Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

[Pyrephox]

@DeadEmpire I think you're referring to stat costs, and it's a base cost of 100, not 1000.

That said, the XP situation is crazy. I mean, that's been known (and mentioned, even in this thread, I think) for months. Some people regularly get 30/40+ XP a week, and maximize it with use of the very generous teaching system, and I know several characters with 5+ skills at 5 (the highest you can go without being actively supernatural in ability) and 3+ stats at 5.

It's always been my position that the game badly, badly needs an XP wipe before moving out of 'beta', and a retooling of XP costs, now that there is a solid idea of how much XP can be acquired weekly. And a few more XP sinks added, or a way to 'cash in' XP for other resources.

[Roz]

@Pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@DeadEmpire I think you're referring to stat costs, and it's a base cost of 100, not 1000.

No, she's talking about Level 6 skills, which have a base cost of 1000xp.

[Pyrephox]

@Roz The idea that anyone is even able to contemplate getting level 6 skills is, in itself, crazy to me, and a sign that maaaaybe XP has gotten out of hand.

[Roz]

@Pyrephox I mean, I only personally know one person who's seriously pursuing it, and even that is still very much "save up for a year" type planning.

[Lisse24]

@Pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

That said, the XP situation is crazy. I mean, that's been known (and mentioned, even in this thread, I think) for months. Some people regularly get 30/40+ XP a week, and maximize it with use of the very generous teaching system, and I know several characters with 5+ skills at 5 (the highest you can go without being actively supernatural in ability) and 3+ stats at 5.

I'd be lying if I said that this perception and my own perception that I just didn't have the time/desire to keep up, wasn't a major factor in my leaving. It's really disheartening to log in and, week after week, see people getting massive XP gains, while knowing that I'll never be able to do that.

[Sparks]

@Pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Roz The idea that anyone is even able to contemplate getting level 6 skills is, in itself, crazy to me, and a sign that maaaaybe XP has gotten out of hand.

No, see...

There's no way I'm getting a level 6 skill. But I can xp/cost to see what it would cost me.

So, a level 6 skill on Aislin would cost 1966xp. I will never be able to save that up. But I thus know, because the base cost is 1000, that my XP tax is 96.6%. Meaning I have enough skills that every skill I get costs me 196.6% of the base cost. A 10xp skill would cost me 20xp (19.66 rounds up). Etc.

Conversely, Hana is not a jack of all trades. A level 6 skill on her would cost me only 1000xp according to xp/cost, meaning she has no XP tax. (Not surprising; she's very focused on smithing, so has far fewer skills than Aislin.)

That's how people talk about level 6 XP costs.

I don't know anyone who has seriously even considered buying level 6, much less who could do it without saving up for like 7-12 months of spending XP on nothing.

[Pyrephox]

@Lisse24 said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

That said, the XP situation is crazy. I mean, that's been known (and mentioned, even in this thread, I think) for months. Some people regularly get 30/40+ XP a week, and maximize it with use of the very generous teaching system, and I know several characters with 5+ skills at 5 (the highest you can go without being actively supernatural in ability) and 3+ stats at 5.

I'd be lying if I said that this perception and my own perception that I just didn't have the time/desire to keep up, wasn't a major factor in my leaving. It's really disheartening to log in and, week after week, see people getting massive XP gains, while knowing that I'll never be able to do that.

It can be. I've long since come to terms with the fact that my character will never be able to compete on XP gains (or spends, for that matter, since I don't find teaching/learning scenes very fun in a general sense, and thus choose not to use the teaching system), just due to matters of my own availability and my character's personality.

And having come to terms with that, I can find a fair amount of fun, even knowing that statistically speaking, my character is far, far behind others (even significantly newer characters) because I don't fully use the systems available, or spend my time hunting down randomscenes or seeking out the big, social scenes. And, to be fair, current policies do allow new characters to 'catch up' with dinos if you don't mind a flood of people trying to randomscene and firstimpression you in your first couple of weeks.

But for a game that is still, as I understand it, supposed to be at a low fantasy stage, we have a looot of folk who could put Conan in a headlock until he cries, etc. And that's likely not sustainable going forward, while still maintaining an environment where people can be useful in a variety of contexts.

[kitteh]

@Roz

Aren't the people not buying the rank 6 skills because they're not allowed to, not because they don't have the XP (or couldn't get it)? I know I've seen someone say they have rank 6 for the crafting sub-specialties, because those are not restricted the same way.

Anyway, between the high costs, massive casual vs. normal vs. tryhard XP rates, and the retainer stuff, I don't see how the whole thing won't become pretty ridiculously skewed. I'm not entirely faulting the game for that either, because dinos are always a problem, but it's absolutely a thing.

