Capped XP vs Staggered XP?

[Arkandel]

Following some chats with @Misadventure, how about something like this:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.
• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

I believe the above should result in a non-staggered system where dinosaurs are ahead of the curve but within reach of newer characters, where activity is rewarded but casual players are still given enough to advance, where alts are easily made and character death/retirement is resolved more smoothly, and where socialization and plot participation is incentivized.

Thoughts?

[Groth]

@Arkandel said:

where alts are easily made and character death/retirement is resolved more smoothly,

My only question is why you would want there to be alt incentives. You've designed a system where alts will always be more powerful then new characters and I have a hard time imagining how you could make a game more hostile to new/casual players then that.

[Arkandel]

For starters because some people like playing alts. And there's no reason for a barrier to that which mandates they need to start off as complete scrubs; this system would encourage players to reroll into inactive spheres for instance.

But the other reason is that systemic stagnation in spheres, many times, comes from characters who are entrenched but inactive; that is, a PC rises and their player might not be excited about them afterwards (which I've seen many times) but doesn't want to start over either and at the same time is quite more powerful than newcomers. The system closes the gap considerably and at the same time encourages anyone interested in rerolling to do so.

Or that's the theory.

[Groth]

I'm willing to bet significant amounts of money that the end result of your system in action is a game full of semi-inactive powerful alts entrenched in all spheres because there exists absolutely no reason to not do that. It'll create a game that looks big but is almost impossible to get actual scenes in.

It'll also lead to even more insular cliquishness as there's no need to go outside of your friendcircle for anything, since at any time you need any particular skillset, you or your friends can just create a new powerful alt with whatever you need.

You can't resurrect an inactive sphere by making incentives for people to reroll alts into it. You resurrect a sphere by having it run by someone that's active, passionate and able to make the players inside the sphere genuinely excited about what's going on. No amount of XP rewards is going to help there and the kind of player that joins a sphere just because they can join that sphere as someone powerful, is not the kind of person you want joining that sphere in the first place.

I think it's worthwhile to remember the reason we have XP systems in the first place. The reason that most games start you off at lvl 1 and let you progress instead of giving you everything you could ever want.

That reason is because it's the progression that most people find exciting, that journey of going from nothing and rising to power. Whenever you give 'base xp' or 'catch up xp' or whatever, you're robbing them of that experience. There is no emotional attachment to that rise of power because there never was a rise, just power.

[Arkandel]

@Groth said:

I'm willing to bet significant amounts of money that the end result of your system in action is a game full of semi-inactive powerful alts entrenched in all spheres because there exists absolutely no reason to not do that. It'll create a game that looks big but is almost impossible to get actual scenes in.

It'll also lead to even more insular cliquishness as there's no need to go outside of your friendcircle for anything, since at any time you need any particular skillset, you or your friends can just create a new powerful alt with whatever you need.

You can't resurrect an inactive sphere by making incentives for people to reroll alts into it. You resurrect a sphere by having it run by someone that's active, passionate and able to make the players inside the sphere genuinely excited about what's going on. No amount of XP rewards is going to help there and the kind of player that joins a sphere just because they can join that sphere as someone powerful, is not the kind of person you want joining that sphere in the first place.

There is no real one reason for which spheres are or are not active. It's a combination of factors and, as such, there is no silver bullet that I've seen to cause one to improve; you are quite correct in that it takes good/active staff (but the same could be said about anything) yet it also requires timing for some flagship characters to roll into your sphere and pull others into their orbit, Storytellers who will run things thematically interesting, actual players willing to roll into it (which is the part this system is trying to address), etc.

I think it's worthwhile to remember the reason we have XP systems in the first place. The reason that most games start you off at lvl 1 and let you progress instead of giving you everything you could ever want. That reason is because it's the progression that most people find exciting, that journey of going from nothing and rising to power.

I'd be very interested to hear how you reconcile the statement with the fact games which offer high XP right out of the gate - such as TR - are so very popular.

[Groth]

@Arkandel said:

I'd be very interested to hear how you reconcile the statement with the fact games which offer high XP right out of the gate - such as TR - are so very popular.

It's possible to be popular despite having various shitty features. I've almost never heard anyone say anything positive about TR or Fallcoast other then the fact they're almost the only place on the internet to play nWoD Geist/Changeling/Mage/Changing Breeds etc. The fact TR/FC remains the largest non-sex MU* on record after wiping everyone's XP seems to support that the XP was in no way the killer feature.

Now if you honestly believe that XP is a killer feature, why not just start everyone at 500xp and stop pretending you care about character progression? Ask yourself, why are you doing the 1xp per week at all? What purpose does it serve?

