Absolute Idiom II
BetaMax.
68
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Posted - 2012.12.22 20:11:00 -
[1] - Quote
CCP Cmdr Wang wrote:Laurent Cazaderon wrote:Garrett Blacknova wrote:I'd like to see a daily "diminishing returns" effect, but one which works gradually, not hitting players hard, and with smaller modifiers being applied the longer you play - basically like a "stacking penalty" on the negative modifiers for long-term play.
There should also be a weekly "hard" cap on SP earnings, preferably with a series of thresholds that provide negative modifiers as well.
That would mean that people with only a day or two of playtime could grind for several hours and still be reasonably expected to keep up with the daily players who have a similar amount of total playtime.
To integrate the above restrictions into a coherent form, only the higher of the two applicable modifiers should be used. If you have a -100% modifier from hitting the weekly SP cap, you shouldn't have the daily modifier counted as well, because that will mean you lose SP for playing, and that's a terrible idea.
More importantly than this change, though, is that I want MORE TRANSPARENCY in the SP system. We need a way to see the following details:
1. Base SP earned (possibly with a further breakdown of SP from kills, SP from objectives and SP from destruction)
2. Booster modifier (if applicable, possibly with an ad for "you could have bought a booster for X AUR and got this bonus")
3. Currently-active diminishing returns modifier
Point 3 is the key thing we're not being told. Show players what our limits are, what's happening to "our" SP when we go into a match, so we aren't coming here and screaming "you stole my SP, stupid hard cap" or similar, less-polite reactions. Posted something in another thread about sp that kinda sounds like this as well. Mix of a weekly (why not even monthly) and daily cap ? Also had an interesting talk on IRC with other players about cool ideas. Anyway, only sur thing i can add is what CCP_Praetorian tweeted me yesterday : "We want to ensure that players progress (sp) similar if they started at the same time. "https://twitter.com/CCP_Praetorian/status/281403441752977409 We do plan to improve the SP cap system with future iterations that will be more sophisticated than the current daily SP cap. Thanks for all the suggestions and time spent in testing this system. The difference in opinon on whether a weekly or daily SP cap seems to be based on player preference and play style, and we will find a system that can best accomodate both and retain balance.
Here is my pitch for a much better SP limit model:
The previous system has an SP pool per character that gets reset once a week on a Tuesday. SP that is rewarded is drawn from the pool and once it is dissipated results in minute amounts of SP being rewarded per match. There is a diminishing returns calculation applied to make the pool last over the week.
Although this is pretty fair, there a several use cases which expose limitations. For instance, let's say 4 days of intense play that would exhaust this SP pool. If the 4 days you play happen to span Sunday-Wednesday then you'll never experience the SP limitation, although many others would. The arbitrary timing of the full SP pool refresh does not restrict all players equally and would also lead to distortion of playing behaviours in order to min/max.
Instead, the pool should receive a top up every hour or so, going no higher than the standard weekly limit. For example, let's say the SP pool was 168k SP then every hour an additional 1k gets added to the SP pool for you to (potentially) earn in combat.
If you manage to exhaust the SP pool with heavy play then the next day (the very next hour even) you have some more SP available to earn. Everyone still has the same weekly limit of SP that they can earn, but you'll never hit a point where it's practically pointless to play for a few days until the reset.
For an example of a game which has implemented this example style, please see Urban Dead: http://www.urbandead.com/faq.html#ap
Action Points are refilled at +1 AP every half hour, up to a max of 50. Players can either play once per day using them all up in once go. Or they can spread out how they spend the AP. The analogy to playing Dust either every day or only a day or two per week is obvious.
The benefit of this system is that everytime you come back to the game after a break you have some more SP to earn from your SP pool. And the system doesn't benefit casual players over hardcore players over the other or vice versa.
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