Leveling rates/ Highest Levels currently in ALFA/PrC's

[Rumple C]

I advocate having (every once in a while, with a low probability), serious critter drop in known farming areas (these should be non static quest areas!).

While the intention is noble, what this would serve to do is reward undesired behaviour (combat oriented gaming by gaining combat prowess through levels and build choices) by throwing DM-placed challenges at such people, in effect vindicating their playstyle - those people are the only ones likely to even have a chance at surviving such an encounter, and even if they don't, the lesson is "sheesh I was not powerful / high enough level yet, will have to try harder".

It's really throwing good money after bad.

Cheers,

I understand your point, by serious critter drop, i meant "Serious Strong chance of Kill the PC critter drop". But you point is still relevent.

[Brokenbone]

When "farming", the player has a choice in virtually all encounters, to go for it, or withdraw. There is no DM involved.

PC visual range is better than NPC range usually. Expect to see bunnyrabbits, notice a dragon instead, the tactic is "run."

If you can run across an AT, you are safe.

If you can't run across an AT, and you have a 300gp invisibility potion you're prepared to use (or a 150 scroll, or a free spell / power), you are safe. Assuming we're talking about "successful farmers" here, a piece of panic button kit is common to have. Panic button kit, everyone tends to seek out, whether for DM'd or DM'less content.

All I am reviewing that for, is to say "crazy surprise encounters" don't really produce a big "gotcha" here.

...

There are conditions though to spawn things in stealth for AI scripts. When your guy wandering the woods, all of a sudden is jumped by fey or something. Or other strange scripts like "looks up in the sky and wyverns drop." Those are also in cases "scoutable", but also "missable" and all of a sudden there is no choice except to be in a fight, or get into AoOs as you turtle and/or try to run away or go invisible or something.

Again, I remind, that "plunking down a big nasty" isn't too elegant, and a skilled player will avoid it anyhow. Some more subtle challenges like stealthy sentries or whatever, yeah, those may end up littered around by hand if a DM really feels like it, but remember, if you can reach the AT or click a potion/spell/invocation, battle over.

Conduct should be discussed, not "litter woods with booby traps and hope that sorts things out without having to have a confrontational talk," the booby traps won't catch the either mythical, or "well known but hard to pin down" farmers that community sentiment seems to think, lurk among us.

[Rumple C]

Fair comment.

((off topic, randomised spawns would be neat))

[Riotnrrd]

I am happy to work with any DM or builder whom wants randomized spawns

[CloudDancing]

Why revive this long dead thread by a banned player?

Ask a Dm like Paazin or Curm who has logged data on the topic if you want to know about actual factual progression data. Knowing the levels and leveling rates of other players is meta-gaming. You should not be advertising your stats.

[Matti]

I for one chose to answer here and in the A GENERAL REMINDER ON STATIC QUESTS AND STATIC COMBAT thread as they had similar thoughts posted.
Thoughts considering xp rewards for static quest, even the repeatable ones. Along the newly resurrected thread there hasn't been any general call for illegal usage of meta-gaming information.

[dergon darkhelm]

All I did was put in a search for "dimret" and this is thread that popped up.

Maybe an entirely new thread on the issue is warranted.

[Mick]

Why revive this long dead thread by a banned player?

Ask a Dm like Paazin or Curm who has logged data on the topic if you want to know about actual factual progression data.

Interestingly enough, it is such data that spurs the current discussion.

My suggestions regarding all of this:

1. Maximum of 750-1000 xp from static content (i.e.-anything not DMed.) per week. If you are able to augment this by getting in on five DM sessions a week, then great.

2. PCs cannot achieve level 4 before one month in play. Then they can achieve a maximum of one level per month thereafter. The latter would be regulated/validated by DMs on their home server.

3. Speaking of home servers, every PC should identify with one. The home server could be changed with but a request to the DM team on the new server, but never more than once in a month. XP awards on a server not your own should come at a penalty (-25% or whatever.) This is to deter server hopping on a semi-weekly basis to hit DM events.

4. RP XP should be modified by a variable attached to each PC. This variable is assigned by the home server DM team and is an indicator of quality of RP as seen by the DM team. This increases the amount of RP XP awarded for great RPers even when DMs are not around and it decreases the amount of RP XP for PCs who engage in grinding the RP XP scripts. Obviously this has the potential to generate some controversy because of its subjective nature. I would argue it is no more subjective than which PCs routinely get DM attention, however.

[Swift]

Alot of the issue could be relieved if the 'one time' statics had their XP rewards reduced since, at least according to Dans post in the sticky, they seem to be a significant driver for the rapid xp gains.

