Goblin Squad Member
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I am a huge fan of time-constrained character advancement. I think it's a wonderful solution to a very real problem, and it's one of the things that really got me excited about PFO in the beginning. To me, the most important benefit is freeing up the player to pursue their own interests, rather than grinding away pushing Sisyphus's rock up that hill.
Recent blogs have discussed Daily Limits to certain types of advancement. I implore the devs to consider using Weekly or even Monthly Limits instead (or in addition).
The danger in Daily Limits is that the player will end up with a Daily Grind of stuff they feel must be done every single day. Every day they don't reach their limit is a "lost" day they can never regain.
Weekly and/or Monthly Limits are better because they allow the player to "make up later" whatever time they're missing - usually because they're doing something meaningful rather than grinding away at some stat.
I wouldn't mind Daily Limits as long as they were paired with Weekly or Monthly Limits so that I still had some "free nights" every once in a while. I just don't want to feel pressure to log in every day to "do my dailies".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nihimon, how would daily limits even work within a game that grants XP in equal amounts to every character that a player has paid to gain XP? I may be too tired ATM to see your point, so forgive me, but given the fact that everyone gains XP at the same rate, and every player and his/her PC will have different training goals, thus different training needs (the things one must do to earn a badge), can GW even impose these, and if so, why would they? Sounds too Theme-park to me, and not at all Sandbox.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nihimon is referring to the daily limits for positive alignment shifts and reputation gains, I believe.
Correct.
And I should add that, if those are the only things that are ever subject to Daily Limits, then I'm not very worried about it.
However, I expect that there will also be Daily (or hopefully Weekly or Monthly) Limits to the Faction that can be gained with any particular Alliance, as well. In those cases, I would actually like to see a Monthly Limit set for gaining faction, regardless of which faction it is - that is, if you can only gain 300 faction per month, then that might be 100 with the Hellknights and 200 with the Red Mantis rather than 300 with each.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You mean 'paired with' as something like "daily limit X points, weekly limit 4X points"?
Personally, I would be more interested in the effort required to meet a daily limit: is it 15 minutes of dedicated grind or 2 hours?
I can probably get in 30 minutes most days, but 4 hour sessions only if the mrs is away and all the kids go to sleep as intended - which will hopefully the 4-5 times during the EE period...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nihimon is referring to the daily limits for positive alignment shifts and reputation gains, I believe.Correct.
And I should add that, if those are the only things that are ever subject to Daily Limits, then I'm not very worried about it.
However, I expect that there will also be Daily (or hopefully Weekly or Monthly) Limits to the Faction that can be gained with any particular Alliance, as well. In those cases, I would actually like to see a Monthly Limit set for gaining faction, regardless of which faction it is - that is, if you can only gain 300 faction per month, then that might be 100 with the Hellknights and 200 with the Red Mantis rather than 300 with each.
Ah, I see. I missed that as the point. My apologies for my slow-wittedness.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is the problem with traditional level based character structures and leveling. There are many ways to "level" a character, but the visible number and the overly exaggerated "Ka-ching!" of the next level has become somewhat of a standard (which I abhor). Players ("Achievers mostly, based on the other thread going on) rush headlong to max level, whatever level that is. They ignore the scenery, the story, the lore....all that gets done later. They just want the level.
Many other players don't care about the visible number, but want the power. Fine. I acknowledge having a powerful character is fun. But I have no problem with developers limiting advancement. The XP buy system seems to do that pretty well (subject to testing in EE). And caps on things like alignment shifts seem fine to me. The max should be somewhere around where a plodding character might be, so the overachiever can meet his daily/weekly/monthly max, then go do something else (harvest, refine, explore, PvP...whatever)!
I just hated feeling penalized because I couldn't take a month off work only to see 100 little kids with unlimited time hitting max level, then getting rich on dailies, exploiting the imbalanced economy (as they drive prices up), then cry about end game being boring because there was only 100 of them and they all knew each other. (SWTOR was really bad for a while with this issue.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nihimon I agree with you completely I hate daily limits. I have a job and as such I really only get to play on weekends.
so Mon-Fri I loose all those days of points or whatever thing has the limits on them. Then when I find that I have a extended session to play on the weekend. I cap out 1/3 through my play session. Then it feels like the rest of the time I play is worthless.
If Alignment shift is the only thing that is a Daily Cap I am perfectly fine with that as long as alignment isn't something you need to grind at. (hopefully 3,000 good isn't significantly better then 2,000 good and not the whole your not a very good player unless you farm good points)
Good should be good for the most part. I can see an exception around the alignment boarders so people don't dip in and out of N and G just to get benefits.
