Post by Lady on Mar 10, 2015 8:32:08 GMT
Brace yourself for a hell of an essay.
So this has been weighing on my mind for a long time now; several months in fact, and recently even more so where I find my thoughts constantly turning to it. What if we had a very simple, rudimentary stats system in place?
I'll preface further discussion by stating clearly that right now I am NOT implementing such a system nor have any current plans to, but I want to reach out to the community and hear your thoughts on the subject. So if you find yourself not favoring the idea at all, fear not.
I find myself often wishing that I'd created the board with something that would allow a certain level of fairness but also accuracy of a player's strength and the strength of their items and powers. Ultimately the decision between myself and my founding mods was to keep things as a freeform RP. The community has grown exponentially since then and we've made many changes in rules in order to keep things from getting out of hand. We live, we learn. As things stand, the board works pretty well with a team of mods able to monitor things on an individual level for discrepencies and most people do play fairly with one another.
But things could be more so, and numbers help, especially with a system that would be simplistic. The pros and cons of such a setup are many on both sides, however, and thus why I want to hear from the community.
Pro:
1) Accuracy. There would be no guessing if someone was capable of crushing a bus with a single punch of their alchemized gauntlets. It would be given a value, or the player, or both, that lets it be known just how strong someone is. While this would be useful for PVE situations, it would be an enormous equalizer for PvP.
2) A clear power ceiling. There could be a cap or a limit (or maybe there won't be, as I said, there's no solid ideas right now, but in theory...) so that once you reach the top of your theoretical echeladder, that's it. There's no going higher. It would be a goal for players to eventually reach as well as making sure there's no singular handful of individuals that utterly dominate everything.
3) A potential lifting of current strife rules. The rules placed to put limitations on artifacts were in an attempt to artificially make said power limitations so that we don' t have older (or richer) players able to swoop into a spot and curbstomp everything in sight.
4) Adds a new dimension to the game. There could be stat altering powers, items, glitches, planetary perks, you name it. It's a whole new playing field.
5) Allows quick assessment of another player. OOCly, you could glance at their stats or the qualities of their weaponry and gear and get a good idea on if you really want your character to get involved in a situation or not, allowing for more informed choices where strife and PVP is concerned.
Cons:
1) Work. Work. WORK. The work for such an overhaul would absolutely enormous were it to be a boardwide situation. I've brought the idea up in passing to my mods before and gotten negative feedback for this reason. When we implemented the rule that all powers had to be stated up front and clearly, mods had to go through every single profile to look the changes over and approve them, sometimes needing to work long term with players who needed to fine tune things. That was a relatively small change and it still took a while with all the mods working. This would be at least five times that work. Chances are good that mod activity (including myself) on the board would drop, slowing everything as we focused attention to the task. On a related note....
2) Inability to use, well, a lot of things. Until your character was completely restatted, including their gear, the powers, their race, everything, you wouldn't be able to do anything using the stats system until absolutely everything was finished which could take quite a long time.
3) Massive retcons and loss of races, items, and powers. Not everything would be able to be converted as is. Many things would need to be rewritten to fit the terms and definitions and phrasings used utilizing stats. And some things wouldn't be convertible at all for various reasons, which may result in some things not being useable anymore and that, in turn, might require a looooot of handwaving "glitching" to resolve things RP-wise.
4) A great deal of take-backs, tweakings, and adjustments. Since we'd be going forward with a system that hasn't been in use before, even with a small sample prior testing, odds are high that we'll nod and agree to a change only to later say 'nevermind, this isn't working out after all' which can be frustrating for everyone involved. You can compound that frustration exponentially if it winds up being a massive change that effects everyone at the same time.
There's likely more to be said for and against the idea that will surface in the ensuing discussion. As you can see for yourself, there's much to be said on both sides of the issue.
There's a third option as well, which is that it not be a boardwide thing but a pseudo-optional set-up. Primarily, I was thinking, something similar to the arena or a world or something on a small scale of that size. It'd diminish the severity of most of the cons but it'd also mean that the pros only apply to that one section and it would also cause an increase amount of various powers and items and such being rejected for simplicity's sake, thus such things would just be nullified and unusuable in that localized area (similar to the glitch on LOMAM.) But people who are in favor of the idea but not wanting to see it applied boardwide might want to consider this option. If this option is chosen by the majority, I'll likely spend a great deal of time working with players and brainstorming to see how it would best be implemented.
Again, as reassurence, this is just me feeling things out with the playerbase right now so nothing is planned and nothing is going to go into motion. I plan to spend a long time discussing things before I even tentatively suggest moving forward, if I do at all. I now invite you all to vote and to post expressing your own thoughts on the matter.
