XP Reducer

[Tiempko]

Originally Posted by logothesia

I can't believe that you continue to pay for a luxury good, when you believe the providers of that luxury good are either 1) unresponsive, 2) incompetent, 3) purposefully deceitful. These are the only three conclusions left from your analysis.

I would take my money and spend it on a luxury good that I would enjoy.

If I thought as you did then, indeed, I would not be here.

I come here and make my business case, based on return-on-investment, the proper way to figure in quality assurance and support costs into an ROI calculation, and the relevance to various types of poll data to the benefits variable in those calculations, precisely because I expect that there are people at Turbine who would respond to those arguments.

The very fact that I am making these arguments assumes competence and responsiveness on the part of turbine.

And the charge of being "purposefully deceitful" is absurd. I can well imagine people at Turbine rubbing their hands and gleefully saying, "Tiempko has provided us with a sound business case for this addition but we are going to LIE and say that we would not benefit as a business by accepting his arguments."

Floon is not Tubine. Floon is an individual with his own interests, likes, dislikes, and prejudices. I examine his arguments like anybody else's arguments. I ask whether the reasoning is valid, whether the premises are true and well supported, and if I find reason to question either I do so. An invalid argument is invalid no matter who states it. An inappropriate cost calculation in determine return-on-investment is inappropriate no matter who makes it.

The very reason that businesses employ tools such as return-on-investment is because private likes, dislikes, and prejudices have a bad habit of causing bad business decisions. So, businesses look for more objective measures.

An individual's 'gut reaction' - even an individual who has lots of experience in a company - has too often proved to be a very poor substitute for objective measures and calculations.

[Dago_Red]

Originally Posted by BellusDuFenna

I have no doubt that some people have left the game due to various changes in this game, including the increased rate of leveling, but how can anyone know how many left for that specific reason?

Because it is a very common and hot topic on these forums, including locked threads and lots of flaming unfortunately. It 's a VERY common problem with friends spouses, kins, etc.

Furthermore, I have personally lost three RL friends (to other games /entertainment) because eventually, we found it impossible to adventure together the way we'd imagined we could when we all signed up. We quickly began outleveling each other as some of us played constantly and some could only play on the appointed adventure nights. We tried using alts, scheduling more nights, switching to crafting endeavors, etc. None of it works for long, no matter what you do you gain tons of XP, you can't craft without gaining tons of Xp and leveling (unless someone gives you all the things you need or you are filthy rich, and even then you must be satisfied at certain skill tiers as advancing requires going out into the world on quests).

After about 3 months we were hopelessly scattered with no one at the same level and 2 of us 10-13 levels higher than the other two. I began adventuring with the lowest with a new alt, etc.... but the results were we could not effectively adventure together the way we wanted. Once someone gets "ahead" in XP there's no way to have everyone else catch up if you continue playing together. One party must somehow play more, which really means they must work at gaining XP and that sucks all the fun and wonder out of it. OR one party must play less, or cease for a time - NEITHER is good for anyone involved, including Turbine.

Three people quit.

Originally Posted by BellusDuFenna

As I've said before, I'm in favor of a Toggle. I wouldn't use it, but I see no reason not to have one...

That is very reasonable of you

[FoxFire]

In a game like LoTRO (or any MMORPG, but especially LoTRO), flexibility to a wide variety of play styles is key. The more play styles the game can cater to (without compromising the basic premise of the game or unduly effecting other players) the better the game should do.

Turbine has a VERY popular IP in Lord of the Rings, so the only question of people that would otherwise be drawn to, or retained by, the game is why aren't they? Some may think the game is too difficult and they level too slow, others may think it isn't challenging enough to keep their interest, or they level way too fast.

Perhaps the former has been MORE of a problem for people. So, Turbine has been doing a good job at 'dumbing down' the game, at least in so far as making leveling faster and the challenges easier. Sadly and somewhat inexplicably they have done this across the board, rather than making these changes optional. So everyone is FORCED to accept rapidly accumulating Rest XP, and all manner of Bonus XP, quicker leveling curves, and easier overall encounters (with the only suggestions for increasing the difficulty being "play the village idiot").

Well... a good game, an increasingly successful game, wouldn't do that. They would recognize that different people like to play in different ways, even in ways that few (if any) at the company comprehend, and they would find reasonable ways to accommodate those play styles. They most certainly wouldn't make across the board changes that alter the leveling rate or challenge level (in one direction or the other) for every player without providing for a means to individually modify it to suit one's preferences. To do otherwise is especially baffeling when the solutions to this are fairly straight forward.

