Discouraging Grinding: A Proposal

[Dr. B]

Hello!

I have a suggestion for discouraging grinding and encouraging other forms of play. It popped into my head as I was skimming the thread on grinding for awards.

Some caveats: I like grinding. It's fun. Running around, killing things for fun and money, watching them explode into blood as my character savages them with crits, is fun. But I am inclined to agree that writ large, it's an issue for RP quality on the server. Dungeon congestion is annoying, with people often getting into spats over grinding territory, and people are usually more motivated by OOC than by IC considerations when grinding. Maybe you're not, but most people are.

I'm also not saying grinding and roleplaying are in principle incompatible, but I am strongly inclined to think that, in practice, the first tends to undermine the second.

Update: perhaps a more modest suggestion is to simply cap kill XP in a way that discourages some of the more obsessive degrees of grinding. I'm talking people who just run around killing things for 16 hours straight and then pass out.

So, I have a two-part suggestion. These are very broad, with the specifics of the implementation left for further discussion:

1. The first part is to add a modest or even significant increase to the amount of experience earned through other sources than killing things: RPB, adventure xp, and an increase to the output of the adventure bonus.

2. The second part is to place a cap on the amount of experience you can earn from killing things every 24 RL hours. Once you reach the cap, you can't earn XP from killing things anymore until 24 RL hours have passed, although you can get it from other sources. You can still get gold, treasure, and other stuff, but no more xp.

(1) is very important. Leveling up is fun, and for better or worse, is one of the reasons people play here. Character turnover is also important in order to preserve novelty, and player retention is an important factor here. People won't want to play if they're stuck at low levels forever! (2) would be a disaster if (1) were not given special weight and carefully implemented.

How big of an increase in experience from non-kill sources should there be? Should it scale with level? What should be the cap for kill xp, and should that also scale with level? Might the cap be on the number of monsters killed rather than the amount of XP? These are important questions for further discussion, but these are the basics of the suggestion, so I'll leave them here.

[Nitro]

No. If I wanted to have a cap on how much XP I could gain per day I'd play on Ravenloft.

Why do you feel that grinding undermines RP? In which way have you, in practice, seen grinding undermine RP as you indicate is the case?

[Aeralad]

Good ideas but for the sake of discussion possible improvement I want to say...

I see this putting a pause on fast levelling.
I also see it encourage idling or just not doing much after the limit is reached. Now I understand you want that nothing to be rp, but I don't think it works out that way especially given the steps of RPR.

[CptJonas]

Good idea on paper...but when you think about it even for small time...you will find that...You will not solve problem...you will make it worse or just create new one....

Bcs...

-If you put cap too high all people would reach level 30 super fast and without effort (and its allready quite fast)
-If you put cap too low people would be pissed bcs low levels are boring as hell...especialy on some classes...I personaly just turn off my brain and grin my teeth until high epics...thats when my game starts...

and why it would make grinding same or worse? Bcs people would just create like 10 chararacters at once...and reach cap with each one of them every day....Which is in some extend posible even in current state...with writs alone...just not as easy on time...

....good idea on paper...but terible in the end...

[Aeralad]

ha if anything we should allow an npc to level delevel you from 30 to 3 and back at will. What I got from Jonas's post.

[Dr. B]

No. If I wanted to have a cap on how much XP I could gain per day I'd play on Ravenloft.

Why do you feel that grinding undermines RP? In which way have you, in practice, seen grinding undermine RP as you indicate is the case?

I'm not proposing a cap on XP per day, just XP from killing things.

[AskRyze]

I have played on several servers, most notably Ravenloft as others have remarked here. The part of that server that I grind against the most heavily is, and has always been, the XP cap: Firstly, by how frustrating it is to go up against and how it slows leveling down to a crawl while people who have been there longer than you by any real measure get to effectively do whatever they wish to you (A community issue, I am aware, but one which exists regardless) ; secondly, by how easy it is to circumvent once you know how.

It is a fact that people go out and grind; many enjoy it, others do it simply to level their characters to 30 and be done with it. The fact that we play in a level-based game means that people will want to be as high of a level as possible. Unless passive XP increases by a factor of ten or more people will grind to get levels, and even if it did increase by such a degree they will grind and get the passive xp. The problem with an XP cap system is, quite simply, that you will immediately put the minds of the 'grinders' toward the problem of solving the XP cap - people who are more than willing to test the limits of whatever is presented them, and no edifice of human creation is truly impenetrable. I remember the sheer number of ways in Ravenloft to cheese the XP cap... It is one of the reasons why I play here, instead of there, so that I don't have to feel like I'm exploiting the game in order to enjoy it.

