High level difference play.

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Dalenger
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Dalenger » Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:29 pm

XP is gained from honing your skills and pushing yourself, not simply watching things die. If I go to the sewers with a lvl 30 WM demigod, all I'm going to see is a tornado of blood and rat guts. There's nothing to be learned from that.
Droolguy wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 1:26 am
A. Outright powerleveling of buddies is very rare, and easily spotted.
Where are you getting this? Outright powerleveling of buddies doesn't exist because of the system there is in place right now. And how do the DMs "easily spot" OOC metagrinding between buddies and a legitimate RP happening between two parties that, by all rights, are way too far apart to be fighting the same monsters?

What other people were saying is super true, also. Want to help out newbies? Hand out consumables (wands, kits, pots, etc), low level gear (there is always a demand, but no one ever wants to take the time to make it), play a cleric and give buffs, join a guild and try to help them find hunting buddies, or if you really want to help out your best friend, de-level your character or roll a new one. All of these are options. Level 30s aren't supposed to be hunting rats.

Finally, a system (similar) to the one that you want existed, and exists. Try one of Mith's Fixed Level servers. You start the game at a given level, and don't ever go up. Your character can become marginally stronger by "purchasing" training from NPCs at a substantial cost; however you don't even become overwhelmingly stronger than you were to start. This allows for anyone to play with anyway, by getting rid of enormous power gaps yet still allowing mechanical progression.

But DO feel free to leave. The server has lost some really great contributes because the community forgot they were volunteers and started screeching at them over mundane design decisions. We are very lucky to have the devs we do.
Last edited by Dalenger on Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Liareth » Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:33 pm

msterswrdsmn wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:23 pm
It's actually pretty easy to balance to an acceptable level. Calculate the average AB of the party (or the highest member). Cap AB to 1 above it. Calculate the average damage per round of the party (or the highest member). Cap damage per round to 2 above it. Average saves (or the highest member). Cap 1 above them. Average AC (or the highest member). Cap 1 above it. Cap spell effects to average level (or the highest member) + 1. Consider the mentor the average level (or the highest member) + 1 for the purposes of exp calculations. Half mentor exp gain if you're paranoid. Yes, the mentor has more spells/day and greater utility due to consumables, but it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced - this way is certainly more balanced than the "drop party and punch mobs down to help and heal and buff" psuedo-exploit.
That sounds really drawn out, and sadly, still wouldn't work well with balancing. Theres a lot off not-always-on-paper stuff that greatly influences how strong some people are. Bursty builds, builds with outside help prior to farming, or stuff that just looks terrible on paper but still does really well with pve comes to mind.
I would like some specific examples of something that wouldn't be balanced here. Obviously bursty builds would have their burst capped by this system - but, again, it doesn't need to be perfect. It simply has to ensure that high level players don't seriously outperform low level players, which it would do. " stuff that just looks terrible on paper" doesn't sound terribly convincing to me - if your ab is low, damage per hit is low, and APR is low, then you're not going to have high damage output - this game is based on numbers and performance is quantifiable. This system has historically worked very well in other MMOs.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by msterswrdsmn » Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:44 pm

if your ab is low, damage per hit is low, and APR is low, then you're not going to have high damage output
Totem druids. On paper, the character by itself is terrible at all the above. Thats the first thing that came to mind. Unless summons are being factored in, in which case that scale is gonna get broken again, but in the opposite direction.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Liareth » Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:50 pm

msterswrdsmn wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:44 pm
if your ab is low, damage per hit is low, and APR is low, then you're not going to have high damage output
Totem druids. On paper, the character by itself is terrible at all the above. Thats the first thing that came to mind.
I don't know much about totem druids, but the same rules apply as any other build. My experience of playing with them is that they have low damage output but can hit really high AC and temporary HP. If you had a party full of low AC characters and you mentored them as a totem druid, you'd get minced. There are several ways to avoid that - for example, one might be to set AC and AB values for each level for different archetypes and set those instead of capping relative to party.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by msterswrdsmn » Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:52 pm

