I initially had nothing to say about this, but after reading Frisbee and Maina's posts, I'm really feeling their ideas.
I want my character to learn and progress, and for that hard work, blood and sweat to count for something in the overall storyline somewhere.
I also am all about that merit. I hope that GMs will consider RP being a way to gain merit instead of just relying on mechanical things to make it go up.
I'm not a fan of extra points/special abilities or whatever one might call it. I think that 'master' and 'legend' will lose its true value over time as players chase after that dream.
My overall thinking is to not hesitate to give us something to do to contribute to the world. Keep us busy and most of us I'm pretty sure won't complain too much about reaching 100.
Idle Musing: Keep making those numbers go up!
Re: Idle Musing: Keep making those numbers go up!
(Rias says, "Happiness is accepting your past as part of who you are.")
Re: Idle Musing: Keep making those numbers go up!
I'm also late to the party. I've been thinking about this for a little while, and my ideas are often far fetched at best, but first a little background in numbers.
Most people are comfortable with finite sums. Adding 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125 won't make most people sweat. Those are just powers of 1/2 (or negative powers of 2, if you prefer), so 2^(-1) + 2^(-2) + 2^(-3). It is possible to continue that series infinitely and that sum converges to 1. There are a lot of number series like that, generally adding increasing powers of numbers smaller than one converge to a finite number, yay fun math doing weird things. So that's the background needed to understand the rest of this idea, which is that you could slowly earn a random re-roll similar to morale.
Locking
Hitting level 100 would make available a feature for skill locking. When you lock your skills, you can't skill decrease or skill increase any longer, you have to unlock to do that. Unlocking allows you to increase and decrease skills again, but you doing so causes you to lose all of your post-lock progression. Your post-lock progression is that you get a second column of practice for each of your skills that starts at 0 and can be practiced up as normal. Once a skill is practiced up to your same skill level you locked at, it resets to 0 practice and gives you a reroll 5% of the time. The next completed set of practice raises the probability from 5% to 9% (0.05 + 0.05 * 0.8), the next completed set of practice raises the probability from 9% to 12.2% (0.05 + 0.05 * 0.8 + 0.05 * 0.8^2). This could be repeated infinitely and would just get you to one reroll 25% of the time. Infinite growth, diminishing returns, incentive to experiment for a time, and incentive to settle on what your character can do and get just a little bit better at it over time. The percentages don't have to start and end at 5% and 25%, there's flexibility there and I have NO IDEA what is reasonable, since maybe morale is less awesome than I thought due to bug fixes (I haven't tried it out at all), but this might be a way to fill in that gap a little more for characters up at cap.
Most people are comfortable with finite sums. Adding 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125 won't make most people sweat. Those are just powers of 1/2 (or negative powers of 2, if you prefer), so 2^(-1) + 2^(-2) + 2^(-3). It is possible to continue that series infinitely and that sum converges to 1. There are a lot of number series like that, generally adding increasing powers of numbers smaller than one converge to a finite number, yay fun math doing weird things. So that's the background needed to understand the rest of this idea, which is that you could slowly earn a random re-roll similar to morale.
Locking
Hitting level 100 would make available a feature for skill locking. When you lock your skills, you can't skill decrease or skill increase any longer, you have to unlock to do that. Unlocking allows you to increase and decrease skills again, but you doing so causes you to lose all of your post-lock progression. Your post-lock progression is that you get a second column of practice for each of your skills that starts at 0 and can be practiced up as normal. Once a skill is practiced up to your same skill level you locked at, it resets to 0 practice and gives you a reroll 5% of the time. The next completed set of practice raises the probability from 5% to 9% (0.05 + 0.05 * 0.8), the next completed set of practice raises the probability from 9% to 12.2% (0.05 + 0.05 * 0.8 + 0.05 * 0.8^2). This could be repeated infinitely and would just get you to one reroll 25% of the time. Infinite growth, diminishing returns, incentive to experiment for a time, and incentive to settle on what your character can do and get just a little bit better at it over time. The percentages don't have to start and end at 5% and 25%, there's flexibility there and I have NO IDEA what is reasonable, since maybe morale is less awesome than I thought due to bug fixes (I haven't tried it out at all), but this might be a way to fill in that gap a little more for characters up at cap.