In conclusion, the XP cap will not discourage the players who wish to grind, because they will find a way to more or less ignore it - simply put, it will only step on the people who go out to grind occasionally and mostly roleplay.

[Nitro]

No. If I wanted to have a cap on how much XP I could gain per day I'd play on Ravenloft.

Why do you feel that grinding undermines RP? In which way have you, in practice, seen grinding undermine RP as you indicate is the case?

I'm not proposing a cap on XP per day, just XP from killing things.

You mean, per character, forever? That's even worse.

[Dr. B]

No. If I wanted to have a cap on how much XP I could gain per day I'd play on Ravenloft.

Why do you feel that grinding undermines RP? In which way have you, in practice, seen grinding undermine RP as you indicate is the case?

I'm not proposing a cap on XP per day, just XP from killing things.

You mean, per character, forever? That's even worse.

No, per character, per 24 RL hours, similar to how there's a limit to how many writs you can take in one day. Sheesh, did you even read my post?

[Good Character]

While I understand the intention, someone did mention Ravenloft. I believe that was a good example.

I loved Ravenloft as a setting and it was a beautifully made module. However, I was so turned off from the XP gain that I quit years ago and haven't gone back.

The idleness is what stifles Ravenloft's playercount imo. People log in, can't make RP at that very moment, can't really earn XP while they wait, so they log off.

[Nitro]

No, per character, per 24 RL hours, similar to how there's a limit to how many writs you can take in one day. Sheesh, did you even read my post?

Yes, so then that is a cap per day. That's what I was referring to, a cap on XP you can gain from grinding, each day. I thought that obvious given the subject matter of your post.

[Void]

2. The second part is to place a cap on the amount of experience you can earn from killing things every 24 RL hours. Once you reach the cap, you can't earn XP from killing things anymore until 24 RL hours have passed, although you can get it from other sources. You can still get gold, treasure, and other stuff, but no more xp.

I'll simply quit if this is put in place. People enjoy different things, and combat xp is quite pitiful to begin with. Capping THAT implies that after some time your character becomes breaindead and can't learn any more.

How big of an increase in experience from non-kill sources should there be?

Increasing adventure xp could be useful, because as of know it is impossible to run out of it. It keeps accumulating and is never fully used. By how much, though, I do not know.

While I understand the intention, someone did mention Ravenloft. I believe that was a good example.

Yep, their system is truly horrible. Makes playing feel pointless, and makes the server feel snobbish.
-----

It is worth keeping in mind that grinding can be easily explained through RP. The character is battle junkie. What matters is whether they interact with other people when stopped, and not whether they grind or not.

[strong yeet]

I think any attempts at discouraging people from logging on and having fun with the game or the server in any capacity is kind of a bad idea. Grinding, even circularly, doesn't really hurt anybody or directly detract from anything.

And I distinctly recall an attempt at a sort of "XP cap" on grinding a few years ago. It didn't end well.

[the grim yeeter]

I love grinding. I hate a long, tormenting journey to level 30.

Every attempt at discouraging grinding has turned out poorly or has been received badly on Arelith, so far. All these times I've asked myself: why do these people have this aversion towards grinding? What is wrong with grinding?

[Skibbles]

What if instead of nerfing grinding experience, we boost the other ways?

For example - for every X amount of hours you spend not killing things your RPR tick doubles once or twice until the tick is significant enough to keep playing but not feel the urge to grind?

Of course this doesn't net any gold, so both killing and not-killing have their own rewards.

[Void]

What if instead of nerfing grinding experience, we boost the other ways?

For example - for every X amount of hours you spend not killing things your RPR tick doubles once or twice until the tick is significant enough to keep playing but not feel the urge to grind?

Of course this doesn't net any gold, so both killing and not-killing have their own rewards.

Having this feature woudl feel very weird and would make me wonder what is the logic behind encouraging pacifism through mechanical means.

Basically, mildly unpleasant experience.

[chris a gogo]

I used to played on another server that had this awesome idea of stopping players getting XP from certain styles of play I left soon after, as did almost everyone else there are like 3-10 players on it at it's peek times now.

Any idea that punishes a player for a style of play that isn't disruptive to others is a bad idea.

[Drowboy]

I think any attempts at discouraging people from logging on and having fun with the game or the server in any capacity is kind of a bad idea. Grinding, even circularly, doesn't really hurt anybody or directly detract from anything.