Well, no, but personal experience? Totem druids themselves don't deal much damage. Their summons steamroll everything though in their path. This ncluded multiple pit fiends when Sei ran around with Tau. It was hilarious, and Tau herself probably wouldn't fit well in the spectrum mentioned because Tau herself seemed quite squishy

Her bears? Not so much. Theres a few other things, where damage will flat out drop off in some areas for some builds (godly damage via sneaks to no damage vs constructs) and so on, buuuut. Probably a discussion for a different topic.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Liareth » Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:56 pm

msterswrdsmn wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:52 pm
Well, no, but personal experience? Totem druids themselves don't deal much damage. Their summons steamroll everything though in their path. This ncluded multiple pit fiends when Sei ran around with Tau. It was hilarious, and Tau herself probably wouldn't fit well in the spectrum mentioned because Tau herself seemed quite squishy

Her bears? Not so much. Theres a few other things, where damage will flat out drop off in some areas for some builds (godly damage via sneaks to no damage vs constructs) and so on, buuuut. Probably a discussion for a different topic.
Summons are a spell resource, which would be capped in power following normal spell progression. But, yeah, it's a hypothetical. This sort of feature would require a lot of NWNX and a very motivated person to implement. It won't happen in reality!

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Baron Saturday » Tue Oct 02, 2018 6:15 pm

Droolguy wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 4:45 pm
This is a very big problem, one of the points I gathered from that thread that has made me step away from the server for now. If at the time it is the most active and divisive thread on the forums. A response from the admin team is warranted, hell, required. If the admin team did not want to respond for fear of rubbing the community or the developer the wrong way. Then this shows an aversion and avoidance of conflict, which is something that absolutely can not exist in management.
There was another thread on roughly the same topic a few weeks later to which Irongron did respond, and provided some context for his lack of response.
Irongron wrote:
Wed Jul 04, 2018 10:23 am
Every year I go away for 3 weeks, and invariably a thread like this pops up while i am not here to reply. It must be intentional!

Here is my brief reply: this has always been a thing, with xp rewards, with item crafting, even with citizenship. There are always mechanics to prevent low level characters benefiting from high level friends. Having to consider the level difference with potential party members has ALWAYS been a thing. RP server or no, Arelith is still a game.

Maybe some numbers need to be tweaked, I'm not at home to look, but immersion breaking? No more than this game is by its very design. Also this argument about us being an RP server, I recall the same point being made by a player a couple of years ago when they were upset that their indestructible familiar was removed.

Truth is we are not an RP server, we are an RPG server, and RPGs are always about challenge.
Please do remember that Arelith is entirely run and created by volunteers. It's easy to speak of "the admin team" and forget that often, there's just two of them, and they have lives and jobs outside the server, not to mention a ton of other Arelith-related things to do. A casual perusal of the Feedback forum will show dozens of 10-page heated debates. Crafting a thoughtful response to each of them would take a massive amount of time, which takes away from time to, for instance, answer PMs or work on the server, which I would argue are more important than putting out another forum fire.

Back onto the topic of helping lower-level characters, it is entirely possible to assist by simply not being in their party and hanging back, allowing them to do all the fighting but being ready to step in if they get in trouble, which I think you'll agree, feels less cheat-y and tedious than trying to damage enemies without killing them. I've had this done to me once, and it made for quite an interesting dungeon crawl.
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Sockss » Tue Oct 02, 2018 9:58 pm

Liareth wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:05 pm
Sockss wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 3:16 pm
Liareth wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 1:03 pm


The "doesn't make much sense" argument doesn't make much sense to me. Things that don't make much sense: the character power arc from 1 to 30 and reconciling relative differences in character power with the RP narrative. Things that make sense: a high-level character intentionally holding back their blows (in other words, mentoring) to assist in the training of a low-level character. Also: "Arelith is an RP game. It's important to remember it's a game".
It's not a high level character Holding back their blows though. It's a high level character becoming weak enough to find an area challenging. So the low level monsters that'd normally be insignificant to them are now actually a challenge.

Arelith is also an RP game and I don't believe this change would further any RP as a whole or introduce anything interesting in terms of gameplay. While being very very difficult (if impossible) to keep balanced (even the consumable advantage of a level thirty character is significant).

Why nothing new? Because people can already group with level appropriate characters. Higher levels can already help lower level characters.

