Can we maybe look at rebalancing when exp and learning bonus kick in? Getting 40 people on is pretty rare these days, let alone 60.

My understanding is that the experience bonus is was meant to make up for some of the potential lost skill improvement opportunity that can come as a result of there being more people online (for one reason or another). Based on that, I'm not inclined monkey with the numbers on the experience bonus even if in practice it is not having as much impact as it did in 2011 (or whenever it came out).

I also don't see any reason to increase the exp bonus. As it is, the experience bonus is always in effect to some (usually a large) degree. This feels like you're asking for more just to see if you can get it, and given how the bonus is playing out right now what you're effectively requesting is that we increase base learning rates more so than the bonus itself.

I could probably be persuaded that the folks trying to level up when there are less than a dozen PCs on in the early AM probably needs a little help, but not the kind of help that is going to also benefit groups of three 90% of the time. On that, I'll brainstorm.

The experience bonus I was never really interested in increasing. The latter part of my comment was more about the learning bonus from max players given the fact that I don't think we've hit 60 in a long time so we never see that learning bonus.

It's nice to get the random learning bonus for a few hours but just thought it might be more realistic to notch down the 40-60 bonus to 30-50 or whatever.

But again, the same logic applies to all. Ratcheting up the passive (who numbers based) EXP bonus could be detrimental.

It hasn't even been established with any sort of certainty that there is a causal effect between time taken to level, and lower player numbers. For instance 99.9% of the shrinking player base might be attributed to people aging and real life responsibilities. Or it might be that the new content added to the game simply isn't enough to excite someone who has played for 20 years.

I would personally like to investigate this further before I put forward a case for any change. Some players use the time taken to rank to max skills. It's not simply a case of one, or two players having a perceived grievance with an aspect of a game and things being clear as day from an admin perspective.

I do think it warrants investigation at some point, but like I said, more pressing issues currently (from a personal perspective). I am more interested in building infrastructure to assist new players, as this will not affect existing players at all, and should see results on improving our player count (thus eliminating part of the problem with ranking in the first place.)

Edit: and that's not to say that people who claim that ranking, or grind is an issue are wrong. I'm just pointing out the pitfalls of jumping right onto a change without having good information as to what specifically needs changing. Increasing the ease with which players can gain skills, gain levels etc. It might be beneficial, or it could lead to an attitude of no player investment, increased alt characters, or reduce the average login time from an hour (for instance) to 15 minutes. Maybe we see more players playing, but lower numbers,just based on shorter logins.

As a player you know what you personally want. As an admin it gets a little more convoluted.

I would like learning rates to change a bit. I could just be having withdrawls from the learning bonus that was active around christmas and new years, but it's painfully slow to master things - time which would be better spent ranking, killing, or even interacting with players. I could give you specific examples throughout this last month where most if not all of a pk range is out hiding in remote zones spamming skills... this particularly happens pre-hero range. When half the mud is hero, you kind of have to do it before then or it won't happen. Maybe it's the OCD nature of our players or the fact that good players want high %s, but it just feels like lost time.

I had a giant (Behmurra) during the bonus and I'd probably would have ripped my hair for hours trying to work on things like even protective shield today. I wouldn't doubt at least 3-4 hours of spamming for 90%. I was even lucky enough to get some free skill increases from the scavenger hunt and I still spent a lot of time practicing. That bonus let me actually interact more with the game, not semi-AFK watch Netflix while I spam stuff. It could be because of aging and real life responsibilities but no one enjoys actually spamming stuff for hours on end in remote places.

Say a giant wants to master 10 of his skills - having data to say "on average this would take players about 40 hours" would be nice to have. You could even pick passive ones like protective shield, that are basically required to practice for Girded Shield, and run a simulator to see how long it'd take via RNG spamming to master it. Run it with an elf then and see if that is the number we want.

EXP bonus for me is fine - even today. We have people who hit hero in like 20-30 hours total. Learning is where the pain lies.

To me this looks like another way to bring up the same argument for faster skill learning and I really don't expect the answer to change.

Playing a giant means you should not have perfect 100s easy. If you want perfect 100s you could play a smarter race. Intelligence and learning rates are just another balance between the races.

A second note, it may be rare but there are some of us that do in fact enjoy working on skills - though this can come and go for me.

Even if you enjoy practicing (which I'm not sure how someone can enjoy learning non-combat skills especially), it's not good for the environment of the game if you're spending several hours away from everyone else and not interacting.

There's a smaller group than normal as is - you want folks to be in the mix of it. I can remember epic PKs/raids, I don't think fondly of spamming word of recall while I watch more of the West Wing.

It is obvious to me that we cannot find common ground here. Someone gives you a rational response, and logic behind the system, so you change tack and come at your objective from another angle.

"Even if you enjoy practicing (which I'm not sure how someone can enjoy learning non-combat skills especially)"..

Not on you to decide what other players do and do not enjoy.

"it's not good for the environment of the game if you're spending several hours away from everyone else and not interacting"..

Fair enough, but there are other (easier) ways to achieve a higher concentration of players within the existing world. Only one of the requires faster learning rates specifically. I don't see why we would change something that factors in so much and could have unintended consequences, when easier solutions exist?

(And no not easier solutions to your specific character problem, but easier solutions to the problem you stated in your immediate post above, which is lack of interaction and people being too spread out.)

Addendum, before I get back to area writing: You personally make a choice to play a High STR/High INT build at character creation. You personally choose to spam those skills up to maximize advantages over other players.

Those are two choices you make in your play. You cannot blame admins for not shifting goalposts to give a racial build* an even greater power:investment ratio than exists today.

*A racial choice which has already been shown to be competitive, and to be able to go toe to toe with other builds, I might add. Even post DEX changes.

I was only trying to simplify an argument - apparently it's not agreed upon and that's fine. I'm just speaking from the investment I've put into characters over the last year or so (don't get me started on felar APs).

Removing a lot of area borders has been brought up before and personally I'd love that - you'd still get folks finding somewhere to hide to do these tasks.

It seems like in the end though you're going into a combination of our discussion about STSF on QHCF and this. Even high int characters have to spam skills over a long period of time - it's not as long but it's long. If you really want numbers from real life examples of my last few characters, we can talk via email - I got bored so I started to look them up with some quick searches.

Anyways, sorry - just voicing something trying to help out. Apparently I'm doing a bad job of it lately so I'll just shush.

I am pretty stressy at the moment based on various things.

Let me just get my ducks in a row on some more pressing stuff, and I will try to understand this time investment:reward trade-off for various in game elements in more (quantitative) depth. I don't see this changing any mechanics any time soon, so don't expect anything on that front, but I'll look at this when I can.

Probably a long-term project, but I'm also curious about it just from a purely academic stance.

Hopefully the players who find this perceived issue to seriously detract from their game enjoyment can at least accept this compromise, because it's about the best I (or anyone else for that matter) can do at present.

I am extremely busy and I'm not willing to sacrifice personal relationships, or my career, on a whim.

nt

Learning bonuses are okay right now.

I maintain that a more conclusive study (with actual data) needs to be done before the learning bonuses and learning rates should be tinkered with. I would run this, but my schedule is -really- full right now.

Nobody wants CF to turn into POS with slightly more in depth lore.

Edit: And honestly, I'd personally rather focus on the ongoing efforts to find new players than carry out an enormous gathering of raw statistical data, refining said data and analysing. It could take up to 3 months to run depending on how in depth we went, and that is assuming we could even get that raw data in the first place.

Between the random manual bonus learning that has been going on recently, I do not see a reason to be changing this.

It is intended to be an additional bonus to having a lot of players on at once. More blood, more blood!