Sorry for the double post, but I had some more interesting numbers:
You gain 392,040,000 experience. You need 2,069,816,710 more for level 147. Kneeling before a crimson cairn a final time you issue a short prayer. Light surrounds the construct, suddenly flashes, and engulfs you. When you open your eyes, the cairn is gone, but a feeling of enpowerment remains. (<--- that should totally be 'empowerment')
338793180 xp gained this run, totaling 16435475780 xp. (<--- my latest run of caanae's cairns)
I was once proud of my bashing achievements... until I saw an 18 year old with more experience than mine. Wow.. 200 wasted years bashing. What next, Cairns for PK experience.
I was once proud of my bashing achievements... until I saw an 18 year old with more experience than mine. Wow.. 200 wasted years bashing. What next, Cairns for PK experience.
Even though the XP gain from cairns are crazy right now and should most likely be lowered or somehow nerfed, I still think it's great that people can jump into the game and become Aspects in 1-2 days with this. It means we'll get a new stream of people that can PK with us right from the get go. Or just people being able to make alts without feeling they have to spend a lot of time doing something they find boring before they get to do the thing they want.
Doing this to level up, buying the no brainer lessons and you're basically set. You'll have all the basic skills necessary to do some good in group fights and even 1v1 if you want to. From what I've noticed we're having more people online too.
I was once proud of my bashing achievements... until I saw an 18 year old with more experience than mine. Wow.. 200 wasted years bashing. What next, Cairns for PK experience.
I actually totally get this sentiment, because I often brag to anyone who will listen about in-game achievements in other games. That said, you see where the pros obviously outweigh the cons here, right?
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Honestly, I think the idea of divorcing cairne xp from quest xp would be a good move. I cannot quest to save my life and my quest level is now higher than my pk level; that's a little meh, for those that have worked hard on that. Faster aspect is a good thing though, I think.
* Sanctifying or defiling cairns now give a diminishing amount of xp. Each sanctify will reduce the total xp gain by 5%. This amount comes back at the approximate rate of 1% per minute. (These are subject to change).
* Quest XP gain on Cairns has been reduced to 10% of the total. You still get 100% added to your total XP.
ANNOUNCE NEWS #2986 Date: 3/16/2015 at 19:47 From: Dec To : Everyone Subj: Cairns Part Two
For cairns:
The 5% decrease is cumulative. So if you sanctify or defile 20 or more cairns all at once you will not receive any xp at all for additional cairns. If you keep sanctifying, you will keep adding to your total even though you get zero XP. For example, sanctify 35 cairns and you will have -75% xp. You won't ever lose XP from sanctifying or defiling the cairns, but it will take longer to get in the positive. E.g. to get back to 100% xp it will take ~175-200 minutes of waiting.
You will also notice that you receive two XP messages for cairns. One is for the portion that counts towards both quest and total, the second is for the portion that counts only towards your total xp.
What's the rationale behind not putting a floor on the loss? Rather than not rewarding the owner for doing more than 20 cairns or so in whatever period of time they can, it actively penalizes them - essentially ensuring that routine cairn maintenance has to be limited to a select pool of players at a time.
I think this will spell the end of cairns, since they've only been as effective as they are due to the number of participants. At the very least, I think it would be wise to remove that negative accumulation part, and let players get no reward rather than be punished.
What's the rationale behind not putting a floor on the loss? Rather than not rewarding the owner for doing more than 20 cairns or so in whatever period of time they can, it actively penalizes them - essentially ensuring that routine cairn maintenance has to be limited to a select pool of players at a time.
I think this will spell the end of cairns, since they've only been as effective as they are due to the number of participants. At the very least, I think it would be wise to remove that negative accumulation part, and let players get no reward rather than be punished.
Is the sanctify/defile decrease per player or per cairn? I had read it as per player but maybe I misunderstood.
I personally don't understand the need for the generic XP change. What does giving people easy access to aspect really do to negatively affect the game?
Cairne's should probably just not give quest XP in general as, ultimately, people can still farm these to easily surpass the quest level of people who actually do stumble through Imperian's quests.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
ANNOUNCE NEWS #2988 Date: 3/16/2015 at 21:00 From: Dec To : Everyone Subj: Cairns, Part 3
Jeremy was feeling generous today, so we've made one more change to cairns. The minimum amount of XP gained from a cairn is 10% of the expected value. You will not be penalized for sanctifying repeatedly at 10%.
