New AP / Award Changes Feedback

[The GrumpyCat]

Whilst I have some sympathy for those with low playing time that are effected by this, I still susspect that you're getting a better deal.

First off- if we were going to hang this system off something mechanical rather than something entirely roleplay related (which I susspect many of you are in favour of) we'd need to choose something relitivly agnostic. We need to consider what we want to encourage. Quick Leveling? Gold Aquisition? Fast Typing? Ultimatly the 'fairest' thing to me, especially for one of the other goals of this system - the encouragement of sacrificing characters when the time was right - was pure time sink. Note I say 'encourage' not 'force.'

Again, this is not an action server, it's a roleplay server. I believe that hanging awards almost entirely off 'Killing things and getting gold' wasn't entirely fair either. Also, as I'll show, I'm not sure it was -that- much faster on average.

So, second off, let's do some quick, basic and likely rather flawed math.

In the prior system, if you rolled a level 26+ character, with one million gold, your most likely outcome was still a normal. This started a two month timer. The chances of getting a Major - if one had one million gold in the bank.

By (VERY!) rough law of averages, that meant you had a 1 in 10 chance of getting a Major.

Let's pretend you roll nothing but normals (A sad possiblity, but it makes the math easier for me. You could also roll a greater, but that has a longer timer, a +1 to the month) That means, theoretically, one greater for 20 months work. Which is faster but presumes...

a) That you are able, with less than 120 hours work, under the old system, to reliably get a character to level 26 AND get 1 million in the bank.
b) You get no extra point gain from Dms in a similar time scale.(which granted won't be dependable or much, but is worth mentioning)
c) It also isn't factoring in the (admittedly small) adventure gain bonus points
d) The big on - it also doesn't factor in the roll that still exists.

Adventure XP from all sources (except writs and the -adventure mode) will reward a small amount of AP.

The d100 roll on Epic Sacrifice still exists, and it can reward anywhere between 6000 to 30000 AP.

Presuming no behaviour is changed, and you're still perfectly capable and willing to grind and delete characters up to 26, with one million gold, every two months and consistently delete them - even if you only ever get the lowest amount, you'll earn about 60000 points. That's another about two months shaved off the time alone.

The main difference in time value of the two systems, as I see it, is the first one is based purely on luck. You might get your 5% first roll you do, you may not get it 50 rolls downt he line. There's no way of telling, quite simply.

So I don't think the time difference is neccesarly as big as people say.

[Zaon]

Whilst I have some sympathy for those with low playing time that are effected by this, I still susspect that you're getting a better deal.

First off- if we were going to hang this system off something mechanical rather than something entirely roleplay related (which I susspect many of you are in favour of) we'd need to choose something relitivly agnostic. We need to consider what we want to encourage. Quick Leveling? Gold Aquisition? Fast Typing? Ultimatly the 'fairest' thing to me, especially for one of the other goals of this system - the encouragement of sacrificing characters when the time was right - was pure time sink. Note I say 'encourage' not 'force.'

Again, this is not an action server, it's a roleplay server. I believe that hanging awards almost entirely off 'Killing things and getting gold' wasn't entirely fair either. Also, as I'll show, I'm not sure it was -that- much faster on average.

So, second off, let's do some quick, basic and likely rather flawed math.

In the prior system, if you rolled a level 26+ character, with one million gold, your most likely outcome was still a normal. This started a two month timer. The chances of getting a Major - if one had one million gold in the bank.

By (VERY!) rough law of averages, that meant you had a 1 in 10 chance of getting a Major.

Let's pretend you roll nothing but normals (A sad possiblity, but it makes the math easier for me. You could also roll a greater, but that has a longer timer, a +1 to the month) That means, theoretically, one greater for 20 months work. Which is faster but presumes...

a) That you are able, with less than 120 hours work, under the old system, to reliably get a character to level 26 AND get 1 million in the bank.
b) You get no extra point gain from Dms in a similar time scale.
c) It also isn't factoring in the (admittedly small) adventure gain bonus points
d) The big on - it also doesn't factor in the roll that still exists.

