I do realize edge points have been discussed in depth. However, perhaps an additional implementation of ways to earn edge points would be beneficial to the player base. I can specifically think of two ways in which it benefits the player base, which I shall outline.

Now. Understand, this is not increasing edge points, merely providing an automated mechanism on when you earn them. It follows that a character who lives to be 400 hours old, would have learned a few more tricks than someone who is 50 hours old. Yet, in the current system. Someone who runs a script and run around looking at everything can have as many as the 400 hour old character.

So, implement a time based system (In addition to the current system)


First, The Concept:

Grumpy Duergar Thief doesn't have friends. Doesn't Explore, and is really bad at PK. Most of the time he has to hide from the paladins hunting him. He is 100 hours old, and has X Edge Points.

Good Fortie who loves destroying evil, has 2k imm xp, and has spent a majority of their time exploring, looking at stuff, and observing. They love taking their trinkets and trading them at various vendors for gold. They have X +20 edge points. They are 50 hours old.

For Example: Why not, after Duergar thief hits 100 hours, he would be brought up to say, 25% of his max edge point earned.

100 hours - 25%
200 hours - 40%
300 hours - 60%
400 hours - 80%
500 hours - 100%.

The scale doesn't have to be this even, but you get the idea.

Regardless of how many things he has looked at, or how many he has killed, he will be able to customize his character.

Eventually, this player, newb or not, will be 'on par' with the advanced player that had these edge points since hour 50 or 100, or evil baddie who has 100 pk's.

This achieves two goals.

1) Those whom are unable to earn edge points thru pk/obs/explor, will eventually be on 'par' with more advanced players, giving them perhaps a bit more ability to 'survive' that portion of the playerbase.

2) It somewhat automates, and takes out the tedium of obs/explor for those of us who have to do it for the 100th time.. Which also may bring a bit more balance to the player base in old vs. new players. And those who receive immortal attention, and those who do not.


Thanks for reading.

It won't look quite like this, but we have been kicking around some ideas of how to make observation/exploration XP smaller factors and longevity a bigger one.

Granted, I'm sure Cyradia can whip up an idling for hours script even easier than exploration ones, so we'll need to be a little thoughtful about how that works. ;)

but the more I think about it, the trickier it seems in terms of fairness (idle script vs legit time played)...good luck!

Is this wheel really broken?

Idling eats up their hours and age death says they won't do that.

People who are worried about being competitive want the scoreboard to show it. 200 hours idle to get edges is 200 hours they waste towards beating Kostyan.

You miss the part where a powergamer wants to be the best ASAP, and always. So really, this change will not help 'powergamers' at all

What it will help, is new dude who spends 250 hrs dying repeatedly, and doesn't really hit any area explores/etc due to lack of knowledge - it will let that guy pick edges if he "sticks with his character"

I don't see this as a boost to powergamers at all, I see it as a boost to noobs - Daev can correct me if I am wrong

I like the idea. Daev said "we are thinking of something like that, but people can game it by idling."

Me: "So let them...etc."

They won't and they would be dumb to because age death, PKpH, etc.

That got titled "the slowest rising evil" or something like that.
I think there some gechos that said a slow moving glacier killed him or something.
I thought it was so funny. That was a while ago.

>Me: "So let them...etc."
>
>They won't and they would be dumb to because age death, PKpH,
>etc.
>
>

I think you might be surprised by how many people don't care much about either of those things.

Is an angle you seem to enjoy.

Scoreboard players are called scoreboard players because they do indeed care about just that: "the scoreboard"

Scoreboard players and power-gamer is so close to the same thing that they might as well be synonymous.

Who else is going to game your "system" and sacrifice 200 hours of their character for edge points?

Unless you mean to make edge points so bad ass that they can make up for 200 hours of sitting on your ass in terms of scoring points?

"How many people don't care..." doesn't matter, since all players aren't out to game the system in the first place. How many of the people who ARE out to game the system DO care about either of those things? Nearly all, if not all.

Age death means they can't reign in the PK world for as long. Lower PKpH means lower pk wins over the character's lifetime.

That's all ignoring the fact that if so many people just didn't care about their scores, this conversation wouldn't be taking place in the first place. Edges and the grind to get them gets complained about all the time. Why is it complained about if no one cares about winning?

I don't think even most "scoreboard" players care about PK per hour.

I don't think most players, including those players, care about age death.

You're aware that some (I won't say a lot, but some) players idle/bot to mature age currently?

the angle Jim!

"Age death, PKpH, etc."

How do you suppose these things interact with a character's over all PK wins? What do you suppose "etc." might mean in this context?

I've spelled it out as best I can. You already have a system in mind that will work and even though I suspect sarcasm in the reason it is not (yet) implemented, I've given you solid reason why that won't come into play.

You know everyone can't be pleased and you know psychotics play this game. Yes. One or two people are going to idle for their edge points. Pro might. The "some" (suddenly reduced from "I'd be surprised how many") will likely do it. Who cares? Those same people are going to delete when they lose their first con or aging kicks in.

I am aware that some (I won't say a lot, but some) players bot their way to observation/exploration experience.

Either way you have bots. In one instance their is a mechanical disadvantage to botting: Sooner to age (stat reduction), sooner to age death (less hours for awesome killing time), and lower total possible PKwins (because 100, 200,... 600 hours spent idling).

In other you just have to hope you catch them?

