A possible compromise for RP/powerlevers

[Erisnas]

      The other day I was thinking about ways that we could discourage power leveling, and make it a little easier for RPers to spend less time training OOC.  Now, this is just a compromise, personally, I believe that someone should be able to power level if they want to, even in real life I have spent hours just at one thing to get better or make money.  Also, RPers often have to go OOC just to train since their character wouldn't fight but that is the best way to train.  Here is what I came up with, feel free to expand......... BOREDOM.
      Now you probably find that sort of odd that I would say that, well here is my theory behind this:  When you first start to do something, you are often very eager, and pay very close attention to how you do it, right?  Now, fast forward several days.  After doing it every day, for several hours each day, are you going to care as much about the quality of your work and pay much attention to it? No.  So here is my proposal:  When first starting an activity you get +50% experience for it.  As the day goes on if you continue to do this activity then your experience will eventually get down to -50% the usual.  So, people who rarely do it, get slightly more XP per time when they do it, and the people who power level don't get quite as much.  Now, true you can still power level, but that is one thing I was aiming for. 
     You would have to work out the mechanics to how this would work and how fast you should regain "your interest" in the activity.  This could be any amount of time, 1 hour on up to fully regain it perhaps.  More likely it would be in coordination with the game time though, so maybe 12 yliakum hours.  You could also add some other things as well, such as after just coming out of training then you are surely eager to try your new skills as well, or perhaps if you got a new item to use. 
     I hope I explained this fairly well, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this.

[Dihenis]

i do like this idea. there's a minor problem, like if someone roleplays/plays a miner, and that's the only thing they are, then they will end up with a little less experience. Then again, that would encourage people to learn a secondary trade, and that would make characters more varied, like a fighter who knows glasblowing?

[Erisnas]

That is one problem, that is one reason why I don't think we should make it that you can't powerlevel at all.  In theory though, there could be other things to balance this.  For the miner problem, it wouldn't be too bad since it would regenerate when they went to go sell, also if they are truly roleplaying it than they could just go mine, do an even, come back.  With this in place it wouldn't affect any money they made, so when a better training system is implemented or even currently, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.  Honestly, I think that most people will stop doing it just to accumulate the extra XP and while they are waiting chat or Rp.

[bilbous]

I think it is a pretty good idea, specifics need to be worked out for balance but it will discourage one thing I see as a problem which is one dimensional characters. "I am a miner, thats what I do, I mine!" Well that is all very fine, Mr. Miner, but you cannot mine 24/7. What do you do when you are not mining? Drink? I am sure there are such people in real life but it seems kind of a dull existence.
Getting back to the idea you might be able to improve your mining training if you spent half your lunch time whittling sticks or carving that soft rock that was in the rubble. Of course most miners in the game do not take lunch breaks.

[LigH]

If I was mean, I would interpret this so that you expect the game mechanics to force players into a balance between roleplaying and skill leveling.

Often I see force as the opposite of fun...

[Erisnas]

That is one thing I am trying to avoid.  With the proposed system you could still powerlevel, it would just take longer.  As said above, specifics would need to be worked out to see how this would work.  It may end up that if you are on of the people who just mine then you might be able to spend an hour with normal and extra XP gain before you start getting negative.  Plus, if you look at it mathematically, the bonus you get when you start will make up for some of the XP you lose, so in total, you would only start getting less XP if you do it for very long amounts of time. 

[Ver]

I like this basic idea!

Although discouraging grind-gaming is ultimately up to the conscience of the community, concrete barriers that help to herd PP acquisition in this direction will certainly help lead to a more organic, RP-based game experience.

