High level difference play.

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Regionals
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Regionals » Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:33 pm

While I agree restrictions could be loosened from the 3 level range I'm just not convinced encouraging more epics to hang around low level dungeons is a great thing. Mechanically it throws off spawn difficulty for anyone else around, IG it heavily favors making new characters who would be favored by existing epics and makes it more difficult to play someone who goes against the grain.

Maybe an alternative could be separate "training writs" meant for a mix of levels, based on the idea of a higher level character from a settlement/faction patrolling with initiates. Make them more about exploration and patrolling territory than dungeon diving, this would serve to make the areas around cities/factions more active with roaming characters as well.

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Scurvy Cur
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Scurvy Cur » Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:30 pm

Amineh123 wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:18 pm
Well Dirac put it exactly how I feel it as well, so +1.
So he’s being factually wrong for two people. Well, it’s efficient, if nothing else.

Just popping in to clear something up since it seems to have cropped up again: the writ restriction kicks in when you exceed the level range of the writ by 3, not the level of the other players in the writ by 3. Since most writs have a 5 or more level range, there should be opportunities to do writs with people anywhere within 7ish levels of each other.

And this frankly is starting to verge into "local man upset that he actually needs to play the game to get xp" territory. D&D (and by extension Arelith's writ system) xp distribution is premised on the idea that you should only get xp for things that challenge your character. This is why the per-kill XP award drops as you start outleveling the challenge rating of things you kill. If you spend all your time doing effortless things (or even watching other people doing effortless things), you're not challenging yourself, and should not be rewarded more than a nominal XP amount for doing so.


Dirac
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Dirac » Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:56 pm

Scurvy Cur wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:30 pm
And this frankly is starting to verge into "local man upset that he actually needs to play the game to get xp" territory.
Yeah? I don't really see that throughout any of these posts. What I see is a lot of new players reaching out about a system that doesn't make sense and is simply not fun to them.

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msterswrdsmn
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by msterswrdsmn » Tue Oct 09, 2018 12:44 am

I'd like to point out that as the system is now, you can have some horrendeous strong players drag a midlevel through a writ

For example? Lets say a writ has a level range of 14-20. The cap is 3 levels or higher for the writ level. So a level 22 (or group of level 22's) can drag an even larger number of level 14 and 15's through a dungeon for writ xp.

That is extremely generous. How is that not doing exactly the opposite of what the OP is complaining the system is blocking?

If you start getting into parties with a level gap larger than that? You really shouldn't be getting rewarded the same as a group of more appropriately leveled people doing the same thing.

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flower
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by flower » Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:56 am

Dirac wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:56 pm
Scurvy Cur wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:30 pm
And this frankly is starting to verge into "local man upset that he actually needs to play the game to get xp" territory.
Yeah? I don't really see that throughout any of these posts. What I see is a lot of new players reaching out about a system that doesn't make sense and is simply not fun to them.
Really? And how is asking that epics grind lowbies trough writs who then do nothing but watch kills to get xps per writ different than quoted?

Dirac
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Dirac » Wed Oct 10, 2018 3:09 pm

flower wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:56 am
Dirac wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:56 pm
Scurvy Cur wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:30 pm
And this frankly is starting to verge into "local man upset that he actually needs to play the game to get xp" territory.
Yeah? I don't really see that throughout any of these posts. What I see is a lot of new players reaching out about a system that doesn't make sense and is simply not fun to them.
Really? And how is asking that epics grind lowbies trough writs who then do nothing but watch kills to get xps per writ different than quoted?
It’s not.

High level players can grind low level players through xp anyway, we both know this. You simply need a little knowledge of the server and a group of good buds.

I guess I just don’t understand why you restrict a system in hopes that we somehow prevent behavior that is already prevalent to begin with.

So what is the end result? From the threads popping up (such as this one) it irritates and hinders new players from enjoying the server, greatly restricts RP opportunities, and folks are still out getting easy xp.

By all means, if you guys are super confident that this is somehow helping the server, then keep it up.

But as a good friend of mine would say, IMO it’s starting to verge into "local programmers in love with the design rather than the end results" territory.

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flower
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by flower » Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:26 pm

Just because something is present in some manner in the game we should go ahead and openly support it with another systém?

There is a difference, when level 30 drags someone trough Titans and when level 30 makes a writ for someone.

In epic dungeon low level risks to die to a trap, sneaker, mass spell. He literally has to walk trough it, and count xps per kill, and usually will level with same speed as with same levels of himself in a proper place related to his level.

When lvl 30 brought guys to do their writs by killing low level-to mid level NPCs there was no effort. Npcs died on one two orthree hits, and group just walk in and out, harvesting these 1 000 xps per writs with no effort in addition to cheap gold (in this place your buddies did not need to waste consumables most likely).

