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
SIMU-LYNEYA
LEELO83
Re: SoE Roundup!
07/25/2019 01:19 PM CDT
I see a problem with the idea's for a TDP change.
First, the idea that you have to train everything to even compete is really a falsehood. I know of players who do not train everything and have the ability to have their stats all at 100. For myself personally, I train every weapon because I wanted all of the titles in the weapon master category. I just never stopped because I like watching the numbers go up. A personal accomplishment I guess.
Second, there are races that have a significant negative cost to increase some stats. Rakash, Prydaen, Gor'Tog S'kra, Halfling, Kaldar have negatives to Wisdom and Intelligence. Gnomes and Halfling have negatives to Strength. The current system allows you a means to overcome this. A lot of the players (Myself included) play this game because of the freedom it affords us in the way we make our characters and how we are able to fine-tune them in any way we want. This feels like a backdoor attempt at controlling that level of customization.
I also kind of feel like someone within the staff had an idea, "You know what we could do that would increase the MT profits? We overhaul TDP generation so they can't do what they want. Then we make end-loot at the MT that will allow the further customization of stats. We'll make tons of money that way!"
First, the idea that you have to train everything to even compete is really a falsehood. I know of players who do not train everything and have the ability to have their stats all at 100. For myself personally, I train every weapon because I wanted all of the titles in the weapon master category. I just never stopped because I like watching the numbers go up. A personal accomplishment I guess.
Second, there are races that have a significant negative cost to increase some stats. Rakash, Prydaen, Gor'Tog S'kra, Halfling, Kaldar have negatives to Wisdom and Intelligence. Gnomes and Halfling have negatives to Strength. The current system allows you a means to overcome this. A lot of the players (Myself included) play this game because of the freedom it affords us in the way we make our characters and how we are able to fine-tune them in any way we want. This feels like a backdoor attempt at controlling that level of customization.
I also kind of feel like someone within the staff had an idea, "You know what we could do that would increase the MT profits? We overhaul TDP generation so they can't do what they want. Then we make end-loot at the MT that will allow the further customization of stats. We'll make tons of money that way!"
DAMIAN
Re: SoE Roundup!
07/25/2019 02:32 PM CDT
>> - 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.
this is where i have the biggest problem, the contest makes sense if you take into account the amount of time each player put into developing their character. it should be expected that those who trained more (ie spent more time in game training) should be further ahead and be better prepared. this game has always been about risk vs reward and you are, at this point, advocating to take the time that player spent in developing their character and flushing it down the toilet in the name of balance in PvP because, for some reason, stats should be more equal regardless of actual time spent training.
it boggles my mind that the main point of this game is character development via training and RP but there is now a major design shift to accommodate what is a small subset of the population who want to engage in PvP in a way where they have a better shot of winning with less work.
>> - 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.
I want to make a special note about this, most of us have personal goals and that is part of the reason which drove us/them to train broadly. Some of it is for title gains, some for the ability to be a moon mage who uses 2he effectively because that is what DR meant to me and kept me playing it. The other part of it is this, i was trying to mitigate risk.
Through the years, certain adjustments have been made which left a sour taste in my mouth. I'd invested heavily in a certain training method, be it weapons or something else and somewhere along the way, GMs decided that things needed to change and change they did. This put me at a disadvantage as i now needed to revise my routine and do something different, possibly needing to back train something. So the obvious answer was to train everything so i'm not left holding the bag at the end when Simu wants to change things. this, of course, had the benefit of awarding me TDPs and therefore stat points which also had the happy benefit of smoothing over mob transitions.
Something else i'd like to mention, consider this, i'm on the cusp of entering a new hunting area but i can't quite make it without taking heavy damage/etc. It is at this point my option to continue to train evasion/armor/weapons until they are on par with the hunting area i want to visit or invest in the alternative of training more widely and increasing my stats so i can compensate for some lack of skill. you've now effectively removed that second option in the name of PvP balance.
I know you talked about not only PvP balance but PvE balance, although, it seems to me that most creatures are currently balanced just fine with the oddball special attack which someone tweaked to 12 and could be addressed individually with that mob. As it stands, you'll still have to address every creature in the game since you are trying to scrap a system that's been in place since day 1 and everything in game was designed around it. So really, PvP is the only balance it is apparent you are trying to achieve.
>>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.
Glad to hear you're going to be looking at data. Make sure whoever is preparing/presenting that data has no bias on either side of this debate.
Lastly, i just want to be clear, a TDP change of this magnitude will burn whatever good will GMs may still have and, speaking only for myself, will bring an end to my plat subscription which i've maintained since close to the web migration. Be very careful if you choose to proceed down this path because, based on conversations i've had and posts i've read, i'm certain that mine will not be the only subscription you'll lose permanently.
As a side note, waiting this long to officially comment on what is obviously a very hot topic does not instill warm and fuzzy feelings in Simu's ability to plan, much less execute. You wanted a player to post about the changes, fine, your GM reply should have been ready to go and posted minutes after that player uploaded their comments not days after.
