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Post by Slazz on Apr 16, 2016 1:50:34 GMT -5
Hi. I'm a brand new player (Cipher) and I just figured I'd put in my two cents.
Most of the players against the 35 XP incentive are old players who got their XP rolled over from the old MUSH, which was, as I understand it, fraught with its own problems and a lot of toxic people (hence the reboot). From a purely mathematical point of view, I'd totally be okay with doing away with the 35 XP incentive, if other players on grid didn't start off the bat with 1300 beats. I recall another player telling me that they'd been violenced by a 13 strength character. My mind kinda boggles at that. Maybe I'm not the creative type, but I was trying to figure out how a character could have 13 strength. Started getting into Blood Potency 5+ and all that kind of nonsense. Simply put, the gap between brand new players and old players is too large - with that kind of power level gap, there's little tension or drama when the story's all but decided in favor of someone who has 1300 beats, versus no beats. Furthermore, it's completely arbitrary how wide that gap is.
Flipping that around, it'd make more sense to have the current old players who had their XP rolled over from the old MUSH start from scratch, but then give them a 35 XP incentive on top of that. The difference, in relation, between 1300 beats and 175 beats (the 35 XP incentive suggested as being offered to new players) is much greater than this system of 175 beats and 0 beats. I feel like rolling over characters with all their XP from the old MUSH also might roll-over a few other ideas of elitism and clique-ishness, among other things. The recent bbpost on Layth (an old player who presumably rolled over their XP) and their toxic behavior kind of discourages a fresh start.
Granting that 35 XP incentive to old players gives a nod to their loyalty, as it were, but it doesn't perpetuate an old, flawed system or a distinct over-class and under-class. The difference would be of degrees, not of kind.
That's my two cents.
-Cipher
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Post by cipher on Apr 16, 2016 2:42:16 GMT -5
After reading the logs for the meeting to determine the re-opening of Kingsmouth, I withdraw my belief that we should be rerolling old players. Those old players have a vested interest and are often protective of the MUSH, and I can better appreciate the reasoning now. RPing is a cooperative endeavor, and trusting that the old players are there for a reason, having responsibly wielded that power, I am of the mind to think that there's no need to enact measures to punish players who have responsibly told the story.
I'm not sure if I'm of a mind to agree with Manon's suggestion (a smaller incentive) or no incentive at all. Come back to me on that.
-0
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Post by Perse on Apr 16, 2016 20:48:50 GMT -5
Good Evening,
I will attempt to add my opinion on this and hope that it will come off as objectively as I am hoping.
The xp had already been announced to players so I think that the staff should maintain the professionalism of keeping their word. However, as we can see from the responses older players have given they do not see this as fair. So I would propose that instead of the 35xp to new characters you offer it as 175 beats to all players. This will be 35xp for the new characters and will meet the demand of maintaining professionalism as well as give the older characters the same number of beats on their sheets. Then for older characters the number of xp gained from this will vary and be less than the 35xp but they will have received the same number of beats. In addition, this will avoid the bringing old members back down to the same level as new characters as was suggested, which I think would actually cause us to lose players, not retain them. I think this may appease both new and old players but it is merely a suggestion to consider.
Respectfully,
A Rogue Spirit
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Post by casamir on Apr 16, 2016 23:24:52 GMT -5
Can't say that I'm against it. Wouldn't mind hearing alternative methods that were less disruptive. The mush is a reboot of old Kingsmouth, there was talk at one p oint of resetting everyone's XP(which would have sucked and lost players). Everyone shouldn't expect current/new staff to just maintain status quo. I think the starting XP is just a bit low here and as said earlier by staff, this is per the book. Perhaps the back dating of XP could be graduated so that every month after June it goes down by an XP point/month or something like that? That way all players end up getting some?
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Post by gregory on Apr 17, 2016 1:25:00 GMT -5
I think everyone should stop thinking that the game is a 'reboot' because it's not. The game was turned back on by new staff, and is a continuation of the old story. There was no grid reset, no player wipe, no reboot. That is where a lot of misunderstanding is coming into this. This is Requiem for Kingsmouth Mush - Reopened, not version 2.0 or anything similar.
That said, I can like the idea Ovidio has suggested of improving the ratio on the lower end of the beats spectrum, so that players gain beats faster right at the start - however I think that that will cause problems of its own in that if the scale is changed, it would also result in the players who have a lot of beats gaining a few xp because the scale is a coded application that applies to everyone.
I'm extremely against the idea that players be just handed a large sum of beats either. The whole point of the way Kingsmouth does beats and xp is that a player has to actively go out and earn all xp that their character has. It's not difficult to earn at any point, and especially not with the beat sheets giving so much to anyone who simply bothers to do them. Every player who has a character that pre-existed the shutdown earned every xp they have, and got to where they are through earning that, and all players should do the same.
Ultimately, this is a problem that is a matter of perception on the part of a few people new to the game in my opinion. The system we have is a great one, that results in diminishing returns on beats as characters 'age' on the xp scale. That in and of itself gives new players a much faster progression of improving their characters than older characters. This is a self correcting problem, that requires nothing more than for new players to go out and RP, and to fill out their beat sheets.