Penned by my hand on the 24th of Artificium, in the year 71 AM.
I personally don't understand the need for the generic XP change. What does giving people easy access to aspect really do to negatively affect the game?
There is a difference between "easy access to aspect" and "aspect in less than two hours of actual gameplay with no actual work required other than using a cairn-running script once an hour."
Making it easier to hit Aspect is good, but I don't think that making throw-away alts so easy to get and so valuable is a particularly good thing; I do not think that letting the Brishis and Vanmoriels of the game roll a new alt and trivially Aspect inside of a day is in anybody's best interest, to pick an obvious example.
Also, I think that encouraging investment in a relatively small amount of characters is better for the game than a system that encourages so many alts that no character receives any real development.
I still think the best way to provide powerleveling is to make the bashing area coins worth a crapton of XP; this provides easy level boosting for a single character, but the coin is consumed for a single character instead of providing a boost for every character in the game that scales up as more and more players use it.
I would be fine with doing 80-100 in <10 tokens; I am less fine with doing 1-100 in 0 tokens, even without that 1-100 increasing the exp gain of everybody else.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
The Cairnae couldn't have happened like it did if there weren't a ton of surplus tokens in game. It was already starting to die out. And having a ton of quick-made aspects is in no way a bad thing. Better ability to join group pk. Opportunity to test drive classes without a heavy investment increases the likelihood that people will invest because they can get a feel for whether they're going to like it first. Plus people can bypass the sucky new character period if they want to make an alternative but have trouble sticking them because of skill deficiency.
If you want to take something from this, @jeremy, I'd direct attention not to the cairns but to the state of pve and the verb-chasing game IRE calls questing.
Boo to people whining about their rankings. It isn't a challenge to be a top ranked basher or quester. It means you have more time and tolerance for tedium than others. And you are just as capable of taking advantage of the cairns as anyone else. Just because something was sucky when you did it doesn't mean it has to be sucky for everyone. Isn't that part of the rationale behind all the pk changes? We want an accessible game. This accomplishes that and ducks excess wealth from the game.
I personally don't understand the need for the generic XP change. What does giving people easy access to aspect really do to negatively affect the game?
There is a difference between "easy access to aspect" and "aspect in less than two hours of actual gameplay with no actual work required other than using a cairn-running script once an hour."
Making it easier to hit Aspect is good, but I don't think that making throw-away alts so easy to get and so valuable is a particularly good thing; I do not think that letting the Brishis and Vanmoriels of the game roll a new alt and trivially Aspect inside of a day is in anybody's best interest, to pick an obvious example.
Also, I think that encouraging investment in a relatively small amount of characters is better for the game than a system that encourages so many alts that no character receives any real development.
I still think the best way to provide powerleveling is to make the bashing area coins worth a crapton of XP; this provides easy level boosting for a single character, but the coin is consumed for a single character instead of providing a boost for every character in the game that scales up as more and more players use it.
I would be fine with doing 80-100 in <10 tokens; I am less fine with doing 1-100 in 0 tokens, even without that 1-100 increasing the exp gain of everybody else.
I pretty much disagree on all fronts here. I understand where you're coming from, and I think the reasoning make senses, but it's just not what I personally think is best overall for the health of the game.
Imperian already requires an absurd amount of investment, in time, currency, willingness to create and adhere to a persona. Being able to sell a new player/convert from another MUD on the idea of 'so hey, you'll probably need to look into at least Iron Elite to be useful to your crew, but at least Aspect's super easy to get, so you can just hunt for achievements/gold, et cetera' is a lot better than the current sales pitch. It's also not as if this is a regular feature. It's basically a community initiative.
I don't think this change makes or breaks things, and I don't think @jeremy's wrong per se, I just think this change is pretty unnecessary when you consider what a niche genre MUDs are, how expensive they are as a hobby and the fact that most pay for perk games are heading in a direction which lowers the initial entry barrier.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
This may be a reversal of my opinion, but what's wrong with having someone log in at level 100 xp? I can't see a problem. Chances are, 1/100 of those instapects are going to be notable outside of zerg 349. You know what there is to do from level 1-99? Nothing. People like Khizan, Eldreth, and I are going to turn you into a bloody mist because I know you're sitting at 80% of your full potential. The only thing Imperian has that's interesting is all end-game. Up until then, you're just shooting yourself in the foot.
