XP Reducer

[Beldacar]

I don't know how Blizzard or SOE does it, but in DAoC XP gain could be turned off. It was introduced when they introduced RVR battlefields that capped at certain levels. So say you wanted to stay in the 20-30 battlefield, you could turn off XP gain so you would not go above that lvl (as you gained XP killing other players.)

Assuming (I know!) that Blizzard and SOE did it for similar reasons

Could it be that the cost of the potential CS issues is outweighed by the need for players to remain a specific level, for level limited content?

If that is the case, there is nothing like that in LOTRO. In this case, the cost of CS issues may outweigh the need itself.

Well that's a matter of perspective. From my perspective, once quests turn grey and their rewards are no longer useful, that's "level-limited content." But I agree, there are no hard level caps on zones, so in that sense an XP off switch is not as "necessary" as it is in those games. But by that same logic, neither is a mentoring system.

I think Ohioastro is correct: this thread has reached the point where the exact same objections keep getting raised and the exact same counterpoints keep getting posted in response. Unless someone can come up with something "new" this thread has probably outlived its utility....

[FoxFire]

(Which makes me wonder. If such a tool is ever implemented, I strongly suspect that those who play hobbits will, by far, make the greatest use of it. The Shire . . . at least on Landroval . . . may be teaming with low-level hobbits just being hobbits. They would be gardening, cooking, drinking ale, smoking pipeweed, partying, and gawking in disbelief that any hobbit would even THINK of leaving the Shire.)

Not just hobbits. I not only have a Shire Bound hobbit, but also a Bree Land bound man - warden, each with their own interesting back story.

Unfortunately they are now both well above the appropriate levels for those areas, so there is no challenge there. When my Warden goes on his vendetta against the Brigands who killed his family, he pretty much has nothing to worry about, and if I want to go to an out of the way place to fish, there is no danger involved (he may as well stay in Staddle), so his existence has gotten pretty boring (unless he wants to leave Bree-Land which he has sworn to protect as a Watcher).

[DrWookie]

Not just hobbits. I not only have a Shire Bound hobbit, but also a Bree Land bound man - warden, each with their own interesting back story.

Unfortunately they are now both well above the appropriate levels for those areas, so there is no challenge there. When my Warden goes on his vendetta against the Brigands who killed his family, he pretty much has nothing to worry about, and if I want to go to an out of the way place to fish, there is no danger involved (he may as well stay in Staddle), so his existence has gotten pretty boring (unless he wants to leave Bree-Land which he has sworn to protect as a Watcher).

There are so many roleplaying opportunities like that in this game, considering the incredible amount of source material.

I actually think features like halting experience gain makes MORE sense in a game like this, which is so easily roleplayed, than in PVP games (where halting your level in a certain Tier allows you to gain the BEST equipment in that tier, making you more powerful than most people in that leveling area...allowing you to just gank everyone else).

[BINKLEY1]

This thread is like gum. It's less flavorful the more it lasts.

That's a great question -- just what flavor gum is this thread?

[ferdinanda]

Well, I think it's like cinnamon. Lots of flavour, tangy flavour, but it fades eventually.

/begs Turbine for an XP throttle

Actually, cucumber and tomato flavoured Froot Loops sounds kinda tasty. I'd buy a box.

[bubbajman]

For those wanting to do the level 50 stuff on level. Good luck finding 5 other level 50's to do the same thing.

[Tiempko]

For those wanting to do the level 50 stuff on level. Good luck finding 5 other level 50's to do the same thing.

I already know that this will not be a problem.

The reason it is difficult now is because Turbine rocket-sleds its characters past 50th level without the option to stop and explore them.

I've got more than enough people already lined up who would go on these adventures with me, if only Turbine would allow it.

In fact, I would expect a lot of players to find it much, much easier to find people to explore this content with, simply because those "passing through" will be supplemented by those who are sticking around for a while to enjoy the rich variety of content at that level.