Adventure XP from all sources (except writs and the -adventure mode) will reward a small amount of AP.

The d100 roll on Epic Sacrifice still exists, and it can reward anywhere between 6000 to 30000 AP.

Presuming no behaviour is changed, and you're still perfectly capable and willing to grind and delete characters up to 26, with one million gold, every two months and consistently delete them - even if you only ever get the lowest amount, you'll earn about 60000 points. That's another about two months shaved off the time alone.

The main difference in time value of the two systems, as I see it, is the first one is based purely on luck. You might get your 5% first roll you do, you may not get it 50 rolls downt he line. There's no way of telling, quite simply.

So I don't think the time difference is neccesarly as big as people say.

Two months normal cooldown = you can roll once per two months, so you ideally get 1 major in 20 months (roll ten times). New system? 2 years, spending every day 2 hours in game, no breaks, no anything. SO that's already 4 months more, AND a daily time investment.

Greater is even a worse deal with the new system. 35% to get greater/major with 1 mill. That's either greater or major almost guaranteed in 6 months (u have to roll 3 times).

To hit greater with new system? 400k points. Which is 390k for playing every day over period of 11 months, every day two hours.

Real simple math to show how biased the system is toward casual people.

I got an idea. how about people with access just see how much time per day the majority of arelith players play. lets back with statistics whether this new system benefits the majority or people with A LOT of time on their hands

[PowerWord Rage]

Whilst I have some sympathy for those with low playing time that are effected by this, I still susspect that you're getting a better deal.

First off- if we were going to hang this system off something mechanical rather than something entirely roleplay related (which I susspect many of you are in favour of) we'd need to choose something relitivly agnostic. We need to consider what we want to encourage. Quick Leveling? Gold Aquisition? Fast Typing? Ultimatly the 'fairest' thing to me, especially for one of the other goals of this system - the encouragement of sacrificing characters when the time was right - was pure time sink. Note I say 'encourage' not 'force.'

Again, this is not an action server, it's a roleplay server. I believe that hanging awards almost entirely off 'Killing things and getting gold' wasn't entirely fair either. Also, as I'll show, I'm not sure it was -that- much faster on average.

So, second off, let's do some quick, basic and likely rather flawed math.

In the prior system, if you rolled a level 26+ character, with one million gold, your most likely outcome was still a normal. This started a two month timer. The chances of getting a Major - if one had one million gold in the bank.

By (VERY!) rough law of averages, that meant you had a 1 in 10 chance of getting a Major.

Let's pretend you roll nothing but normals (A sad possiblity, but it makes the math easier for me. You could also roll a greater, but that has a longer timer, a +1 to the month) That means, theoretically, one greater for 20 months work. Which is faster but presumes...

a) That you are able, with less than 120 hours work, under the old system, to reliably get a character to level 26 AND get 1 million in the bank.
b) You get no extra point gain from Dms in a similar time scale.
c) It also isn't factoring in the (admittedly small) adventure gain bonus points
d) The big on - it also doesn't factor in the roll that still exists.

Adventure XP from all sources (except writs and the -adventure mode) will reward a small amount of AP.

The d100 roll on Epic Sacrifice still exists, and it can reward anywhere between 6000 to 30000 AP.

Presuming no behaviour is changed, and you're still perfectly capable and willing to grind and delete characters up to 26, with one million gold, every two months and consistently delete them - even if you only ever get the lowest amount, you'll earn about 60000 points. That's another about two months shaved off the time alone.

The main difference in time value of the two systems, as I see it, is the first one is based purely on luck. You might get your 5% first roll you do, you may not get it 50 rolls downt he line. There's no way of telling, quite simply.

So I don't think the time difference is neccesarly as big as people say.