Re: Idle Musing: Keep making those numbers go up!
There are some great ideas in here! It's very much the dream to try and let as many player characters feel important and impactful as possible, but with this particular line of musing I was trying to think of things that could keep people busy when such things *aren't* happening. Individually-tailored character involvement and world development are great, but they're also a constant ongoing effort for staff and require quite a lot of time, energy, motivation, and creative steam. It's absolutely a worthwhile effort, but in this particular thread I was looking for little things that might help people feel there's always something to do during the downtime, something that from a development standpoint can be coded in and then moved on from to work on other areas of the game (like those world-affecting events). I know not everyone is as into the numbers and gamification and that's okay, but there could be some fairly minimal-effort ideas that could help keep the attention of those who are into that sort of thing and might be increasingly tempted to wander off when they hit that numeric progression ceiling.
And to reiterate, this isn't a current development focus, it's just something that came up in another community and I thought would be fun to get ideas for if anyone hand some spaghetti to throw at our wall here in COGG. Which is why I don't mind going off on a tangent for a bit here in this thread ...
The Dominion stands out as a faction that *wants* to do all that fixing mentioned above and is actually looking like they might be capable of making actual progress toward it, but, er ... spoiler alert, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Once the Dominion succeeds and turns the Lost Lands into a sprawling empire of glorious order and peace and prosperity, that's where I lose interest in trying to tell stories in the setting, because the setting will have fundamentally changed. That would be the point where I write "The End" in fancy cursive script and move on to something else. Luckily (for me, and those who enjoy the current setting) the Lost Lands is in such an awful state that it's pretty safe to say the Dominion's vision is still very much in the dream stage, and it's going to be such a monumental effort that we've got plenty of time to enjoy the scary ruins and monsters and chaos and overall struggle for humanity's survival in what is the most hostile region in the known world.
All that said, I *do* enjoy RP and efforts toward the betterment of the Lost Lands and its people and outposts, just as long as it's with reasonable expectations for the setting and expected results, and with the understanding that player characters aren't going to actually succeed in fixing the Lost Lands. Sometimes degrees of progress could be made toward that. Often, such progress is going to be undone in some way or other, because life out here is still a constant struggle and there are more than a few opposing forces against such progress. Or those who will prey on such things. Haiban in all its planned opulence and luxury was just begging to be raided, looted, and pillaged. There's a reason New Emberlight keeps stubbornly turning down offers to fix the town up again. There's a reason the significant population centers are in highly-defensible geographical positions, and the ones that have managed to survive are wary of reducing their survival chances by sending part of their population elsewhere to try and start a new one. (And most NPCs are well aware of the extremely low chances of survival trying to strike out away from the established population centers that have managed to survive, so they aren't likely to entertain offers to go help start or join a new settlement or outpost anyway, even when PCs try to wave bulging backpacks full of money at them. Riln isn't very useful to a dead man.)
One thing I can certainly stand to work on is to come up with more events and situations that are within my own setting expectations that can allow players to feel they can meaningfully contribute to, and more consistently set the stage.
Lastly, and this is important: There have been plenty of player-initiated efforts and projects that *have* fit into the setting. My previous paragraphs have likely sounded a bit grumpy. It's easy to get stuck dwelling on things that frustrated, but for every frustration there have been many more joys and delights. I'm very lucky to have you all interested in this game and this world, and wanting to play larger parts in it. I'll try to be better about working with PCs who want to make their mark.
And to reiterate, this isn't a current development focus, it's just something that came up in another community and I thought would be fun to get ideas for if anyone hand some spaghetti to throw at our wall here in COGG. Which is why I don't mind going off on a tangent for a bit here in this thread ...