[oningo]

well the train a bit and then if continued get less exp sounds very nice. great idea. hope they can think of an algorithm for it before version 1.0 i guess.  but i agree on the rp and power lvling conflict. non fighting rpers have to sorta OOC fight to get the exps to train skills. if new jobs .. -,- and here i mean some thing more than crafting too, if maybe there were say... 4 jobs like..err.. fighter(magic, melle all killing stuff), enchanter (with that esteria and stuff), crafter, herbalist, alchemist, farmer, cook err soem of these.. and having these other jobs give exp like killing or a bit lesser or more than  killing..depending on difficulty and duration will make people do these jobs and rp. Now the new jobs would need exp rewards. we know crafters dont get exp..but they can sell to player sor NPCs for money. now ifg exp rewards are increased for a few of these jobs. The other jobs who will have hoards taking after them wont have many buyers of thier wares. Maybe a NPC can buy all that player can sell i guess... but a need for say a food item from cook has to be generated amongst the players. so too potions of alchemists and herbalists. that way trias can also be generated for new jobs i guess. maybe a food item gives a spl effect on ur self and a boost or soemthing..that players will play top tria to buy..both rpers(spl efect or sign on the body or chat schematics) and killers(stat boost)...err sioem thing like that...in case of generating intrest and need by the community for food and thus a demand for cooks. who in turn need exotic ingredients which drives indirect demand from alchemists, herbalists and farmers. Also... examples of course.. .....  miners at high levels can identify and pick soem special rocks but cant use them..but are the only gus who can pick or dig for it whenn thye see ground a spl colour. they sell these spl rocks to alchemists for thier potion making who in turn sell them to rpers( for spl effects) or to fighters/miners/cooks/crafters/farmers to give stat boost in some way to help them in thier work.

say..soem dishes need very rare exotic igredients.. needs high levels of all job classes to work together...maybe a dish... animal part  form most strongest in the world(rare loot form that animal too) be brought by fighter. Herbalist, farmer and achemist (with help from miner in identification) at high lvl can give another ingredient or mixture. then these are prepared by cooks in a special cooking vessel that gets destroyed after one use..err cos the vessel is enchanted after being crafted..(so both crafter and enchanter have to have high lelve for that too)..and then the dish is cooked...and that dish/ dishes with different combinations give cool spl effects ( like glow/ darken/ clour body/eyes, float a bit above ground eveywhere, armor or some other equipemtn also glows when dish poured on it or taken to enchanter for enchanting)....

ok lot of ramblings like that lol . Got too many ideas like that . But i like the idea suggested in earlier posts. only thing is ..release a few more jobs and make the exp rewarding more balanced. Also create a need for the jobs. weapons was always needed. maybe reduce the durability of crafted weapons a bit more..not quality..a bit less so that peole do more wear and tear and buy new ones. not sure though.

[Erisnas]

What I was shooting for was this:  Rpers often have to go OOC to fight, now that time could be minimized since they tend not to spend much time on it like power levelers.  Power leveling is a way of gaming, I would hate to see this prevented, so this method would discourage it.  One thing I know that will come up is this will be hard to code.  I do wonder if it is worth it, though.  This would dramatically change some aspects of game play and might be a huge step forward for this project.

[Roderyck Slywolfe]

If I was mean, I would interpret this so that you expect the game mechanics to force players into a balance between roleplaying and skill leveling.

Often I see force as the opposite of fun...

Touche!

I think it's high time every stops with the control freakish attitude and realize people enjoy games differently. If it really affects your RP, then you simply don't know how to RP. Everything around you can be translated into RP, if you just took a second and thought about it.

-People running around is nothing new in a civilization without transport. (The North American Indians were said to have run for days at a time.)

-Shouting can be ignored.

-There are witless fighters in EVERY fantasy RP setting!

-You can always respond to OOC chatter IC. Just look at it as a foreign language, since you're trying to alienate them anyway.

All I've seen lately is this discussion all over the forum. As A DM of 29 years, I have met good and bad RPers. Nothing disrupts a game more than complaining about bad RP. The best way to teach bad RPers good RP is to stay in character and set them a good example of it.

[rtrentc]

Well I agree that the best way to show people how to roleplay is to do just that roleplay. As to the problem of OOC training and the powerlevelers, the solution isn't to play around with the amount of xp's gained at various times but to get rid of experience points as currently done altogether. Instead One should have the following.