And I distinctly recall an attempt at a sort of "XP cap" on grinding a few years ago. It didn't end well.

This. I know we're all getting weird from the quarantine but this wild proliferation of mall-cop mentality where we all have to be snooping on and mad at what everyone else is doing is getting really bad, really fast. Just worry about what you're doing.

In fact, go play cormyr and the dalelands for a day or three and see if the system you're proposing is to your liking. Maybe it is, but that server exists already. Might be more to your style.

[Hazard]

Myth Drannor had an XP cap on it, and for the first few years I played there it was great...

You could only get a good few dungeons worth of XP a week or something like that, and the majority of your XP had to come from DMs who saw you RPing (in our case we have RPR I guess)...

But over the years you would see some people get more DM XP (or if it were here, higher RPR) and their characters would advance in mere months to 20+ where other characters would normally take years! ... Or in our case someone might advance in days vs weeks, because Arelith leveling is SO FAST.

This, of course, led to a lot of accusations of favoritism whether true or not it didn't really matter, it tore the community apart and everything DIED. Doom, doom, doom.

I think if we capped XP here, players a few years from now would start getting spiteful over their and others RPR and begin flinging accusations and it would overall be bad for the community and server health.

Letting players just grind it out is fine. If that's how they wanna spend their time, go for it.

My only problem is, with the huge increase in players, I'm noticing a lot more people who don't really ... roleplay much at all? It's not that they're out of character, but it seems like they're just doing the bare minimum and trying to get through writs/grind as fast as possible to 30 so they can get to the PvP meta or whatever. Sorry but that's not okay. It's a roleplaying server, you're expected to be in character and roleplay here. I hate seeing this and I hate feeling like I'm the annoying weirdo for trying to roleplay with someone that is much more interested in just running past me and continuing to grind silently.

There's no reason why you can't roleplay and grind. The two can go hand in hand, perfectly. Your character has every motivation to train hard and gain power and wealth, and it's so much more fun if you immerse yourself in it rather than just tune out.

[CookieMonster]

No. If I wanted to have a cap on how much XP I could gain per day I'd play on Ravenloft.

Why do you feel that grinding undermines RP? In which way have you, in practice, seen grinding undermine RP as you indicate is the case?

I followed Adventurer (Disguised), A Palemaster and one other last night as they ran the Aurlite cave in silence. Pinged a DM as well after Adventurer decided bashing fixtures en route would be fun. Reason I followed is because without any RP, without actually stopping to be fair, they bashed my Animal Companion and carried on their way.

[Dr. B]

I do feel like many of the concerns here depend on the details of how a hypothetical cap is implemented, and what degree of grinding the administrators want to curtail. To use some rough examples, capping it on one loop's worth of grinding would be a big problem, definitely. Ten loops worth? Maybe not so bad. It might be used more aggressively to make everyone fall into line to a very specific idea of how to enjoy the server, and I think that could be a big problem, as others who have cited Ravenloft have explained. But it might also be used to curb the more obsessive amounts of farming, those that ruin the enjoyment of others, and which those often-cited players who have little playtime on their hands would not have time for anyway.

[Drowboy]

The concern is that it's a bad idea, whose execution or failure thereof can be observed on several other servers that struggle to get past 30 players concurrent. Or have faded out of existence.

[the grim yeeter]

No. If I wanted to have a cap on how much XP I could gain per day I'd play on Ravenloft.

Why do you feel that grinding undermines RP? In which way have you, in practice, seen grinding undermine RP as you indicate is the case?

I followed Adventurer (Disguised), A Palemaster and one other last night as they ran the Aurlite cave in silence. Pinged a DM as well after Adventurer decided bashing fixtures en route would be fun. Reason I followed is because without any RP, without actually stopping to be fair, they bashed my Animal Companion and carried on their way.

Instances like these don't occur because of the way grinding works on Arelith. This behaviour cannot be attributed to anything other than the players themselves.

Again, what would any form of (periodical) XP cap accomplish? What "problems" would it solve? Why isn't the way it currently works, just fine as it is?

What is wrong with people occasionally logging on to grind for 12 hours straight and then log off again?

[Drowboy]

If the intention is to fix behavior of a minority of players, can we maybe not, yet again, ruin whole swathes of possible avenues of play rather than just deal with a handful of people?

[strong yeet]

If the intention is to fix behavior of a minority of players, can we maybe not, yet again, ruin whole swathes of possible avenues of play rather than just deal with a handful of people?

Please god this