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Post by Okra on Dec 6, 2019 16:06:51 GMT -6
Hey all. Last night I had a discussion with Nashua over the new LMB system and it's faults. Mainly the rate at which people are reaching 100k. We've had a few people gain PL at extraordinary rates, myself included. I initially disagreed that people were gaining PL too quickly, and while I think those people are still outliers in in terms of PL gain and are just especially motivated, I did some thinking and I've come to see what Nashua was getting at. The new system encourages PL gains within the first 100k pl over getting items.
Now that LMB isn't factored into raw XP, it's much more advantageous to go for straight PL before you buy items. While items only count towards 75% of the xp value, it's still not really worth it to buy items when you can maximize your PL gains and then focus on items. If you try to get items and PL, it'll just throttle the rate at which you gain PL. So naturally, people go for PL first, which leads to some players reaching high power levels very quickly. Suggestion- Possibly make items only account for 50% of your xp total while you're under 100k or still in LMB? That might encourage more people to pick up items while still in the lmb stage. When people see others gain Power Level at an extraordinary rate. Sometimes others feel pressured to keep up.
This is just natural. When others see others zooming ahead, some people feel a need to try and keep up. It's sort of a feedback loop. I see people talking about trying to 'catch up' to others while I'm chatting in the discord. This isn't necessarily an issue with LMB, but LMB does exacerbate the issue. Personally, I don't feel it's healthy for rp when others feel a need to catch up. It often leads to inflated word counts and rapid posting. I also feels it adds a sense of competition that isn't really needed on a forum rp. This isn't really anyone else's fault. I'm not trying to point fingers at anyone. It just happens. New BP gains are too large.
We talked a bit on souls about adding extra gains to boost new players. This was also before the creation of SMM. I think Bao made a good point about what increasing gains could do. It certainly contributes to people getting PL at a swift rate. I think we should take a look at lowering the average xp given per bp. I think the average right now is around 13k XP? Maybe an average of 7k per BP would be better. Or, we could go to even lower numbers. I understand there might be some push-back and new players who might say "well those guys got way more xp on average, why can't I?" but it's still something we should take a look at.
Bao's point about increasing gains.Any other thoughts or suggestions?
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Regulus
Archived
PL: ARCHIVED - XP/PL TRANSFERRED TO EREGLA
Lunakin (x2T)
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Post by Regulus on Dec 6, 2019 16:33:19 GMT -6
Alright, I have a few thoughts on this myself.
For your first suggestion, I don’t think that will fix anything. If anything, it benefits the people in malus more instead of encouraging people to buy items while in LMB.
In the old system, when LMB increased raw XP gains, it encouraged newbies to get items first and PL later. The current situation is just the opposite of the old one.
As for increasing starter gains, because the switch in LMB and malus happened after it, I don’t think initial XP was ever rebalanced. 13k is roughly equal to 20k if you convert it all to PL, and because of how LMB works, you will. So really, you’re starting with 20k. If you want the starting PL to be around 13k, then lower the initial XP to an average of around 8k.
This is by no means a perfect system. But the way it is now, people are going to continue converting to PL while in LMB and not get items. Because getting items only slows you down from being “relevant” in terms of PL in the main story. People in malus will be more free to buy items like senzu beans than people not in malus. Just because of how it works now.
I suppose it just depends on if you prefer to get PL faster and discourage early items or encourage getting items faster and slow the PL growth rate.
For malus, the XP was nerfed, which meant that buying items and gaining PL were difficult. Progress of any kind mechanically was difficult. But now they’re more free to buy items and gain XP faster than before.
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Post by Reno on Dec 6, 2019 16:46:14 GMT -6
I might suggest you also think about what the lbm and malus is for. Its meant for new characters to have a way to catch up to the older players and for the older players to be able to settle down to collect items they may like. Eventually they raise when you get malus to progress the story and allow for the older players to progress further etc.
So any system you ask them to change to must solve the initial issues of new players not being able to catch up at all and give older players some thing to do.
This is a role play site not a arms race and you should do what fits your character best not what always works best on paper.
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Post by Kuma on Dec 6, 2019 17:22:20 GMT -6
I agree and disagree with certain points here, and I guess I'll speak as one of the newer people gaining faster as I can't speak elsewhere so take that as you will. This might be long.