Some kinships would likely have groups of alts stopped at Level 50, so that they can run The Rift and do other Level 50 content to break the tedious boredom of only having Level 60 (or 65) content to do at level.

Variety is the greatest ward against boredom.

[Khafar]

The reason it is difficult now is because Turbine rocket-sleds its characters past 50th level without the option to stop and explore them.

A decent mentoring system (or fully implemented instance scaling tech) would be more useful for this, because it would let people experience everything at an appropriate level, no matter where they currently were in their character progression (as long as they were at or past the level in question). Instances, raids, Books, you name it.

By the time a few more expansions have arrived, there will be raids and other instances at 50, 60, 65, 70, etc. Mentoring would allow those level 80s to go experience the Rift (or anything else) at an appropriate challenge level. Of course, the rewards wouldn't be very interesting if you've dropped 30 levels, but it isn't all about the loot.

A different approach (instance scaling) would go in the opposite direction, although it might only do so for a few discrete levels (e.g. an option to run a level 50 instance at levels 60 or 70). This would beef up the challenge and the rewards, and bring some of that content left in the rearview mirror back into the present. Turbine has just introduced an "Epic" option for some of their instances in DDO, which basically means "Take an older instance and provide an option for it which makes it suitable for the current level cap". They plan to roll that out over time to more and more instances, and they could certainly do something like that in LOTRO too. This approach is less flexible than mentoring (because it's infeasible to try and apply to all content), but would still be a very appealing way to extend the endgame.

Khafar

[DrWookie]

A decent mentoring system (or fully implemented instance scaling tech) would be more useful for this, because it would let people experience everything at an appropriate level, no matter where they currently were in their character progression (as long as they were at or past the level in question). Instances, raids, Books, you name it.

By the time a few more expansions have arrived, there will be raids and other instances at 50, 60, 65, 70, etc. Mentoring would allow those level 80s to go experience the Rift (or anything else) at an appropriate challenge level. Of course, the rewards wouldn't be very interesting if you've dropped 30 levels, but it isn't all about the loot.

A different approach (instance scaling) would go in the opposite direction, although it might only do so for a few discrete levels (e.g. an option to run a level 50 instance at levels 60 or 70). This would beef up the challenge and the rewards, and bring some of that content left in the rearview mirror back into the present. Turbine has just introduced an "Epic" option for some of their instances in DDO, which basically means "Take an older instance and provide an option for it which makes it suitable for the current level cap". They plan to roll that out over time to more and more instances, and they could certainly do something like that in LOTRO too. This approach is less flexible than mentoring (because it's infeasible to try and apply to all content), but would still be a very appealing way to extend the endgame.

Khafar

For the purposes of running older "end game" content again i agree those two systems would be superior. However, those two systems would also be MUCH harder to implement (in my opinion). So an "XP off" (with the proper restrictions to avoid whiners complaining when they accidentally leave it on) could even be a "temporary" solution to the instance issue.

However, that isn't the only issue at play with this feature (i'm sure you know that...you seem to have read most of this thread). I personally see the role-playing opportunities as much more important than running instanced content.

[Beleg]

While I don't have a problem with this "XP Toggle" a small, vocal group here are advocating for I can understand where Floon is coming from with his reasoning. He is following the K.I.S.S. principle.

Hardly. Floon is more in favor of a Mentoring system, instead of a simple XP toggle. While that would be a great system to have, the KISS choice would be the XP toggle.

We know that each character already has data related to XP associated with it - the rested XP bonus. This might be stored as a simple boolean true/false flag, which is checked before applying any incoming xp. More likely, it's a number (such as 1.1 for 10% extra) which is multiplied by any experienced gained before it's added to the character's total. Somewhere in the code, there's probably a line like:

character.xp += quest.xpReward * character.restedBonusRate;

Probably it's the latter, which would be just as easy as the boolean, but much more powerful. If Turbine wanted to change the rate (from 10% extra to 20% extra), they just need to change that number. If that's correct, then changing that multiplier to 0 would effectively toggle off any xp gain (or at least whatever xp is affected by the bonus; IIRC some is not). The line of code above wouldn't have to change at all - just the value of the rate. That would be a pretty simple change.