Why won't it help RP? Because it further promotes very insular groups of players. You might find the odd person that is doing so to help people out but I'm willing to bet the vast majority of help will be for profoundly ooc reasons.

Even if by some miracle the system is balanced. Parties with mentors have a distinct advantage over others. If two parties meet grinding an area and one has a mentor, it's obvious which will stay to grind.

The lower hanging fruit and one that is actually feasible would surely be to make it easier for people to find groups. An lfg system built into an adventurers guild would be neat.
It's actually pretty easy to balance to an acceptable level. Calculate the average AB of the party (or the highest member). Cap AB to 1 above it. Calculate the average damage per round of the party (or the highest member). Cap damage per round to 2 above it. Average saves (or the highest member). Cap 1 above them. Average AC (or the highest member). Cap 1 above it. Cap spell effects to average level (or the highest member) + 1. Consider the mentor the average level (or the highest member) + 1 for the purposes of exp calculations. Half mentor exp gain if you're paranoid. Yes, the mentor has more spells/day and greater utility due to consumables, but it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced - this way is certainly more balanced than the "drop party and punch mobs down to help and heal and buff" psuedo-exploit.

I disagree with your other points, too. It would be something new and I would love it. I always get bored at mid-high epics because most of the cool adventure RP happens at low levels. I'd love to be able to drop my level and participate without screwing them over. (And make no mistake - you ARE screwing over a low level group if you join as an epic, no matter how you mince words). If two parties are grinding an area and one has a mentor, so what if the other has to leave? They would have to leave in the same situation without a mentor. Also, definitely disagree that it would promote a very insular group of players. That's what happens right now with level tiers - you either have a group of same-levelled players to grind with or you don't. A mentoring system would allow more players to interact together more easily.
You would need to:

Cap spell damage to the new level.
Cap spell DC to the new level.
Cap HP to the new level.
Cap bard song to the new level.
Cap spell buffs to the new level.
Cap abilities to the new level.
Cap shapechange/polymorphs to the new level.
Cap on-hit effects to a new level.
Cap spell durations to the new level.
Cap feats to a new level (Sneak attack / epic sl / blinding speed etc.)

And various other things. Even if you did all of that, the mentor would still be more powerful, as you've recognised, simply because of consumable wealth.

There's also no risk because you just, turn it off if you need to.

I'd disagree that 'most of the cool adventure RP happens at low levels', it happens at all levels.

You misunderstand my point regarding the mentored group. If your group doesn't have a mentor, you are at a disadvantage, as the mentor will wipe the floor with the other group if they don't leave. So to grind effectively you will then need a mentor, or two, or three, or be at risk of being bullied out of somewhere. Making mentors advantageous beyond just another person in your group.

What happens now is people light up discord in their various ooc cliques and organise a grind, hoping their friends are in range. With this change they're always in range - it promotes insular play.

Edit: Not to mention the average AC / AB of a group of mages is not going to work well for a melee dude. etc.
Last edited by Sockss on Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Liareth » Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:11 pm

Sockss wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 9:58 pm
Liareth wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:05 pm
Sockss wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 3:16 pm


It's not a high level character Holding back their blows though. It's a high level character becoming weak enough to find an area challenging. So the low level monsters that'd normally be insignificant to them are now actually a challenge.

Arelith is also an RP game and I don't believe this change would further any RP as a whole or introduce anything interesting in terms of gameplay. While being very very difficult (if impossible) to keep balanced (even the consumable advantage of a level thirty character is significant).

Why nothing new? Because people can already group with level appropriate characters. Higher levels can already help lower level characters.

Why won't it help RP? Because it further promotes very insular groups of players. You might find the odd person that is doing so to help people out but I'm willing to bet the vast majority of help will be for profoundly ooc reasons.

Even if by some miracle the system is balanced. Parties with mentors have a distinct advantage over others. If two parties meet grinding an area and one has a mentor, it's obvious which will stay to grind.