However for more meaningful things such as Reputation, faction/alliance standing ect... I strongly feel there should be a Weekly Cap (monthly might be a bit much but I would be ok with this as-well)
If I play an assassin I would really hope that the Reputation bonus I get for fulfilling contacts would be at least weekly.
because if its daily will I will lose 5 days out of the week worth of reputation, and will only get bonus reputation for a fraction of the contract I perform on weekends which would make me want stop playing once I cap out, until cap resets. I don't want to stop playing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How about no time limited grind?
The only limited grind I care for is story... once you run a story with a character its done. And you should be able to start the story any time in the characters life, and stop in the middle so you can return later and finish it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The issue with no limitations is because of the "crazy Korean gamers" (no offense to any Korean gamers, the term isn't really racial this is just the only term I know for it.)
The issue is these gamers can farm and grind content at an insane rate.
so without limitations, you could potentially have a person who plays like a machine.
They would farm reputation or alignment at such a rate that the in-game mechanic of a Reputation system; that allows your choices and actions to hold more weight could be relatively meaningless to this person.
They could say go from Evil to Good in one sitting because they are grinding these points.
I understand the limitations, I just don't think it should be daily as that causes problems too.
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Goblin Squad Member
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ahh right, yes that would certainly element the issue. If the Reputation bonus you got from certain flags was sufficient enough to entice you to use it, however not substantial enough to warrant a cap. That would indeed work, but might be a bit tricky to balance out but thats one of the tricky parts about being a Dev and finding that perfect balance.
I'd rather have the Devs try and make this game an online ROLEPLAYING game rather than just another online level grinding game.
I don't think this is achieved by either limits or lack thereof to how much you can level in one day. It's done with compelling NPCs, interesting dialogues, meaningful choices, atmosphere and good stories.
I don't play the elder scrolls, Baldur's gate or Torment to get to max level as quickly as possible, but to breathe in their atmosphere and experience a compelling narrative as an active participant.
But i think the fact that other players have to live in the same world will always stifle such things and limit the actual roleplaying aspects to singleplayer games.
I'd rather have the Devs try and make this game an online ROLEPLAYING game rather than just another online level grinding game.
I don't think this is achieved by either limits or lack thereof to how much you can level in one day. It's done with compelling NPCs, interesting dialogues, meaningful choices, atmosphere and good stories.
I don't play the elder scrolls, Baldur's gate or Torment to get to max level as quickly as possible, but to breathe in their atmosphere and experience a compelling narrative as an active participant.But i think the fact that other players have to live in the same world will always stifle such things and limit the actual roleplaying aspects to singleplayer games.
This game almost certainly won't have many (if any) compelling NPCs or many interesting choices or dialogues or atmosphere not related to interacting with other players.
And getting to max level in this game will be pretty much implausible if not virtually impossible.
Nihimon is only saying he doesn't want a mechanism that implies he needs to do something daily. I agree with his sentiment.
I'm not sure what you're arguing for, or what your points have to do with that.
As bringslite said, it's just what i would like to see in a game such as this. It's a loosely related preference, not an argument for or against anything said in this thread.
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Goblin Squad Member
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+1
I prefer no daily limits, and instead having a weekly or monthly limit. Or even a monthly limit in conjunction with weekly limits, if this is desirable and not too complicated.
I think weekly/monthly limits strike a good balance between incentivizing players to log in regularly and aiding players that can only play at irregular intervals for varying spans of time.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think that some daily limits are a specific incentive to get people to log in every day, intended to convince those people that they are having fun by logging in every day. This type of daily limit loses effectiveness if it is multiplied into a weekly limit.
Others are simply an attempt to limit how fast you can accumulate the limited resource over a long time. This limit loses nothing by being made weekly, monthly, or even lifetime.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't know exact what these daily limits you are talking about are I don't recall reading about them. However if they refer to character advancement they could work iwthout being a grind. Say for example there are daily limit on how many achievements, or badges, or whatever we are calling the in game action one must take to unlock the functionality of the skills trained over time.
If those daily limits are set high enough to allow you to advance them faster than the skill growth over time one would not need a daily grind and could easily take days off and catch up later. The daily limits then simply serve to keep a person from sitting on a character not playing it and then one day just grind it all the up to few power in a week.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The daily limits then simply serve to keep a person from sitting on a character not playing it and then one day just grind it all the up to few power in a week.
For this particular purpose of Daily Limits, it seems obvious to me that Weekly or Monthly Limits would serve just as well.
