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.
Sockss#5567 for nwn mechanics questions.