The lower hanging fruit and one that is actually feasible would surely be to make it easier for people to find groups. An lfg system built into an adventurers guild would be neat.
It's actually pretty easy to balance to an acceptable level. Calculate the average AB of the party (or the highest member). Cap AB to 1 above it. Calculate the average damage per round of the party (or the highest member). Cap damage per round to 2 above it. Average saves (or the highest member). Cap 1 above them. Average AC (or the highest member). Cap 1 above it. Cap spell effects to average level (or the highest member) + 1. Consider the mentor the average level (or the highest member) + 1 for the purposes of exp calculations. Half mentor exp gain if you're paranoid. Yes, the mentor has more spells/day and greater utility due to consumables, but it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced - this way is certainly more balanced than the "drop party and punch mobs down to help and heal and buff" psuedo-exploit.

I disagree with your other points, too. It would be something new and I would love it. I always get bored at mid-high epics because most of the cool adventure RP happens at low levels. I'd love to be able to drop my level and participate without screwing them over. (And make no mistake - you ARE screwing over a low level group if you join as an epic, no matter how you mince words). If two parties are grinding an area and one has a mentor, so what if the other has to leave? They would have to leave in the same situation without a mentor. Also, definitely disagree that it would promote a very insular group of players. That's what happens right now with level tiers - you either have a group of same-levelled players to grind with or you don't. A mentoring system would allow more players to interact together more easily.
You would need to:

Cap spell damage to the new level.
Cap spell DC to the new level.
Cap HP to the new level.
Cap bard song to the new level.
Cap spell buffs to the new level.
Cap abilities to the new level.
Cap shapechange/polymorphs to the new level.
Cap on-hit effects to a new level.
Cap spell durations to the new level.

And various other things. Even if you did all of that, the mentor would still be more powerful, as you've recognised, simply because of consumable wealth.

There's also no risk because you just, turn it off if you need to.

I'd disagree that 'most of the cool adventure RP happens at low levels', it happens at all levels.

You misunderstand my point regarding the mentored group. If your group doesn't have a mentor, you are at a disadvantage, as the mentor will wipe the floor with the other group if they don't leave. So to grind effectively you will then need a mentor, or two, or three, or be at risk of being bullied out of somewhere. Making mentors advantageous beyond just another person in your group.

What happens now is people light up discord in their various ooc cliques and organise a grind, hoping their friends are in range. With this change they're always in range - it promotes insular play.
All those things would need to be implemented, yes. And probably more that we haven't considered yet. Regarding the lack of risk and the bullying - I thought it was a given that you wouldn't be able to toggle the system in the field. This is something you could only toggle in a resting zone, and there should probably be a cooldown to proactively prevent abuse that we haven't considered yet.

OOC clique grinding is gonna do OOC clique grinding stuff with or without a mentoring system - these types of players are insular *anyway* and tend to play together and level together and stay within the same level range so not much is gained there. If there is a level disparity then these players will just let the lowbies tag along to high level areas for phat exps. I don't see the sort of people who use Discord to arrange their OOC grinds on a regular basis to be the target audience for such a system, nor do I think they would use it regularly.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Sockss » Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:19 pm

It's very complex, with huge potential for exploitation, to facilitate something that is very rarely an issue.

It's also disruptive to the overall narrative of Arelith if you can't turn it on and off at will. You'd have very odd situations, like assassins waiting till someone was mentoring to bop them.
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Liareth » Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:31 pm

Sockss wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:19 pm
It's very complex, with huge potential for exploitation, to facilitate something that is very rarely an issue.

It's also disruptive to the overall narrative of Arelith if you can't turn it on and off at will. You'd have very odd situations, like assassins waiting till someone was mentoring to bop them.
I don't think it's very rarely an issue, based on the feedback we've seen in the previous thread and now this thread. It might very rarely be an issue to *you* and the people you hang out with but evidently that's not the case to others. I think players clearly want some mechanically supported way to play with their lower level friends while still maintaining some level of mechanical challenge and mechanical reward.

I'd argue that the OOC consideration that one must constantly take when finding others to adventure with and the corresponding break in immersion and continuity when you have to excuse yourself to be fair to the group to be much more disruptive to the narrative of Arelith than the alternative, especially when the group is forming naturally in the flow of RP.