Two months normal cooldown = you can roll once per two months, so you ideally get 1 major in 20 months (roll ten times). New system? 2 years, spending every day 2 hours in game, no breaks, no anything. SO that's already 4 months more, AND a daily time investment.

Greater is even a worse deal with the new system. 35% to get greater/major with 1 mill. That's either greater or major almost guaranteed in 6 months (u have to roll 3 times).

To hit greater with new system? 400k points. Which is 390k for playing every day over period of 11 months, every day two hours.

Real simple math to show how biased the system is toward casual people.

I got an idea. how about people with access just see how much time per day the majority of arelith players play. lets back with statistics whether this new system benefits the majority or people with A LOT of time on their hands

I think using probability as a maths equation for securing the award is flawed because over the course of ten of years, there're players which they've already named themselves even in this topic, that did not actually get a major award ever despite rolling more than 10 times while there're certainly players who get a major with just first 3 tries.

Now...that's the issue here that relying on probability to gain Award is flawed.
And your argument against the new system is under the impression that the gambling style of the old system will 100% guaranteed you a major out of 10 tries or perhaps less than that.

This is fundamentally flawed because your opinion will change depending on whether you get a major before the 10 tries or NOT get a major after 10 tries.

The new award system is introduced to rectify what the past ten of years have shown us, that there're players ( probably not in small amount ) that never ever get a Major despite more than 10 tries and each time you gamble, it does not feel good after losing because it's like, 5 times? 10 times? that the time you invest to level 26 and 1mil gold simply net you a normal.

Furthermore, the system has just started and the AP points required are being looked at.
Perhaps someday, it will no longer be Minor / Normal / Greater / Major but individual AP points for various races depending on their population and rarity. That's a good approach.

Edit: Lastly...I don't see how 60 hours a month that are shared across all your playable characters are difficult to achieved though. As written in my earlier post.
1 month = 30 days = 720 hours
60 hours... that's not even 10%.
Granted, you need to sleep, eat, work and everything.
But if you like something, you spend more time on it. And if you're not spending time on it, means that you probably don't like it?
And the time spent on a game isn't linear.
But with that said, i'm not against lowering down the 60 hours to even 30 hours. In fact, I will be happy if it does because ultimately, the game exist for us to have fun.

[Zaon]

Whilst I have some sympathy for those with low playing time that are effected by this, I still susspect that you're getting a better deal.

First off- if we were going to hang this system off something mechanical rather than something entirely roleplay related (which I susspect many of you are in favour of) we'd need to choose something relitivly agnostic. We need to consider what we want to encourage. Quick Leveling? Gold Aquisition? Fast Typing? Ultimatly the 'fairest' thing to me, especially for one of the other goals of this system - the encouragement of sacrificing characters when the time was right - was pure time sink. Note I say 'encourage' not 'force.'

Again, this is not an action server, it's a roleplay server. I believe that hanging awards almost entirely off 'Killing things and getting gold' wasn't entirely fair either. Also, as I'll show, I'm not sure it was -that- much faster on average.

So, second off, let's do some quick, basic and likely rather flawed math.

In the prior system, if you rolled a level 26+ character, with one million gold, your most likely outcome was still a normal. This started a two month timer. The chances of getting a Major - if one had one million gold in the bank.

By (VERY!) rough law of averages, that meant you had a 1 in 10 chance of getting a Major.

Let's pretend you roll nothing but normals (A sad possiblity, but it makes the math easier for me. You could also roll a greater, but that has a longer timer, a +1 to the month) That means, theoretically, one greater for 20 months work. Which is faster but presumes...

a) That you are able, with less than 120 hours work, under the old system, to reliably get a character to level 26 AND get 1 million in the bank.
b) You get no extra point gain from Dms in a similar time scale.
c) It also isn't factoring in the (admittedly small) adventure gain bonus points
d) The big on - it also doesn't factor in the roll that still exists.