It is the other side of Daily Limits that I object to - namely, the grind of having to do something every day in order to avoid gimping your character relative to the others in your peer group.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hark, I tend to agree that limits like this actually help avoid grinding, though my reasoning is slightly different. It makes grinding something pointless, since once you've hit the cap, there's no gain to continuing to grind the rep/alignment, so you're free to go do something else without losing progress on that goal. But then, I'm apparently weird, since I don't feel like I've "fallen behind" if I miss a window. I feel like I didn't do anything to advance that goal. That was the opportunity cost of whatever else I chose to do with my time. I don't particularly care if it's daily limits, or diminishing returns, or what, but I believe there should be something to prevent someone from marathon grinding their way through rep/alignment/faction in short order. I think these are the sorts of changes that should require demonstrated effort over time, rather than measuring it purely by how deep the pile of bodies is.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hark, I tend to agree that limits like this actually help avoid grinding...
Yeah, in case it wasn't obvious, this is very much what I was trying to say in my opening sentence of the original post.
I think that limits to how much we can accomplish in a particular time are not just good, but incredibly good, and incredibly effective at eliminating the grind.
What I'm afraid of is that we'll get rid of one set of grinds (grinding xp to gain levels), and replace them with another set of grinds (grinding daily faction gains).
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Dario,
Sorry, I'm not able to express this clearly.
1. Grinding is bad.
2. Time-constrained limits to advancement are effective at eliminating the grind if and only if the time frames are long enough to give players plenty of opportunity to do other stuff instead.
You expressed this sentiment very clearly.
It makes grinding something pointless, since once you've hit the cap, there's no gain to continuing to grind the rep/alignment, so you're free to go do something else without losing progress on that goal.
Imagine how effective time-constrained limits would be if instead of Daily Limits we were talking about Minute Limits. Would Minute Limits have the positive effect you describe in the quote above?
My contention is that Daily Limits are also too short to generate that positive effect.
3. Therefore we must ensure that the time-constrained limits are based on sufficiently long time frames to ensure that players still have the opportunity to pursue other interests without losing progress on their goals.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have to confess, Nihimon, I cannot make sense of your argument.
You seem to be saying:
1) Grinding is bad.
2) Limits are effective at eliminating the grind.
3) Therefor we must do away with limits so we don't have to grind.
Here's the way I'm reading it:
If the only limit is a daily limit, then in order to keep up with the Joneses (the player population power curve), everyone must log in every day to grind. That's a chore, not something fun.
If, instead, there is a weekly or monthly limit, then people can attain that limit in any way they wish - daily, weekly, or every other Tuesday. At the end of the extended limit period, everyone would still be at roughly the same relative power position, and no one would have felt torn between "having" to log in daily to get the daily limit, or doing other things.
It's similar to time-based, rather than grinded (ground?) experience in that the Achiever types don't charge off and leave everyone else behind the power curve.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon
Look at it on the flip side, though. Say you've got a weekly limit of 1000 in whatever you're grinding. Then say you can realistically advance that value at a rate of 250 points per hour.
If you spread that over a week, it's 142 points per day, or only about 40 minutes. Then say you can only play on the weekends. Now, to avoid that feeling of missing out that you were talking about, you have to devote four straight hours to doing it. The weekly limit is now incentivizing grinding for a significant duration, rather than simply being something you work on a bit each day.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here's the way I'm reading it:
If the only limit is a daily limit, then in order to keep up with the Joneses (the player population power curve), everyone must log in every day to grind. That's a chore, not something fun.
If, instead, there is a weekly or monthly limit, then people can attain that limit in any way they wish - daily, weekly, or every other Tuesday. At the end of the extended limit period, everyone would still be at roughly the same relative power position, and no one would have felt torn between "having" to log in daily to get the daily limit, or doing other things.
Thanks! You give me hope that I'm not simply failing to express myself clearly :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Look at it on the flip side, though.
Okay, let's take it one step further.
There's a daily limit of 142 points. But you have, say, an Aikido class every Tuesday and Thursday evening which pretty much precludes your ability to play those days. Maybe Wednesday night is a family night when you play Guitar Hero with your daughter. But you've got plenty of time on the weekends, and in fact you expect to play for 12+ hours both weekend days. Oh well, you'll just have to make do with 4/7 of the advancement you could have gotten, and simply deal with the fact that you're behind the curve among your peer group (your Chartered Company / the people you group with all the time). And if whatever your "grinding" is actually used to gate access to particular stages of an Escalation? Well, tough luck - you'll just have to group with some other people who also don't play every single day.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Would weekly limits in coin or gathered materials make sense to reduce the grind in earning those?