I agree that the system could lead to some seriously odd PvP behaviour though. I'm not really sure what we could do to fix that - maybe we should look at how other MMOs with mentoring systems handle that case for inspiration. It might require some IC justification for the mentoring weakness - e.g. some sort of potion or drug that reduces your strength, that high level characters intentionally take so that they don't interfere with the 'training' of low level characters while still being able to mentor them in the field.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Sockss » Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:35 pm

There are a very vocal handful that really want something like this. I still believe it to be a small proportion of people.

And yes, I believe that some players want a mechanically supported way to play with their lower level friends. Which directly results in insular play.

Another point of contention. Arelith has very high traffic areas as it is, with the influx of new players. Having more players in those areas, instead of level appropriate areas, will cause problems.
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Liareth » Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:48 pm

Sockss wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:35 pm
There are a very vocal handful that really want something like this. I still believe it to be a small proportion of people.

And yes, I believe that some players want a mechanically supported way to play with their lower level friends. Which directly results in insular play.

Another point of contention. Arelith has very high traffic areas as it is, with the influx of new players. Having more players in those areas, instead of level appropriate areas, will cause problems.
I think it's very difficult to judge the proportion of players that want this feature. It's easy to dismiss a group as being a vocal minority - but the same logic could be applied to you and the few others who defended the original change to writs (myself included, by the way). The server has grown so large and houses such a wide variety of players that it's very difficult to get a handle on which issues are relevant and which aren't. This problem is exacerbated by Discord cliques, which tend promote echo chambers because they are compromised of players who think similarly and therefore want similar things. A truth that seems obvious to one group is in fact a falsehood to another.

Back on the insular play thread, I think there are three types of players that organise grinds OOCly:

1) The public Discord grinder, who looks for people on one of the bigger Discords. In this case the level disparity between players tends to be high and the mentoring system would work well for them. The mentoring system would improve the quality of life for these players and increase the quantity of players they could adventure with - which is a win, IMO.

2) The public-but-private Discord grinder, who is part of a smaller Discord clique that is public but less so - this is a faction clique. These players are already insular. There is likely a large level disparity between members. They will likely use the mentoring system to play together when they can't get a big enough group together for a high level dungeon (and when they do, they'll just tug lowbies through). This is the danger zone of insular play but IMO these groups are already insular; a mentoring system just makes the game more accessible to them.

3) The private OOC-driven Discord grinder, who forms an OOC group of friends who roam from concept to concept and faction to faction, levelling up new characters together. These guys don't care about the mentoring system because they are all the same level, and they'll be finished with the levelling process in a week or two anyway so they can smash your face in PvP.

I think Irongron has something up his sleeve that might help with the full areas. :)

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Baron Saturday » Wed Oct 03, 2018 12:16 am

I can say from my most recent leveling experience that I would welcome a mentoring system - not because I want to bring along higher-level buddies, but because several times now I've run into higher-level characters while in the middle of doing a writ. We ended up traveling and rping together, which was great fun, but it would have been nice to be able to have the RP & also complete the writ, rather than coming back to finish the writ later.
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:10 am

Sockss wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 3:16 pm
Even if by some miracle the system is balanced. Parties with mentors have a distinct advantage over others. If two parties meet grinding an area and one has a mentor, it's obvious which will stay to grind.
I hear this a lot (when this conversation comes up), but my experience has pretty much always been that both groups merge- because since the discussion of what makes sense has come up, when two roving bands of adventurers killing groups of monsters meet each other while killing monsters, the smartest thing to do for survival is to kill monsters together.

100% of the loot divided by two dead adventurers is worse than 100% of the loot divided by five living ones.

You may have killed ten thousand hobgoblins/orcs/gnolls/dragons, but nothing says that next one won't be a cunning and masterful foe like nothing you've ever faced before.

I often feel that the assumption that one doesn't need/want more help to deal with monsters is based on the security of knowing how the spawn system works, and the ability to come to the forums and say that a really strong monster is an inappropriate challenge for a certain area's level rating, and not a rational IC one at all, IMO.

And generally in most of my IC interactions, most people have agreed. I've had the odd outlier, and generally just been happy to let them have an area because if all they're there for is the area and not the interaction, I've got plenty of other places I can be.

