Post by Shun Minamoto on Jun 18, 2016 18:39:31 GMT -5
For a very long time, Bleach Gotei has stood at a crossroads. There have, at all times, been two options.
You can see why these two options are at odds. Not only does – unwilling, specifically; willing is another matter entirely -- death require the effective loss of tons of work, but it takes away from what that character can do for everyone else as well. Powerful characters that have been exceedingly well-developed are hard to come by and their death doesn’t mesh well with a setting where death can happen a lot.
And, maybe, it should? Who knows.
That’s what I want to ask about, what I want to gauge by people offering their perspectives, to let our Staff and GOD EMPEROR Tokiyo decide.
So let’s talk about each option and what it entails.
Option One
This is literally where we are now and, therefore, the easiest to go with. A 10,000 GP Prestige character that, we’ll pretend has somehow gotten 6,000 Base GP already, requires 4,000 other GP to be written. That’s 200,000 words.
That’s two novels, even in this very generous example. That’s why I refer to our characters as high investment.
Back when I was the owner, I attempted to mitigate this with the introduction of Legendary Challenges. Really, just a way for characters who make cool shit happen for others, like with crazy fight scenes, to get more GP, which gives them more agency with their character.
GP, really, is just character agency in currency form.
This is kind of really dumb, though. We already have a method for rewarding that kind of thing: It’s called Base GP. But Base GP has that effective “soft cap” that, while you can go above it, you really probably won’t. The issue here, of course, is that 6,000 Base GP “limit” dates back to BG 2011.
We are not BG 2011.
So if we choose to continue down our path, I propose two changes.
I feel like this would vastly enhance playability by providing more means to get GP for doing great things with your character and writing well, without requiring quite as much in terms of sheer word volume.
Option Two
This is where the rule book gets thrown out. If we want to change BG to accommodate this, which is my personal favorite option, we can look at any number of changes in order to make it happen. Which ones would be best, if we even wanted to do this? I can’t really say, but I do have ideas.
One of my favorite radical ideas is this: Eliminate everything but Base GP. All GP growth would be through milestones, eliminating the issue of people always writing big posts and lots of words because more GP = good. However, players that get lazy and write short, weak posts simply won’t do well when Milestones are graded.
Milestones would become much more frequent, and probably smaller. This probably isn’t a bad thing, since the trade-off is no longer needing to count or claim words at all.
This way, characters can grow fast when they get out there, rock ass, take times, and do awesome shit and grow. Whereas other players can continue to be more in the background and, while they might not grow explosively, can and will grow continuously without the constant need for super-huge posts to help fuel them.
There are tons of options but, if we retain anything similar to Bleach Gotei’s current progression system, I would propose still increasing Base GP’s “soft cap” from 6,000 to 10,000 as in my above suggestions.
-----
This the crossroads that we’re at. What we do, if anything, is largely up to us and up to discussion. Maybe we won’t do anything at all!
But I wanted to get it out there, since it came up with that other thread, and maybe help point the discussion in a productive, bold direction. There shouldn’t be anything in here but friendly brainstorming and idea-tossing, so please, have at it.
Meanwhile, barricading my apartment against murderous Tokiyos.
- High-investment characters requiring years of work, time, and effort. We’re talking, word counts in the hundreds of thousands to make Prestige characters.
- Lower-investment characters in a highly dynamic world where they can live and die freely, making fights more interesting and our stories, generally, more engaging.
You can see why these two options are at odds. Not only does – unwilling, specifically; willing is another matter entirely -- death require the effective loss of tons of work, but it takes away from what that character can do for everyone else as well. Powerful characters that have been exceedingly well-developed are hard to come by and their death doesn’t mesh well with a setting where death can happen a lot.
And, maybe, it should? Who knows.
That’s what I want to ask about, what I want to gauge by people offering their perspectives, to let our Staff and GOD EMPEROR Tokiyo decide.
So let’s talk about each option and what it entails.
Option One
This is literally where we are now and, therefore, the easiest to go with. A 10,000 GP Prestige character that, we’ll pretend has somehow gotten 6,000 Base GP already, requires 4,000 other GP to be written. That’s 200,000 words.
That’s two novels, even in this very generous example. That’s why I refer to our characters as high investment.
Back when I was the owner, I attempted to mitigate this with the introduction of Legendary Challenges. Really, just a way for characters who make cool shit happen for others, like with crazy fight scenes, to get more GP, which gives them more agency with their character.
GP, really, is just character agency in currency form.
This is kind of really dumb, though. We already have a method for rewarding that kind of thing: It’s called Base GP. But Base GP has that effective “soft cap” that, while you can go above it, you really probably won’t. The issue here, of course, is that 6,000 Base GP “limit” dates back to BG 2011.
We are not BG 2011.
So if we choose to continue down our path, I propose two changes.
- Eliminate Legendary Challenges and allow that sort of thing and other world-enhancing events to be rewarded via Base GP.
- Expand Base GP’s “soft cap”, and rewrite the Lifecycle, to 10,000 Base GP.
I feel like this would vastly enhance playability by providing more means to get GP for doing great things with your character and writing well, without requiring quite as much in terms of sheer word volume.
Option Two
This is where the rule book gets thrown out. If we want to change BG to accommodate this, which is my personal favorite option, we can look at any number of changes in order to make it happen. Which ones would be best, if we even wanted to do this? I can’t really say, but I do have ideas.
One of my favorite radical ideas is this: Eliminate everything but Base GP. All GP growth would be through milestones, eliminating the issue of people always writing big posts and lots of words because more GP = good. However, players that get lazy and write short, weak posts simply won’t do well when Milestones are graded.
Milestones would become much more frequent, and probably smaller. This probably isn’t a bad thing, since the trade-off is no longer needing to count or claim words at all.
This way, characters can grow fast when they get out there, rock ass, take times, and do awesome shit and grow. Whereas other players can continue to be more in the background and, while they might not grow explosively, can and will grow continuously without the constant need for super-huge posts to help fuel them.
There are tons of options but, if we retain anything similar to Bleach Gotei’s current progression system, I would propose still increasing Base GP’s “soft cap” from 6,000 to 10,000 as in my above suggestions.
-----
This the crossroads that we’re at. What we do, if anything, is largely up to us and up to discussion. Maybe we won’t do anything at all!
But I wanted to get it out there, since it came up with that other thread, and maybe help point the discussion in a productive, bold direction. There shouldn’t be anything in here but friendly brainstorming and idea-tossing, so please, have at it.
Meanwhile, barricading my apartment against murderous Tokiyos.