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Post by lordbelh on Apr 17, 2016 7:15:22 GMT -5
That there have been 1200 beats behemoths have never been a problem for me. It wasn't a problem when I had 0 beats and it's not a problem now that I have considerably more than 0 beats. (And I doubt there's more than a handful of them, anyway, nor that all of them are going to be all that politically active/influential). It was never a problem in the old game because there were other ways to compete. Status was more important than XP, because with Status you gained various protections (including real incentivized backup their Clans/Covenants because Prisci/Clan Leaders wanted a strong base). New characters were more suited to hunt laurels than old, too, and so felt accomplished in that way. Because a new character could come into an Influence Sphere that was under-utilized, and suddenly be incredibly useful to the Praxis, and have ways to punish others.
Right now we're not really playing Kingsmouth, as we knew it, though. The mechanics that softened raw edges of XP difference aren't there. We may have the Kingsmouth characters, in the Kingsmouth setting, but it's not the same game we knew. I can understand why that would frustrate players who're coming in, because they're at the mercy of brute XP like on most other games and no softening the blow.
But now is really not the time to make a permanent 35XP bump, skewering the whole game going forward, changing the very foundation of the XP balance that was always there, and that was always a part of what set RfK apart. Because there should be an xp differential in a vampire game. When everybody is equally xp powerful, you're playing the game very differently, way more chaotic and it gets way more violent. Especially you shouldn't do that kind of permanent and far reaching change to incentivize new characters before you've put in place all the other things that were the actual heart-blood of RfK.
I can understand Gregory's frustration, too. If you had 90ish XP after most of a year of roleplay, its hard to enforce vampire justice and leadership (which is inherently unfair and actually depends on a certain power-differential, or at least the perception of one, by the way) if even the new characters (let alone having to deal with old rivals) are hard as hell hitting 66XP characters (with beatsheets). Even without, anyone who played RfK before knows that if play the game for a few month they're soon enough going to be shrewd and dangerous anyway.
- David's player.
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Ovidio
Tasty Mortal
The Great Grumplord
Posts: 6
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Post by Ovidio on Apr 17, 2016 11:11:58 GMT -5
I would argue that if the ratio idea change did anything, it would effectively "refund" about 30 beats to older players. This would typically mean about a 4-5 XP "refund", then, which doesn't tilt anything really for the older players and in a way rewards them - which while I don't care if I would get this "refund" or not, I've noticed some older players do, so bonus!
Ultmately, I feel it would skyrocket the new players a bit faster.
A second Idea I had was instead of 35 XP upfront, give a 2XP/week boost until they get to a total of about 60 XP. This would allow for those working on gaining to hit the cap faster, but it would also not punish new players struggling to establish contacts and get into plots. This would be a slow, steady increase and fill a middle ground. Given beatsheets and the like usually propel people to about 20 XP or so, this could send a new player who's hardcore finding things to RP over to possibly 5 beats/week for about 2 months before going to what the older players experience. Alternatively, a player who may have some trouble getting into the rhythm would still have a constant flow of XP to keep them progressing and possibly up to the point to where they could start on whatever goal they're working on.
Thoughts?
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Post by lordbelh on Apr 17, 2016 11:29:34 GMT -5
I just don't think an xp boost is necessary. I don't think its been proven that the old xp system was faulty at all. It worked last time around, and the xp differential was never really a problem, just a facet of the game.
I still think the problem is not xp related, its that we're pretending to be in 'soft rp' when honestly we're in hardcore rp with an incomplete game. The latter is where the focus should be, not giving newbie incentives (and I'm generally opposed hand-outs anyway).
In a game where the status system is up and running, territory system is defined, and influence (even a simplified version to help staff overloard) is a thing, your average newbie character shouldn't be competing against the oldbies. They should be competing for status and power vs the other new characters, and being pawns in the games between the oldbies. Once they're in the game for say, 3-6 months they'll have plenty of XP to throw around if they've been active anyway. By that time the oldbies (and being oldbies, they tend on average to both get around less and eventually idle/Reroll on average) will have progressed way less even if they were just as active.
Basically I think we're tinkering with something that shouldn't be tinkered with, and instead put efforts into the parts of the game that aren't online yet.
If you absolutely must give anything, give it everybody. But then give it as beats, not straight-up XP. Beats that are way more valuable for newbies than olbies, but you'd likely lose some of the feelings of 'i put in work but they didn't' feelings going around. But I'd be against that, too.
- David's player.
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groth
Tasty Mortal
Posts: 9
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Post by groth on Apr 17, 2016 13:36:27 GMT -5
I still think the problem is not xp related, its that we're pretending to be in 'soft rp' when honestly we're in hardcore rp with an incomplete game. The latter is where the focus should be, not giving newbie incentives (and I'm generally opposed hand-outs anyway). What does 'soft rp' mean anyway?
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Post by Baptiste on Apr 17, 2016 14:55:49 GMT -5
Roberta is really, really right here -- same with Groth and Lordbelh.
Right now, the game doesn't have the systems required to support our current population, because we don't have the OSS up and running. When we do have the OSS up and running, you can be a meaningful character with just starting XP + beatsheets -- and we will have to beat back players.
The OSS gave people a sense of ownership in the game, and when it was up and running more people were apping in than staff would handle. I wouldn't worry about issues with XP until you have the existing systems functioning, and then see if the population is too unbalanced and needs tweaking.
TLDR? It's too early to know if we need to be encouraging new characters, because the game still doesn't have a functioning OSS.
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Post by Baptiste on Apr 17, 2016 15:01:07 GMT -5
The other echoing question is this:
What is the problem we are seeking to solve? There's RP going on on the grid right now, people are making characters. Is there an issue recruiting people?
I worry that sometimes in the re-opening we have had solutions in search of problems while we are avoiding solving the very real problems, like needing to get the OSS back up and running.
B
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