Since it's been openly ruled to not be cheating, I just drop parties for now, and I have to get a little more creative with my spell selection and targeting as a result. It would be nice to have a mentoring system. FFXI lets you mentor to an individual, bringing you to their character level for the duration so that you can tag along.

I think a decent way to accomplish this would just be to give the higher level characters negative levels equal to the difference in their mentee's levels from theirs for the duration and call it a day, but I'm not sure how viable that is.
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Poolbrain » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:30 am

Suggestion (dont know if this was suggested before) : just have a mode from the rest menu that sets incomming exp and ecl to 1. If you cast a spell, attack or get hurt the mode breaks.

Can be used while scrying too to avoid meta game detection.

You will have a benifit of a high level to rescue you if shit goes bad, maybe open a chest and buff. But those are things that can happen currently as well.

Edit: having a summon would also deactivate

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Sockss » Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:00 pm

Liareth wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:48 pm
Sockss wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:35 pm
There are a very vocal handful that really want something like this. I still believe it to be a small proportion of people.

And yes, I believe that some players want a mechanically supported way to play with their lower level friends. Which directly results in insular play.

Another point of contention. Arelith has very high traffic areas as it is, with the influx of new players. Having more players in those areas, instead of level appropriate areas, will cause problems.
I think it's very difficult to judge the proportion of players that want this feature. It's easy to dismiss a group as being a vocal minority - but the same logic could be applied to you and the few others who defended the original change to writs (myself included, by the way). The server has grown so large and houses such a wide variety of players that it's very difficult to get a handle on which issues are relevant and which aren't. This problem is exacerbated by Discord cliques, which tend promote echo chambers because they are compromised of players who think similarly and therefore want similar things. A truth that seems obvious to one group is in fact a falsehood to another.

Back on the insular play thread, I think there are three types of players that organise grinds OOCly:

1) The public Discord grinder, who looks for people on one of the bigger Discords. In this case the level disparity between players tends to be high and the mentoring system would work well for them. The mentoring system would improve the quality of life for these players and increase the quantity of players they could adventure with - which is a win, IMO.

2) The public-but-private Discord grinder, who is part of a smaller Discord clique that is public but less so - this is a faction clique. These players are already insular. There is likely a large level disparity between members. They will likely use the mentoring system to play together when they can't get a big enough group together for a high level dungeon (and when they do, they'll just tug lowbies through). This is the danger zone of insular play but IMO these groups are already insular; a mentoring system just makes the game more accessible to them.

3) The private OOC-driven Discord grinder, who forms an OOC group of friends who roam from concept to concept and faction to faction, levelling up new characters together. These guys don't care about the mentoring system because they are all the same level, and they'll be finished with the levelling process in a week or two anyway so they can smash your face in PvP.

I think Irongron has something up his sleeve that might help with the full areas. :)
It's not that difficult to judge the proportion of players for or against a change, a poll would do it. (That's not necessarily an indication on whether it's a healthy change)

The 'public Discord grinder' tends to be someone new to the server. It would be better to push this LFG mentality using an in game feature (Such as an adventurers guild built on the foundation of super-fast halflings that facilitates an LFG system). Rather than push these people into Discord chats as the norm, which inevitably leads to 2 and/or 3.

Aside from this insular play, there are numerous other reasons that external systems should be avoided as the norm.

RE full areas, if new areas are added. That's great. However an important component of that is balancing risk and reward which isn't dealt with well in the current environment (It has been getting better with monster tweaks but it's slow progress).

Unfortunately there is still a very clear-cut order to do things in, if you want to progress at a decent speed, which has very little variation - even prior to EE there were high traffic areas because of this. The quest system has helped somewhat, pushing people to lesser used areas but the problem remains. (Of course you may be referring to instancing but that reduces the chance of meeting anyone at all, which isn't great for an RP server)

So, if there is any advantage at all to having a mentor with you (Which there will be), the mentored group will always have the advantage over a non-mentored group - even if they have other areas to progress in, unless those areas have similar rewards. Which is unlikely considering current areas do not.