Are you asking if people would stop "grinding coin" if they stopped gaining coin? That answer seems obvious.
Are you asking if there should be time-based limits on the acquisition of resources? I certainly don't think there should be. However, those resources can be traded on the market. Faction can't.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would disagree with time-gating actively aquired currencies or resources. Things that are "spent" in exchange for advancement (Yes, xp is time-gated and spent, but is not actively aquired). But Reputation/Alignment are not consumed for advancement. They are about meeting a threshold. You are only "behind" other people until you meet that threshold. They also have upper bounds, limiting how far ahead of you someone who *does* work daily on advancement can get. If it takes a week to grind up to the upper bound metric, then a weekly limit is effectively not a limit at all, unless you're doing something else that causes you to lose it. Which circumvents the other purpose of a time-gated advancement rate, the prevention of "bouncing" the metric to work it up, then do something that penalizes you by reducing it, then grind it back up again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Dario, @Nihimon
the way I read Dario's post is that its not worth using a weekly limit if the cap isn't important.
Which would be nice. If these point based things for us to gain alliance or reputation, They have a Total Hard cap period. so a player who plays every day getting dailies could theoretically max out, another player who only plays on the weekends will still hit the life-time max it will just take him longer.
No these alignment and reputation systems can be spent by actions.
So with that said, as long as they keep hard limits on the pool you can have, daily or weekly limits won't really matter because you can never really "lose" a day.
Guess a good way to look at it is, There is a Life-time Cap (7,500) and there is a Daily Gate of (X) amount. so you can really never loose progress you will just take longer to get there
That said Reputation can be spent.
Personally I am still a fan of weekly gates.
However if the Daily cap is minor enough it might not matter.
(example) like first Rep granting action of the day gives you a defined bonus.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So with that said, as long as they keep hard limits on the pool you can have, daily or weekly limits won't really matter because you can never really "lose" a day.
Maybe it's my current experience in Vanguard, which is very, very grindy, but the idea that you'll "never really lose a day" rubs me wrong.
If I know my peer group is going to do Activity X next weekend, and I have (and need!) 7 days to reach the faction threshold, then I will definitely suffer if I fail to get my daily limit every single day. I don't understand why this seems so difficult to understand. Telling me that it won't make a difference in ten years is scant comfort.
I agree with Nihimon. I hate being pressured to work every day to keep up with people--I play like a geyser, not a river. Occasional bursts of activity instead of a steady flow.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon I understand where you are coming from I am just looking at it objectively and attempting to look at both sides of the argument.
I personally agree with you and would prefer to have a weekly limit and a lifetime limit VS a daily limit and lifetime limit (which is how it appears to be planned).
Mostly because I don't play daily, I liked Kobold Cleavers Geyser analogy. I don't play games Monday-Friday and if I do its for an hour at best. However weekends I can sometimes sink a all day 12+ hour session in.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Would weekly limits in coin or gathered materials make sense to reduce the grind in earning those?Are you asking if people would stop "grinding coin" if they stopped gaining coin? That answer seems obvious.
Are you asking if there should be time-based limits on the acquisition of resources? I certainly don't think there should be. However, those resources can be traded on the market. Faction can't.
What if faction could be? Either player-to-player, as "I vouch for this person, lowering my reputation but increasing theirs" or "I donated enough to the Rotary Club that they named a scholarship after me, and now they like me more."
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I agree with OP. Limits are what make the grind painful because you have no flexibility.
In an early 'vanilla' installment of a certain game there was no daily and no limit of 25 of them.
Despite being a 'hardcore' player I never felt any grind. Even certain *crazy* rep grinds.
I remember teaming up with a friend to earn rep with a certain bunch of metallic dragons by killing bugs in a certain desert for a couple of hours every evening before 'raid' time. I'd heal, he'd kill (they were big scary *elite* bugs).
In later installments of said game I felt press-ganged into playing every day or I'd fall behind. Even if I only needed to log in for 1-3hours per day, I still needed to log in for 1-3 hours (per character) each day or fall a little farther behind the cutting edge of content.
I like Decius' idea about being able to trade rep "I vouch for X" sort of fashion, that was something I really wanted in said other game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What about a softcap system in which your rate of gain takes into account how much you've gained recently. Downtime could provide a sort of 'rested XP' buffer to help you keep up, and after that's used your rate of point-gain gets slower and slower the longer you play within a 24-hour period. Maybe the rate at which you build up the 'rested' buffer would also depend on how long you've been logged out.