Presuming no behaviour is changed, and you're still perfectly capable and willing to grind and delete characters up to 26, with one million gold, every two months and consistently delete them - even if you only ever get the lowest amount, you'll earn about 60000 points. That's another about two months shaved off the time alone.

The main difference in time value of the two systems, as I see it, is the first one is based purely on luck. You might get your 5% first roll you do, you may not get it 50 rolls downt he line. There's no way of telling, quite simply.

So I don't think the time difference is neccesarly as big as people say.

Two months normal cooldown = you can roll once per two months, so you ideally get 1 major in 20 months (roll ten times). New system? 2 years, spending every day 2 hours in game, no breaks, no anything. SO that's already 4 months more, AND a daily time investment.

Greater is even a worse deal with the new system. 35% to get greater/major with 1 mill. That's either greater or major almost guaranteed in 6 months (u have to roll 3 times).

To hit greater with new system? 400k points. Which is 390k for playing every day over period of 11 months, every day two hours.

Real simple math to show how biased the system is toward casual people.

I got an idea. how about people with access just see how much time per day the majority of arelith players play. lets back with statistics whether this new system benefits the majority or people with A LOT of time on their hands

I think using probability as a maths equation for securing the award is flawed because over the course of ten of years, there're players which they've already named themselves even in this topic, that did not actually get a major award ever despite rolling more than 10 times while there're certainly players who get a major with just first 3 tries.

Now...that's the issue here that relying on probability to gain Award is flawed.
And your argument against the new system is under the impression that the gambling style of the old system will 100% guaranteed you a major out of 10 tries or perhaps less than that.

This is fundamentally flawed because your opinion will change depending on whether you get a major before the 10 tries or NOT get a major after 10 tries.

The new award system is introduced to rectify what the past ten of years have shown us, that there're players ( probably not in small amount ) that never ever get a Major despite more than 10 tries and each time you gamble, it does not feel good after losing because it's like, 5 times? 10 times? that the time you invest to level 26 and 1mil gold simply net you a normal.

Furthermore, the system has just started and the AP points required are being looked at.
Perhaps someday, it will no longer be Minor / Normal / Greater / Major but individual AP points for various races depending on their population and rarity. That's a good approach.

Edit: Lastly...I don't see how 60 hours a month that are shared across all your playable characters are difficult to achieved though. As written in my earlier post.
1 month = 30 days = 720 hours
60 hours... that's not even 10%.
Granted, you need to sleep, eat, work and everything.
But if you like something, you spend more time on it. And if you're not spending time on it, means that you probably don't like it?
And the time spent on a game isn't linear.
But with that said, i'm not against lowering down the 60 hours to even 30 hours. In fact, I will be happy if it does because ultimately, the game exist for us to have fun.

Probabilities for RNG epic sacrifice have been hardcoded. So yeah, some people will not see reward even though probability says they will.

Hell, I can theoretically toss a coin 100 times and it may all end up "tails". Does it mean I am unlucky? Hell yeah! Does it mean we need to make it hard on ALL the people who can't play 2 hours every single day?

In short, compensating for a minuscule minority who drew the short straw by punishing the casual majority does not sound fair

[The GrumpyCat]

Two months normal cooldown = you can roll once per two months, so you ideally get 1 major in 20 months (roll ten times). New system? 2 years, spending every day 2 hours in game, no breaks, no anything. SO that's already 4 months more, AND a daily time investment.

Are you... not also investing a certain amount time under the old system of getting to level 26 + 1mil?

Maybe it was quicker, under the old system, but that surely doesn't encourage roleplay (which slows down perspective xp gain) or grouping up (which slows down gold gain).

Speaking entirely respectfully - I'm not really sure that the server should be rewarding that sort of behaviour? I'm by no means condemning it! If that's how you have the most fun, great! But I'm not sure we want it the default behaviour of the server?

