Questions about proposed changes

[Kaden]

Reading through, the only thing that set off warning bells was standardising custom tech costs. I actually think that more powerful techniques shouldn't necessarily cost more, as generally speaking they've always had bigger downsides to use, and thus get used less often. But there are a lot of cases where a custom tech is so useful (IC, I know - but that doesn't make it any less important) and character-changing that I would actually EXPECT to pay a higher cost for it, and it feels like that much more of an accomplishment to finally get the XP to buy it.

Conversely, if I come up with a very minor thing that's probably not going to change the outcome any fights IC - let's use Directed Invulnerability/Immaterial as an example, which lets a character make a specific body part Invulnerable/Immaterial whilst the rest of their body stays normal - I like that it has an appropriately low cost, and I have that choice between getting a few fairly insignificant techs or one that's very significant. If every custom tech costed the same, I'd be trying to make my custom techs all 'worth the price' so to speak, or simply save my custom tech budget for the best ones. The fact that CL will increase prices over time makes this even more of an important factor.

I definitely understand that concern. Kaden himself is a "tech whore" and many of those are fairly insignificant techs that work together to do something more interesting. I haven't thought of anything to address that, though; anything I've thought of doesn't seem worth throwing out standardized costs for, if that makes sense.

I would simply say "if you want your character to have a job, you're free to roleplay it and be rewarded through the same grading system as everything else". I'm guessing that's probably what you're planning.

As of right now, you guessed correctly.

Finally, I just want to say it's awesome the way you've handled this whole system change, getting the gist of everyone's opinions and distilling them in a way that address both having a clever, fun game and trying to make the members in general happy. We are very lucky to have someone like you as admin.

Thank you. I appreciate that a great deal.

Edit: I don't know why it slipped my mind, probably because it wasn't really mentioned, but CL could have exactly the same problems as the current system if it starts at level 1 and works like PL in the traditional sense of how it affects judgement. If that is the case, I'd HIGHLY recommend you consider roughly how much CL you'd expect the average, 2-3-4 posts-a-week writer (I'm pulling these 'averages' off the top of my head, obviously, so maybe give it a bit more thought than I have) to make in a year and then make that the starting CL. If you want this to be a long-term system and not have the same problem that started this overhaul in the first place. Obviously, it's still up for massive debate and until I actually see the system and the kind of diminishing returns I'm pulling numbers out of my ass ... but as it seems to be a reoccuring problem, I think my concern is justified, even with diminishing returns >_>

The power gap could absolutely happen again, you're completely correct. As you know, there's a balancing act to be done with diminished returns. We don't want someone to just suddenly be x20 a starting member, but we don't want to eliminate any sense of accomplishment.

Did Traits ever really do ANYTHING?

Not really, no. It's served as more of an at-a-glance Roster field for figuring out someone else's character.

The wasn't really a plan to make any changes to it. I don't really see a problem with keeping it, but if people think it's a waste of space it's just as easy to dump.