I think the death of cairnae is pretty sadface. It had more involvement than...let's be honest, anything else this game has done in the past few years. Cairnae participation probably rocked the socks out of the ToA and you spend six months getting that ready. People interacted. People fought. We drained more tokens from your busted ass economy than you ever did. I know I'm using strong words here, but the situation merits it. Your players were having fun and you just kind of dropped the anvil on it for...what?
To argue against myself, I can almost see why you would nuke Cairnae...if I squint really hard. My problem is that you just whacked the fun part. You know most of us think levels 1-99 are bullshit. You know that we hate the slow xp buildup. The pill would be easier to swallow if instead of "tell us how you feel" (pissed off and you knew would we would be) you said "We hear your cries, let us discuss how we can find a happy middle ground between cairnae xp fun fest and make it worthwhile." That ship hasn't sailed yet, just saying.
The only thing I'm not really miffed about is the nerf to Quest XP gain, just because that's what you should have done in the first place instead of nerfing virtue drop rates -.-
E:On the throwaway alt "problem": This is a good thing according to the P2W model of the game and the entire rationale behind the ungodly grindfest that exists. Every alt is a potential credit explosion, even if the vast majority are just used for other reasons.
I don't usually jump on here to discuss things in details like most of you guys, but I can't say I'm unhappy with how things went, and where they are at now.
Beloved Cairnae was great while it lasted. Though I had my moments when "newbies" joined the guild and hit lvl 100 in about 2 actual hours of game time. I know that guilds and RP have kind of dwindled in importance, but still, as a casual citizen of the world, I do feel that cairns were a little game-breaking, the way they were.
I'm not really going to argue any points, because I'm pretty on the fence.
At the very least, I do not think it was intended for Imperial to have people shoot to lvl 100 in a few hours. I don't know many games(MMOs anyway) that do that intentionally.
After all, what would be the point of rankings? I see the pros and cons, I think. For example, if Impy were to remain RP-conscious, the old cairns weren't doing any good. I tend to name the lvl 100 newbies I meet "Cairners". Like a slew of geniuses that grew explosively in divine experience. It really spoils the RP and achievements of some.
On the other hand, I do understand the practical aspects of it in terms of PK health and people jumping on alts in new professions and whatnot.
I think that though it got nerfed a lot, people can still benefit a little from cairns on top of whatever they're already doing.
Of course, though, that's assuming people will bother to go hourly anymore, let alone spend that token on another Cairn after this.
1) Limit how much quest experience per sanctify per cairn.
2) Limit the maximum amount of experience, or even scale it down to a point. But having it go -75 (and yes, I know it doesn't lose experience) is kind of overboard.
3) Make that maximum a percent of a level, so that a novice -can't- go from 10 to 60 in five minutes. 10-15% of an entire level in one sanctify is fne.
4) DROPS. Virtue drops are going to break the world. They are going to unbalance shrines shortly, even if people haven't used their reserves yet. Simple fact is that I'd be utterly shocked if at least antimagick hasn't stored up thousands upon thousands of spirit drops from cairns. This means every shrine they can afford is automatically max level... for a long time.
I get you're trying to limit it.. and I actually approve of that. But I think it went too complicated. A flat "You can't gain more than 15% of a level per sanctify" (or lower even, I don't know exactly what the line should be) would be better than than a flat "You're screwed. "
I do agree.. and I want to eat my own tongue for saying this.. with Khizan. Reaching aspect is a chore. And not anything else. The current issue has to do more with how it affects other mechanics, and people being upset because people are leveling too fast.
A throttle needs to be put in place so that novices do actually learn things, but many, many people are bothering with alts, and that is good overall as long as people aren't stupid or metagame-y about them.
In other words.. Cairns are good and bad. The flood of them lately highlights both issues.
Maybe it'd be better to just increase experience across the board by 30% and stop selling cairns period.. I don't know. But in the end, cairns are making novices horrifyingly inexperienced, and too powerful to understand it.
Is there an overwhelmingly negative difference between an inexperienced novice and an inexperienced aspect? At the end of the day, aren't both going to be asking for help? At least in the latter situation the player in question has a lot more tools to mess around with and learn about.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Most people doing cairns were either alts of existing players or folks drug here by existing players. Getting aspect quickly doesn't break RP potential. At all. Also plenty of MMO's have some system to let you start a high level character so you can dive into pvp quickly. I know WOW has. I know LOTRO and DDO have. It makes good sense or the players and for the business.