I'm not sure the mindsset of 'YOU MUST Grind up a throw away pc to level 26 plus get One Mil gold every two months!' is better than this strange 'YOU MUST! play 60 hours a week'

In fact, speaking honestly, I think the latter is a lot more friendly to the majority of peoples playstyle? People enjoy doing different things on their log in time on Arelith. They should get some reward for that, not just leveling and gold grabbing.

And again, the sad fact is if we have an award system at all, and it has to have a mechanical gate on it - it's going to favour one sort of playstyle over another. Whether it's chatting a lot (fast typer, bit unfair) roleplay (judged by Dms, obviously problematic) Gold gain (leans itself very easily to exploitation, and honestly also favours pcs with more time) or leveling... (already adressed issues) Other player kudos (exploitative and lends itself to ooc friendship and nepotism) Or something else? There's always going to be something.

I'm really sorry that some players won't be able to make the full 60 hours per month, but I'm sure there are just as many who can't make the 'roll at 26 with 1 mil gold every two month' target either. In fact honestly I susspect the number for that is higher though I could, of course, be wrong.

[Xerah]

Two months normal cooldown = you can roll once per two months, so you ideally get 1 major in 20 months (roll ten times). New system? 2 years, spending every day 2 hours in game, no breaks, no anything. SO that's already 4 months more, AND a daily time investment.

It's actually only a 65% chance you're going to get a major with 10 rolls at level 26, with 1 million gold. So, that's not exactly a great assumption. There are plenty of people who didn't get anything.

I still wonder who these causal players are who are grinding these awards before but now don't play enough.

[Floral Shoppe]

Just speaking for myself, I don't care about reward races, I'm just concerned 60 hours a month now becomes the baseline for how long you're expected to be online to be a real Arelith player instead of a "casual" in general and maybe there shouldn't be such a number coming from server staff. Not expecting anyone to care necessarily but I felt I had to raise the point.

[Zaon]

Two months normal cooldown = you can roll once per two months, so you ideally get 1 major in 20 months (roll ten times). New system? 2 years, spending every day 2 hours in game, no breaks, no anything. SO that's already 4 months more, AND a daily time investment.

It's actually only a 65% chance you're going to get a major with 10 rolls at level 26, with 1 million gold. So, that's not exactly a great assumption. There are plenty of people who didn't get anything.

I still wonder who these causal players are who are grinding these awards before but now don't play enough.

yeah maybe in real world it will take more than 10 rolls. still, with 35% getting either/or major/greater, this pales in comparison to now having to invest at least 11+ months for a greater.

This argument of mine is really going in circles, and I fully understand that people are entitled to their own opinion.

What I will never accept is hitting us with these kind of fundamental changes with no prior notice whatsoever. I did not sign up for this. I think I deserved a way out.

[Xerah]

Just speaking for myself, I don't care about reward races, I'm just concerned 60 hours a month now becomes the baseline for how long you're expected to be online to be a real Arelith player instead of a "casual" in general and maybe there shouldn't be such a number coming from server staff. Not expecting anyone to care necessarily but I felt I had to raise the point.

I'm expecting that Ice will review the data after a month, make a cumulative data plot, and find the various percentiles for people who reach certain hour thresholds, then adjust them (if needed) after that.

Like, if only 25% of people are getting >=60hr then it definitely needs to be adjusted. If it's 66%? Maybe that's the target. They just need to get a feeling for how many players should be expected to hit the max then adjust the numbers based on that. (or maybe that's already been done with historical data)

[Wrips]

I think this is a very good and welcome change.

The only thing that I think could be considered is to review the necessary time to hit the monthly cap; 60 hours seems a lot! I hope the team can review it and reduce the cap to something like 40 hours or, at least, 50 hours monthly. The cap wouldn't change, only the hours necessary to hit them.

As for the awards, I think the cost for a Minor and Normal awards could be slightly reduced as well.