Clearly Turbine does understand this to a degree. They've implemented and are implementing various means to make the game more accessible to different play styles. The Skirmish System being a good example. This gives me SOME hope that they can recognize the value in allowing players to individually control the rate at which they level and the degree of challenge they encounter while leveling (by being able to take on greater challenges without subsequently hyper-leveling their characters).

Ultimately, more than any other change Turbine can make, increased play-style flexibility is the best investment they can make.

[Khafar]

Originally Posted by Dago_Red

we found it impossible to adventure together the way we'd imagined we could when we all signed up.

Hmm. One or more of you must have been relatively new to MMOs, because I've seen this issue occur in the majority of the ones I've played. It's definitely a real and serious issue, but one I think is best solved by a full-featured "mentoring" system. Then nobody has to do things like turn their XP off for long stretches, waiting days or even weeks for others to catch up. Instead, you can all play at the same level as others in your group whenever you wish. Then if they're not around, you can resume playing at your natural level.

Khafar

[logothesia]

Originally Posted by Tiempko

I come here and make my business case, based on return-on-investment, the proper way to figure in quality assurance and support costs into an ROI calculation, and the relevance to various types of poll data to the benefits variable in those calculations, precisely because I expect that there are people at Turbine who would respond to those arguments.

Your entire tone and argument presupposes that Turbine either doesn't know how to do an ROI calculation or doesn't do them as well as you can, because you insist if they "did it right" they'd come to the same conclusion you have.

Likewise, you (or others, I get the five of your arguing for this confused) have argued that they either don't know how to do player polling, or don't know how to do polling as well as you, because if they "did polling right" they'd come to the same conclusion you have.

And then we have the hilarity of a supposed "software engineer" offering quotes of work on a codebase he will never see, without seeing any of the design documentation, and yet somehow coming to the conclusion that it's "just a boolean value, I could do it in a week or three."

Oh, and you misunderstand, I was speaking in the subjunctive, "If I felt as you do...". I certainly don't. Actually, I'm one of the thousands of players who feel that leveling in this game is too slow, and I want it to be faster. 5 days played from 1-50 was too long for me.

[Beldacar]

Originally Posted by logothesia

Your entire tone and argument presupposes that Turbine either doesn't know how to do an ROI calculation or doesn't do them as well as you can, because you insist if they "did it right" they'd come to the same conclusion you have.

That's not quite what I got from his posts. All I got was that he's "not sure whether they did it right or not." Not an unreasonable sentiment coming from a customer paying for a service.

Likewise, you (or others, I get the five of your arguing for this confused) have argued that they either don't know how to do player polling, or don't know how to do polling as well as you, because if they "did polling right" they'd come to the same conclusion you have.

Khafar and I have both mentioned polling. I don't know if Turbine's marketing people are any good or not, but I do know that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to constructing polls (having done graduate-level work on such when I got my MBA). And honestly, I don't really care if you believe me or not ;^)

And then we have the hilarity of a supposed "software engineer" offering quotes of work on a codebase he will never see, without seeing any of the design documentation, and yet somehow coming to the conclusion that it's "just a boolean value, I could do it in a week or three."

Yeah, that seemed a bit over the top to me as well....

Oh, and you misunderstand, I was speaking in the subjunctive, "If I felt as you do...". I certainly don't. Actually, I'm one of the thousands of players who feel that leveling in this game is too slow, and I want it to be faster. 5 days played from 1-50 was too long for me.

Thousands? You've talked to that many? Or are just pulling that number out of ... thin air?

And five days /played to get to 50 was too long? *shrug*

To each his own. I have 16 days /played on my level 41 Hunter and I assure you, to me that was about five times too fast. So, clearly, you really don't understand why I'd want to go slower, just as I cannot even begin to comprehend why you'd want to go faster. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

[Tiempko]

Originally Posted by logothesia

Your entire tone and argument presupposes that Turbine either doesn't know how to do an ROI calculation or doesn't do them as well as you can, because you insist if they "did it right" they'd come to the same conclusion you have.

My tone and argument were directed to those who posted objections to this feature - many of whom demonstrated through their arguments that they, in fact, do not know how to compute return on investment or how it is used in allocating business resources. To the best of my knowledge I never spoke directly to Turbine. The closest I got was to a developer who was not in charge in making such decisions - but who did have the ability to repeat arguments found here to those who are (if his mind were not already closed on the subject).

