Bahr

Do you want community happiness?
Because this is how you get community happiness.

1 hour ago, Baldur said:

I think I picked up in chat that the benchmark level being discussed was Paragon level 75, which would be equivalent of someone being level 375? I feel like that must be a typo, but it doesn't really bear into my decision.

I don't like the idea of custom skills or sword arts. For me, it goes against the setting. If we wanted to have player submitted skills that were added to the complete list, that might be one thing, as long as anyone could take them.

I also don't like the idea of power creep. Custom Sword Arts and Skills are going to be hugely dependent on who the player is, who staff currently is, what's come before them. The first player to get one might choose something entirely reasonable, but the second person might get away with something much more powerful than the first, simply because it's different. It is easier to balance certain things (like sword arts) than it is to balance something that has a "soft" function. If a different team of staff take over by the time someone reaches Paragon level 75, then the first person to get one might have an entirely different philosophy of balance to deal with. Each one being close but slightly more powerful than the last, until the first person's custom skill isn't even really that good.

By and large, I don't trust the average player to be able to determine the balance of a skill or sword art against the system holistically. While I trust our current staff group, it may be a long time before someone actually achieves one of these.

It's really hard to perceive how these will actually end up working, considering how nebulously into the future they are. We may have 4.0 by the time someone hits the benchmark level.

I do want to end this with the caveat that I think it's a cool system. It definitely has the potential to insert some interesting things into RP, but for me, setting and balance come first. If this system was implemented, would I use it? Yes. I'd be foolish not to. Would I like to see this system implemented? Not particularly. I think, in the long term, it's too nebulous and prone to abuse if certain "in" people are able to justify/balance their custom skill/sword art, and other people aren't. I don't think the current staff runs into that problem, but we have had staff in the past and probably in the future that may not be so objective.

Just as a start to my response, I want to start by say I think there's been a serious miscommunication in how Paragon Levels work. A Paragon Level is any level obtained beyond the currently implemented level cap, which will always be the current floor + five. So on Floor 26, the level cap would be 31, and if someone who was at the level cap then accrued enough EXP to reach level 32, they would instead be level 31, and Paragon Level 1. This repeats up to an infinite amount of Paragon Levels regardless of the level cap. 

Keeping this in mind, Paragon Level 75 would be the equivalent of level 106 on Floor 26, 107 on Floor 27, etc.

The fun thing about the setting in SAO-RPG is that it is indeed so amorphous. There was no Custom Skill or Custom Sword Art system in the show or novels, but that does not mean it violates the setting. It only means that the writers did not implement such a system within said setting. Something comparable would be saying that having no Kirito or Klein violates the setting. Or that having power players like Macradon or Calrex violates the setting. Or that having a weapon such as Ominaru in existence violates the setting. None of these, of course, actually do violate the setting - they're just different from the original story. But we expect and promote this, as this is an AU in comparison to the original Aincrad. 

Virtually nothing (within reason) can actually violate the setting of of SAO. Cardinal is an ever changing entity that can create and update an ever changing world. It's how things like the 3.0 update can be justified in character. This, too, can be justified as a Cardinal-issued content patch. The history of war is one of improvisation and adaptability. People would develop and learn new skills and techniques to improve their chance of survivability. Being that that is the case, I consider it within reason that Cardinal may issue an update that adds a feature to coincide with this history. 

I can see why you may not trust the average player to determine what is balanced against the system as a whole. That's why the entirety of staff will be involved in discussions pertaining to Custom Skills or Sword Arts, with the Systems team leading the conversations and bringing possible abuse or loopholes to light (as we have arguably the most in-depth grasp of the system holistically). I also see how power creep could be a concern, which is why I made it clear that we reserve the right to make adjustments, implement additional restrictions or addendums, or otherwise change whatever needs to be changed to prevent the abuse of loopholes or the presentation of power creep. Oscar and I have already talked about coordinating regular audits of the Custom Skills and Sword Arts once they are implemented to ensure that nothing has been overlooked. 

When it comes to keeping things impartial and objective, I think you might be underestimating current staff's capacity to maintain a fair and balanced system in regard to this proposal, as well as our capacity to ensure that future generations of staff will follow suit. As the site matures, I think it is safe to say that the process of staff work, the enforcement of rules, and overall transparency of staff has improved in a way that makes it more fair, honest, and with the interests of the players in mind. This is because each generation of staff learns from the successes and mistakes of the previous generation, and builds upon it in a cycle of continual improvement. 

After all, we could have just implemented this proposal whether the community wanted it or not, as previous generations of staff may have done. But we chose instead to bring it out into the open and ask for feedback. That, to me, is nothing less than a demonstration of our commitment to remain transparent, objective, and keep the interests of the community as a whole our focus. 