[Perplexia]

personally i would rather be "FORCED!!" to play a character for 2 years in order to guarantee a major, than to willingly invest 2 (or more!) years into a character, only to get hit with "Congratulations, you earned a Normal award!"

i've been fortunate enough not to have that happen to myself, but i can sympathise with how soul-crushing it must be for others

also it's bizarre that some people in this thread view the 60 hour cap on AP as a goal that they have to reach

you can just play for less than 60 hours if you want

it's not like you're gonna go bankrupt and be forced to shut down your Arelith account because you couldn't reach a monthly quota or whatever

i don't play this game nearly as much as i used to, and i still average around 50 hours a month, so you'd have to be a very casual player indeed if you're unable to play for 2 hours a day, or 4 hours every other day, or 8 hours on the weekend, whatever – at that point, what makes you think a major award would even be worth it?

do you expect to log onto your rakshasa for an hour each week just to check on your shop and do quick a dungeon run? i'm asking sincerely

[Rei_Jin]

I played as Ner’enthis Shadowclaw for more than a year, regularly putting in 40-60 hours a week. I built an empire, dramatically impacted many factions and settlements, and told and contributed to more stories than I can count or retell.

When the time came to say goodbye to him? All that amounted to, was a Normal award.

The same was true of when I rolled Nadjia, my sailor turned pirate who did similar things and wrote multiple books that were duplicated and passed around for literal years. Rolled, for a Normal award.

The same was true of when I rolled Tom the Wand Merchant, the merchant lord of Guldorand. Yet another Normal award.

The previous system added insult to injury when a story ended, and gave me the same reward potential as someone who RPed like the Protagonist in a pokemon game and got rolled after two months.

If Arelith is a roleplay server? Then that’s just not right.

It may have been even-handed, in that everyone had the same odds, but it did nothing to reward roleplay or character investment. In fact, it did the opposite, rewarding players for not investing or roleplaying and just churning character after character.

The new system, whilst imperfect (because nothing is perfect), is a hell of a lot better for rewarding roleplay and investment.

Will there be winners and losers from its implementation? Of course, such is unavoidable.

But this is a dramatic improvement for the encouragement towards roleplay that Arelith says it wants to see happen.

[Seekeepeek]

1. Dina (Loviatar monk weapon master with a greatsword) - Normal
2. Chikasha (Gnoll Ranger) - Normal
3. Assiala (monk/SD/asssassin + 1 artefact) - Normal
4. Blob'lol Shoe-hat (Goblin Wizard) - Normal
5. Grumbass Laghor (Duergar Weapon master dwarven defender) - Normal
6. Azhael Luxator (Warlock test) - Normal
7. Nicha Hasish (Warlock refined) - Minor
8. Lux Facka (Warlock + -2 ecl = xp per kill was insane) - Minor
9. BunBone Gobolin (Goblin wild Wizard) - Greater
10. Terzimalim Danger (pirate warlock outcast + artefacts) - Normal
11. Scalarius Tossar (Kobold true flame) - Minor
12. Miko Sakurar (Samurai) - Normal
13. Aabegale Bear Claw (spellsword first Skal start) - Greater
14. Aagali Ironwagon (drawven waraxe duergar spellsword) - Normal
15. Aaze Ratatouille (totem druid rat)- Normal
16. Aagron Bloodhowl (Orog feylock test) - Normal
17. Liam Puff (str Cleric with 1 million in bank) - Normal
18. Aalund Leerow (lvl 30 pirate cleric + 1 million) - Normal
19. Anizi Zirush (lvl 30 new spellsword test + 1 milion in inventory) - Normal
20. Gizmosine Floiy (lvl 30 pirate warlock + 1 million in inventory) - Normal
    +1 free Normal reward from guldorand event
    +1 free Lesser reward for nwn 20 year event.
21. Empella Ashtray (Fire Genasi wizard + 400k in bank) - Normal
    +1 free Normal reward from row of server crashes compensation.
22. Hafiz del Khassad (old class kensei + 1 mil in bank + artifacts, class kensei got deleted) - Greater
    +1 free Normal reward xmas
23. Saseline Maplewoods (Paladin scum, ruined due to class overhowl) + 1,5 milion. - Normal
24. Anirier Thient (old character slave drow with two major gifts, +2 con,+2 dex) + 1 million. - Normal
25. Danair Steel (Air elementalist with talos ring test, class overhowl) + 1 million. - Normal