EDIT: I made 2 newbs to see how long it would take to achieve aspect. It was roughly 2 hours of effort on each. I also spent most of the cairnae raising my numerous alts to aspect. It was effort, but it was also the only way I'd ever do aspect again. The reward is honestly not worth the investment of time and energy normally. Now, though, those characters have a much better range of skills. Which makes them far more enjoyable to play. Which makes it more likely I will pick up the stories I have built around them at various points in the last decade.
I think this made it pretty clear that as long as there is a way to reach Aspect in a quick and easy way, the player base will increase. It's a long time I saw this many people online. So why not add a way to actually buy (for real cash) your character to level 100? The game itself would benefit from the income and an increase in player base, which is more than likely buying more credits later on since they already spent some just to level up.
And if you do want to charge people for a character boost, I created a handy UI modification that both makes it convenient and represents Imperian's super friendly pricing structure!
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Comments
You gain 392,040,000 experience. You need 2,069,816,710 more for level 147.
Kneeling before a crimson cairn a final time you issue a short prayer. Light surrounds the construct, suddenly flashes, and engulfs you. When you open your eyes, the cairn is gone, but a feeling of enpowerment remains. (<--- that should totally be 'empowerment')
338793180 xp gained this run, totaling 16435475780 xp. (<--- my latest run of caanae's cairns)
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
I think this will spell the end of cairns, since they've only been as effective as they are due to the number of participants. At the very least, I think it would be wise to remove that negative accumulation part, and let players get no reward rather than be punished.
Cairne's should probably just not give quest XP in general as, ultimately, people can still farm these to easily surpass the quest level of people who actually do stumble through Imperian's quests.
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
The Cairnae couldn't have happened like it did if there weren't a ton of surplus tokens in game. It was already starting to die out. And having a ton of quick-made aspects is in no way a bad thing. Better ability to join group pk. Opportunity to test drive classes without a heavy investment increases the likelihood that people will invest because they can get a feel for whether they're going to like it first. Plus people can bypass the sucky new character period if they want to make an alternative but have trouble sticking them because of skill deficiency.
If you want to take something from this, @jeremy, I'd direct attention not to the cairns but to the state of pve and the verb-chasing game IRE calls questing.
Boo to people whining about their rankings. It isn't a challenge to be a top ranked basher or quester. It means you have more time and tolerance for tedium than others. And you are just as capable of taking advantage of the cairns as anyone else. Just because something was sucky when you did it doesn't mean it has to be sucky for everyone. Isn't that part of the rationale behind all the pk changes? We want an accessible game. This accomplishes that and ducks excess wealth from the game.
Good all around.
Imperian already requires an absurd amount of investment, in time, currency, willingness to create and adhere to a persona. Being able to sell a new player/convert from another MUD on the idea of 'so hey, you'll probably need to look into at least Iron Elite to be useful to your crew, but at least Aspect's super easy to get, so you can just hunt for achievements/gold, et cetera' is a lot better than the current sales pitch. It's also not as if this is a regular feature. It's basically a community initiative.
I don't think this change makes or breaks things, and I don't think @jeremy's wrong per se, I just think this change is pretty unnecessary when you consider what a niche genre MUDs are, how expensive they are as a hobby and the fact that most pay for perk games are heading in a direction which lowers the initial entry barrier.
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
To argue against myself, I can almost see why you would nuke Cairnae...if I squint really hard. My problem is that you just whacked the fun part. You know most of us think levels 1-99 are bullshit. You know that we hate the slow xp buildup. The pill would be easier to swallow if instead of "tell us how you feel" (pissed off and you knew would we would be) you said "We hear your cries, let us discuss how we can find a happy middle ground between cairnae xp fun fest and make it worthwhile." That ship hasn't sailed yet, just saying.
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
EDIT: I made 2 newbs to see how long it would take to achieve aspect. It was roughly 2 hours of effort on each. I also spent most of the cairnae raising my numerous alts to aspect. It was effort, but it was also the only way I'd ever do aspect again. The reward is honestly not worth the investment of time and energy normally. Now, though, those characters have a much better range of skills. Which makes them far more enjoyable to play. Which makes it more likely I will pick up the stories I have built around them at various points in the last decade.
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”