level difference is just enormous, there would be no xp, just a paycheck. This would give us RP-focused people the same IC recourse we currently rely on: “You might not learn much if I come with, but if that’s alright with you, I’m willing to help.”

I know it’s a more complicated way to go about this, but I think it’s pretty clear right now that this is a complicated issue.

I too, would be totally fine if the change impacted the XP you got for completing the writ. It makes perfect sense to get paid but not have learned anything.

[Nitro]

On-topic, I entirely support the reason why this change was implemented, because it's super frustrating to go to a dungeon alone or as a group for some juicy XP, only to find that someone or several someones has their high level buddy blasting through stuff which would blast your XP gain down to a pittance if you stayed to do the dungeon. I agree that there can be some smoother implementations (The level 23 wanting to adventure with a level 19 for instance, since those are in a similar level range for a lot of content) but that's all a matter of fine tuning.

At worst, an IC problem that could be solved IC. A simple "I do not believe I am learning anything from simply watching your superior powers in action, Master Wizard." is all it takes. And that's assuming this is even a problem for everyone. Hint taken from this thread: It's not. Some people actually enjoy spending time together, regardless of how much their experience gets cut.

"I know you were here first and all helping your apprentice kill gnolls master wizard, but could you kindly bugger off so we could team up with your apprentice instead?"

[susitsu]

I think following Nitro's example, instead of a mechanical barrier, there could just be an established courtesy rule like Be Nice about leaving a grinding area for lowbies if asked/going as far as offering.