1 -- You have theoretical and practical knowledge to increase a skill as we do now.
2 -- You can purchase the theoretical knowledge.
3 -- You can gain theoretical knowledge at a 1/4 of the rate that you would gain practical knowledge from the use of the skill. This would represent the trial and error method of learning something.
4 -- You have the practical knowledge that we currently have.

This would solve the problem of OOC xp's gained for the express purpose of raising other skills. Case in point. I currently am working on being a good weapon smith with one character and I plan on having a decent mage with another character. In both cases I have to go out and kill monsters to get the xp's I need to raise the stats and the skills I need for my character to develop in the direction that I want him to develop in. Now I still have to gain the finances needed to pay for the training, but with the suggested system above, if I was short on cash then I could spend time using the skill until I gained enough cash to finish paying for the theoretical knowledge that the character needs. The use of a skill to gain theoretical knowledge would represent that by continuing to use the skill at some point I would have those moments of insight into new ways of using the skill. Also you could add one more skill to the system. Instruction. This way characters that have a higher skill level can make some money by training characters of lower levels in the knowledge that they possess. IE you wouldn't have to have only npc's as the only available trainers.

[eldoth_terevan]

You still need some means of measuring progress that can be stored as a value in the database. Even if a label was substituted to the client perspective of experience gained, it is still a number in the database. And this would add another level of calculation to everything the client is already doing...

[Zhaxor]

Hmm, interesting discussion, and I have some thought on PL that I would like to share. There are always going to be powerlevelers, that's not an issue to me, however it does seem rather strange that a PL'er can be a master at mutliple tasks. For instance a craftsman can be a masetr at both axe making and sword making, or alterntively in combat they can have extreme skills in fighting with many different weapons, basically maxing their characters in all the different skill branches. But I have a though that maybe there should be a way to limit this so that in certain areas you can only be a master at one task.

For instance making swords versus making axes. I can make a basic axe and a sword, adn it would be no trouble for a blacksmith to do either with moderate skill, but I wouldn't expect him to be a master at both. So what I would suggest is a limit on training which should be simple to implement. It would work like this, if I have trained my sword making to say 150+, I can't train axe making any higher than 150. So power levelling in sword making means specialising in sword making and only achieving moderate axe making skills, so I could be a master sword maker but only a moderately good axe maker, or vice versa. The same method could be applied to just about any branch of skill, magic for instance, if I trained in the blue way to max skills I could only ever train up to 3 quarters in the other ways, combat the same, I could be a master swordsman but only a moderately good axe wielder.

It shouldn't be a complex chnage to make (of course speaking as one who is not familiar with the code that may not necessarily be true), but I should think a simple database check when training should be all that's needed, if you go to an axe trainer the program checks your skill level in sword making and doesn't allow the option to train higher than 150 if your sword making is already trained to higher than 150.
 

[Rongar Elani]

I have thought about this too, but I came to the conclusion, that you shouldn't be limited in training. See, in RL it only takes time to get better in something, and that should go for PS too. It's not realistic that someone is a master in 1 billion skills, but neither is it realistic to limit someone to only a handfull of skills to be mastered.

If you really want to stop powerleveling (which I think is unnecessary), it could be done this way:

Give a limit of training that can be done in one day. If this limit is reached, no more training a.k.a. experience points (those that make your skill-progression bar go up) are to be given within 24 hours. I think this would be pretty realistic, since everyone who trains something needs a break from time to time, or he'll collapse.

But like I said, I actually don't like limiting someone in his way of playing a game.

[Kieve]

Well I'll vouch for the "boring" aspect... My char is fixated on becoming a mage, training Red Way, and so forth. (*Hail the Great Inferno!*)

But since training costs ridiculous amounts of tria, and since mining is the only reasonable way to accumulate enough of it... well, frankly it's as I told a friend last night:
"Play? Bah. Right now "play" consists of mining, selling ore, and giving Levrus all my hard-earned tria for another rank of Red."

...bottom line, from the game-mechanic aspect it's pretty dull already. But then, I've quietly supported a leveling rework ("Learn by doing") for a while now... *sigh*