Post
by Durvayas » Sun Jun 17, 2018 6:19 pm
I play characters that level slowly. I do a lot of RP, and even while I'm on a break, I can see where this new change is inherently cancerous. Enough so that I'm actually finding myself agreeing with several people whose posts I usually just gloss over as trolling.
If you are playing a low level character that may or may not be good at combat, writs used to be your "I can ask my high level friends for help with these" three missions for the day. You only get three, and you would go into them knowing full well you're probably not getting exp for the kills, but you could at least go on adventures with your really high level friends and have meaningful RP with them without really feeling the sting of an exp dock. The exp you got at the end, adventure exp at that, would make up for all the piss-poor exp you lost by partying with these characters to begin with; But the important thing is this literally facilitated and rewarded mentor RP, Military excercise RP, religious trial RP, "I need a vial of giant's blood for mad science will you help me get it?" RP.
Three times a day, it facilitated this RP without the inherent penalty that has always been a thing on arelith. The "Sure you can do this RP, but you're mechanically wasting your(due to RL, often really limited and valuable) time because you will gain 40exp for this entire trip due to wanting to RP with character 'X'". This penalty has, for years, resulted in people rejecting characters, or quietly encouraging them to kindly piss off, based on level because Arelith's grind SUCKS, and players naturally prefer not to run the same dungeons dozens of times. Having someone in your party that wipes out the group's RP is harsh on the players with limited time, and so for years, we've subtly, or not so subtly, encouraged people to avoid going on any kind of trip wherein the exp is going to get killed. I routinely ask people in tells how the exp is, because my main character is a mentor type. If the exp is bad, I have to come up with some excuse to piss off, or I'm being an active detriment to the other players because I'm wasting their time.
Three times per day...
Prior to the recent change. I, as a lowbie, could freely RP with higher level characters on dungeons, without shooting myself and my character progression in the foot.
Prior to the recent change. I, as a high epic, could freely RP with lower level characters on dungeons, without shooting THEIR character progression in the foot.
Post change, as it sits now, I, as a lowbie, need them to piss off, or I straight up WASTE one of my three daily writs.
Post change, I, as an epic, need to find an excuse to piss off, because I don't want to waste one of someone else's three daily writs.
My point is thus: Was something that could only happen three times a day REALLY so egregiously abused that there was really a need to take away the social tool that it provided?
This hurts all the wrong people, as anyone who may have been abusing this before is just going to go back to taking lowbies to high epic areas to lasso epic mobs, which was the ONLY way to meaningfully go on adventures with people of super disparate adventures before. A consolation prize at the end of the rope, assuming you didn't get it killed along the way.
Plays: Durvayas(deleted), Marco(deleted), Hounynrae(NPC), Sinithra Auvry'ndal(rolled), Rauvlin Barrith(Active), Madeline Clavelle(Shelved)