Hello!

So, we talked about a lot of things at SimuCon! Most of our time was spent brainstorming new and fun ideas, but we did share some tidbits of our LONGTERM plan. The hottest topic, both at the convention and here on the forums, is the TDP situation.

Let's talk about why we think a change to TDPs is necessary for a minute. There are varying reasons of varying importance:

1. Overall balance for the high end game
- It's a complex task to code systems that utilize our depth of characters when we cannot reliably predict the stat layout any character might have at any given level (or highest skill in X, or however a particular system measures).
- It's far easier to come up with interesting facets for systems when we haven't burned our coders out on the skeleton of the system itself.

2. Overall balance for PvE / PvP
- We have a wide variety of creatures with an even wider variety of different abilities, all of which need to make some basic assumptions regarding what the stat value is expected of a character hunting there. There has been much discussion about various creatures' special attacks, and this is at the core of it; You all aren't wrong. While some may be intrinsically unfair, many are simply skewed toward different expectations of what and how many stats you possess. A predictable contest would be more sensible to program, to moderate both extremes of the hunting experience (contests that are too difficult to make hunting feasible, as well as those that are too simple to provide any element of danger).
- DR is a role-playing game. There should be IC PvP when the characters want to pursue that avenue of role play, and the contest should make sense.
- DR is a video game. It should be fun, and some people take their enjoyment from the OOC PvP aspect of it. We've said since Day 1 that "we don't code for PvP" but that seems awfully silly to me when a large subset of our players enjoy that so much. Historically, even though our development hasn’t focused on PVP balance, we want to include that going forward. As long as they play within policy, they should be able to enjoy that part of our game. That being said, the contest should be balanced and make sense!
- We want to develop some post-150 content for those of you that sit at the top of the heap. To lay this groundwork, we need to rebalance the numbers on the back end, which will allow us to lay the ground work for more engaging and exciting stat contests. If Joe wants to turn on Hardcore mode and go slam Bob's garrison, the time he's invested in training his character widely will give him an advantage!

3. Training habits - Wide verus narrow
- Many players train their characters with the "MUST DO ALL" mentality, because they believe that's the most effective way to make their character strong. If you're not moving 30 skills, you're doing it wrong. This is also silly! It's a game, you should only feel obligated to train what you'll need and what you'll use in the course of your character's lifetime.
- DR is a role-playing video game. We want for you to engage with your fellow players -- classes, spells, games, events, etc. Rested exp was meant to relieve some of the pressure from 'train all things all the time' so that you'd feel more comfortable engaging in these activities. Updating how TDPs are awarded can be another step towards achieving that goal.
-- To be clear, if you want to continue to train widely, you can! We do recognize the need to make more skills "useful" in ways beyond generating TDPs, and have ideas for that germinating as well. We are working on ways to recognize those efforts.


All of this said, each of these issues could absolutely be addressed in other ways. Addressing the TDP issue directly sets a stronger foundation going forward for all of them.

As for how we're thinking to modify stat growth and character progression? Well, we're tossing around several ideas. We are creating a utility to measure the before and after results across a wide range of players -- Essentially, we are reproducing Socharis' research from 2010, when the TDP rewrite plan was first hatched. It's not that I don't trust his research, it's that he's not here to explain it to me and I want to understand it completely before I pull the trigger. Player demographics have changed quite a bit in the past few years, and revalidating the data is the responsible choice.

As we learn more, we will begin to talk about which possible routes make the most sense to go with.

In the next few days, I'll share more info about the other topics we covered at 'Con. Post-150 content, Events, and Achievements were the big ones!


~ L

This message was originally posted in Abilities, Skills and Magic, The Experience System. To discuss the above, follow the link below.

http://forums.play.net/forums/13/110/655/view/5620