Even better, they could use a slider to allow the player to change that number from 0 to 1, so we could throttle XP to the pace we wanted. Almost as easy, but that would require an interface change, which isn't really necessary for what most proponents of this feature want.

Of course it may not be that simple. A line like that might actually be in multiple places in the code - one for quest rewards, one for mob kills, one for deeds, etc. If that's true, then it might be simple to turn off (or throttle) xp gain for some things (e.g., mob kills) but not for others (e.g. quest completion). That's probably what Floon means when he says it's not as simple as we think, and that implementing a quick and dirty solution would not result in a feature that made anyone happy; I understand that.

But if Turbine has done a good design and encapsulated the functionality, there's probably a Character object with a operation to called "addExperience". In that case, the change would only be necessary in single place.

At this point though, it's pretty clear that Floon thinks there isn't enough demand for this feature. But at least one other dev (ZC) seems to have another opinion. So, perhaps like the Public Option for health care reform, this option isn't quite dead yet.

[Tiempko]

On the accusation that a person might forget to turn off XP and be stuck "grinding mobs" to gain a level, this is a bogus and imaginary problem.

First, it assumes that people will routinely turn off XP immediately after gaining a new level. Actually, the vast majority of people (probably all of them) will be turning off XP shortly before leaving a level to prevent from leaving. When they turn leveling back on they will only need to "grind" a few monsters to finish up the level.

Second, in talking about "grinding mobs" one is thinking like somebody obsessed with XP and Turbine-generated quests - somebody who is not likely to use the feature to start with. Whereas those who use the feature would be people more interested in adventure then XP. For such a person, there is no such thing as grinding mobs. Such a player can invent their own quests. In my time as a player I have (1) rescued Bounders from goblins, (2) found lost children in the Old Forest, (3) delivered supplies to towns that have been substantially cut off by hostile forces, (4) escorted people through hostile terrain, (5) ran guided tours through the Old Forest, (6) patrolled the Shire by going from town to town asking if other characters would like help with anything, (7) walked the road from Point A to Point B clearing the path of hostile creatures, among others.

Third, a player in such a state can "grind' his mobs by offering assistance to others in fellowships. Since we are assuming a player who is not at level cap, such a player has over 10 levels of fellowship quests he can volunteer to help others on.

Fourth, a player need only team up with one other player to work on quests he could not complete individually and gain XP for those quests, if he finds himself in such a situation.

And fifth (and most damaging to that argument), there is no difference between a person at 40th level repeating 40th level content (instances such as Fornost and regions such as Dol Dinen) than a 60th level character repeating 60th level content. Except that the 40th level character will eventually rach 41st level, and the 60th level character will not. If being in a position where there are no new quests to do and nothing to do but re-running existing content is so horrible, we would expect to see NOBODY at 60th level, because that is exactly what they are doing.

As I said, these are imaginary problems. These are problems invented by people who, for some reason, need to find a reason to make up excuses to oppose such a feature.

I am sensing a pattern that suggests two possible reasons for opposition.

The first is the arrogant presumption that, "Nobody should enjoy the things that I do not enjoy. I would not use this feature. Therefore, players who would use this feature are defective in some way - inferior to me - and Turbine should not cater to their perverse interests."

The second is that, "An /XP Off feature would remove some of the demand for a mentoring system. I want a mentoring system, so I must oppose anything simpler that is not a mentoring system that might fulfill some of the same needs."

[logothesia]

The main reason I've seen for people opposing this is that it takes precious developer time away from giving us more content, more raids, etc.

You conveniently left that reason off.

[Jadzi]

The first is the arrogant presumption that, "Nobody should enjoy the things that I do not enjoy. I would not use this feature. Therefore, players who would use this feature are defective in some way - inferior to me - and Turbine should not cater to their perverse interests."

