Deleted Posts?

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Fade

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Hey, it looks like some posts were altered and deleted from a thread on these boards recently.
Now there was some snark involved in the posts, but it highlighted a core problem with Alliance that has yet to be really addressed: rapid build bloat.

There was a player who said they started just before 2.0 hit who said they had a 30th+ level character. I'm not going to name them, because the player was not cheating, but had clearly used legitimate systems in the game to purchase build in order to close the level gap with other players in their home chapter.

Again, this isn't illegal in any way, nor am I calling said player to task on this.

Rather, this is the number 1 problem with alliance, as an ongoing system and as an organization: our levels are so disparate, that we have developed a real money trading system to purchase experience without actually playing at events that aren't even anywhere nearby. With goblin stamp sales, we've become the larp king of microtransactions.

We are so encouraged to buy experience blankets year round to catch up, because the systems we use are incredibly rough on lower level players, and catching up would take many years. Years that people who wish to play with their friends on relatively equal footing don't want to wait.

To say nothing of grandfathered on 60th level characters, who's level is now essentially unattainable due to experience chart changes. Seriously, do the math on it, it's like 40 plus years.

I know this doesn't pertain to 2.1 directly, but it does when 2.1 isn't addressing a major problem, and has the opportunity to do so.

The 2.1 package makes many assumptions about available build totals, and seems to highly favor the high level character, thus the alchemy changes feeling like an enormous nerf to people who don't have about fifty build floating around they can Forge into.

Despite the snarkiness involved, I do not see it as a personal attack, as the conversation kept going normally.

As mods on this forum are anonymous, we have no idea what is getting deleted by who. People posting here have very strong feelings about this game, and not a single person posting here wants it to fail or become worse. We have investment, both time and emotion, and it is important to leave it all on the table
Discussion here will get heated. It's part of the debate.
Please mods, do not delete any more posts here.
 
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Rather, this is the number 1 problem with alliance, as an ongoing system and as an organization: our levels are so disparate, that we have developed a real money trading system to purchase experience without actually playing at events that aren't even anywhere nearby. With goblin stamp sales, we've become the larp king of microtransactions.

As someone who is not part of ownership at Alliance and no longer staff at any chapter, but has been part of the financial side of running multiple larps, this is not the reason for accepting donations. The reason is to keep the cost of larp down. Camps, insurance, supplies, and food are expensive. Without donations of time, resources, and money, larp events would end up needing to be much more expensive. The stamp system is meant as a way for us to thank those who are enabling us to run the game, and incentivize to help. To run an event without this sort of system would likely have each event cost several hundred dollars per player (and we see some larps running at this price point for this exact reason). We want to keep larp affordable, so there is an incentive for donations of time and money. (As a data point, for the non-alliance larp I do still help run, we are used to about 30-50% of the cost of each event coming from donations.)


As someone who did a lot of math around the XP progression with the 2.0 release vs the previous rules set, there was a clear conscious decision to accelerate the low level xp progression in 2.0, while slowing and smoothing some of the later progression.
 
Friend; I am 50 years old, a widower, a stroke survivor, a heart attack survivor, and a disabled combat veteran (I survived an IED explosion in a near ambush in Iraq). I do not have the luxury of time. Their is a real chance I could be dead in 2022 or 2023. The ability to buy back build to experience rapid growth is a very valuable tool. Without it I don't think I would be as excited about this game as I no longer can physically put 10 years into a game.

Now the one event I was at had levels from 10 to 40. Everyone was able to participate in the event and everyone had the opportunity to show value regardless of level. A good writing team can scale your chapter so that you don't realize the disparity as much.
 
Appreciate the response, but as a moderator, you have to realize that when a post is deleted from a debate thread, it brings to question what else was deleted anonymously somewhere else.
I understand the need for moderation at times. I would ask that the moderation done in this 2.1 section particularly, be done in the threads for transparency purposes, and not simply removing someone's post.
 
As far as a Pay to Win model, there has to be a better answer than "we can write around it so we should write around it." That doesn't address the issue.
The cost argument makes a TON of sense, but I still do not believe it is a justifiable design response to the issue: essentially taking an Out of Game Action (Paying / Donating to the Chapter) for an In Game reward (Experience and Build). This all wrapped up in a system that tends to break at high levels in general.

To remedy this, I would propose a system with the following qualities:
Active Rituals carried or on spirit limited to 25
Soft Level cap at 250 experience
Any experience after 250 is still gained by the characters
Circumstances allow players to function at full build levels (Similar to how transforms are activated situationally) for epic situations.

That said, I'm going to stop this thread where it's at. It's not a debate about the system as a whole, but one about the 2.1 proposal.

Thanks for the responses either way though.
 
That said, I'm going to stop this thread where it's at. It's not a debate about the system as a whole, but one about the 2.1 proposal.

Thanks for the responses either way though.
I have locked this thread in keeping with the original posters wishes.

Fade if you want this thread reopened for any reason simply send me a PM.
 
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