Timeskip/Floor Jump Poll

[Takao 0]

This is an idea I've been sitting on for a while now regarding 3.0, and after receiving some mixed feedback from those who I pitched the idea to, I figured it'd be best left up to a site vote.

So, INTEREST CHECK!

How many of you would be interested in a Timeskip/Floor Jump? This would be to further the narrative along a bit, which is otherwise quite slow by nature. The jump itself would be a single digit number of floors and probably only a few months time-wise, and may or may not include a small level bump as well. Opinions?

EDIT:
So there's a bit of confusion as to what the purpose of the Timeskip is. Allow me to make it as clear as I possible can, this is not to fix the process of leveling up. That is an entirely different change of mechanics. The way players will level up in 3.0 will largely be based on their current level relative to the floor number. Higher levels on lower floors mean that progress is greatly hindered. Lower levels on higher floors means that progress is expedited. By leaving the next <10 or so floors to be manually unlocked, we would be offering high level players even more rewards(namely from being on the frontlines/boss raids) without really giving anything to the low leveled players that want to catch up, outside of how the system already balances the leveling meta.

So, to summarize, the process of leveling is changing in 3.0, but that process alone isn't enough to fix the level gap. The timeskip would allow low leveled players the means to close the gap without giving the higher leveled players both the time and the means to continue furthering it.

 

Also, since this apparently needs to be said. Voting multiple times with alts will result in all votes from your accounts being removed.

Edit 2: Vale and Ssendom's votes were removed for double-voting.
Edit 3: Sey changed his vote from No to Yes.
Edit 4: Macradon changed his vote from No to Yes.
Edit 4: Beatbox changed his vote from No to Yes.

[Shield 0]

While I'm all for things picking up pace, I think that just arbitrarily doing so is a little cheap. If both staff and players are unhappy with the pace of the game, then my personal thought is that they need to work together to come up with a way to make the process quicker: reduce the necessary number of map fragments, or increase rewards for people who fight field bosses/floor bosses, find labyrinths, and complete maps. Maybe even make map fragments drop as loot from really lucky loot rolls in labyrinths.

There are any number of solutions. My personal vote is that we should change HOW we move forward, not just arbitrarily skip forward.

[Takao 0]

The purpose of the time skip isn't to arbitrarily skip forward for the sake of doing so. With a timeline in the works, the reason for the time skip would be to put the current progression of the game into realistic proportions. One day in real life does not equate to one day IC on the forums.

Generally speaking, the issue progression speed is separate from the issue of where we stand currently. We're not where we should be, which is what the timeskip is for. The progression speed is a separate issue that will be looked into, but ultimately is not the purpose of the time skip.

[Baldur 0]

40 minutes ago, Takao said:

The purpose of the time skip isn't to arbitrarily skip forward for the sake of doing so. With a timeline in the works, the reason for the time skip would be to put the current progression of the game into realistic proportions. One day in real life does not equate to one day IC on the forums.

Generally speaking, the issue progression speed is separate from the issue of where we stand currently. We're not where we should be, which is what the timeskip is for. The progression speed is a separate issue that will be looked into, but ultimately is not the purpose of the time skip.

To expand upon this, we have players who are in the 50+ area, while we're on floor 20. A time skip/floor jump would make our levels in relationship to the floors much more realistic. A lot of the issues we have is that our current frontline player based is geared for much more challenging content than we currently have unlocked, and even in the method of starting the next floor boss fight the day the previous one finishes, we are so far beyond where we should be, player strength wise, that it would be technically impossible to catch up.

I personally love the idea of going through the tower floor by floor, but I also feel like a time skip might be the best way to correct some otherwise untenable problems.

[Hydra 0]

I like the idea of this. Another suggestion which people may or may not like is putting a level cap on the floor bosses themselves.

At first, I wasn't so sure about this but thinking about it, in a way using this method offers a few advantages. Firstly it would provide a means for other lower leveled players to obtain some of the more powerful items. Secondly, it stops the people further ahead from getting too much further ahead and closing the gap. It also allows the boss designers to tailor the bosses down to a better-suited level. Of course, this raises the question of 'Is it fair?' and to be honest not really, considering the frontliners have put more effort to get where they are than anyone else. Another alternative could potentially be a 'Stat cap' in that case. 

[Shield 0]

36 minutes ago, Hydra said:

Another suggestion which people may or may not like is putting a level cap on the floor bosses themselves.

I don't know if this is the way to accomplish what you're hoping to accomplish. I do, however, see that party size is a big part of why events and boss battles take so long. I think that raid size should be limited. There should be a sign-up period for any and all events, and people who are of appropriate level and who have also been in the fewest prior events should get top priority.