Which is actually a fairly widespread sentiment among players, whether they admit it ( or even realize it) or not. Kind of sad really.

You can see it in some of the people that want an open PVP world. Or who want to make the game harder because it's being 'dumbed down' or 'neutered'. Or the people who want everything made easier because they can't explore Thaurlach's chamber without actually beating Thaurlach. Those who say it's a game and lore be damned, those who say it's Tolkien and game be damned. Everyone has an opinion, and while there are many many people who can respect other's opinions, there are just as many (if not more) who do not.

Now of course people will jump up and say "you're being pessimistic, the game community isn't THAT bad!" And I'll agree, it's not as bad as some other communities. But there's also the fact that people tend to assume the best about things they like and the worst about things they don't like.

Case in point: Floon's comment about an XP throttle driving CS calls. The initial reaction I saw was "Whoa, you really think your players are that dumb?" It's not so much a question of them being dumb as being forgetful or disregarding (by intent or accident) the plainly obvious. The devs post various notices of downtime and other assorted announcements on the forums and in the launch client itself, and even people who stare at that client to log in don't notice or read them. When Book 8 opened, there were dozens upon dozens asking where it started, when it started with the same person Book 7 ended with, one who said "I'll call on you again". When Moria opened, a major complaint was that people couldn't find the entrance to it, despite the giant "TO MORIA" on the map.

In essence: never underestimate humanity's ingenuity. Just as it has an astounding imagination when it comes to improving the world, it also has a confounding ability to come up with ever more creative methods of screwing up. It just doesn't like to admit the latter.

[GregJL]

At this point though, it's pretty clear that Floon thinks there isn't enough demand for this feature. But at least one other dev (ZC) seems to have another opinion. So, perhaps like the Public Option for health care reform, this option isn't quite dead yet.

Except for the fact the post from ZC was in relation to the skirmishes, not general play. Context.

[Thane9]

The main reason I've seen for people opposing this is that it takes precious developer time away from giving us more content, more raids, etc.

You conveniently left that reason off.

When you boil it down, this is the ONLY reason.

The developers would LOVE to provide every single player with every single wish item they had. Of that I'm certain.

But ALL things must be prioritized and analyzed based on demand, functionality, usefullness, impact on other wishes/developments, QA, and sustained CS.

It's my opinion that it's really clear that an XP lock doesn't float very high on a VERY large list of things to implement. Does it make the list? Well, some people really really are convinced that they want this, so yeah I guess hypothetically it's on the list. But I can't even imagine it's anywhere on the radar for current or future development streams.

There's just too much other work to be done.

Oh and I three manned Carn Dum the other night. We ran through Urugarth and Carn Dum in one evening, with a nice break in the middle actually for dinner. It wasn't the same as running through "on level" but it also wasn't the chore it was back then either. I personally had a lot of fun, and I know they did as well.

A Duo may have been challenging...and Solo would require some serious work...and actually may not be possible for some of the later fights. I'd be interested if anyone has run the entire instance solo yet...

[Khafar]

First, it assumes that...

No, it mostly assumes that in a group of 100+ K players, a non-trivial number of them will do stupid things, then expect the game company to "do something about it" (costing the game company time and money). Past experience makes this a flatly true statement, not some sort of "imaginary problem". They need to consider it, whether you think it's an issue or not, and 3 dozen more 300-word posts isn't going to change that one iota. Part of their job is to try and design out ways for players to do "stupid things" to the degree that they can.

Khafar

[henry316]

It'll show up eventually. Certainly not with SoM, but it'll show up in some fashion down the road.

Good development houses always leave room in dev cycles for low hanging fruit. Even if it's only 5-10% of allocated time. This is clearly on their radar. Eventually it'll get through. Not in time for the alt I care about, mind you...

[Thalian39]

Hmmm.....541 replies and 37 pages for this thread. Turbine are you listening?