Damian, a voice from the distant and long-forgotten past.
this is where i have the biggest problem, the contest makes sense if you take into account the amount of time each player put into developing their character. it should be expected that those who trained more (ie spent more time in game training) should be further ahead and be better prepared. this game has always been about risk vs reward and you are, at this point, advocating to take the time that player spent in developing their character and flushing it down the toilet in the name of balance in PvP because, for some reason, stats should be more equal regardless of actual time spent training.
it boggles my mind that the main point of this game is character development via training and RP but there is now a major design shift to accommodate what is a small subset of the population who want to engage in PvP in a way where they have a better shot of winning with less work.
>> - 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.
I want to make a special note about this, most of us have personal goals and that is part of the reason which drove us/them to train broadly. Some of it is for title gains, some for the ability to be a moon mage who uses 2he effectively because that is what DR meant to me and kept me playing it. The other part of it is this, i was trying to mitigate risk.
Through the years, certain adjustments have been made which left a sour taste in my mouth. I'd invested heavily in a certain training method, be it weapons or something else and somewhere along the way, GMs decided that things needed to change and change they did. This put me at a disadvantage as i now needed to revise my routine and do something different, possibly needing to back train something. So the obvious answer was to train everything so i'm not left holding the bag at the end when Simu wants to change things. this, of course, had the benefit of awarding me TDPs and therefore stat points which also had the happy benefit of smoothing over mob transitions.
Something else i'd like to mention, consider this, i'm on the cusp of entering a new hunting area but i can't quite make it without taking heavy damage/etc. It is at this point my option to continue to train evasion/armor/weapons until they are on par with the hunting area i want to visit or invest in the alternative of training more widely and increasing my stats so i can compensate for some lack of skill. you've now effectively removed that second option in the name of PvP balance.
I know you talked about not only PvP balance but PvE balance, although, it seems to me that most creatures are currently balanced just fine with the oddball special attack which someone tweaked to 12 and could be addressed individually with that mob. As it stands, you'll still have to address every creature in the game since you are trying to scrap a system that's been in place since day 1 and everything in game was designed around it. So really, PvP is the only balance it is apparent you are trying to achieve.
>>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.
Glad to hear you're going to be looking at data. Make sure whoever is preparing/presenting that data has no bias on either side of this debate.
Lastly, i just want to be clear, a TDP change of this magnitude will burn whatever good will GMs may still have and, speaking only for myself, will bring an end to my plat subscription which i've maintained since close to the web migration. Be very careful if you choose to proceed down this path because, based on conversations i've had and posts i've read, i'm certain that mine will not be the only subscription you'll lose permanently.
As a side note, waiting this long to officially comment on what is obviously a very hot topic does not instill warm and fuzzy feelings in Simu's ability to plan, much less execute. You wanted a player to post about the changes, fine, your GM reply should have been ready to go and posted minutes after that player uploaded their comments not days after.
Damian, a voice from the distant and long-forgotten past.
SARAGOS
Re: SoE Roundup!
07/25/2019 07:55 PM CDT
Thanks for the post, Lyneya.
For me, while I recognize there are problems with the current system and would like to see some changes, there are five major challenges that I feel will need to be addressed in the process to have the playerbase come out feeling that these were good changes. I said some similar things in another thread related to Microtrans, but I wanted to reiterate a bit here.
1) SvS Contests - This is going to be THE source of most of the disputes, IMO. It's noy only my biggest area of concern, but there are echoes of it in all the other things I'm concerned about. The existing system has always allowed players to overcome racial deficiencies with enough training, and while there is a theoretical limit to TDP's, they've always effectively felt unlimited. This is going to have to be the prime area of focus for balance of the new system, partially to ensure that stats actually matter so that we're not in a "debil always works" or "debil never works" situation at the top end.
There will probably also have to be some serious thought put into the meta of stat choice, possibly involving minimum and maximums to stats so that we don't see people dropping lesser used stats to very low numbers in some stats order to put very high numbers in things like Reflex, Stamina, and Discipline. These are already very good stats even without taking into account the SvS defensive aspects, and competing with ultra-high stats here could require magic primes to be in turn be physically infirm in order to afford high enough mental stats to actually be able to use their debilitation spells as well.
Put more simply, at whatever point stat growth ends, everyone who is at that point is going to be struggling to both have their debilitation spells and abilities function while not having any hostile effects function on them. It's a tricky issue that may require some in-depth changes to SvS contests.
2) Stat Balancing - In a world where stats are no longer practically unlimited, the issue of some stats being worth more than others is going to come to the forefront. Either effort should be made to equalize the less important stats, or, if GM's feel that stats like Charisma are worthwhile, we could use some data that explains what Charisma is really used for other than Fear/Charm spells and Soul pool. Some thought should also be put towards the usefulness of mental stats for characters at cap where learning speed is no longer a thing.