With smaller groups, mods have more call to be strict on posting time. If it's your turn and you wait more than x amount of time to post, it's on to the next person, and you can always expect your turn to come relatively soon, so there's no excuse for missing. Not to mention that the rotation itself will move much faster. The pattern has so far been, if you give people more time to waste, they will waste it.

 

51 minutes ago, Baldur said:

To expand upon this, we have players who are in the 50+ area, while we're on floor 20. A time skip/floor jump would make our levels in relationship to the floors much more realistic.

This right here speaks of a balance issue, that it takes too long to get through a floor, and gives people time to power level. If we skip forward without balancing what we currently have, then there are two possibilities that I see:

1) We'll have the same problem in another 20-30 floors and have to skip again.

2) This is a natural part of RPG leveling, where you level quickly at first and slow down the further in you go, which implies that eventually the problem will correct itself if given enough time.

I don't know which of those is the case, but either way, a time skip wouldn't make a difference in the long run.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Shield

[Seul 1]

Fairness is a tricky subject around here imo. I don't envy the staff since they have to keep both the the high and low level players happy but a lot of things that would help one group would hurt the other. 

---

@Shield I don't think the balancing issue stems from our speed of floor clearing but rather it comes from how we level up. In a traditional rpg game you only get levels from killing monsters and doing quests. Here you get levels from anything whether it's killing a monster on floor 20, a monster on floor 1 or just drinking tea. If you only do 21 posts you get the same amount of "exp" in the form of SP. You just passively level the more active you are so people with 3 years worth of threads in their pocket are miles ahead of where people who join now will ever hope to be. I remember back when I was like level 10 a bunch of older players went back and dug up a whole bunch of old threads they were in from before the sp system was used and (even if they only posted once) closed them and shot up 10s of points above where they were.

The current level system is like a double edged sword because you want leveling to be accessible but not to the point where you can be way out in front of everyone.

The staff have mentioned that there'll be a new system for leveling implemented eventually so hopefully that'll remedy the situation if SP isn't being used for levels anymore. People won't be able to just jump into threads and get an SP (maybe I don't know how the new system will work). I personally think having level caps in place would have worked nicely, but it's kinda late for that. xD

With that considered if a time skip puts us in a place where it makes more sense to be so powerful then I'm for it.

[Baldur 0]

1 hour ago, Shield said:

right here speaks of a balance issue, that it takes too long to get through a floor, and gives people time to power level. If we skip forward without balancing what we currently have, then there are two possibilities that I see:

If we had had a consistent way of leveling throughout the history of the site, this might be the case, but at one point in time you got levels based on your number of posts. Without an EXP system, a player could never least the first floor, yet become the most powerful character in Aincrad. We have, unfortunately, inherited these issues, and without going to players over a certain level and saying "sorry, we're gonna have to take this back" we just have to roll with it. A time skip would let us smooth this out, without having to take anything away from the most dedicated of the player base.

[Shield 0]

1 minute ago, Baldur said:

A time skip would let us smooth this out, without having to take anything away from the most dedicated of the player base.

I'm not seeing how this would balance anything other than the top end. I feel like it would further unbalance the top versus bottom players. It'll skip us ahead X floors rather than lower level players having that time to play catch-up. That's the way I see it at least.

[Emerath 0]

I know I've been gone, and ultimately don't know exactly the state of the game at this point until I do some more reading on the site and play a bit again, but based on the conversation at hand I'd have to agree with Shield. All in all, the focus is 3.0, which will (hopefully) fix many of the issues that have always plagued the game systems as a whole. And in all fairness, many of the issues I came up with moons ago have been patched, which I'm very happy for. But as a player sort of in the middle of everything, (i.e. has a history, but isn't a frontliner) I don't think the timeskip would do much for me. I think the timeline is more important, and if we have a basis for how time progresses in the game, then it makes the narrative feel less slow.

For example, when you consider the idea that a day IRL equals a day IC, then it feels slow because a person with a regular social life, work, school, etc can only post a handful of times in a day, not to mention time between replies on multi-person threads given these IRL duties and obligations. Then it means your character is progressing at such a snail's pace that walking across the room or smiling at your friend takes an entire day.

I don't know what the timeline ideas in place are, or what has been previously discussed, but one RP site I was on had an interesting idea in which a player could only be doing X amount of threads (I believe for them it was three) and on their own personal timeline, the  most current thread is labeled as "present", and was the only thread that could contain combat. The other two threads would take place at points before this present thread, would not contain combat (due to the nature of, "if your character dies, you can't explain the most present thread and their existence there), and could be arbitrarily anywhere in their timeline so long as events don't conflict or contradict. This opens up the possibilities of flashbacks, prior history, and other backstory.

The obvious drawback is the fact that in multi-person threads, if a person gets busy or cannot respond, the "present" thread may be unnecessarily halted and a character (or characters) story may end up floundering, with the player being unable to do anything but past threads with no combat. I never really learned how they dealt with this, but my own personal thinking was that other rules, such as timers or the ability to skip or write a person out of threads depending on the situation would be necessary.