On top of that, these mixed groups ruined fun for others. How? Because presence of this epic guy usually turned off xps per kill for others in areas, and it also gave one of the two parties edge in conflict role play. Why to back down from other bigger group when single character from your outlevels them all together

There is a huge difference in both approachs.

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-XXX-
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by -XXX- » Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:06 pm

a) Debating the presumed difficulty of level advancement on a server where you can reach max level by straight up doing nothing for 30 days of playtime seems rather dubious.
Concerns expressed abut outcomes that might be perceived as "too easy leveling" follow a line of argumentation that could just as easily be applied to adventuring parties in general - do players of characters in adventuring groups have an unfair advantage over those who prefer to solo PvE content?

b) Arelith is an RP server where characters of all kinds, shapes and forms are supposed to interact. Any arguments presenting reasons why this should not be the case for whatever reason are fundamentally wrong (honorable mention goes to the 24hrs rule for being pretty much the only exception).

c) As it stands, an OOC concept heavily incentivizes players to cease interactions between characters under certain circumstances for OOC reasons. I'd argue that's not exactly an ideal outcome.

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flower
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by flower » Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:53 pm

-XXX- wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:06 pm
a) Debating the presumed difficulty of level advancement on a server where you can reach max level by straight up doing nothing for 30 days of playtime seems rather dubious.
Concerns expressed abut outcomes that might be perceived as "too easy leveling" follow a line of argumentation that could just as easily be applied to adventuring parties in general - do players of characters in adventuring groups have an unfair advantage over those who prefer to solo PvE content?

b) Arelith is an RP server where characters of all kinds, shapes and forms are supposed to interact. Any arguments presenting reasons why this should not be the case for whatever reason are fundamentally wrong (honorable mention goes to the 24hrs rule for being pretty much the only exception).

c) As it stands, an OOC concept heavily incentivizes players to cease interactions between characters under certain circumstances for OOC reasons. I'd argue that's not exactly an ideal outcome.
a) "doing nothing" usually consists of role play interaction, it can be barely called doing nothing.

b) noone prevents to level 30 to interact with level 1 Limiting this "interaction" for level 30 unable to make writ for level 1 is a bit off,


c) LVL restriction on writs hardly makes people to cease interactions with higher level. As killing things and doing writs is like one thing of thousends possible on server. IT is their own choice to do so. No ooc concept makes them to do it, They just cannot harvest award for no effort.


I wonder that noone yet demanded to remove all restrictions from leveling, and to allow level 30 to level lvl 1 with full experience points. It is as much weird as this.

Amineh123
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Amineh123 » Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:46 am

What difference does it make for you guys if someone is level 1 or 30? Even if he/she leveled super fast overnight with their buddies? They play together, have fun together, in most cases having close to none affect on your character.

PvP? Oh my, someone is better, but their character is only real time month old, and mine is 2 years old! That's unfair!
PvE? How does this even affect you?
RP? Level is so unrelevant, or sometimes helps just a little.

Epic grinding their friends. So what? Sounds like some weird jealousy or unjustified whining - again, how does that affect your character?
You can't go through a dungeon because there's an epic character in lowby regions? I seriously doubt that suddenly all epic players will powerlevel their buddies all over the server.
There are dozens of dungeons anyway, don't meta and go only to the one that has best rewards/xp.

I feel like there's also tendency to see through point of view of a regular player, myself being a casual one, more controversial restrictions equals less fun.

monkeywithstick
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by monkeywithstick » Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:28 am

One thing I have seen before is an inability to find companions for questing within your own level range resulting in player inactivity.

This doesn't affect people who know the server or its meta builds well - they can likely just go and solo.
This doesn't affect people who have an established ooc clique - friends will roll alts.

It does disproportionately affect newer players, people who dont' read the forums or discord for builds and contacts etc.
In case the point isn't clear; if we want to attract more players, new arrivals having a dull experience isn't great. Older players being mechanically restricted from helping them in their early days on the server doesn't really help that at all.

Izzy had an apprentice for a while but there was naff all I could do beyond RP and buy him gear, his build was suboptimal for soloing and with no conjuration foci on Izzy I have a fairly grim solo experience also. So I couldn't help with low level writs, and I couldn't really "carry" him through higher content either. The player is now playing another character (for a while I thought they had quit) and maybe the apprentice will wander back in occasionally.

Fundamentally in my opinion PvE exists to keep people logged in in between roleplay bouts. The server population is active but not everyone has an RP goal to work on all the time and talking rubbish in the tavern is only fun for so long; so people go and kill dragons or whatever. It's a vehicle to keep people logged in long enough for serendipitous roleplay to occur, or for long enough they are seen and sent a speedy...

Should also be remembered that writs will only take you as far as ~level 20 anyway, this is far from "end game" and it's fairly standard amongst people I've spoken to that levelling slows down in the epics, however at the epic content the barrier to partying with people disappears anyway.
Characters: Izzy, short for Isabel. Shaena Ash.

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