Heh, honestly though, this system or a new one either way is fine by me. Take your sweet time. Addicts aren't going anywhere.

No, I'm likely not going anywhere.

For what it's worth, folks that bot to abuse the system are likely to get caught eventually. There are people out there that abuse a system just because they know they can, and they have certain patterns. Combine that with the fact that our IP addresses are logged, the repeat offenders are going to be caught and punished eventually.

Now, I've done my share of "idling," which in my case translates into, "I have no idea where half the stuff I knew about two years ago is, and I have no idea where to go that won't get me killed in two seconds flat."

In these cases, I'm not likely to stay logged in. Does it mean I have a comparitavely long amount of accrued hours where I'm not doing anything but talking? Yes. But, its not intentional. I'm just one player out of many, and there are others like me out there that have similar habits to me. Even I have times where I'll log in and have to scram immediately because there's other crap going on I gotta take care of.

Even if someone writes the script, who cares? Most people won't use them for the same reason most people don't use other elaborate scripts; laziness & principle.

Besides, how many of those players have actually had an impact bigger than a minor flash in the pan?

Nt

I'm not sure exactly how flaws count towards edge count or if they don't entirely.

I consider myself something of a scorecard player (though not entirely) and I wouldn't even burn time on scamming obs exp. There's mechanical advantage and there's just lame.

There's a pretty large but semi-silent chunk of the player base that is, for lack of a better term, obsessive compulsive that might be tempted to script this sort of thing though. Perfectionist might be a better term. They usually won't have very many kills, or deaths, but they will strive to complete every quest, explore every area, gather every edge, etc.

Though I don't see the advantage to the perfectionist scripting idling for edges. Seems like if they play like that...well, doing every quest takes time and they can kill two birds with one stone.

I'm obviously not a scoreboard player, but I too see no advantage good enough to warranty botting under the current system, or idling forever under the semi-proposed, scantly detailed system.

Those that do under the time-based system are taking disadvantages to counter it

If I was you, I'd so something like this :

1) Hard cap exp, obs, commerce xp etc by level range through 45. In other words, if you want to try for 15k observation XP by level 9 you can but you'll get an echo that you're hard capped at like 2k or something. This is to remove the far side benefits of 'camping at level 9' to revisit every area that doesn't have aggro mobs.

2) Derive a standard deviation for these various things, with a heavy emphasis on Imm XP and retrieval XP and grant edge points based on how far above that you are. You should get Imm XP just for being watched in a positive way btw, quit free loading on my PKs. If you like what you see put a tip in the jar dammit.

3) Raise the hour level bonuses and bonuses for heroing.

I played Skyrim a little while back after all that CF'ing and when I made a new character I found myself compulsively picking up books and looking at each page without reading it to get observe exp. Then I found myself doing something similar with Doom 3, and that's not even pretending to be an RPG.

I mean it's good practice to look at every corner for power ups but when you've already played the game and read all the flavour text but you're compulsively flicking through journal entries anyway - once you have enough game knowledge to be competitive observation/exploration in CF is just a chore 95% of the time and not actually a voyage of discovery. Heck most time a player goes to a new area for the first time they're just dragged around and told what to look at without ever actually reading the descs. I'd probably have spent more time understanding the paintings in K'tengs for instance if I wasn't on a mission to get through the whole place and look at everything as fast as possible.

I actually regret knowing the specifics of getting edge points that were mentioned, because now I feel compelled to obtain them even though eventually I ended up having more edge points than I was willing to spend with later characters anyway.

Could you add ability to see how many edge points you have and the edge costs when discussing with guildmaster?

I don't think there is any need to obscure this information.
The game is complicated enough without trying to figure out edge system.

nt

If you were lazy, you just wouldn't receive the benefit of going through the HTOS at level 15 again... Even from a balancing point of view. The fact that an advanced player would stick around and 'wait' (by being lazy) for their edge points, gives an advantage to a non advanced player.. in the terms of that advanced player does not have a pk advantage.

But, if your character made it 500 hours, I'd say that you've 'earned' those edge points, one way or another. Either through RP, or another method... But perhaps not rewarded.

Or

You are newb, and didn't do it 'right' - (i.e., stay at the pk bands on the way up, explore the right areas at the right time, do the right quests, etc) You would still have the opportunity to be a better character .. hundreds of hours into the development of it.

Either way, it's an automated way to evolve your character and take out any conspiracy theory of IMM favoritism. The idea is not meant to be a way to earn 'free' edge points. It's a way to reward the longevity of characters, who may not be able to, or know how to powergame enough to get edge points.

I think that the relationship between edges and "low level exploration" is too exaggerated at this point (and it seems the Imms agree). You know how tedious it is exploring the same keywords you've seen 1000x before every time you roll a new character? There's a very real mechanical advantage to doing this but it's kinda tedious after a while - especially since many people are using scripts to do this.

There are people out there who claim they don't level to 15 without 15k in obs exp. That's...retarded. But that person is going to have a 2-3 edge advantage over me probably.

I usually go somewhere halfway, I'll get 3k or so worth of obs/expl XP and farm some gold (usually about 30) but I don't want to be a lowbie for 40 hours nor do I want to exploit scripts to re-explore HTOS for the 30th time over the last 10 years.

There's, to me at least, a vast difference between lazy and broken...with obs xp leaning more towards the broken side.

Btw, I'll also master all my weapons, so it's not laziness...just the fact that I'm tempted to macro it though makes me think it's bad.