Overall, I feel that these types of solutions, as Shield has presented, are overall better for the health of the game. I get that we have OP characters, but you can't focus on those people. There will always be min-maxers. There will always be no-lifers. And I don't mean that to insult anyone who is those things, because more power to you, you have the power and dedication to back it up and can kick my butt in game no doubt. But their existence will always be a constant, as will new players, and in betweeners like me. The wanderers, the ones who come and go. A timeskip won't make these people go away. It won't "fix" them. It'll just make them strive to be back in their slot again, at the top again, and won't get the low levels, wanderers, and inbetweeners back into the fray any faster.

I get why you want the timeskip, but it's, at best, a bandaid. And, at worst, an insult. Because you'd be telling people they can't play their way because it isn't "fair". Because some are too high level, and some are not high enough. This is an MMO based text RPG. The very nature of MMOs means that there will never be an even playing field. There are people who still play World of Warcraft who have zero interest in the latest expansion. They are no less players than the hardcore raider, the altoholic, and the achiever. They just play differently.

And as a final point, if people are having trouble catching up, a timeskip won't fix that. Again, because of the hardcore elite. Calrex is a machine (or used to be, if he isn't still) and would pull ahead in no time even with a timeskip. And then you'd just have the rest at your door again complaining about he's too OP. Just as an example.

Obviously, I vote no to this. :)

[Seul 1]

I don't understand any of you. You guys all voted no to getting new content out sooner... :T

Edited March 19, 2017 by Seul

[Soredell 0]

I'm more in favor of @Shield's suggestion on changing our method of advancement as opposed to a small timeskip. RPGs are supposed to take a long time to progress through content, I realize that. The main issue I see is the longevity of the site. Many members both new and old will get tired of waiting to hit the next floor and will leave. I've witnessed this happen before. We want to progress things along, but not at the expense of our experience role playing and adventuring, since that is the point of the site.

We need to make efforts in closing the gaps between high and low level players to give an experience that is fun and challenging for everyone regardless of where they are at in terms of level. This is really important for events and bosses as we see a whole spectrum of levels in players in events. Although I have not experienced this myself, I feel like finding map fragments for floor bosses takes too long, and there needs to be a quicker way of getting there to keep players who are at the level of fighting bosses can fight.

As I mentioned, the imbalance in levels and by extension power is quite evident. Higher level players are able to easily carry lower level players and they are rewarded for it, but it leaves lower level players with little opportunity to get stronger themselves through the means of items and weapons.

There is a lot more a could write, and much neater too if it wasn't past midnight and I wasn't sleepy. To summarize, echoing what Shield said, we need to change how we progress as opposed to just skipping forward.

[Seul 1]

@Soredell Let me direct you to Baldur's post and my post.

Edited March 19, 2017 by Seul

[Takao 0]

The main issue here is that people continue to misinterpret the purpose of the timeskip despite it having been explained. The timeskip is not something to fix a continuous problem, it's not meant to do anything for the process of leveling up. It's fix what has already happened and to better equip players for the new leveling mechanics in 3.0. At the moment, the lower floor count will hinder low level players just as much as it will players on the other end of the spectrum. The point was to unlock a certain amount of floors in preparation for the players that constantly complain about the level gap to be given an opportunity to close it. But given the public opinion, not only will they have to close that gap themselves, but they'll also have to unlock the means to do it themselves, which not only gives higher leveled players time to continue to further the gap again, but it also gives them all the rewards from unlocking the floors which will continue to help them level up.

The process that created the gap is changing, but the timeskip's purpose was to give lower leveled players better footing to level up while higher leveled players were hindered. The current floor count just increases the amount of work for low leveled players, while also giving high leveled players both the time and the means to continue.

[Vale 1]

I'm special. I get my own edit line. :3 Sey is special too!

[Macradon 0]

The discussion has put me into a place where I actually think the timeskip is a good idea

Let's take my current level into account, 60.

My HP is 1215
Loot standard mobs will have an HP of 1215/2=608(rounded up)
The floor standard mob which has 608 HP is the mobs that should be present on the 121st floor ...

Can the @Takaocat change my vote from no to yes?

[Beat 0]

It seems to me that the problem is not the level gap. If people have an issue with the level gap then they really need to think about why that bothers them. In any stat based system or game, people who put in more time and effort will be higher level. I feel like the fact that there is a large gap between groups of players is not a problem you should be going out of your way to fix since it a natural phenomenon. However, by addressing the problem I'm about to mention, you might be able to kill two birds with one stone.  

The issue is that floor progression is very slow, especially with how few people are pushing the unlocking of the floors, which makes reaching the levels that can push the labyrinths feel a little lack luster since it takes an incredibly long time to unlock the next floor and creates that pile up of high level players at the top. I think time skipping will only buy you time to come up with a solution that would be better implemented now.

