Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

I try to think about things such as this in terms of the activity you are trying to reward. Players are going to (in most cases) do those activities which reward them most, or which they find the most rewarding. The party loot chests had plenty of detractors before it was implemented, but has been successful in its intended benefit...removing a "penalty" leveraged against people adventuring in a group, causing more parties to form...

Bringing this to the topic at hand, moving quest xp to be granted for adventuring/rp moves players away from quest grinding, except when level appropriate for the adventure/gold. Instead they will do what d&d is based on...adventure and role play. Currently most builds, especially in epics gain xp faster by quests than any other activity...thus we incent players toward quest grinding. Implementing a weekly xp pool rewarded for rp and kills rewards players for doing what the game is really about. Maybe there are other ways to move folks away from quest grinding and toward rp/adventure, but this seems a simple solution that has been successfully implemented elsewhere in the past.

Side wrote:I would say we make every quest give regular experience for the first time only. Then it either goes over to pool experience or the opt in system. Maybe give every quest a small experience bump compared to how it is now for the first completion too. Not all of the quests are terrible after all, and there should be some sort of reason for new players to take the time and search them out.

The quests - they're all terrible. Every sinlge one of them. I had many many characters and I saw them many times, and seeing 5-page speech of those idiot halflings for the 50th time is infuriating (the fact that you can't murder them both on the spot in the name of greater good is even more infuriating). Same applies to norton's smug introduction, the guy which sends you to deliver goods to temple of gond and pays one gold piece, and all the other nonsense.

Aside from the obligatory grind, the big issue is that they ALL godmod/force your character to act a specific predetermined way. I understand what quest designer tried to do, but when your MUTE character suddenly starts speaking elaborate page long sentences (witch quest), it feels out of the place. Some of the quests also take your alignment into account, and force individual alignments to act in specific cartoony way. For example, in badger quest you can either act like an idiot and go "aww you are soo cute with your badger" and coo over them or like an idiot that pulls a blade out in a town full of guards to take the badger hostage. It just feels dumb for me. In Berries quest evil characters' start vaguely threatening Jehanna (or whatever her name is), etc. It ALL feels fake, and doesn't fit the atmosphere of the server.

So no, there are no non-terrible quests. At least I can't think of a non-terrible quest at the moment.

I wouldn't mind if they gave xp for the first time, though (subtract it from the pool, maybe, if it is granted, even if the pool goes negative?), but I feel like nobody should be required to take any of those quests, ever. I do think that they might help a lower level characters to get started. I mean that's one way to hit level 2 quickly, unless you're an ECL (in which case you'll have to either go punch zombies or start risky run to OTHER quest, because you totally know how to get to beregost rightaway). On surface, anyway.

Side wrote: I do have a question though. What happens if you don't use all of the pool experience by the end of the week? Is the pool reset to 8500, or does the 8500 add onto what was left at the end of the week?

I think it doesn't really matter which way is used and I would prefer if the pool kept accumulating, as long as character is still active. You're still required to ACT to get that bonus xp, and even if there's millions of bonus xp in the pool, if you aren't doing anything, you won't get any of it. Which is quite fair, in my opinion. My main for example at the moment is getting 0..700 xp per week despite being active, and even with the pool it'll simply translate into 0..1400 xp per week, meaning most of the bonus will be unused.

The pool shouldn't be getting any xp if character ISN'T active. Meaning you'd need to log on with the char once in a while and actually go down the world and play for a while, to get your bonus. This could be implemeneted by recording the number of the week (i.e. index of the week within the year, or relative to start of unix epoch, or whatever) player played last time and granting bonus if the number has changed. It probably wouldn't make any sense to implement overly draconian tracking of player's activity, the idea is to save people from having to do the damn quests and give an option to just enjoy whatever they like doing. If someone wants faster progression, they can try pushing the luck by grinding whatever (kills/rp) once the pool runs out. If someone doesn't need this, hey, they can just not opt in for the feature.

That's the way I see it.

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NegInfinity wrote: So no, there are no non-terrible quests. At least I can't think of a non-terrible quest at the moment.

Well, as a primary UD player I don't think all of the quests down there are terrible.

NegInfinity wrote: The pool shouldn't be getting any xp if character ISN'T active. Meaning you'd need to log on with the char once in a while and actually go down the world and play for a while, to get your bonus. This could be implemeneted by recording the number of the week (i.e. index of the week within the year, or relative to start of unix epoch, or whatever) player played last time and granting bonus if the number has changed. It probably wouldn't make any sense to implement overly draconian tracking of player's activity, the idea is to save people from having to do the damn quests and give an option to just enjoy whatever they like doing. If someone wants faster progression, they can try pushing the luck by grinding whatever (kills/rp) once the pool runs out. If someone doesn't need this, hey, they can just not opt in for the feature.

That's the way I see it.

Here's the reason I ask. Say you continue with your current rate of experience. After a few months of playing like that you get some time off and want to play a bit more than usual.

If pool experience doesn't roll over you have 8500 experience to gain each week and that's it. If it does roll over all those weeks that have been building up are now available to you. You could easily make 8000 every few days if you had the time. You can catch back up to people who play just as many days as you do, but put more hours into those days.

It's not as big of an issue for people with very static schedules, but for anyone who never knows how often and how long they can play it could mean quite a bit.

Side wrote:

NegInfinity wrote: So no, there are no non-terrible quests. At least I can't think of a non-terrible quest at the moment.

Well, as a primary UD player I don't think all of the quests down there are terrible.

I'm mostly playing at surface. UD quests may be better, but I hate surface quests at this point.

Side wrote:

NegInfinity wrote: The pool shouldn't be getting any xp if character ISN'T active. Meaning you'd need to log on with the char once in a while and actually go down the world and play for a while, to get your bonus. This could be implemeneted by recording the number of the week (i.e. index of the week within the year, or relative to start of unix epoch, or whatever) player played last time and granting bonus if the number has changed. It probably wouldn't make any sense to implement overly draconian tracking of player's activity, the idea is to save people from having to do the damn quests and give an option to just enjoy whatever they like doing. If someone wants faster progression, they can try pushing the luck by grinding whatever (kills/rp) once the pool runs out. If someone doesn't need this, hey, they can just not opt in for the feature.

That's the way I see it.

Here's the reason I ask. Say you continue with your current rate of experience. After a few months of playing like that you get some time off and want to play a bit more than usual.

If pool experience doesn't roll over you have 8500 experience to gain each week and that's it. If it does roll over all those weeks that have been building up are now available to you. You could easily make 8000 every few days if you had the time. You can catch back up to people who play just as many days as you do, but put more hours into those days.

It's not as big of an issue for people with very static schedules, but for anyone who never knows how often and how long they can play it could mean quite a bit.

I don't mind pool accumulating forever, and think it is better idea than capping xp in the pool at weekly amount. As I said, to get xp from the pool you need to do something first, so you'll be interacting with people and won't get any xp for free.

The issue is progression vs available time. Calodan's suggestion look like a great compromise that can address that. There's not much to add to this.

I'm mostly playing at surface. UD quests may be better, but I hate surface quests at this point.

The UD quests are quite compact and easy to do and only take about 1 hour or so to complete. Very nice compared to the surface quests.