Power Creep and Rebalancing the Game

[Geras]

A thought that came from the recent MUD review and Discord discussion...

I think (and I think most reviews we get would agree) that we have a real power creep issue in this game. We hoard IC influence, code advantages, OOC relationships. The first and last of those I think are things we need to deal with in the culture (and aren't wholly bad when done right), but the code stuff maybe we can address more directly.

Should we be putting a cap on how much XP you can spend/have? Should it be on an account or just a character (I think the latter)?

My gut tells me 300k? With maybe some tweaking to the XP costs for stats (which are where most XP goes now I think?).

[BlackSoul566]

A thought that came from the recent MUD review and Discord discussion...

I think (and I think most reviews we get would agree) that we have a real power creep issue in this game. We hoard IC influence, code advantages, OOC relationships. The first and last of those I think are things we need to deal with in the culture (and aren't wholly bad when done right), but the code stuff maybe we can address more directly.

Should we be putting a cap on how much XP you can spend/have? Should it be on an account or just a character (I think the latter)?

My gut tells me 300k? With maybe some tweaking to the XP costs for stats (which are where most XP goes now I think?).

Perhaps instead of a cap, just make it so that the more XP you spend to raise skills, you being to accrue a sort of "tax"? So as you invest XP into skills, they become slowly more expensive to raise?

[Geras]

We already have that to an extent, but the ramp up could be made steeper. Would that just give an edge to folks with large pools of XP though who can pay the penalty?

[BlackSoul566]

We already have that to an extent, but the ramp up could be made steeper. Would that just give an edge to folks with large pools of XP though who can pay the penalty?

It would just slow down those who are already powerful, from getting more powerful while giving those who are less powerful, more opportunity to sort of catch up. I think, anyway.

[AlwaysShunny]

+1. I'm all for redistributing the power across the playerbase.

[Dice]

The learn system should help at least a little with this, assuming it's still in the game? By making people really max out in the skills they can have above 25, you should have a very hard cap on the amount of XP you can realistically invest in a character in a way that gives you meaningful benefits. Is learn perhaps too generous? Or are there other really important XP expenditures beyond skills making PCs overly powerful?

[BlackSoul566]

The learn system should help at least a little with this, assuming it's still in the game? By making people really max out in the skills they can have above 25, you should have a very hard cap on the amount of XP you can realistically invest in a character in a way that gives you meaningful benefits. Is learn perhaps too generous? Or are there other really important XP expenditures beyond skills making PCs overly powerful?

This doesn't do anything for stats, though. Which older players can easily just dump XP on and max out on them.

[Dice]

Hmm - if stats are that consequential, seems new players should start with more points to divvy up between them, then!