[surreality]

@Arkandel said:

I believe the above should result in a non-staggered system where dinosaurs are ahead of the curve but within reach of newer characters, where activity is rewarded but casual players are still given enough to advance, where alts are easily made and character death/retirement is resolved more smoothly, and where socialization and plot participation is incentivized.

Thoughts?

Working on something very similar to what's described for exactly those reasons.

@Groth said:

My only question is why you would want there to be alt incentives. You've designed a system where alts will always be more powerful then new characters and I have a hard time imagining how you could make a game more hostile to new/casual players then that.

And not necessarily. Players may wish to focus the majority on a single character no matter where it comes from -- or save it up to create a more realistic elder, or a vast majority of other things.

Nothing stops someone from creating a character at starting level, and frankly, I have heard many players, particularly those playing minor templates and especially purely mortal characters, that the character is where they want it to be and they don't plan to spend more XP on it without a compelling reason. Yet, they are still actively earning XP. Why NOT allow them to apply this to the creation of a new character?

It also means a more casual player can have a toe dipped in a variety of places with a low level character or two, but concentrate their XP on a higher-level one while leaving others more basic, to avoid concerns about being excluded from any higher level activity on the game.

And the best part is, they all will have earned the privilege to do those things, and the range of what those things are expands considerably, allowing the players the flexibility to decide what they want to do with their point pool.

Combine with learn times, and you avoid aggressively stupid bursts of "Tee hee I learned Firearms from zero to five overnight!" as well.

[Arkandel]

@Groth said:

It's possible to be popular despite having various shitty features. I've almost never heard anyone say anything positive about TR or Fallcoast other then the fact they're almost the only place on the internet to play nWoD Geist/Changeling/Mage/Changing Breeds etc. The fact TR/FC remains the largest non-sex MU* on record after wiping everyone's XP seems to support that the XP was in no way the killer feature.
Now if you honestly believe that XP is a killer feature, why not just start everyone at 500xp and stop pretending you care about character progression? Ask yourself, why are you doing the 1xp per week at all? What purpose does it serve?

For starters, once again: There is no 'killer feature'. There are no silver bullets, no shortcuts to get everything working out great if only <X> is implemented. Nearly anything done for a game (one could argue for management in general) is a tradeoff; you take something away trying to maximize the gains from it. As for TR, there are certainly many positive things one could say about it; many of us here have worked rather hard for that game.

Now, I already stated why the XP income in the system I suggested would be in place; it's there to provide a steady source of income to casual players who can't be present for plots, offer the opportunity for newcomers to not be too hopelessly far back from existent players, but at the same time allow the latter to still be ahead as long as they are active.

Conversely that's the reason we wouldn't start everyone at such a high place in the XP curve to begin with - it would be taking the carrot of advancement away altogether. Considering GMC for instance given there are 52 weeks in a year, it seems like a reasonable amount to offer universally to players; enough to buy some things but not all the things. In the very long term inflation will still ultimately mean the baseline XP would be high, so it's likely diminishing returns would have to kick in after that first year.

[Groth]

Disregarding my objections to the goal of your system. I think it's worthwhile to question your premise.

What is the reason that you want to lower the gap between new players and dinosaurs?

In my experience, unless you're playing a level based game such as D&D, the problem with dinosaurs is not that they're more powerful then everyone else. The problem with dinosaurs in open progression systems like nWoD/oWoD is that the dinosaurs tend to break the game in various ways, either by being hypercompetent at something or just having absolutely no weaknesses making it extremely hard to involve them in any sort of interesting plot.

If that is the case, then raising the baseline just means that you're making everyone into a dinosaur and with all the problems that entail. The only way to address that problem is by lowering the ceiling, i.e. some variation of capping.

As long as the dinosaur isn't actually breaking the plots through omni/hyper competence, I've never had any actual problems with xp disparity as the new characters will always be better then the dinosaur at something.

[Arkandel]

@Groth said:

Disregarding my objections to the goal of your system. I think it's worthwhile to question your premise.

Of course it is. Unchallenged systems are weak, thanks for the input.

What is the reason that you want to lower the gap between new players and dinosaurs?

Take HM for example as a (rather extreme at that) case. On HM there were zero catch-up mechanisms, and the game had been running for a long time, but XP was flowing in rather slowly for most people at least compared to later standards. That meant, on a nWoD 1.0 system, there were players with hundreds of XP spent dealing with characters playing for weeks or even months who weren't even breaking into triple digits yet; the disparity was enormous, and as long as everyone was at roughly the same activity level newer characters couldn't even hope to start closing the gap.