Thal

[Beleg]

Except for the fact the post from ZC was in relation to the skirmishes, not general play. Context.

His comment was in response to a question about skirmishes, yes. But where he said "We've had a number of people internally ask for this however..." it makes me wonder. Why would people want to opt of of xp (just) for skirmishes? Is there some reason, something special about skirmishes?

It doesn't seem so to me. I can understand wanting to toggle all xp gain off (to maintain your level). If that's true, and he's had a number of people (internally) asking for it, then that's a good sign I think.

It still is never going to be a feature used by anywhere near most of the players. But if enough want it, and it's easy (and low-risk, etc) enough to implement, then maybe we'll get it someday.

[logothesia]

A noisy tiny minority is still a tiny minority.

[henry316]

A noisy tiny minority is still a tiny minority.

Noisy, tiny antagonists are still noisy, tiny antagonists. Your point?

I mean, I appreciate that you came here to help us chew some gum and bump the thread, but if the gum isn't to your liking, by all means, stop chewing it.

[Lomeloth]

On the accusation that a person might forget to turn off XP and be stuck "grinding mobs" to gain a level, this is a bogus and imaginary problem.

What a pronouncement. Did you miss the posts from not only floon, but those with actual CS experience, who know otherwise?

Build a better mousetrap, and the world builds better mice. There is nothing so idiotproof that some idiot won't find a way around it.

First, it assumes that people will routinely turn off XP immediately after gaining a new level. Actually, the vast majority of people (probably all of them) will be turning off XP shortly before leaving a level to prevent from leaving. When they turn leveling back on they will only need to "grind" a few monsters to finish up the level.

It makes no such assumption. The argument doesn't depend on where in the process the xp is turned off. The end result it argues may happen is obtainable no matter where you turned it off - only the amount of grind necessary to rectify it shifts. Yes, someone posited an extreme scenario - but really, they are not alone in positing extreme scenarios in this thread.

Second, in talking about "grinding mobs" one is thinking like somebody obsessed with XP and Turbine-generated quests - somebody who is not likely to use the feature to start with. Whereas those who use the feature would be people more interested in adventure then XP. For such a person, there is no such thing as grinding mobs. Such a player can invent their own quests. In my time as a player I have (1) rescued Bounders from goblins, (2) found lost children in the Old Forest, (3) delivered supplies to towns that have been substantially cut off by hostile forces, (4) escorted people through hostile terrain, (5) ran guided tours through the Old Forest, (6) patrolled the Shire by going from town to town asking if other characters would like help with anything, (7) walked the road from Point A to Point B clearing the path of hostile creatures, among others.

There is no real basis to believe every potential user of this feature is as you describe. You might wish they were all this inventive - but if they were, could they not as easily be inventing their own quests that didn't involve gaining exp in the first place?

There are strong arguments made for this feature that some would use it as a way of 'not getting ahead' of specific people they're grouping with. Those players do not obviously fall into your description - in fact, the argument can be made that these users are precisely the ones who might find themselves without quests left when it's time to finally level.

Third, a player in such a state can "grind' his mobs by offering assistance to others in fellowships. Since we are assuming a player who is not at level cap, such a player has over 10 levels of fellowship quests he can volunteer to help others on.

Perhaps that's not that player's desired playstyle? Maybe they don't want to repeat content that is old and boring? I thought we were about the flexibility angle in this thread, and specifically not about repetition that's not wanted.

Fourth, a player need only team up with one other player to work on quests he could not complete individually and gain XP for those quests, if he finds himself in such a situation.

Doesn't this kind of contradict your prior assumption he's already done all of that? In fact, isn't the player you describe in your second point already likely to have grouped all over the place to help others in that level range?

Even so, where's the flexibility? You've just said it's ok to force someone to group. Forced group vs forced solo grind - there's force involved, no matter the solution... and that's where the CS tickets you're so carefully tiptoeing around will come into play.

