Questions about proposed changes

[Kaden]

I'll mostly be addressing points Sigfried has brought.

Firstly, and most importantly, the current system has absolutely no method of diminishing XP returns while the new system does. Yes, that means that a power gap would eventually resurface between brand new members and "veteran" members. To that, though, I can only say that we have differing design philosophies. An advantage should be given to those who have spent more of their time and thought and energy on developing their own character.

If someone who's been here for two or three years, and accomplished countless things throughout participation in sagas and tournaments and personal storylines, suddenly gets smacked down by someone who's been here a week... that would be bullshit. You disagree. That's fine.

CL is not an attempt to prevent a power gap from ever occurring, it's to delay that from happening and make it more manageable when it does. An ideal power-curve allows for players to quickly make defining changes/additions/whatever to their character without being prohibitively expensive in the initial stages. Once that developmental period slows progress should still be very much attainable, but more difficult to simply sky-rocket out of. Given a community of writers of comparable activity, the vast majority of them would be within a few levels of each other with outliers at either end of the spectrum.

Your suggestion of using PL (in context of the proposed system, of course, we should all know what the varying terms refer to at this point) does nothing to actually alleviate the probably you're trying to correct. For the purposes of the discussion, we've been equating more time on the RPG with more posts/power as a given character. More posts, ostensibly, means more Prestige. Given that people will need to buy PL to remain competitive, more Prestige will mean more PL in the long-run. In order to compete a new player would have to do nothing but buy PL through the developmental period of the power curve and then they'd go into a fight with no Techs or items or anything interesting. How does that make things better for new people who want to have a "fighting chance?"

With CL as it's proposed, the new player can use the developmental cycle to create interesting character concepts and gimmicks without sacrificing the gain in power. Yes, it's the same thing that older members have already gone through, but, generally speaking, it's never been direct competition that drives people to RP. It's been creating interesting and unique stories for their characters. More defined characters lead themselves to more diverse and intricate storylines which means more RPing which means more chances to make purchases with the Prestige they earn.

Another point that's not being taken into consideration is the Community Grading system to be implemented. As I said in the opening post, the majority of a character's earned Prestige should come from community graded posts, which means the community decides if someone just shoots up through character levels or not. If a new player shows up and just starts hammering out posts of absolutely amazing quality, it will be rewarded. They'll progress faster than other players of either lesser quality or less frequent posting.

I think if you just let people BUY THEIR OWN N PL you can have a system that says, "HEY. PL IS LAW. (Also writing)," without totally fucking new people over OR fucking the vets who have earned it over.

That's not what's being proposed, though. Your "PL is law" system fucks over anyone who doesn't just rush PL gain. It fucks over the people interested in making diverse characters who are about more than just being powerhouses without any sort of tangible balance.

This will sound arrogant, but I say it with no ego. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that I could create an interesting, compelling character with regular, sizeable posts of high quality and do nothing but drop every single point of Prestige in PL gain. I'm sure the first thing a handful of people will think is "well that's Kaden, he's an extreme," but I'm not. Trafford, Belle, Victoria, Sage, Ander, Sophia, Vad, Piper, and so on could all do the exact same thing if they wanted to. Then what would happen? How is that scenario (one that seems relatively likely, given past experience with RPGs) any better for new players? I could walk around, stomping them all day long and they'd never stand a chance. Even if their writing quality was twice as good as mine.

The next thought that will probably occur to most is "yeah, but that's an extreme example," but so is everything else in this thread. Sigfried's examples are no less extreme than anything I've said here and that's simply because, in discussions of this nature, you have to deal in extremes. You have to look past the specific example to the point that it represents.

I think creativity -- in this case, creativity in how a character is built/designed/whatever you want to call it -- should be rewarded, and CL does that. While you're suggestion doesn't actually penalize people for doing anything other than pouring points into PL, it does actively make them less competitive and I don't see any way that it would actually be as beneficial to new players as you think it would be. I don't think that's the best direction for us to take.

This post ended up being longer than I thought it would be and I know I kind of rambled. Not everything I said will be completely relevant, but the overarching ideas, I know, are there.

I'd also like to say something about design as a whole. I have no intention of trying to create a system that everyone likes. That would be a blatant waste of my time and energy. At the end of the day we're going to end up saying "this is how it is" and some people will just not be happy about it. Hopefully we'll be able to keep that number of people as low as possible.

What I do want to do is make a system where everyone understands why we made the decisions that we made. They may love it. They may hate it. What's important to me, though, is that they see how it's all supposed to fit together.