One problem you may introduce by skipping 20 or 30 floors is that the players will have no feeling of accomplishment and no attachment to the progress of the game for those floors. This is something I personally have been looking forward to and would feel like I was robbed of the chance to push the game forward with my own hands.  

From the sounds of it, in 3.0, leveling on content far beneath your level will yield far less exp and progression than leveling on content closer to your level. That makes total sense and I'm all for that. The really cool thing here is that I think it helps you with the level gap problem if you don't time skip. While the higher level players work to unlock higher floors to obtain more gear and more experience so they can continue leveling, the lower level players, who are fighting content at or around their level, will be doing what they are already doing: Trying to catch up to help push the frontlines. The lower level players will level faster respectively, while the frontliners will be able to feel like they are working towards greater rewards as they unlock the higher floors, assuming the process of progressing to higher floors isn't a process that takes 2+ months per floor. 

A possible middle ground here is that you temporarily make the floor progression process simpler and faster and tighten the reigns again once it gets to where you think it should be. This would let the players feel like they pushed that progress (cuz they did) while accelerating your ability to provide more content for those higher level players. While this happens, the level gap shortens, appeasing anyone that feels like that is an issue currently.

Edited March 19, 2017 by Beat

[Macradon 0]

15 hours ago, Beat said:

A possible middle ground here is that you temporarily make the floor progression process simpler and faster and tighten the reigns again once it gets to where you think it should be. This would let the players feel like they pushed that progress (cuz they did) while accelerating your ability to provide more content for those higher level players. While this happens, the level gap shortens, appeasing anyone that feels like that is an issue currently.

I think the current approach to floor clearing is to counteract the fact that scouts found boss rooms nearly right after we defeated the boss.
I remember finding Tanos 3 hours after we defeated the boss before.

[Beat 0]

1 minute ago, Macradon said:

I think the current approach to floor clearing is to counteract the fact that scouts found boss rooms nearly right after we defeated the boss.
I remember finding Tanos 3 hours after we defeated the boss before.

I certainly understand the desire to make floor clearing a process, but I think 2-3 months to find and clear each floor may be a bit excessive. Even if it is reasonable given certain circumstances, it doesn't seem like it has worked given the situation we are now facing. 

Like I said, the ease of floor clearing could be a temporary measure if they wanted it to be, just to allow people to unlock floors more quickly to achieve this "timeskip" without robbing the players of the opportunity to find and clear the floors themselves.

I could be in the minority here, but part of the appeal of this site, for me anyways, was that we would be a part of that unlocking process. I don't feel like having to work for something is a bad thing, especially on a forum RPG where instant gratification really isn't a thing most of the time. The appeal of forum sites like this is that the payoff is in the long term. You can look back and go "Yeah, that was awesome. We totally kicked ass." and "Oh remember that boss fight? Oh man!"

With a time skip, we miss 20 or 30 boss fights that, if the floor clearing process had been a little more lenient, we would have done naturally anyways (at least partially). Playing catch up is fine, but I feel like removing the process entirely isn't the right way to go. 

[Takao 0]

Why are you assuming that we would skip 20-30 floors? The first post even says less than 10 floors.

Also, when I/other scouts were finding boss rooms within 2 hours of the raid being cleared, it still took us months to clear floors. I believe that, during that time, we maybe cleared a total of six or seven bosses? There's nothing wrong with the current system. The issue here is that everybody is still trying to scout by themselves. Get a thread of five people going, four posts each minimum, and kill the monsters. Congratulations, you have all the map fragments. I admit there could be more incentive to scouting, maybe additional SP rewards or something, but the system itself is fine.

Edit: Because I'm bored, I decided to go back and prove how easy it is to scout for anybody that thinks the current system is too cumbersome.

Here we have eight separate labyrinth scouting threads:

sao-rpg.com/topic/14435-pp-f20-ventures/
sao-rpg.com/topic/14438-sp-f20-ascendance/
sao-rpg.com/topic/14369-scouting-the-20-floor-labyrinth/
sao-rpg.com/topic/14473-scouting-the-20-floor-labyrinth/
sao-rpg.com/topic/14226-f20-sp-the-labyrinth-of-swamps/
sao-rpg.com/topic/14453-f20-sp-the-re-attempt/
sao-rpg.com/topic/14236-f20sp-%E3%80%8Ascouting-the-20th-floors-labyrinth%E3%80%8B/
sao-rpg.com/topic/14256-sp-f20-the-ending-of-days/

Between them is a total of 84 posts. If this was one single thread, not only would all of those participants receive 4 SP from simply closing the thread, but they would also receive 1 additional SP for finding the fragments on top of having located all the map fragments already. There's nothing wrong with the system when the players are choosing the path of most resistance.