I thought it would be fun to share this, since—for some reason—I’ve kept track of all my rolls from the very first day Mithreas introduced the automated roll system.

[Iceborn]

hey question, if a character has "no refund" listed in -awards, does that mean rolling them will give nothing?

Quite so.

The refund logic is pretty simple.
No legacy award/new points spent: Nothing to refund.
Never crossed level 11: Full refund
Crossed level 11 and 60 hours of playtime: Partial refund
Crossed level 11 and does not have 60 hours of playtime: No refund

Can you explain the partial refund idea?

I would have thought that if you played less than 60h is when you'd get your partial refund, i.e. tried out the character, not a fan, want to refund it. But it works the opposite of that. So, just not sure the idea behind why.

Does that mean you'll always get a partial refund on your rewards, assuming you invested a month of time into the character?

I guess the reason for it is for remakes. But it seems to work on -delete_character and not just -remake?

Having an old character that is not at 60h yet, is there any way to know how far away it is?

We are debating this internally and we might be addressing it in the future - I don't fully agree with it, but it goes something like this:
The current logic is this way to prevent people from making an award character, mindlessly grinding into epics and deciding they want to start RPing then, only to realize they don't like their characters. The 60 hour is there to force people to try to make their characters work, or serve as a threshold barrier - you have until 'this' level range to make sure you want a full refund, or you are in for the long run.

I wrote a time check in one of the -delete_character dialogues that should inform of the current playtime vs required check. Don't remember which (also use with caution, remember that if you are under the epic roll range you don't get a popup conversation when you type -delete_character twice).

[chris a gogo]

Hang on.
So my fey character that i spent a major award on can be rolled after i spend 60 hours in game and i'll get the major award points back?

[Rei_Jin]

If you roll a character that you used an award to make, you'll get some of the points you spent on the award back, yes.

At the moment (numbers are always subject to change) the refund is:

• Minor - 36000
• Normal - 67000
• Greater - 160000
• Major - 160000

In addition, if you remake you will unlock all of the points accumulated to that character, you just won't get the "Epic Sacrifice" points.

This means that if you play your major award character for two years and accumulate the cap each month (36k, so 28,800 AP on character and 7,200 AP to your account), you would be able to remake them and still have over 220,000 AP left over for other awards or future use.

This is a wonderful benefit of the system for those who play award characters for whom there have been major mechanical changes and would benefit from a remake.

[chris a gogo]

So instead of getting an award for deleting an old character you get to remake it shiny and new and get all the benefits as if it had been rolled...thats a terrible idea.

[Rei_Jin]

You also unlock the points accumulated on the character over time (the 80/20 split meaning 20% of it went to your account total previously and was available, the 80% was locked to the character, and rolling or remaking them releases that 80%), as well as if you do "roll" the character you get an Epic Sacrifice roll which adds additional AP to your account total.

This is an improvement in every way from the previous situation.

[Iceborn]

Hang on.
So my fey character that i spent a major award on can be rolled after i spend 60 hours in game and i'll get the major award points back?

No, not quite. You get a partial refund back.
For a major, you get 20% back. For a greater, you get 40%.
Normals and minors are like 80% and 95%.

In the future, I'd like to implement a way for -remake to refund the full amount, but only if you immediately use it to actually make the same character.