It created a deep divide in the VampSphere whose politics were contaminated by this extreme; while some people want to play the underdog relatively fewer seemed to want to never be actual contenders in power struggles. To make matters much worse, oldbies started risking their characters less and less - after all all that time investment could be wiped clean if dice fell particularly bad against them. I had players actually page to tell me they wanted to but couldn't come to PrPs if there was risk because they hated the idea of starting from nearly nothing.

What I want to do here is encourage activity (so newbies and oldbies aren't equalized, and not certainly not indiscriminately) but giving new characters a fair chance to catch up while allowing alts to be fairly good at whatever they'll do in order to perhaps see inactive spheres resurge somewhat easier.

[Groth]

@Arkandel said:

To make matters much worse, oldbies started risking their characters less and less - after all all that time investment could be wiped clean if dice fell particularly bad against them. I had players actually page to tell me they wanted to but couldn't come to PrPs if there was risk because they hated the idea of starting from nearly nothing.

While I'm not a fan of alts because alts dilute the game, making it harder to find active characters and making less players take more Staff attention, I've always been a fan of allowing people rerolls/respecs/death awards because it's just such a terrible feeling when you're 'trapped' in your character because it has too much investment. RfK awarded 50% for a 'good death' which most people seemed to be fine with, you could probably go higher without any terrible effect.

What I want to do here is encourage activity (so newbies and oldbies aren't equalized, and not certainly not indiscriminately) but giving new characters a fair chance to catch up while allowing alts to be fairly good at whatever they'll do in order to perhaps see inactive spheres resurge somewhat easier.

In your proposed system however, you have no catchup mechanism. The new players will never actually catch up to the older characters, you're just raising the baseline each week. 50xp baseline + 100xp earned is still 100xp ahead of 50xp baseline + 0xp earned. If you want the new players to actually catch up, you need something like TR/FC uses where the weekly XP is calculated based on the highest xp character in the game.

I used to play on an Exalted game where everyone below 500xp gained 4xp per week and then 1xp per 100xp difference between the character and the highest xp character. Above 500xp you earned 2xp per week and above 700 0xp per week iirc excluding rewards from scenes etc.

[Derp]

@Arkandel said:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.

So, like, I don't follow. It all goes into one big pool somewhere, and anybody can draw off of it? I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Example, for clarity?

• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

This is not bad. This I like. It would mean tracking the pools seperately, though, which could get somewhat confusing. And how would the amount of non-automatic xp affect the thing above, if at all?

I believe the above should result in a non-staggered system where dinosaurs are ahead of the curve but within reach of newer characters, where activity is rewarded but casual players are still given enough to advance, where alts are easily made and character death/retirement is resolved more smoothly, and where socialization and plot participation is incentivized.

Thoughts?

See the last part confuses me too. Non-staggered as in how? I mean, I like the tone of the thing in general, especially paragon xp, but i'm not sure I follow enough of your proposed implementation to be able to really provide feedback one way or another yet.

[Arkandel]

@Derp said:

@Arkandel said:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.

So, like, I don't follow. It all goes into one big pool somewhere, and anybody can draw off of it? I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Example, for clarity?

It's very simple - let's say we're 30 weeks into the game. All approved characters have been given 30 'automatic' XP. That's the baseline.

• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

This is not bad. This I like. It would mean tracking the pools seperately, though, which could get somewhat confusing. And how would the amount of non-automatic xp affect the thing above, if at all?

So, using the same example as above, let's say you've accumulated 30 Beats on your characters through activity. You now also have 15 Paragon Beats which your alts may spend (each alt gets 15 Beats).

See the last part confuses me too. Non-staggered as in how? I mean, I like the tone of the thing in general, especially paragon xp, but i'm not sure I follow enough of your proposed implementation to be able to really provide feedback one way or another yet.

The idea is to promote activity but gradually raise the overall tone of the game. The design so far only includes the barebones of the system just to make it easy to discuss - you'd need to still have sanity checks in place such as diminishing returns and activity requirements to be eligible for automatic XP, spending delays and so on.

[Derp]

@Arkandel said:

@Derp said:

@Arkandel said:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.

So, like, I don't follow. It all goes into one big pool somewhere, and anybody can draw off of it? I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Example, for clarity?

It's very simple - let's say we're 30 weeks into the game. All approved characters have been given 30 'automatic' XP. That's the baseline.

• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

This is not bad. This I like. It would mean tracking the pools seperately, though, which could get somewhat confusing. And how would the amount of non-automatic xp affect the thing above, if at all?