Originally Posted by logothesia

Likewise, you (or others, I get the five of your arguing for this confused) have argued that they either don't know how to do player polling, or don't know how to do polling as well as you, because if they "did polling right" they'd come to the same conclusion you have.

Somebody else posted to these forums to report that Turbine had conducted such a survey and probably used it to reach the conclusion that to reject creating an XP toggle or slider.

My response was that this would be an inappropriate conclusion to draw from such a survey. However, I was not the one who suggested that Turbine had actually made this implication. My post was written in response to (and raising objections against) another poster who HAD made that claim.

In my response I stated that a poll of current customers is a legitimate tool to use when considering a new product that one wished to sell to existing customers - such as an adventure pack or an expansion pack. They may want to know how efficiently they may have filtered out filtered out customers with play styles who would value such an addition. However, it is still the case that there is not much of a market for a product among existing customers where those customers have been filtered out does not imply that their is not much of a market for that product.

Again, recall the SUV example. A survey of SUV owners would probably reveal that they are not inclined to buy smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. However, this does not imply that there is no market for smaller more fuel-efficient cars.
However, the results of that poll would still be a very poor indicator of the types of customers that Turbine could have if it decided to add elements to its game that were friendly to the adventure-explorer playstyle.

Originally Posted by logothesia

And then we have the hilarity of a supposed "software engineer" offering quotes of work on a codebase he will never see, without seeing any of the design documentation, and yet somehow coming to the conclusion that it's "just a boolean value, I could do it in a week or three."

That wasn't me. To raise that objection against my arguments is a misrepresentation. If you wish to object to that claim - quote the person who made it. Do not pretend it was me who said it because you wish to discredit my arguments by associating them with discreditable claims I did not make.

[Khafar]

Originally Posted by Tiempko

Again, recall the SUV example

Which persists in being a bad analogy. You've already admitted that this feature isn't likely to make or break the game for many players, which means that there isn't much reason to assume LOTRO players are terribly different than the general gaming population when it comes to this issue.

Also, your analogy is hyperbolic. This is a minor feature. Nobody uses it to promote their games, and few if any reviews of a game are going to mention it one way or another. This is more like getting an extra cupholder with your SUV. Handy for some, not hugely expensive to add, but not a buying decision sort of feature for most people either. People who are after a really different sort of gaming experience are likely to head for a really different sort of game (much more sandboxy, or much more focused on PvP, raiding, crafting, or whatever). That's one reason why adding PvP into a game well after it ships never seems to do much of anything for its subscriptions - PvPers aren't (on the whole) impressed with an afterthought PvP wart stuck on the side of a PvE game. They naturally want a game more designed for their favorite playstyle from the foundations up.

Again, I don't care if this feature is added or not. I wouldn't ever use it, but I'm sure some people would. Given a choice, though, I'd much prefer a mentoring system - although it's much more expensive, it's also much more flexible and useful IMO. That feature I'd use with some regularity.

Khafar

[Harperelle]

Originally Posted by Dago_Red

Furthermore, I have personally lost three RL friends (to other games /entertainment) because eventually, we found it impossible to adventure together the way we'd imagined we could when we all signed up. We quickly began outleveling each other as some of us played constantly and some could only play on the appointed adventure nights. We tried using alts, scheduling more nights, switching to crafting endeavors, etc. None of it works for long, no matter what you do you gain tons of XP, you can't craft without gaining tons of Xp and leveling (unless someone gives you all the things you need or you are filthy rich, and even then you must be satisfied at certain skill tiers as advancing requires going out into the world on quests).

After about 3 months we were hopelessly scattered with no one at the same level and 2 of us 10-13 levels higher than the other two. I began adventuring with the lowest with a new alt, etc.... but the results were we could not effectively adventure together the way we wanted. Once someone gets "ahead" in XP there's no way to have everyone else catch up if you continue playing together. One party must somehow play more, which really means they must work at gaining XP and that sucks all the fun and wonder out of it. OR one party must play less, or cease for a time - NEITHER is good for anyone involved, including Turbine.

I'll second the point of not wanting to outlevel each other. My son and I play the 'Thunder Brothers' about once a week together. We RP them as brothers and they even have their own little webcomic. My son gets really upset when one brother has more XP than the other. It would be nice if we could even it up by just reducing XP on one of them for 10 minutes while the other caught up. As is, we have to ungroup and have the lower level kill mobs until caught up.

--Harperella

[Harperelle]

Originally Posted by logothesia

Actually, I'm one of the thousands of players who feel that leveling in this game is too slow, and I want it to be faster. 5 days played from 1-50 was too long for me.