Or, they should become far more limited so you can only do one, say, once a week, rather than chaining them back to back to back and getting 4 figure XP gains in less than a day.

[FoamBats4All]

Or, they should become far more limited so you can only do one, say, once a week, rather than chaining them back to back to back and getting 4 figure XP gains in less than a day.

This really should be incorporated into the quest scripts.

But then, it's not like there's any difference between someone who does the statics in 1 day and someone who does them in 1 month. At the end of the moth, you still have the exact same XP. And it looks like the statics are there to help get people out of Low Level Hell, since most of the statics are geared for levels 1-5.

[Swift]

I'd agree with that if low levels were still dangerous. Our servers are as safe for low level PCs as they have ever been. If we are just putting in these types of statics to essentially shuttle PCs out of the 1 to 3 danger zone, we are just wasting jur time sticking with level 1 as our starting level. Low levels aren't meant to be a trivial obstacle that is an irritation to players, but now I am straying very off topic.

[t-ice]

Or, they should become far more limited so you can only do one, say, once a week, rather than chaining them back to back to back and getting 4 figure XP gains in less than a day.

This really should be incorporated into the quest scripts.

Should be easier to incorporate it to global static XP gain. I don't see anyone going through all quest scripts we have for all servers. Editing the global quest XP giving script, though, is very feasible.

Maybe I’m starting to question whether ALFA’s philosophical position on the existence of statics has perhaps become confused: are they meant to be a primary source of XP, or are they merely intended to facilitate small party RP with a chance of nominal reward when there’s no DM around?

I'm sure the latter is what they've meant to be. But pretty much all PCs have more XP from static sources (RPXP, quests, kills) than from DM awards. That in itself is not a problem we can easily address (it's not like we have heaps more DMs at the door). The problem is, as you've correctly identified, that the reward in XP for powergaming static content is huge compared to taking your time and bothering to actually RP. That positive response vindicates the powergaming, and makes people feel good about playing our game counter to the way it's intended. And needs to be fixed.

[Vendrin]

I think an award should be retroactively applied to long living pcs to make up for the fact that all the pgers have farmed there way to higher levels.

[Veilan]

"Everyone who has a higher level than me is a a dirty farming powergamer without a job. Everyone lower level than me is a dumb n00b who doesn't have a clue."

Practice this.

[I-KP]

1. Maximum of 750-1000 xp from static content (i.e.-anything not DMed.) per week. If you are able to augment this by getting in on five DM sessions a week, then great.

I had a dream about picking up 1000XP/week. In that same dream I also completed the Luge track at Lillehammer in under 50 seconds on a bin liner whilst being ridden by Charlize Theron in her Aeon Flux outfit.

That still sounds like an enormous amount of XP to me. It's also worth remembering that statics do tend to favour certain class builds, so they're already fundamentally unfair.

2. PCs cannot achieve level 4 before one month in play. Then they can achieve a maximum of one level per month thereafter. The latter would be regulated/validated by DMs on their home server.

Maybe that's fair, but it's still several leagues beyond anything that I'm used to.

3. Speaking of home servers, every PC should identify with one. The home server could be changed with but a request to the DM team on the new server, but never more than once in a month. XP awards on a server not your own should come at a penalty (-25% or whatever.) This is to deter server hopping on a semi-weekly basis to hit DM events.

In principle I like this idea, but in practice I think it would be a disaster. Not all servers are created equally which means one will always be better for grinding statics than the others and applying penalties for being on a server other than your home server will only entrench players. If this measure were to be implemented today we’d never get players off BG, even with XP caps. (It would then become a comparison of effort:reward.)

4. RP XP should be modified by a variable attached to each PC. This variable is assigned by the home server DM team and is an indicator of quality of RP as seen by the DM team. This increases the amount of RP XP awarded for great RPers even when DMs are not around and it decreases the amount of RP XP for PCs who engage in grinding the RP XP scripts. Obviously this has the potential to generate some controversy because of its subjective nature. I would argue it is no more subjective than which PCs routinely get DM attention, however.

With the greatest of respect, this a horrible idea. This would only serve to widen the gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. Some players are excellent RPers but very rarely see DM activity, much less give that DM a chance to see how good they are at RP, and their plight would worsen significantly if such a mechanism were to be implemented. There is also nothing that precludes a static farmer from being an excellent RPer, the two are not mutually exclusive and yet this idea presumes that they are in order to have the desired effect. I’d much prefer a system that presumes the best from everyone before evidence to the contrary is presented.

I know, it’s easy to point out faults but it’s much harder to present solutions. An accumulated static XP cap per week of some description is probably the least awful solution. Then the discussion becomes: what should the cap point be?