[Roz]

@kitteh No, I think that nobody has accumulated 1000+ xp for it yet. (And, for the record, staff has kind of clarified on channel recently that Rank 6 skills will have staff involvement, but more along the lines of staff developing plot stuff to allow for a Rank 6 skill buy if someone actually successfully saves for it.) It's true that I don't actually have knowledge of everyone's XP levels, but saving up the XP for it is going to require a lot of saving (and also not spending on other skills, or else their XP tax will inflate and it'll get continually more expensive).

The Rank 6 crafting abilities are totally different with an entirely different (and more reasonable) cost level. Rank 6 in crafting is what unlocks the highest tier of crafting recipes. They're priced at more regular XP prices, not the huge Rank 6 skill jump to 1000.

[kitteh]

@Roz Ok, well, point was mostly people have tons of XP, not specifically trying to argue about legendary skills. If they're not saving it, or haven't quite saved that particular amount, that doesn't really negate the point. There's also a lot of others systems like that; again the retainers (which I guess earn their own weekly xp if you have teaching, so its a massive advantage to older chars) or even all the things like prestige, resources you can grind (another very tryhard favoring system), the gear stuff, etc.

I'm not saying that the game is bad because it's tryhard/dino friendly... just that it maybe is a bit.

[saosmash]

@kitteh You have to spend a training slot to train your retainer, it's not automatic. I have a retainer whose number is 32 (i.e., early on in the system) but he's still level 1 and basically pointless except as a messenger gatherer, because I was using my training slots as my, you know, livelihood, or to help other players with stuff.

Also, the more you spend your XP on skills, the more it costs -- I've got lifetime earned XP of approx 900 on one character, which is, indeed, a lot, 'cause I've been around since last August or so. But it also costs twice as much for him to buy a skill as it does for someone who is newer, and teaching does not reduce the inflation.

It's not that I'm arguing with the idea that there's an advantage to being around awhile -- I think that's kind of inherent in any XP-for-advancement system -- but there are ways that the game design has developed to counteract that.

I feel like the fact that the game can be overwhelming because there's so much story going on at any given time and it can feel hard to keep up / break in because of that is a lot more of an issue than anything with respect to stat/skills, though. If you aren't joining a faction with a really actively helpful presence of current players who are willing to explain a lot of shit, you can end up really, really at sea and thrashing around.

[brent]

@kitteh said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

massive casual vs. normal vs. tryhard XP rates

I think this is more of a perception issue than is supported by the actual math, though. At the top of the votes list is usually going to be somebody new racking up the new character randomscenes by getting like 15 or 20 of them in a week. But that's only active for the first 14 days after approval. When you get into the top of the 'regular' players you're usually looking at high 20s to low 30s.

You have to also remember that the first couple of votes and randomscenes of the week give you a LOT of xp and it tails off very quickly. Like, get 2 votes and do 2 randomscenes and 3 journals and you're already at 20 xp. Meanwhile it takes 14 votes and 10 randomscenes to get to 30. It's not a linear system at all.

The new firstimpression thing is actually more damaging in that regard in that the tryhards will have more opportunity to meet more different characters, but it's limited somewhat by that you can only firstimpression an individual character once and the awards are disproportionately pointed outwards.

[Roz]

@kitteh I don't deny that there's either an existing or seriously impending possible issue with XP bloat. I just think it's helpful to try and talk about things accurately. Which is why I also corrected things like saying that people are getting almost 200xp per week now, when the reality is that the top earners are getting in the 30s. It's a big difference. Like, I just think that if people want to talk about the actual problem, we want to be talking about the actual state of it. (No, people aren't getting 200xp a week, no, people aren't at the point of buying legendary skills as far as I can tell/estimate. The fact that some people might have the idea of saving for them is very different. You can be saving for something that's a year away, and it also means that meanwhile they're not spending their XP on other things.)

I have a PC who's been around since early December. He's at like 142% XP tax. That means it takes him literally 2 1/2 times as much XP to raise a skill than it does a newbie. He absolutely, totally has an advantage to someone super fresh to the grid, sure, because he's been around and I've had time to buy skills. But the XP tax is actually pretty expensive.

[Apos]

Yeah dinosaurs are always a significant issue, though I'm not sure it'll be as big a danger long term as it might seem, since I am intending to add in a lot of small cost sinks, and I don't think it'll be overwhelming by the time other sinks come into play. I could be wrong, but offhand rough math with the anti-dinosaur cost scaling means it would take 56,250 xp to raise each available skill to 5, which at 30 xp a week would take 1875 weeks or 36 years of play. And then the character would die of old age and the xp would be gone.

