Need for a change

[Rhaegar]

Cherek, there is no real good solution to this problem. Whichever way you'll go, you're not going to make everyone happy.
The problem being: New player starts his adventure, asks around, learns first ropes and it dawns on him - if he's going to be active for the next couple of years, MAYBE he'll get to the point where current big guys are sizewise.
It's not a very bright perspective, is it? Some people like to try out new games and achieve as much as possible there, including being the #1 guy. It's nigh impossible in Genesis, or a very unlikely at best that some freshman is going to outsize the old guard.

Edit: And I don't really care about seconds. After all, as long as people are playing, does it really matter which character are they using?

[Cherek]

Cherek, there is no real good solution to this problem. Whichever way you'll go, you're not going to make everyone happy.
The problem being: New player starts his adventure, asks around, learns first ropes and it dawns on him - if he's going to be active for the next couple of years, MAYBE he'll get to the point where current big guys are sizewise.
It's not a very bright perspective, is it? Some people like to try out new games and achieve as much as possible there, including being the #1 guy. It's nigh impossible in Genesis, or a very unlikely at best that some freshman is going to outsize the old guard.

Edit: And I don't really care about seconds. After all, as long as people are playing, does it really matter which character are they using?

I dont have anything against seconds. I just meant we may just have or big players "restart" with seconds instead, and what we wanted to achieve with the downscale was to make their life more fun and challenging .

But yes, I agree. I think it was way better when the highest level was much lower and reachable in a much shorter time. But thats the past... quicker XP the smaller you are you say... No I think it will make the problem possibly worse. We get even more super-brutal myths in a world designed for smaller players. I much rather believe in a downscale of the players to make the world seem bigger.

[Earth]

What about a different approach? Instead of scaling people down, help scale others up by increasing combat/general exp gain significantly the smaller you are?
In my opinion, it should be calculated somehow that by being on 2hrs/day 5days/week you should be able to reach myth in say 6 months.
And also, to honor people who've spent years polishing their characters, why not change the 'wise persons club' or add a different one with an item displaying not their in-game age but their real-world age (eg: diamond pin for characters created pre-1995, mithril pin for 1995-2000 and so on...).

Rhaegar, I disagree with you there about how fast you should advance.
Yes, there may be a big disparity between the really old and the really small, but no matter how you scale the change, there will always be those who will be able to spend more time and energy into the game.

If you make it 240 hrs to myth, then there will be those within a year that will be 3x myths or 5x myths because they play 3x or 5x times more than you. Unless there is an absolute cap (which I think is a huge mistake), the people who play more will grow more than you will grow.

(NOTE TO ADMINS: I'm using numbers here, but they are made up completely for the purposes of example and not based on any real thing).

Let's compare three people...Player A plays 10 hours a week, Player B plays 20 hours a week, and Player C plays 50 hours a week.

Let's say currently it takes 100 hrs to reach level 10.
Player A takes 10 wks
Player B takes 5 wks
Player C takes 2 wks

Let's say you change the game so that it takes only 50 hrs to reach lvl 10.
Player A takes 5 wks
Player B takes 2.5 wks
Player C takes 1 wk

All sounds fine? Not really...in the 5 weeks it takes for Player A to reach A, Player C has reached lvl 50. It's same with the suggestion you are making...even though there aren't any named levels after myth, the fact is that they still grow.

Let's say that you make it harder to grow after you reach myth, so that once you are lvl 50 it now takes 1000 hrs to reach lvl 60. So guess what, all of the sudden you find that the game is full of myths (lvl 50), but now there are a group of players who are lvl 60 who are still bigger than you.

Now you say that the last part is a good idea, but guess what? It already exists in the form of brute. At a certain point, quest exp stops making any difference to them, and so you can catch up, but the fact is that you will reach the same restrictions as you get close to the people you are trying to catch up to...so you will have the same issue.

Rescaling doesn't fundamentally change anything...

In any case, the whole point in Genesis shouldn't only be about reaching max level anyway. In my many years of playing, it's really been about the personal experiences I've gained along the way rather than trying to reach a final goal in the game. Part of the strength that Genesis has is it's uniqueness. Not only in the many different realms and domains that exist on the donut, but also in the people who come to play here. In what other experience can you interact with people all over the world and establish lasting relationships with them. All of us who still around in game or just in the forums here, must gain something from your experience here, otherwise you would just fade away and move on to something else. We all must care about Genesis in some form or another...

...something to think about...

[Targun]

Earth with the assumption that stats in Gen grow linearly, and someone that gets twice as much xp than someone else is twice as big is just false, which you know about after 10 years of playing Gen or so. You made your whole note and effort you put in writing it pointless.

What's the reason? You made a false assumption on the begininng and based the whole note on it. You knew it was false, yet you decided to convince who? There's a soft cap, there's brutality, getting past through myth makes stats growing really slow. I jsut don't want to repeat myself. It's tiresome.

Rescaling changes a lot. New myth is at 2/3 of the old myth. People are smaller compared to the game envionment. The point range whithing which players are 'closed' is more narrow, which allows easier balance, it encourages teaming. Some things are piont based while others are %based on Gen. Hint: health regen. Which again screws the balance when there are huge differences in constitution and so on so on.

[Cherek]

I am with Targun on this one again.

I am starting to like the rescale thing more and more.

And I think those who dislike it and threatens to quit think its a "nerf" and they will wake up with the stats of a champion or titan again. Thats not how it will work.

[Earth]

Earth with the assumption that stats in Gen grow linearly, and someone that gets twice as much xp than someone else is twice as big is just false, which you know about after 10 years of playing Gen or so. You made your whole note and effort you put in writing it pointless.