The proposed system is:

Extremely complex and time consuming to achieve a modicum of balance (Averaging doesn't work, feats need to be looked at and some HC'd ones removed)
Unable to be fully balanced (By virtue of consumables etc.)
An advantage to those who can source a mentor and conversely a disadvantage to those that cannot
Encouraging OOC interaction because of the above advantage/disadvantage
Encouraging external OOC interaction
Baron Saturday wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 12:16 am
I can say from my most recent leveling experience that I would welcome a mentoring system - not because I want to bring along higher-level buddies, but because several times now I've run into higher-level characters while in the middle of doing a writ. We ended up traveling and rping together, which was great fun, but it would have been nice to be able to have the RP & also complete the writ, rather than coming back to finish the writ later.
What writs were these? They're very generous in level range. It might be more appropriate to look at the reasons you encountered them in the first place.
Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:10 am
Sockss wrote:
Tue Oct 02, 2018 3:16 pm
Even if by some miracle the system is balanced. Parties with mentors have a distinct advantage over others. If two parties meet grinding an area and one has a mentor, it's obvious which will stay to grind.
I hear this a lot (when this conversation comes up), but my experience has pretty much always been that both groups merge- because since the discussion of what makes sense has come up, when two roving bands of adventurers killing groups of monsters meet each other while killing monsters, the smartest thing to do for survival is to kill monsters together.

[SNIPPED]

I think a decent way to accomplish this would just be to give the higher level characters negative levels equal to the difference in their mentee's levels from theirs for the duration and call it a day, but I'm not sure how viable that is.
I understand where you're coming from, but this is a direct result of learned experience from characters.

99% of the time, outside DM events, characters are not fighting for survival. They make the choice to go somewhere, to fight things, for a reward - they are an adventurer. Normally (!) characters are not suicidal. Whether through OOC knowledge or not it makes sense a character would make some (IC) effort to learn their destination and the capabilities of their foe. Maybe it's implied when they visit a tavern, maybe they ask around - but they have a good grasp of threat.

Death isn't really an issue in PvE for most players (At least for most of the server areas) and, is even less of an issue for most players in a group. At least players that aren't new. So loot is generally better the fewer the people despite a small amount of extra risk. However, people joining up is beneficial for XP gain, which is the main aim pre-30. At least up to a point.

The problem is, if you're mentoring. That's a slot that could be taken up by someone else (actually) in the level range and if groups are larger and experience an XP penalty by being together, it's less likely people will join up.

The problem with just reducing levels is that, it doesn't work. A 30 rogue drained to level 3 still has a huge edge on a level 3 rogue. Such as huge sneak attack, blinding speed, grenade access, gear.

FFXI is also a very different game. I'm not saying that a mentor system couldn't work. Just that the one proposed, in this environment, would be incredibly complex and even in a fairly optimal state will offer an advantage to those that used it and I believe that would spill over and encourage behavior detrimental to the server as a whole.
Thankfully this team is no longer being used.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Liareth » Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:14 pm

Sockss wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:00 pm
The proposed system is:

An advantage to those who can source a mentor and conversely a disadvantage to those that cannot
Encouraging OOC interaction because of the above advantage/disadvantage
Encouraging external OOC interaction
We could analyse almost every mechanic on Arelith that rewards player interaction and come up with the same list. Quick, better delete writs! They confer a significant exp advantage to those who complete them! Better delete any player crafting, because those who don't have access to other characters are at a disadvantage.

Encouraging players to play together and rewarding them for it lies at the heart of any MMO. It's not a negative - it's a positive. Group play should be supported regardless of character levels, not discouraged by mechanical systems.

I suppose it's at this point we have to "agree to disagree", because I don't find these points to be a particularly accurate or honest assessment of the impact such a system would have, nor do I consider them a compelling reason to avoid it.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Griefmaker » Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:53 pm

Liareth wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:14 pm

Encouraging players to play together and rewarding them for it lies at the heart of any MMO. It's not a negative - it's a positive. Group play should be supported regardless of character levels, not discouraged by mechanical systems.
This is the crux of what I always argue, but Liareth has said it far more elegantly.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Ork » Wed Oct 03, 2018 3:31 pm