One of the biggest struggles I've had with player expectations has been regarding crafting and world impact RP/events. There is the very understandable fact that many people want to "fix" the Lost Lands. People want to pretty it up, tame the dangers, burn down/blow up the dangerous combat zones, fix up the ruins, establish new settlements, build fancy restaurants and resorts, eat bonbons, craft legendary items ... but then the Lost Lands isn't the Lost Lands anymore. There's a deliberate setting and aesthetic established, and I think some people see that as a challenge to be overcome rather than a long-term genre setting to play within. It's one of the reasons I've not wanted to implement mechanical qualities beyond "fine" - because people start getting ideas that they can spend a few hours churning out a bunch of "exquisite" and "masterful" items and convert <insert town/settlement here> into the next Haiban. I need to figure out a way to convey the idea that a skill of 700 (or 400, for skills that don't go beyond that) does not mean "capable of peerless world-class products and powers." The Lost Lands is lacking in many areas of specialized knowledge (even the Library of Qamar was thoroughly looted following the downfall of Aetgard before later being repopulated with great effort), there's not much in the way of remaining advanced production tools/facilities/components, and natural resources are largely limited to what can be found locally. (We do get occasional rare imports, but remember we're in a quarantine zone, which is not exactly an environment ripe for thriving trade).On CLOK/COGG, the only way to do this is with GM assistance. Which requires the time and effort of a very small team serving a growing playerbase. I'm not entirely sure why that has been the case
The Dominion stands out as a faction that *wants* to do all that fixing mentioned above and is actually looking like they might be capable of making actual progress toward it, but, er ... spoiler alert, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Once the Dominion succeeds and turns the Lost Lands into a sprawling empire of glorious order and peace and prosperity, that's where I lose interest in trying to tell stories in the setting, because the setting will have fundamentally changed. That would be the point where I write "The End" in fancy cursive script and move on to something else. Luckily (for me, and those who enjoy the current setting) the Lost Lands is in such an awful state that it's pretty safe to say the Dominion's vision is still very much in the dream stage, and it's going to be such a monumental effort that we've got plenty of time to enjoy the scary ruins and monsters and chaos and overall struggle for humanity's survival in what is the most hostile region in the known world.
All that said, I *do* enjoy RP and efforts toward the betterment of the Lost Lands and its people and outposts, just as long as it's with reasonable expectations for the setting and expected results, and with the understanding that player characters aren't going to actually succeed in fixing the Lost Lands. Sometimes degrees of progress could be made toward that. Often, such progress is going to be undone in some way or other, because life out here is still a constant struggle and there are more than a few opposing forces against such progress. Or those who will prey on such things. Haiban in all its planned opulence and luxury was just begging to be raided, looted, and pillaged. There's a reason New Emberlight keeps stubbornly turning down offers to fix the town up again. There's a reason the significant population centers are in highly-defensible geographical positions, and the ones that have managed to survive are wary of reducing their survival chances by sending part of their population elsewhere to try and start a new one. (And most NPCs are well aware of the extremely low chances of survival trying to strike out away from the established population centers that have managed to survive, so they aren't likely to entertain offers to go help start or join a new settlement or outpost anyway, even when PCs try to wave bulging backpacks full of money at them. Riln isn't very useful to a dead man.)
One thing I can certainly stand to work on is to come up with more events and situations that are within my own setting expectations that can allow players to feel they can meaningfully contribute to, and more consistently set the stage.
Lastly, and this is important: There have been plenty of player-initiated efforts and projects that *have* fit into the setting. My previous paragraphs have likely sounded a bit grumpy. It's easy to get stuck dwelling on things that frustrated, but for every frustration there have been many more joys and delights. I'm very lucky to have you all interested in this game and this world, and wanting to play larger parts in it. I'll try to be better about working with PCs who want to make their mark.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
<Fellborn> NO
Re: Idle Musing: Keep making those numbers go up!
