Post
by Eters » Mon Mar 30, 2020 2:52 pm
As far as my understanding goes, the purpose of the entire reward system is a certain circulation of characters, you make a character, you play it, you roll it, you get something out of it potentially. There is just one simple issue with it all, and that is that the current "progression of a character" isn't one thing, I'd say there are three pillars that we can consider when speaking about character progression.
The first is character level, the journey from level 1 to level 30 is not exactly difficult, it's the most straightforward path one follows through writs all the way to level 21, and from there it slows down a little, but not too much. The leveling process can take from a week to a few months depending on playtime.
The second is gear, the journey from level 1 to level 30 is manageable with average gear, that said once people reach the summit (level 30) , they seek to continue a certain "progression" through gearing appropriately, with the way runes drop, 5%s work, etc... It could take from a month to a year for someone to have the "gear they want". While it isn't really as important as it seems it's something that people work towards and extends their playtime of that character.
The third is the actual narrative of the character, that depends on far too many factors to put a specific time on it, some characters have short lives, others take time to thrive.
But the overall is that the process of a character's life is long, so the "circulation" doesn't often happen from rolling, but /shelving/. For you see, we shelve our characters more than we roll them, yet are only rewarded for rolling them definitely, which can take a while and which also causes people to create "sacrificial characters", either goblin druids or warlocks as they're the easiest to level even with the gift of humility.
What if it was possible for people to use -shelf command to shelve one character per vault (So people don't just abuse this) for a period of 6 months, the character is unusable in that period of time (goes into an empty map until the period passes or something...) and for shelving that one character, you're allowed to roll for reward at the same rates as rolling characters so :
(16-20: 25% normal, 75% minor.)
(21-25: 10% greater, 35% normal, 55% minor.)
(26-30: 5% major, 20% greater, 75% normal.)
If you obtain a minor, or a normal from such, the day you'll decide to roll your character you would be given another chance to roll for reward at your leisure. For example you shelf a level 30 character using the command and get a minor, when you unshelve them and eventually roll them later, you can roll again (could get a minor from it, just as you could get a major.)
If you obtain a greater or a major reward, that's it, you keep it, and the day you roll that character which you shelved you will not be allowed to roll a second time for reward.
Will this stop the grinding? No. Will anything stop the grinding? I doubt so as the grind is deep in the roots of gaming in general, but will this give a chance for people who do not want to roll, and are passing through a burn out the chance to be reinvigorated with creativity after shelving their character? Maybe, I don't know, it remains just an idea and thus open for debate.