Y'know despite being in the camp of leveling with level-appropriate groups, one of the most segregating events happens when a player out levels or under levels their cohort they have been RPing with. If there was a way that allows high levels to party with lower levels and not deprive people of a challenging encounter, I am 100% down.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by -XXX- » Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:28 pm

How about allowing epic characters to -mentor a lower lvl character by transferring xp from their adventure pool to the target per tick in smaller amounts during dungeoneering? This would at least represent an alternative to the currently strongly incentivized option of kicking the higher lvl character out of your party and going to complete your active writs solo rather than engaging in something more inclusive and interactive.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Emotionaloverload » Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:50 pm

Ork wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 3:31 pm
Y'know despite being in the camp of leveling with level-appropriate groups, one of the most segregating events happens when a player out levels or under levels their cohort they have been RPing with. If there was a way that allows high levels to party with lower levels and not deprive people of a challenging encounter, I am 100% down.
Out lvling your faction, partners or just rp companions is a huge issue for me so I would appreciate something that doesn't force me to leave a party (or remove someone from a party) just because of their lvl to be able to participate in a writ.

That said, I too am in the camp of lvling with lvl appropriate groups.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Baron Saturday » Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:53 pm

Sockss wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:00 pm
What writs were these? They're very generous in level range. It might be more appropriate to look at the reasons you encountered them in the first place.
The characters in question were there for reasons that had nothing to do with writs. I feel as though writs have had the effect of segregating the server into "level zones," when the truth is that the server is an open world and there are plenty of IC reasons for a higher level character to be present in a zone with lower level content.

To summarize my issue with the current system: It lacks flexibility. It presents a hard and fast, "this may be done one way, and no other." It doesn't allow players to adapt to changes in circumstance. On a server with as much emphasis on flexibility and player agency as Arelith, it feels distinctly artificial and out of place.

That said, I understand the need to maintain appropriate levels of challenge and reward on the server. The discussion so far has been very focused on balancing the challenge to a fixed reward. What if instead we looked at balancing the reward to the reduced challenge? Something like, say, 200 less gold and 100 less xp (adjusting axp accordingly) for every level of the character(s) outside the range. So, sure, work with someone 10 levels higher... but your reward will reflect that. Perhaps set a minimum reward for extreme level differences that would wipe out the reward entirely.
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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Sockss » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:45 pm

Liareth wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:14 pm
Sockss wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:00 pm
The proposed system is:

An advantage to those who can source a mentor and conversely a disadvantage to those that cannot
Encouraging OOC interaction because of the above advantage/disadvantage
Encouraging external OOC interaction
We could analyse almost every mechanic on Arelith that rewards player interaction and come up with the same list. Quick, better delete writs! They confer a significant exp advantage to those who complete them! Better delete any player crafting, because those who don't have access to other characters are at a disadvantage.

Encouraging players to play together and rewarding them for it lies at the heart of any MMO. It's not a negative - it's a positive. Group play should be supported regardless of character levels, not discouraged by mechanical systems.

I suppose it's at this point we have to "agree to disagree", because I don't find these points to be a particularly accurate or honest assessment of the impact such a system would have, nor do I consider them a compelling reason to avoid it.
Not all player interaction is desirable.

Though I agree, it's been an interesting discussion but I think we differ fundamentally in opinion of the ramifications of it.

Best of luck to whomever gets the daunting task of making it work!
Baron Saturday wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:53 pm
The characters in question were there for reasons that had nothing to do with writs. I feel as though writs have had the effect of segregating the server into "level zones," when the truth is that the server is an open world and there are plenty of IC reasons for a higher level character to be present in a zone with lower level content.
The server has always been segregated in 'level zones' and it's a faux pas to be hanging with over-levelled characters in low level areas.
Thankfully this team is no longer being used.

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Re: High level difference play.

Post by Baron Saturday » Wed Oct 03, 2018 7:11 pm

Sockss wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:45 pm
The server has always been segregated in 'level zones' and it's a faux pas to be hanging with over-levelled characters in low level areas.
I wouldn't characterize passing through a lower-level area with an IC goal in mind as "hanging." Can you honestly tell me that you've never gone into the Bramble Woods for hardwood or silk with a character far beyond the level range of those areas?
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