Funny numbers aside, I always will be concerned about dinosaurs and making newer characters feel overshadowed but I think it might not be as big a danger as it seems at first glance. I still intend to address it to make certain it doesn't scale in a way that's too disruptive, and I don't think it's gonna be nuts before those systems come in.

[Pyrephox]

I will say some of the newer mechanics do HELP with the meaningful issue of XP Bloat (which is 'can some characters contribute so much more than others that lesser XP characters are rendered obsolete'), especially AP. Have AP as a limited resource that everyone has an equal amount of (although some uses of AP are modified by stats) helps to keep the high XP folks from dominating everything. Some of it leads to a certain artificialness in trying to justify why you can't look into something highly relevant because you're out of +storyrequests for the month (and I would love to see that removed in favor of a scaling AP cost, although it might put too much of a burden on staff), but it still means that even the most dino-y dino has an initiative to find people who will be willing to Do Stuff on your behalf.

[kitteh]

I don't mean to be fighting the whole game feeling like they need to defend it. I like the game! See again: way easier to talk at length about negatives, where people gloss over any positive comments

@saosmash I've seen people talking to each other about getting their pets to rank 5 (presumably from 4) so obviously some people are using the training on them every week. Great that you don't, but still something where people are going to get way ahead.

@brent I was on the receiving end of the @rs stuff and was in the top list from it those 2 weeks (and may have also benefited from the massive XP cron bug AHEM) so I do appreciate the mild bit of catchup there. But it's just those two weeks. I think the scaling stuff is good. I think it has some warts of a more social kind. I've seen people in my family/house complain about how they'll rp with various folks and get few or no votes back (and I always get back far less than I give), so that's definitely a kind of clique/entrenchment thing.

Maybe I should clarify that the biggest 'tryhard' thing seems like the tasks/support (which I understand also feeds into the retainers?).

@roz Fair enough, accuracy is good (I don't know who said people were earning 200xp a week, wasn't me). I don't think the game's dinoism is the worst or anything, but maybe weirdly, it feels actually worse than Firan, when the game is otherwise so focused on being the anti-Firan. Like maybe all the sinks just widen the gap (where you don't only need your high investigate, but a retainer assisting your investigates)? I dunno.

[saosmash]

Again: I'm not arguing that this issue doesn't exist, I just think we need to be accurate when talking about it. For example, when you're talking about level 5 pets, there's very little systems benefit from leveling up a small animal. It's-- it's just an animal. Who cares if you have a level 5 sparrow or not? It doesn't do anything besides be an animal.

Task system doesn't relate to retainers at all except in that you need resources (which you can also get weekly through votes / randomscene) to obtain / level a retainer. That said, I kind of hate it and 90% of the time avoid RPing about tasks like the plague, so . . .

You can use retainers to assist in investigations -- many people I know use them in lieu of getting high investigate skills on characters when knowing serious investigation for those characters would make no sense IC -- but that's not why diffs went up. Diffs went up because staff was being forced to generate insane amounts of clues at an alarming rate. Retainers are also really no substitute for characters working together on an investigation, which has the benefit of spreading story around; no one can really 'solo' an investigation all that effectively, but I think that's true regardless of retainers.

[kitteh]

@saosmash It was definitely a combative animal.

Re: investigations, I trust staff knows what they're doing re balancing all this stuff, but the high difficulties do kind of illustrate newbie barrier to entry feeling. And the investigation side of things is where I feel far more stumped than worrying over combat. My char didn't come with it, I don't know if it's worth investing in it, but without it... like, I don't have access to clues unless I bump into people who happen to want to share them, etc. It can feel a little aimless. My char has gotten information, but none of it is in clue form, and I know that also codely gates things like access to +crises (where the real meat of 'doing things' seems to occur?)

[Kanye Qwest]

The idea was to have other players assisting you, re: investigations. Or to build yourself into a social beast where you don't need the help, which is much, much cheaper than building yourself into a combat beast.

I mean, I don't think anyone is coming together to repel an invader or something, but if your perspective of a problem is not other peoples' perspective of a problem, they are likely going to chime in.

That's somewhat the point of a forum like this.

[Roz]

I am building my retainer into an investigation beast instead of my PC because it would be silly for my PC to be an investigation beast.

Anyways, I think there are surely problems to discuss, as there are problems on any game. Arx is not perfect. I mean, you can find me stating some pretty strong criticisms about certain systems on this forum. I've lodged concerns and talked out issues with staff personally. I don't necessarily feel the need to defend every criticism that's thrown Arx's way, because there will always be ones that I agree with. I just wanted to kind of address what I felt were inaccuracies so that the convo could happen as constructively as possible! Because I'm anal about shit. But I don't feel like your concerns are wildly unreasonable or that you're like THROWING DOWN or something.