Even if people could just "fix" one zone at a time, here and there ... that's GM effort that got put into producing a zone and its inhabitants, balancing it, all that gets thrown in the trash, and five years from now new players have nowhere to level combat because people decided "let's clean up the Ravenwood, and now Tarueka, and now let's go about exterminating all the bandits and solving the problems" - it's silly. You can't expect to just "solve" dangerous areas any more than you can expect to exterminate all the random encounters in your favorite non-Undertale JRPG or stop the repops in an MMO. There's a reason it's been made clear that the Infestation is difficult to clear out of a region. COGG might be a roleplaying game, but it is also an "other-things-too" game, and it's important to temper expectations in those regards and make sure that roleplay does not hamper those "other-things-too".
On a different-but-relevant topic, a small note that "people making their own crafts" (as Maina brought up, and I think Rias touched on) as perhaps a use for experience-spending needn't be complicated or advanced skill (at least not to the extent our merchants at perhaps-2000 skill have been doing it). Look how many people are utterly thrilled every time a hairdresser comes around, and that's virtually zero-tech in-character. People tying ribbons to weapon handles, making a shirt out of yellow cloth and blue cloth, making a handcart carved with images of Nereia, etching a ring with a hatch pattern - things almost any crafter would be able to do easily enough, I think, and could add a great deal of personality to peoples' attires and skillsets - but there is also the sad fact that it may end up needing to get policed by staff to prevent abuse ("a yellow-and-blue-clothed sweater" can easily turn into "a sapphire-studded-and-royal-silk-clothed sweater"). However, we do have a system in place that could account for that - after all, you can create carvings and statues from a predefined list, and when buying items, you can often customize things to an extent. Those sorts of systems could be leveraged into an advanced crafting system where you can choose from a wide array of options - some with variables, perhaps, that can be customized further - and players could submit new options in a similar way to craftmarks: approval, rather than policing, though in these cases the options should be generic since everyone would get to use them; a tabard embroidered with $design is less "a picture of a horse biting someone's hair" and more "a picture of a horse". Even 'scrambled eggs' could turn into '$fruit-mixed scrambled eggs' (where $fruit comes from a list) or 'scrambled eggs [dotted with/covered in/sprinkled with] $spice', handcarts could be 'a $pattern-patterned $wood handcart' or 'a [$animal/$god/$flower/faerie/vampire/fish/varwolf/werewolf/...]-carved $wood handcart' or 'a [$animal/$god/$flower/faerie/vampire/fish/varwolf/werewolf/...]-designed $wood handcart'.
On a different-but-relevant topic, a small note that "people making their own crafts" (as Maina brought up, and I think Rias touched on) as perhaps a use for experience-spending needn't be complicated or advanced skill (at least not to the extent our merchants at perhaps-2000 skill have been doing it). Look how many people are utterly thrilled every time a hairdresser comes around, and that's virtually zero-tech in-character. People tying ribbons to weapon handles, making a shirt out of yellow cloth and blue cloth, making a handcart carved with images of Nereia, etching a ring with a hatch pattern - things almost any crafter would be able to do easily enough, I think, and could add a great deal of personality to peoples' attires and skillsets - but there is also the sad fact that it may end up needing to get policed by staff to prevent abuse ("a yellow-and-blue-clothed sweater" can easily turn into "a sapphire-studded-and-royal-silk-clothed sweater"). However, we do have a system in place that could account for that - after all, you can create carvings and statues from a predefined list, and when buying items, you can often customize things to an extent. Those sorts of systems could be leveraged into an advanced crafting system where you can choose from a wide array of options - some with variables, perhaps, that can be customized further - and players could submit new options in a similar way to craftmarks: approval, rather than policing, though in these cases the options should be generic since everyone would get to use them; a tabard embroidered with $design is less "a picture of a horse biting someone's hair" and more "a picture of a horse". Even 'scrambled eggs' could turn into '$fruit-mixed scrambled eggs' (where $fruit comes from a list) or 'scrambled eggs [dotted with/covered in/sprinkled with] $spice', handcarts could be 'a $pattern-patterned $wood handcart' or 'a [$animal/$god/$flower/faerie/vampire/fish/varwolf/werewolf/...]-carved $wood handcart' or 'a [$animal/$god/$flower/faerie/vampire/fish/varwolf/werewolf/...]-designed $wood handcart'.