What's the reason? You made a false assumption on the begininng and based the whole note on it. You knew it was false, yet you decided to convince who? There's a soft cap, there's brutality, getting past through myth makes stats growing really slow. I jsut don't want to repeat myself. It's tiresome.

Rescaling changes a lot. New myth is at 2/3 of the old myth. People are smaller compared to the game envionment. The point range whithing which players are 'closed' is more narrow, which allows easier balance, it encourages teaming. Some things are piont based while others are %based on Gen. Hint: health regen. Which again screws the balance when there are huge differences in constitution and so on so on.

Targun,

You jumped to conclusions again. What I was saying was that there will always be a difference between those who play and those who don't. Even if the advancement gets slower and slower as you get bigger, it gets slower and slower for everyone at the same rate. Regardless of whether this is linear or exponentially based, it's the same for all.

This means that last level of improvement will take longer and longer to get. This means that all other things being equal, the one who is bigger will still have the advantage, no matter how you scale things.

Earth

[Ilrahil]

I also wonder what would happen when you scale it down, and players grow large again.

As I understand the system I think you are suggesting that it would be harder to grow once the scale down was implemented.

But players will continue to grow into size, and in another year for many of the hardcore players you will have the same problem. Would we then scale down again? You might not lose players on the first one, but if more than one was implemented over time I think people would start getting frustrated.

[Rhaegar]

In my opinion. It's not as much a matter of scaling, but rather a matter of there being no real 'end line' where you're being put to a halt. The soft cap we have now isn't really this, especially that it's way too high.
In order to solve most of the issues, there must be a maximum level to which players can grow. And it must be reachable within reasonable amount of time. Otherwise we're just introducing temporary solutions and make the problem persist, if not get worse. But then, Genesis doesn't really have much to offer for people who'd reach this max level, does it? If it would be placed low enough (thinking titan-champion level here), perhaps the PvP would kick in, if it wouldn't take people ages to recover (and ages to kill ubermyth like Irk). Also, more teaming would be seen, both because of the real PvP threat and NPCs getting tougher all of a sudden.

[Targun]

You make same logical mistake in your argumentation Earth. Please, reread your posts. What you're saying is just mathematically wrong. You reach wrong conclusions from wrong assumptions. Yes somone who invests more time will always stay bigger unless he dies- which is easier when you don't have bazillion of hp. No the PROPORTION won't stay the same.

Player A- lvl 1. Player B- lvl 10. Player
* A always grinds at a pace of 100XP per week
* B always grinds at pace of 1000XP per week
* 1 to 10- 100XP
* 10 to 11- 1000XP
B/A=10- B is 10x bigger than A
After a week:
* Player A- lvl 10
* Player B- lvl 11
B/A = 11/10= 1,1- B is 1,1 times bigger than A
=========================================
Lvl 11 to 12= 100000
After 10 weeks:
* Player A- lvl 11
* Player B- lvl 12
B/A= 12/11<11/10 B is 12/11x times bigger than A, which is less than 1.1
============================================================
These are two series. They both have their limit at the SOFT CAP- sort off. Which means that they both will be trying to reach the same limit and regardless of the pace at some point B/A will be very close to 1. The only two things that affect when this happens and what are the differences between players throughout the lvls are: steepness of the soft cap function, steepness of the brute function. Will the player A ever cath up with player B? NO. Will the differene between them always shrink if they grind into eternity? YES. Period.

[Earth]

Targun,

I understand what you are saying...but what I'm saying is that no matter what level you set it at, the player who spends longer playing the game will be larger, even if the proportion decreases in size.

If you rescale so that the exp curve is less steep, then those who are further along already will start to move further towards the limit. They have a "head start", which means by the time it takes you to get to the point where they are, it will take you that much longer to catch up to them.

Let's say you have four people with their correspnding stats:

A = 200, B = 500, C = 600, and D = 900

So D lets say would have taken 1000 days to grow from 600 to 900 and you cut it down by 1/10, so now it will take C 100 days realize what happens to the graph of that, if you make it easier to reach 900, then the person at 900 can advance faster than they would already be able to grow.

Draw an exponential curve and see how it works, if the curve is truly exponential, then try and redraw another exponential curve where the slope of the curve is lesser from C to D and not lesser from D to the hypothetical max. If make it harder for D to grow, then C will have to grow through steeper curve to reach D, than D had to grow to where he or she is. Yes, over time the difference between D and C will decrease, but in the short run, those who are champions will have a much steeper climb to myth than those who are already myth, or if you make it easier to make it to myth, those who are already there will have a easier time growing even bigger.

If you rescale in such a way that your actual stats are adjusted, then those at the "mid point" of the curve don't experience any change, and those who are further along are reduced back in size, and those who are below the midpoint will increase in size, but guess what, if you just rescale stats, that doesn't really change anything except for how difficult the game is. For you to reach the people father along, it will take you just as long, and it doesn't solve anything except make the game overall harder for everyone.

Quick example...

Let's take the same people in the first exampleand you rescale the formula, then you go from:

A = 200, B = 500, C = 600, and D = 900

to

A = 350, B = 500, C = 550 and D = 800

Ok...the difference in stat between them is lessened, but guess what...let's say it took D, 3 years to grow from 600 to 900. It will take C, 3 years to grow from 550 to 800 if C plays just as much as D, but in that three years it takes, D would have grown to 900, and it will take C another 3 years to make it to 900.

Consider one last thing...

The person who is D has 900 stat because he or she already plays much more or has played much more than those who are A, B or C. If A, B or C want to catch up to D, then they have to play more or play more productively than D, but since D is an addict, no matter how much you scale the game, D will always be "significantly" bigger, whether it is a difference of 10 or 100 it doesn't matter. The time investment required to catch up will still be present.

Earth