Isn't this exactly why an XP slider is needed? Some want it faster some want it slower...

--Harp

[Dago_Red]

Whoa, five days was too long for someone to go from 1 - 50! Too long? I'd say you've found the wrong game, and honestly believe you'd be happier in another one where the "journey" is specifically promoted above the "destination."

But that's not for me to decide, it's for you. And why we need user controlled XP right now.

If someone wants to start at level 50 and not have any kind of journey then let them, at least help them along to play how they want.

If someone wants to remain at level 5 forever on patrol in the westfarthing - let them!

[FoxFire]

Originally Posted by logothesia

And then we have the hilarity of a supposed "software engineer" offering quotes of work on a codebase he will never see, without seeing any of the design documentation, and yet somehow coming to the conclusion that it's "just a boolean value, I could do it in a week or three."

Yeah, Logothesis. WHO said this was simply a boolean value, because that wasn't me either. Though AS a software engineer (oh yeah, that isn't "supposed" by-the-way), I can make a relatively educated guess that the code related to calculating and distributing XP rewards is not particularly complex. Furthermore I can make the educated very conservative estimations that I can dissect and comprehend the relevant code and make the necessary modifications in no more than 2 weeks. I would expect someone familiar with the code to be able to do it in significantly less time.

Pretty hilarious, eh?

As to ever seeing the code... well I originally provided a revelation here, but I think it's better to keep you guessing.

[Harperelle]

Originally Posted by FoxFire

Yeah, Logothesis. WHO said this was simply a boolean value, because that wasn't me either. Though AS a software engineer (oh yeah, that isn't "supposed" by-the-way), I can make a relatively educated guess that the code related to calculating and distributing XP rewards is not particularly complex. Furthermore I can make the educated very conservative estimations that I can dissect and comprehend the relevant code and make the necessary modifications in no more than 2 weeks. I would expect someone familiar with the code to be able to do it in significantly less time.

Pretty hilarious, eh?

As to ever seeing the code... well I originally provided a revelation here, but I think it's better to keep you guessing.

Sometimes one can guess an easy feature vs. a hard feature to implement. Using an existing feature and extending it--easy. Adding a brand new feature--hard. Here are examples of both in case you don't see the difference:

Easy
1) Changing the amount of XP for each level
2) Changing stats on existing items
3) Changing the amount of damage that an existing skill does
4) Adding a new option in the options panel

Hard
1) Adding additional levels w/ new skills
2) Adding new items in the game
3) Adding a new skill
4) Adding a new panel to take care of a new game mechanic (like the legendary items panel)

I'm not trying to trivialize adding extending new features. But existing features usually have regression tests associated with them and an established body of code that should continue to work after the changes. New features are all new territory and need both new code and new validation of the code.

On the other hand, there are always hidden gotchas whenever making any change to an existing set of code. But in the case of XP reduction, its just hard to imagine any that could come up. It is a variable that is regularly tweaked for different things. Why is tweaking it for the user's preference any more difficult than a welcome-back weekend?

--Harperella

[FoxFire]

fdwere

Originally Posted by Harperelle

I'm not trying to trivialize adding extending new features. But existing features usually have regression tests associated with them and an established body of code that should continue to work after the changes. New features are all new territory and need both new code and new validation of the code.

Indeed. As I was pointing out, the actual coding of this feature is almost certainly insignificant. The testing of it across the spectrum of situations in which such a feature could come into consideration during game play, or conflict with other systems, is where it can get time consuming.

Though as you pointed out, since this is changing a system which is already in place (XP accumulation) that is presumably well understood by the developers (increasing the rate, and quite possibly also decreasing it), it therefore is something which shouldn't require the same degree of testing as an entirely new system or feature.

And of course (in the case of the ability to halt XP accumulation entirely), the new circumstance of running out of quests in which to continue advancement has to be taken into consideration, though 90% of that work (thinking about such situations and how to adequately address them) has already been done right here in these threads.

[Celt_Ainvar]

I got my system back and work on two toons. One a Champ level 36 Now 37 and a Burgler Level 36 Now 37. Both had Tons of rest xp which I did not want and Just turn 36 before I sent my system in due to overheating.

For the people who complain the game take to long to level. Take a few days off of lotro and then play it. Your toon will level up a little quicker. It took me 6 Hours each toon Just on rest xp and doing quests.

I have lost 7 Friends due to lotro leveling up to fast. I tell my friends to slow down take your time. They seem to be the one gone before I was even level 60.