So this has been weighing on my mind for a long time now; several months in fact, and recently even more so where I find my thoughts constantly turning to it. What if we had a very simple, rudimentary stats system in place?
I'll preface further discussion by stating clearly that right now I am NOT implementing such a system nor have any current plans to, but I want to reach out to the community and hear your thoughts on the subject. So if you find yourself not favoring the idea at all, fear not.
I find myself often wishing that I'd created the board with something that would allow a certain level of fairness but also accuracy of a player's strength and the strength of their items and powers. Ultimately the decision between myself and my founding mods was to keep things as a freeform RP. The community has grown exponentially since then and we've made many changes in rules in order to keep things from getting out of hand. We live, we learn. As things stand, the board works pretty well with a team of mods able to monitor things on an individual level for discrepencies and most people do play fairly with one another.
But things could be more so, and numbers help, especially with a system that would be simplistic. The pros and cons of such a setup are many on both sides, however, and thus why I want to hear from the community.
Pro:
1) Accuracy. There would be no guessing if someone was capable of crushing a bus with a single punch of their alchemized gauntlets. It would be given a value, or the player, or both, that lets it be known just how strong someone is. While this would be useful for PVE situations, it would be an enormous equalizer for PvP.
2) A clear power ceiling. There could be a cap or a limit (or maybe there won't be, as I said, there's no solid ideas right now, but in theory...) so that once you reach the top of your theoretical echeladder, that's it. There's no going higher. It would be a goal for players to eventually reach as well as making sure there's no singular handful of individuals that utterly dominate everything.
3) A potential lifting of current strife rules. The rules placed to put limitations on artifacts were in an attempt to artificially make said power limitations so that we don' t have older (or richer) players able to swoop into a spot and curbstomp everything in sight.
4) Adds a new dimension to the game. There could be stat altering powers, items, glitches, planetary perks, you name it. It's a whole new playing field.
5) Allows quick assessment of another player. OOCly, you could glance at their stats or the qualities of their weaponry and gear and get a good idea on if you really want your character to get involved in a situation or not, allowing for more informed choices where strife and PVP is concerned.
Cons:
1) Work. Work. WORK. The work for such an overhaul would absolutely enormous were it to be a boardwide situation. I've brought the idea up in passing to my mods before and gotten negative feedback for this reason. When we implemented the rule that all powers had to be stated up front and clearly, mods had to go through every single profile to look the changes over and approve them, sometimes needing to work long term with players who needed to fine tune things. That was a relatively small change and it still took a while with all the mods working. This would be at least five times that work. Chances are good that mod activity (including myself) on the board would drop, slowing everything as we focused attention to the task. On a related note....
2) Inability to use, well, a lot of things. Until your character was completely restatted, including their gear, the powers, their race, everything, you wouldn't be able to do anything using the stats system until absolutely everything was finished which could take quite a long time.
3) Massive retcons and loss of races, items, and powers. Not everything would be able to be converted as is. Many things would need to be rewritten to fit the terms and definitions and phrasings used utilizing stats. And some things wouldn't be convertible at all for various reasons, which may result in some things not being useable anymore and that, in turn, might require a looooot of handwaving "glitching" to resolve things RP-wise.
4) A great deal of take-backs, tweakings, and adjustments. Since we'd be going forward with a system that hasn't been in use before, even with a small sample prior testing, odds are high that we'll nod and agree to a change only to later say 'nevermind, this isn't working out after all' which can be frustrating for everyone involved. You can compound that frustration exponentially if it winds up being a massive change that effects everyone at the same time.
There's likely more to be said for and against the idea that will surface in the ensuing discussion. As you can see for yourself, there's much to be said on both sides of the issue.
There's a third option as well, which is that it not be a boardwide thing but a pseudo-optional set-up. Primarily, I was thinking, something similar to the arena or a world or something on a small scale of that size. It'd diminish the severity of most of the cons but it'd also mean that the pros only apply to that one section and it would also cause an increase amount of various powers and items and such being rejected for simplicity's sake, thus such things would just be nullified and unusuable in that localized area (similar to the glitch on LOMAM.) But people who are in favor of the idea but not wanting to see it applied boardwide might want to consider this option. If this option is chosen by the majority, I'll likely spend a great deal of time working with players and brainstorming to see how it would best be implemented.
Again, as reassurence, this is just me feeling things out with the playerbase right now so nothing is planned and nothing is going to go into motion. I plan to spend a long time discussing things before I even tentatively suggest moving forward, if I do at all. I now invite you all to vote and to post expressing your own thoughts on the matter.