I definitely agree that the new system absolutely encourages wanting to put all of your xp into pl to start, and I think it unintentionally punishes you for not doing it if you aren't an item/xp/minion main. If you buy an item that counts towards your LMB, 75% or 1% it not only costs xp at a flat rate, it now counts against your lmb. So if you buy an item for 2500, you are just spending 2500 on an item, it is counting 1,875 against lmb meaning you get that bonus basically subtracted from your lmb amount (so you wouldn't get lmb up to 100k pl as someone who didn't spend on items), and you are missing out on 3,750 pl. So you are not only 3,750 further away from that 100k spot, but unless you are one of the very very few with the 1.0 lmb, you are that much further away once you cap out. It may not seem like a lot at 2500 but it could build up if you get more items and more expensive items.
There is not only not an incentive to get items pre-100k, there is actually the opposite even if it seems minor. It doesn't matter if the items count for 75%, 50% or 25%, it's still counting against lmb and that is going to make people if nothing else question "Well should I really get this item or just spend and get my bonus pl, then I can just get items after 100k", which is what nearly everyone is doing since this new conversion change was put into place.
The old system frankly didn't have the same issue from the short time I got to see it in action because there was no incentive on the back end of conversion with the 1.5 in lmb it was all front loaded. And I get that sucked for people in malus, but most of the site isn't in malus, so the real benefit as far as getting items easier was just on a very small few and completely lowered the incentive to not go ham on pl for those in lmb, which is a much larger pool as far as new players, old players still in lmb with alts, or anyone creating a new alt.
I will absolutely agree some people have gotten far ahead in a very very short amount of time, and even I've gained fast, but I also post far more than the average veteran here, I also only have had one character up to this point as well. Some people have 3-5, some people only post 2 times a day, some people post 2 times every other day or even less than that. You can't directly compare a person who has multiple posts to respond to and the time and motivation to post say 3-6 posts every day with someone who is posting on multiple characters then compare just one of their characters with myself, or someone who doesn't want to post 3 to 6 times a day, or someone who doesn't even have the same amount of time or wants to do other stuff. That's not really a fair comparison cause you are just looking at it in a vacuum and going "Well Kuma is gaining a lot faster than X", when X isn't trying to post, wanting to post, maybe can't post as much. It doesn't mean one is trying to play "Catch up" or grind, or whatever else I've seen thrown around in the chat. I know there are a few people that hate how the new batch of players has gained pl fast, but you can't compare things in a vacuum. Those people didn't have LMB like this before, nor this conversion type. They would have got there just as fast when they started if they did.
So I don't really agree that the pressure to keep up is that important to most people as far as the newer ones, even if people make joking comments about it, as I talk to those people and rp with those people enough to know they aren't just pl grinding, they are making real stories and excited about rp, not just their numbers. It is a dragon ball rp site so the numbers are just inherently a thing people see and go "oooo!", or they see someone with Super Saiyan, and they want to be a Super Saiyan too. Can't fault them for that. big pl, transformations, fights, and also the rp is what people like about dragon ball, so you can't ignore 3 of those 4 as important parts of a dragon ball story. At some point you have to have other people to be the guy trying to take over or blow up a planet or a new group of guys trying to stop them, otherwise it's just going to be the same pool of 10 people doing all the big story plots and everyone else going "Wish I was strong enough to join that DE", while I've seen even older and very strong people in discord saying "It just feels like there is nothing going on". Sure it sucks to not be at the top anymore, or that new people are gaining pl, but it's an rp site, and more people with those big numbers doesn't take anyone else's piece of the story pie, it makes the pool of potential rpers bigger, and a chance for more varied stories and an expanded universe.
I absolutely disagree about your point of starting xp being too large. I think the problem is the fact that people are allowed to convert their starting xp from their bp using the xp-pl lmb conversion, not the starting xp itself. If someone using NG+ can't, then I don't feel a brand new character should either. Say someone starts with the 13k xp, then does the conversion that's a starting 19,500. It should simply be a 1 for 1 for your initial conversion. Sure someone could try to game the system and convert 1 pl then hold the rest but it's fairly easy to just keep track of starting xp, like have someone mark it down etc. My initial conversion from my bp was from the old system so it was 1 for 1 but people starting after essentially started with double the pl almost. I started with just under 13 and change and some people were starting with 20k from the lmb conversion changes.
Basically I don't think the amount given by the BP is the issue, it's allowing them to convert their starting bp with the lmb conversion. You might as well give them 20k from their BP cause that's what they are starting with.
