Powerplayers is a tricky subject, pacy... there are many types, and sooner or later *everyone* will fall into someone else\'s definition.
For those who are worried, I\'m probably one of these PPs at the moment - the game is Beta, so I\'m doing my best to test various boundaries. Pick a skill, max it, and map how it behaves along the way, see when it works and when it doesn\'t, and what side effects (good or bad) are produced. This is beta, after all, and this is our actual job - not playing for fun, unless you are assessing the fun\'s viability. In short, do not get too alarmed at anything yet - the game is nowhere near being in production, and raising bounding issues as \"impacting the quality of the beta\'s gameplay\" is nowhere near appropriate... there is no gameplay yet. When the game nears leaving beta, that\'s another issue... and you\'ll be completely correct - but not yet. Boundaries must be examined, now, while we can.
I\'ve read some interesting suggestions on how to combat the PP issue, and I have a few comments on what I\'ve seen.
a) Do not mix issues. Leet speak has nothing to do with power levelers, for example. One bird, one stone.
b) Define your issues carefully. Half of the posts state a problem with people maxing a stat in 20 minutes, for example. Then they discuss the problem from the perspective that the maxed_stat is the issue, not the rate in which it was achieved. All of this, when in fact neither are the issue, but are actually symptoms - the poster\'s actual issue is a concern about the game becoming a competitive (and possibly monopolized) goal-oriented system, e.g. EverCamp and EBayQuest.
There\'s a few things to consider as you guys evolve a solution - and I\'m confident you will. However, bear the following in mind:
\"Snapshot\" mentality. My toon is maxed on several skills, and did so over a relatively short time via massive grinding. A few other toons have similar stats - and did so over a long period using more traditional methods. From a snapshot perspective, though, the two toons are identical... walk the data, and only the names are different and neither has an advantage over the other. You need to remember this before suggesting \"cap\" based solutions... the real issue is invariably twinking of some sort, and caps will not resolve this.
\"Everybody plays like I do\" mentality. I love these games for their social aspect (grouping), but am generally screwed by real life. If a fire alarm / car wreck / whatever comes in, I have to go, literally \"bye\"... and it directly impacts my options when playing. You won\'t, for example, find me committing to a large, long term \"group\" - it isn\'t fair to them since my leaving will suddenly make them non-viable, and quite frankly I don\'t want to log off my toon in the middle of the worst dungeons in the game. Instead, I\'m primarily going to be solo, or in non-comitted \"easy-out\" sorties where leaving won\'t screw the group.
And therein lies the problem - I want to experience those areas. And to do so, I\'m going to need to do it mostly solo... and thus far, all of the ideas I\'ve seen will directly impact my ability to do so. And as a side note, I will *not* be brought along as a charity case. I want to contribute, and deserve my place.
I\'m hardly unique in this respect, nor this situation - the casual player has a window of when they are available to play, the only difference being that the \"I have to go\" near the end of that window is usually predictable, and usually has some measure of leeway. That my window is unilaterally terminated by an asynchronous pager-beeping simply means I can serve as a general case... my playing-window might be 5 hours or might be 5 minutes, and I do not know which. Either way, I have to remain viable to my peers in the game, regardless of my window size. Otherwise, I cannot play with them... which is the whole point of playing in the first place.
The shorter the playing window, the more goal-oriented the player must be in order to participate in the social aspects of grouping. \"Our guild is going here next week!\" \"Oh, I can\'t even hit those things. I won\'t be able to contribute unless I skill up.\" Also notice that the quantity of windows is irrelevent; 10 hours in a single window compared to 10 hours over 20 30-minute windows, you all know which player won\'t be grouped, nor be doing anything of merit. In every game I\'ve played thus far, every solution meant to check the big-window players has completely screwed the small-window players... the result being an even bigger polarization between the two. You have to remember - a big-window player has the option of playing in small window timeframes when it\'s needed for a goal, and still retains a big window once that goal is complete. A small-window player only gets... small windows. Then come the rare day when the small-window player actually has a large window to play... well, most of the solutions offered thus far would make it a moot experience.
One thought I did have (they\'re rare), though, is training. Right now, it\'s done by NPCs. And several have raised issue with \"power levelers\"... they damage and impede the social nature of the game. Hmmm. Perhaps introduce a social aspect to training...? Train off of other players, and perhaps not allow the same person (or people) to rank you repeatedly, or something. Rapid training would still be possible, but doing so would require a larger social circle which has the option of ignoring you. Done wrongly, it\'ll have no impact - but if done right, it could be like nails on a chalkboard to the people you wish to avoid, and could act as an attritional method of removing the anti-social types.
Ah well, it\'s a good topic and a great challenge - see ya\'all in game.