A sentence has been added to the post.
 

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For additional clarification, the benchmark reward would be creating a single Custom Skill or Custom Sword Art.

There was some brief confusion in a conversation I had with a player regarding this. Just to avoid any undue confusion, this clarification has been added.

3 hours ago, Snow said:

The idea of customization is nice, but I’m wary about the diversity and controlling these Custom Skills. Someone is going to find a loophole and abuse it with that much versatility. It’ll also make profiles a bit of a mess if someone goes all custom. I do not support the custom skills as presented above.

As for Custom Sword Arts, I find that a nice flavor addition. A good reward to personally add something unique and different to a kit. Something to surprise in a fight and a trump card maybe?

I do not, however, agree with the idea of teaching across weapon types. A dagger SA should stay with dagger users. Giving a dagger skill to a mace user and vice versa... I do not agree. Keeping it within weapon types, I think, enforces more of that special niche and a master/student dichotomy.

A compromise is to permit any one player to either have one unique skill or one unique sword art. The benchmark would still allow the option to create one or the other. That would permit your damage dealers some options for weapons and utility characters some options in utility. I believe there would be too much room for chaos if you permitted players to have both (via teaching). Especially an excess of skills that are taught and spread. 

That is my .02 cents.

I hear your concerns. If it helps assuage your worries, all Custom Skills would be catalogued with a special section in the Skills list in our Resource Guide, which mitigates confusion when it comes to people posting stat blocks. 

As far as the loopholes go, this is why all Custom Skills would be handled on a case-by-case basis and approved by staff. It's also why I included an entire paragraph dedicated to making it clear that we reserve the right to enforce additional restrictions for Custom Skills later on if an exploit is discovered so we can mitigate abuse. Rest assured, we won't be approving any Custom Skills that are busted or can be combined with other Skills to become busted (at least not without restrictions to prevent a busted combination, in reference to the latter).

It's important to note that Custom Skills would purely be classified as Extra Skills, of which characters will have a limited number of slots. This prevents someone from "going all custom." Their stat block would be majority standard Skills, with a limited number of Custom Skills sprinkled in. Not only does using one (or more) of these Extra Skill slots prevent that slot from being used with a standard Extra Skill (which are going to be essential for filling roles), there is an SP cost of 10 associated with every Custom Skill learned, which equates to two standard levels (or ten Paragon Levels) in 3.0. It's not a decision that can be made lightly, and filling up one's entire Extra Skill roster with only Custom Skills would almost certainly not be optimal. 

I can see where you're coming from when it comes to teaching the Custom Sword Arts across weapon types. That is why I made sure it was made clear that there is an option for your Custom Sword Art to be weapon-specific. As Custom Sword Arts are also ran through staff-approved evaluation, we would be keeping an eye out for inconsistencies like what you mentioned. A Custom Sword Art made for a dagger, that in its description is very clearly a dagger or blade-specific kind of Art, would certainly need to be made either weapon-specific or include an exclusion list for incompatible weapons before staff approved it.

Again, to clarify, the reason that the types of rewards aren't stated in the poll is because we are opening the floor of that part of the discussion to the community.

If you are confused and do not know how to vote because you do not know what the rewards are, you are in the same boat as us. Suggest what rewards you think would be appropriate, if any.

I cannot stress enough that the entire point of this poll was to gather full community feedback on not only whether or not we should do it, but what those rewards would be if we did.

If you vote yes but explicitly state in your comment that it is only a yes if xyz, we will be taking that seriously. We will not take a simple yes vs no vote and extrapolate it into something the community did not agree to.

Thank you.

I'm casting my vote as yes, and I'll explain why.

The point of this poll was to gather community feedback not only on whether or not this should be done, but if it is, how it should be done.
From reading the comments posted here, it is abundantly clear that nobody wants staff to get in-game rewards for doing the work on these threads. This is neither here nor there for me - I see merits to giving tangible rewards for this sort of work, as well as obvious drawbacks. So if that's your opinion, I won't fight you on it.

The part of this that nobody seems to be considering, which is a little disappointing, is the fact that we can offer rewards that have no mechanical or tangible effect in-game. A role in the Discord server, a title on-site, a shout out in the podcast. Some sort of acknowledgement for the work they put in. Because a little bit of acknowledgement goes a long way, and from what I have seen of the condition on morale in staff as of late, it is necessary.

If you think it would be alright to offer these sorts of cosmetic rewards to the members of staff putting in hours of work and thousands of words into ensuring that the members of this community have engaging events to interact with and cool rewards or bonuses to show for it, I would implore you to vote positively on this poll and let that be known in the comments. Thanks for reading.