I still say that the new system is hard imbalanced but not for all the reasons pointed out in the initial post. I still stand by the fact that the change hurt minion mains starting out. Sure minions gain at 1.25 but that's still .25 less, and you need items to keep your minion relevant since they don't get a standard sig or the standard species traits, so you will be spending a lot on items that will make your gains much slower than someone that just wants to be a pl main and gain get to 100k as we've seen, fairly quickly just by rp'ing. It's fine for people like Carro who was already in malus before the changes, and actually benefited them greatly, but it's gonna take someone new a good amount longer to get to that same point with the new system. You just gained the extra xp on the front end before and could spend it, where now you are basically getting nothing from lmb if you aren't putting it in pl, instead of gaining the lmb from xp and could get items faster from the start. It makes things slower and if you are a pl main you are probably just gonna skip out on items entirely cause some of them are pointless now like the weighted clothes.
Which brings me to my own point of really feeling like items need to be rebalanced then because some items just aren't as good anymore. As I stated, weighted clothes are flat out useless. Why spend 4k on that when you can spend 2k more and get a gravity machine that lasts forever. You get too 100k fast enough now that the weights stopping at 100k makes them a useless investment. Things like the blutz generator are honestly borderline useless now as Oozaru is not really useful realistically once you are past 100k because you will just get Super Saiyan and if you really want it, you can just get Power Ball which is good always and you are just getting it with tech slots which you'll naturally gain anyways.
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Post by Okra on Dec 6, 2019 17:23:28 GMT -6
Alright, I have a few thoughts on this myself. For your first suggestion, I don’t think that will fix anything. If anything, it benefits the people in malus more instead of encouraging people to buy items while in LMB. In the old system, when LMB increased raw XP gains, it encouraged newbies to get items first and PL later. The current situation is just the opposite of the old one. As for increasing starter gains, because the switch in LMB and malus happened after it, I don’t think initial XP was ever rebalanced. 13k is roughly equal to 20k if you convert it all to PL, and because of how LMB works, you will. So really, you’re starting with 20k. If you want the starting PL to be around 13k, then lower the initial XP to an average of around 8k. This is by no means a perfect system. But the way it is now, people are going to continue converting to PL while in LMB and not get items. Because getting items only slows you down from being “relevant” in terms of PL in the main story. People in malus will be more free to buy items like senzu beans than people not in malus. Just because of how it works now. I suppose it just depends on if you prefer to get PL faster and discourage early items or encourage getting items faster and slow the PL growth rate. For malus, the XP was nerfed, which meant that buying items and gaining PL were difficult. Progress of any kind mechanically was difficult. But now they’re more free to buy items and gain XP faster than before. I'm glad you responded. You are right by the way, buying items is way more efficient to do while in malus, but at malus a lot of items stop giving useful bonuses, i.e gravity training. The old system didn't really encourage either. Maybe items, partially, but it was more balanced then what we have now. I'm not suggesting to move to the old system either. I also feel encouraging pl growth over a more balanced approach is something we don't want. It leads to the 'pressure' to keep up that I was talking about. I might suggest you also think about what the lbm and malus is for. Its meant for new characters to have a way to catch up to the older players and for the older players to be able to settle down to collect items they may like. Eventually they raise when you get malus to progress the story and allow for the older players to progress further etc. So any system you ask them to change to must solve the initial issues of new players not being able to catch up at all and give older players some thing to do. This is a role play site not a arms race and you should do what fits your character best not what always works best on paper. I know exactly what LMB and malus is for, but there's an issue when we have people reaching 100k pl in a month. That's not the intention of lmb. |
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Post by Okra on Dec 6, 2019 17:34:51 GMT -6
I'm inclined to disagree here. There is certainly a pressure that some people feel a need to keep up. Some people do joke about it, and others don't say a thing. I've also seen a lot of people say that they need to get a lot of xp in order to be relevant at all. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.
I say it is an issue, personally. I think the boost to bp gains were implemented too early in the sites lifespan. Compared to the old rates, BP PL gains are huge. The average used to be what? 3k? Now it's 13k. It also still contributes to the rate which we see people hitting 100k pl. We never had a major boost to BP gains on souls. If we did, it was when I wasn't around and was implemented much later in the sites lifespan.
Also, I'd like to clarify that I don't think that having lots of threads is a bad thing. Nothing wrong with rping a lot. It's just that, speaking as a former souls staff (and the main idea of lmb may have changed since I was staff), while the intention of LMB is to help new players, it's not intended to help someone so much that they reach 100k in a little under or over a month.
You're right, it wouldn't be a perfect fix. I'm not sure there would be a great way to get around it without reverting back to the old system. I still think lowering it may help, albeit slightly. Part of the reason I made this thread was so I could get suggestions.