[The GrumpyCat]

personally i would rather be "FORCED!!" to play a character for 2 years in order to guarantee a major, than to willingly invest 2 (or more!) years into a character, only to get hit with "Congratulations, you earned a Normal award!"

i've been fortunate enough not to have that happen to myself, but i can sympathise with how soul-crushing it must be for others

also it's bizarre that some people in this thread view the 60 hour cap on AP as a goal that they have to reach

you can just play for less than 60 hours if you want

it's not like you're gonna go bankrupt and be forced to shut down your Arelith account because you couldn't reach a monthly quota or whatever

i don't play this game nearly as much as i used to, and i still average around 50 hours a month, so you'd have to be a very casual player indeed if you're unable to play for 2 hours a day, or 4 hours every other day, or 8 hours on the weekend, whatever – at that point, what makes you think a major award would even be worth it?

do you expect to log onto your rakshasa for an hour each week just to check on your shop and do quick a dungeon run? i'm asking sincerely

I agree with a lot of this post, but I need to nitpick and say that it's not even that you're 'forced' to play A character for two years... because the way it's set up you could play two, or five, or eight or twenty characters in two years, and get the same amount of points. Another big bonus, I feel.

[Biggrouse]

The new system is a huge leap forward. I am happy that Arelith has cut off perhaps its most antiquated and dubious system, and my props to the developers who coded this and the staff who went with it. Even if the system was never tweaked after today, I think we are still better off than before.

I do feel bad for players who have practically no banked AP due to frequently spending their minor/normal awards on low impact things like language/height awards, and frequently rolled old characters. Some people who have played for years have ended up with very low AP because of this. But I recognize there probably wasn't a way to execute the transition that would make everyone happy. I'm glad the band-aid was torn off the old system.

I hope that the passive AP gains will be tweaked. 80 banked and 20 active seems extreme to me. I would simply reverse it like Coolguy McMagic suggested. Making the overwhelming majority of points be tied to rolling technically incentivizes you to spend your playtime on characters you intend to roll. Maybe that's the intention, to keep characters rolling and moving. The way I envision banked AP, it should be icing on top for rolling an old character, rather than the main share of AP that it is right now. The sort of forever characters that people are worried about would still accumulate large banks over time and incentivize their rolling.

Finally, I hope that future tweaks and changes are informed less by concerns about players with tons of AP banked up, and more about helping players with low AP gain it in a reasonable time. I think it can be discouraging when decisions are constantly centered around the top few edge cases rather than the majority. Personally, I came out of the transition with more than enough AP to make a major when the legacy pool is released, but the current numbers seem to feel a bit too heavy for those without any AP to feel like they can achieve an award in any reasonable amount of time.

[Kalthariam]

I feel like I'm just echoing alot of people here, but I am going to reiterate that the old system was not conductive to RP.

TO be honest, if you are more worried about min-maxing your Awards than you are actually making interesting characters to engage with the world, then I personally think you are approaching everything poorly.

I've rolled well over 10 characters, I've gotten two greaters total, and nothing else but minors and normals.

Now I suddenly have enough for a Major technically, which I still never would have had a chance to get before.

Now I don't have to slog through low level content every few months on characters I'm not interested in just trying to roll for an award. I can just play characters I actually want to play, and continue to make gains.

This is an absolute win in my book.

[TheDoctor]

Why does my guy who I have played over a year have only 2 hours?

[Security_Blanket]

I have three level 30 characters in my vault, plus time spent on a few other characters around levels 12-17, all that together nets me a whopping 100,000 legacy points. Where is my incentive to ever play along with your award system? Just keep making humans and save yourself all the headache.

[But Will It Blend]

I just want to be on record that the new system is 100% the right direction and offers exciting possibilities. This change was never the issue I had. I know I can come across as 'negative' or 'critical' a lot so. I want to ensure genuinely that it's understood overall even with some of my uncertainties around RPR being a big part of it, the rest of it is genuinely amazing and I can't wait to see what comes next for it.