So, using the same example as above, let's say you've accumulated 30 Beats on your characters through activity. You now also have 15 Paragon Beats which your alts may spend (each alt gets 15 Beats).

See the last part confuses me too. Non-staggered as in how? I mean, I like the tone of the thing in general, especially paragon xp, but i'm not sure I follow enough of your proposed implementation to be able to really provide feedback one way or another yet.

The idea is to promote activity but gradually raise the overall tone of the game. The design so far only includes the barebones of the system just to make it easy to discuss - you'd need to still have sanity checks in place such as diminishing returns and activity requirements to be eligible for automatic XP, spending delays and so on.

Ahhh, I get it. See, I'm not all in favor of that. I'm more in favor of the newer players starting out with a faster rate of xp gain than older players, kind of like Eldritch has going for it, mainly because when you have -- I guess I would call that an 'instantaneous catchup' system, then you run into things like what you saw on TR, where new players have lots of xp to custom-tailor their sheets to a min-max degree without having to go through the same sorts of trials and tribulations that older characters went through when assigning and allocating xp, which usually causes them to have a more diverse xp spread. In essence, that would still favor new characters late in the game over old characters, not something I'm a particular fan of.

I do like the idea of earned xp being worth something more than automatic interval xp. It means that doing something risky and epic is slightly less risky, because you build a strong base for yourself and in the event you fail and die, you're not starting over at 0.

[Arkandel]

How about this: consider XP to represent a character's ceiling, their potential. Then time is the delimiting factor (as is on Eldritch); you can only go spend so much of it if raises are delay-locked. Characters with very few XP left to spend are simply those who are working very hard on realizing that potential.

So let' say I made a character today with the current system on Eldritch and he was given say, 40 XP on the spot, I wouldn't be able to custom tailor a sheet - sure, I could afford to buy a dot over what Obfuscate is allowed in CGen but not the one after that. I'd still be able to spread it out and be a jack of all trades but that's the opposite of min/maxing.

[surreality]

@Arkandel said:

@Derp said:

@Arkandel said:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.

So, like, I don't follow. It all goes into one big pool somewhere, and anybody can draw off of it? I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Example, for clarity?

It's very simple - let's say we're 30 weeks into the game. All approved characters have been given 30 'automatic' XP. That's the baseline.

• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

This is not bad. This I like. It would mean tracking the pools seperately, though, which could get somewhat confusing. And how would the amount of non-automatic xp affect the thing above, if at all?

So, using the same example as above, let's say you've accumulated 30 Beats on your characters through activity. You now also have 15 Paragon Beats which your alts may spend (each alt gets 15 Beats).

See the last part confuses me too. Non-staggered as in how? I mean, I like the tone of the thing in general, especially paragon xp, but i'm not sure I follow enough of your proposed implementation to be able to really provide feedback one way or another yet.

The idea is to promote activity but gradually raise the overall tone of the game. The design so far only includes the barebones of the system just to make it easy to discuss - you'd need to still have sanity checks in place such as diminishing returns and activity requirements to be eligible for automatic XP, spending delays and so on.

Yeah, that's... a bit different than what I'm looking at. I'm looking at something more along the lines of a 'shared pool' notion people can divide up as they like amongst their alts, not a uniform raise across the board that all of them get.

[Ganymede]

@Derp said:

So after taking some time away to consider some of this, I think that I partially agree with @ganymede. But only partially.

This is the slippery slope to indoctrination.

But, yes, Eldritch has a form of moving caps, as did RfK. It's not what I think would work best, but, at this level of academic discussion, it doesn't really matter. That XP gain is limited -- arbitrary or otherwise -- is something that we all ought to agree on. And each different model will have its merits and flaws.

I like the "cap things per season," if only because it requires a less complex calculation of what people earn per week on a flat-basis. The upside to spend limits, like on Eldritch, is that you don't have to watch what stats people are choosing to raise; they can only gain disciplines /so/ quickly. In a "cap per season" model, it's a bit more free-for-all; or, at least, that's how I imagine it.

[Thenomain]

I don't think Eldritch has moving caps. It has diminishing returns for auto XP. All other beats are earned the same no matter who you are or how long you've been on the game.

[Ganymede]

@Thenomain said:

I don't think Eldritch has moving caps. It has diminishing returns for auto XP. All other beats are earned the same no matter who you are or how long you've been on the game.

I think your face has moving caps, bitch.

Seriously, I got nothing.

[silentsophia]

@il-volpe I liked the idea. It makes sense that navy seal commandos or whatever at the age of 20 are probably incredibly rare to nonexistent.