3) Guild Balancing - Some guilds are far more stat-needy than others. Some of this comes from the fact that some guilds have a wide variety of SvS contest types while others have mostly a specific one, while others come from various abilities where past GM's were trying to encourage stat diversity. Each guild, IMO, needs to be re-evaluated to have guild-specific stat reliance be the same number across the board. This becomes less of an issue if SvS is changed somehow, but probably still bears looking into.
4) Race Balancing - In the past there's always been the sense that you can choose whatever race that you want, that it will "flavor" your character, but not dominate the character's destiny. While I don't think that race should be a purely cosmetic choice, I'd hate to see it become a thing that you basically have to be an Elothean to be a competitive Magic Prime character at cap, or a Kaldar Barbarian. Or, alternatively, that if you rolled up a Kaldar Warrior Mage you might as well retire. Again, it comes down to SvS contests and the fact that debilitation either works or it doesn't.
- Saragos
For me, while I recognize there are problems with the current system and would like to see some changes, there are five major challenges that I feel will need to be addressed in the process to have the playerbase come out feeling that these were good changes. I said some similar things in another thread related to Microtrans, but I wanted to reiterate a bit here.
1) SvS Contests - This is going to be THE source of most of the disputes, IMO. It's noy only my biggest area of concern, but there are echoes of it in all the other things I'm concerned about. The existing system has always allowed players to overcome racial deficiencies with enough training, and while there is a theoretical limit to TDP's, they've always effectively felt unlimited. This is going to have to be the prime area of focus for balance of the new system, partially to ensure that stats actually matter so that we're not in a "debil always works" or "debil never works" situation at the top end.
There will probably also have to be some serious thought put into the meta of stat choice, possibly involving minimum and maximums to stats so that we don't see people dropping lesser used stats to very low numbers in some stats order to put very high numbers in things like Reflex, Stamina, and Discipline. These are already very good stats even without taking into account the SvS defensive aspects, and competing with ultra-high stats here could require magic primes to be in turn be physically infirm in order to afford high enough mental stats to actually be able to use their debilitation spells as well.
Put more simply, at whatever point stat growth ends, everyone who is at that point is going to be struggling to both have their debilitation spells and abilities function while not having any hostile effects function on them. It's a tricky issue that may require some in-depth changes to SvS contests.
2) Stat Balancing - In a world where stats are no longer practically unlimited, the issue of some stats being worth more than others is going to come to the forefront. Either effort should be made to equalize the less important stats, or, if GM's feel that stats like Charisma are worthwhile, we could use some data that explains what Charisma is really used for other than Fear/Charm spells and Soul pool. Some thought should also be put towards the usefulness of mental stats for characters at cap where learning speed is no longer a thing.
3) Guild Balancing - Some guilds are far more stat-needy than others. Some of this comes from the fact that some guilds have a wide variety of SvS contest types while others have mostly a specific one, while others come from various abilities where past GM's were trying to encourage stat diversity. Each guild, IMO, needs to be re-evaluated to have guild-specific stat reliance be the same number across the board. This becomes less of an issue if SvS is changed somehow, but probably still bears looking into.
4) Race Balancing - In the past there's always been the sense that you can choose whatever race that you want, that it will "flavor" your character, but not dominate the character's destiny. While I don't think that race should be a purely cosmetic choice, I'd hate to see it become a thing that you basically have to be an Elothean to be a competitive Magic Prime character at cap, or a Kaldar Barbarian. Or, alternatively, that if you rolled up a Kaldar Warrior Mage you might as well retire. Again, it comes down to SvS contests and the fact that debilitation either works or it doesn't.
- Saragos
DIMINISHEDANGEL
Re: SoE Roundup!
07/28/2019 04:55 AM CDT
I share Saragos' concerns about racial balancing and SvS contests if TDPs become a limited resource.
I applaud the motivation behind a TDP rebalancing (encourage roleplay, not afk skill grinding) but realistically power gamers will power game, and we have already have a couple god-stats and a couple stats that are close to dump stats.
My primary concern is races with negative racial modifiers for the mental stats are essentially stuck at a slower experience gain, or a sub-optimal mathematical build. If TDPs are going to be a limited resource, I suggest stats be purely for in-game benefits like more weapon damage/spell damage/better SvS results, and experience gain be a fixed function of something like circle or rank of said skill.
I applaud the motivation behind a TDP rebalancing (encourage roleplay, not afk skill grinding) but realistically power gamers will power game, and we have already have a couple god-stats and a couple stats that are close to dump stats.
My primary concern is races with negative racial modifiers for the mental stats are essentially stuck at a slower experience gain, or a sub-optimal mathematical build. If TDPs are going to be a limited resource, I suggest stats be purely for in-game benefits like more weapon damage/spell damage/better SvS results, and experience gain be a fixed function of something like circle or rank of said skill.