And fifth (and most damaging to that argument), there is no difference between a person at 40th level repeating 40th level content (instances such as Fornost and regions such as Dol Dinen) than a 60th level character repeating 60th level content. Except that the 40th level character will eventually rach 41st level, and the 60th level character will not. If being in a position where there are no new quests to do and nothing to do but re-running existing content is so horrible, we would expect to see NOBODY at 60th level, because that is exactly what they are doing.

This is me rolling my eyes. People reach 60 because they advance their characters. That is inherent in the nature of MMOs. Once they reach that cap, they look for other ways to advance their character - it can be raiding, running instances, engaging in the challenge of PvP, working on their LIss, whatever (and how fun any of those things actually are is food for other threads). You can't seriously be saying every single player of this game should not want to hit 60 and participate in the content designed for that level, because it's the end of the leveling road?

As I said, these are imaginary problems. These are problems invented by people who, for some reason, need to find a reason to make up excuses to oppose such a feature.

Those who oppose a feature have an absolute right to their opinions. And their opinions deserve the same respect you apparently demand for your own.

There are those who do not oppose the feature, but who have given reasons why it probably won't be implemented, or at the least is not the slam-dunk some of its proponents make it out to be. This is one small subset of those reasons. It seems equally probable you chose this subset because you viewed it as the most assailable. Some equally fanciful 'reasons' for its inclusion have been posited as well.

I am sensing a pattern that suggests two possible reasons for opposition.

The first is the arrogant presumption that, "Nobody should enjoy the things that I do not enjoy. I would not use this feature. Therefore, players who would use this feature are defective in some way - inferior to me - and Turbine should not cater to their perverse interests."

That is not the sense I got at all, except from perhaps a couple of people who posted once and then left.

However, I am getting that same waft of arrogance from your post (as well as some prior posts that have been specifically called out for an elitist slant), in the opposite direction. The dismissiveness is clear: "Pffft. We are the truly superior players of LoTRO. You can't possibly appreciate how great this game is in the same way we do. Your objections are all imaginary and/or petty. We know better than you or Turbine what is best for this game and how it should be done. It's a no-brainer."

The second is that, "An /XP Off feature would remove some of the demand for a mentoring system. I want a mentoring system, so I must oppose anything simpler that is not a mentoring system that might fulfill some of the same needs."

I haven't seen anyone take this position at all.

So, let me posit a third reason: I don't actually oppose this feature/I am in favor of this feature, but I don't believe it offers wide enough benefit to justify its cost relative to other competing features at this time.

That's my position. Has been all along.

[Khafar]

Why would people want to opt of of xp (just) for skirmishes? Is there some reason, something special about skirmishes?

I presume because they're designed to be an alternative way to advance, and they know skirmishes will be popular. I'd imagine that people who spend as much time as they're allowed to in skirmishes may very well outlevel a lot of other content. That's actually part of its stated purpose (giving people another compelling choice on how to advance, displacing some of the existing content for that purpose), but some people apparently don't want to use it that way.

That is one way to get this feature done though, sooner or later... the argument for having an option to turn XP off is probably more compelling due to this new advancement method, especially if there isn't any work-around (e.g. Virtue grinding well above level so no XP accrues). If they're going to do it at all, it probably makes more sense to have a generalized switch than to only turn it off for skirmishes. The coding and testing will be more complex to do it "everywhere", but it will cover more player use cases too.

Khafar

[Jadzi]

Hmmm.....541 replies and 37 pages for this thread. Turbine are you listening?

Don't assume thread length equals massive support. It isn't 541 people all agreeing, it's more around 20-40 people going back and forth. Between multiple postings and replies by the same people, it just shows the capacity of an impassioned argument to run on for a long, long time. That and not every post in here is for the option, or even on topic.

Seriously, I've seen 10-page threads arguing about the most inane things.

[Thane9]

Hmmm.....541 replies and 37 pages for this thread. Turbine are you listening?

Thal

4159 replies and 278 pages.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=83848&page=278

So?