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Post by Kuma on Dec 6, 2019 17:54:54 GMT -6
I looked back a few weeks after I joined and while the starting BP xp was lower, the initial Malus from what I can find was like 20 or 30k, and from threads I found it was because people were gaining pl fast. Malus is still there to keep those ahead from staying way ahead and those new players having a chance to catch up, because this is still a dragon ball site, not like Naruto or MHA where "power level" isn't a factor. You can't just keep looking at it in a vacuum of pl vs pl You have people sitting at like 175k and above on a handful of people, so comparitively, that's makes sense as I'm told the site is just a few months short of 2 years old. I have no idea how things were on souls so I can't comment, but you keep bringing up souls, or members that were on souls and quoting people from souls, but this ain't souls, and even different mods in some cases I would guess. They are both dragon ball rp sites, but they aren't the same site so I don't think that is really relevant to this discussion as an example.
I'll be honest I think this is being used as a borderline strawman to argue that people are just trying to gain xp fast to keep up. I'm not doubting there have been people to say it, but I think it is a very small percentage and using it as a major point of the argument seems disingenuous while also downplaying people that have gained it without caring. I haven't done a single training thread, solo, or ad and I've gained xp naturally because I've rp'd with the vast majority of people on the site. I've just been involved with stories, making stories, etc, and I know a good amount of those gaining fast are the same, so I don't really think this point is fair to use as a blanket statement. If you want to say there is a minority doing it then go ahead, but I think it really is a minority and should be presented that way.
We'll just have to agree to disagree about the bp point, as I said my peace about the previous site and I still don't think the current starting amount is the actual issue with it. |
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Post by Okra on Dec 6, 2019 18:44:41 GMT -6
I looked back a few weeks after I joined and while the starting BP xp was lower, the initial Malus from what I can find was like 20 or 30k, and from threads I found it was because people were gaining pl fast. Malus is still there to keep those ahead from staying way ahead and those new players having a chance to catch up, because this is still a dragon ball site, not like Naruto or MHA where "power level" isn't a factor. You can't just keep looking at it in a vacuum of pl vs pl You have people sitting at like 175k and above on a handful of people, so comparitively, that's makes sense as I'm told the site is just a few months short of 2 years old. I have no idea how things were on souls so I can't comment, but you keep bringing up souls, or members that were on souls and quoting people from souls, but this ain't souls, and even different mods in some cases I would guess. They are both dragon ball rp sites, but they aren't the same site so I don't think that is really relevant to this discussion as an example. I'd say bringing up souls is relevant. The mechanics with power level and lmb are largely the same. Just because it's a different site, doesn't mean we can't compare the two.
I'll be honest I think this is being used as a borderline strawman to argue that people are just trying to gain xp fast to keep up. I'm not doubting there have been people to say it, but I think it is a very small percentage and using it as a major point of the argument seems disingenuous while also downplaying people that have gained it without caring. I haven't done a single training thread, solo, or ad and I've gained xp naturally because I've rp'd with the vast majority of people on the site. I've just been involved with stories, making stories, etc, and I know a good amount of those gaining fast are the same, so I don't really think this point is fair to use as a blanket statement. If you want to say there is a minority doing it then go ahead, but I think it really is a minority and should be presented that way. I don't see how it's disingenuous to say that at all. Speaking from personal experience, I'd say it's a larger percentage than you might think that feel pressured to keep up. Also, I'm not trying to call out specific players, please try to keep that in mind. I'm not attacking or criticizing anyone.
Sure active players should be rewarded for their activity, but getting to 100k quickly isn't healthy for the site at this stage. I'd argue that while people are doing a great job building relationships, they aren't giving their characters time to settle in and breath. Suddenly, you have a character that is super powerful, stronger than a decent portion of the site. And they really just came out of nowhere. It's like if some random new character popped up in dragon ball that was super weak and then in one or two episodes they're almost as strong as Goku and Vegeta.
We'll just have to agree to disagree about the bp point, as I said my peace about the previous site and I still don't think the current starting amount is the actual issue with it. Alright. |
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Regulus
Archived
PL: ARCHIVED - XP/PL TRANSFERRED TO EREGLA
Lunakin (x2T)
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Post by Regulus on Dec 7, 2019 1:37:29 GMT -6
Regarding the discussion about the pressure to keep up, I'm just going to say a few words because I don't think there's an actual solution to it and as such, don't think its worth going into.
This is from my perspective as an older player. It sucks when new people pass you up in terms of overall XP and PL. It's not a good feeling. I can't say that its like that for everyone, but that's how it can feel sometimes. I've also felt it the other way where I want more and more XP so I can do the cool things. I don't really think there's a fix for this, but its real and it exists.
As for the other discussions, I've already given my thoughts. I think its a matter of preference?
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Post by Duran on Dec 8, 2019 16:04:58 GMT -6
Am i the only one that thinks the system is perfectly fine as is? lol
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