Daily UE Gain Tweak

Getting to max UE faster is worse, not better, no matter what you think.

It takes forever to get anywhere near the top and even at the upper-mid level there's a lack of competition, or willing competition, so maybe it would help a bit with that.

And this isn't directly in response to you, but in general. Being able to progress your character on a coded level does have a lot to do with how effective they can be. However, no PC is going to become anything worthwhile if they don't do anything with it.

Anyway all of this is missing the point. If you think UE matters you're just going to sit there fretting about your @stats and not doing anything. The real point of UE is to give your story a sense of progression and to stratify the playerbase so that there's a better sense of haves and have nots. You don't need more xp to do interesting things and you certainly don't need it faster.

Its true you don't need a mechanics system to RP or have fun in SD.

That being said, I do think the game would be a lot dynamic if the progression rate wasn't so slow. What do I mean by this?

If players advanced faster, they would feel more confident in the competence of their characters and consequently take more risks and be less worried about failure or going outside their cubes.

Also this would make shorten then gap between the casual and hardcore players and increase player retention and increase the size of the player base drastically (which I am not sure its something we want to do, because it might make the moo explode in more than one way).

Another added bonus, would be a larger pool of mid-lvl characters that are actually competent enough to be put in plots and challenge NPCs. And there are probably tons more benefits and problems that would come with this core change.

Nevertheless, the reason why I've never suggested something like this is that you are basically trying to change one of the core mechanics systems of game that has been a certain way for a long long time and hence is unlikely to ever change.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter how much UE or money you have in this game if you don't know how to use it properly (generating more RP for the rest of the players).

No amount of game changes is ever going to fix that, because its a problem on the player side of the equation.

I’m for this idea, though.

If you gain more UE every day, people are just that little bit more encouraged to play fast and loose with their current character instead of dreading the months/years long slog to be competitive in the skill contest of duking it out with other players.

The dread of permadeath makes people boring and timid. Higher UE gain a day would make them a little less boring and a little less timid.

I'm curious where this perceived need comes from. The game has highs and lows of activity and higher UE characters, and they'll come with time.

I think there's plenty of high/max UE characters around currently that could be fighting but refuse to for RP reasons. Maybe instead of hammering the same people over and over again, they could go after people on their skill/UE level?

I think it's disingenuous to say that there needs to be more, solely because the ones present don't want to fight each other.

If you perm or CP exit you get a big UE boost on your next character, and if you're experienced enough to know what you're doing you can spend that much more efficiently than a less experienced player, so a boost does exist.

I've also seen groups of high/max UE PCs lament about having no one to fight or that their enemies won't fight them, when they're banded with the exact kind of people they want to fight.

The people with stats/skills are here already. They're just not tweaking their RP to facilitate conflict and would prefer cozy homogenization.

I don't think it's entirely a coaching thing, but it plays a part.

Also, max UE is the end of the game. Once you get to that point you should at least start to think about looking at how to make a CP exit or bring up the next generation so you can leave the game in capable hands. The drama's in the come-up, having been there before I don't think it'd be fun to get there sooner.

That's not really the point of this thread though.

In response to your comment on pacing and responsibility? You might be right, but one or two UE extra isn't going to break the game. It may even make more sense to only allow that extra gain for PCs under a certain level of EXP.

+Lets players progress slightly faster.

I've stated that I believe this is would be a bad thing for a number of reasons.

+Makes those high curves marginally less painful.

They're intentionally painful to separate out people who want to truly commit to something.

+Reduces the time fresh characters spend in totally useless status.

Fresh characters are not useless. They are less individually capable but most of the helplessness comes from a lack of ooc knowledge, which is intended. I've seen plenty of immies make big waves.

+Could fill the 'gap' in the way daily UE is earned currently making the game a bit more part-timer friendly.

This again speaks to a perception that mechanics are how you progress. They're not. Part-timers do have a harder time but this is because they don't have as much time to do the things you need to do to be successful and can't react to emerging situations as quickly. And that's fine. Not everyone needs to be balls to the wall. If you can only play once a week and can't plot, then you're not in constant direct competition anyway, and you sure as hell wouldn't be able to keep up if someone was getting 28 UE a week to your 4 instead of 21 to 3.

There's been a bit of hyperbole when it comes to discussing an increase in the rate gain. I put thought into the proposed rate increase, and I think 4/day would be the appropriate number. More than this would cause problems in my opinion. At four UE a day, you're still taking two years of playing a significant number of hours a day, every single day to reach cap. We're not discussing people capping out in six months. That's still a long-ass time to build your character, make mistakes, recover from them, grow your legend, and sunset into a reroll.

When I mentioned part-time players, I'm not talking about people who play one day a week and can't be involved in plots, etc. I'm talking about the people that play 15-35 hours a week, who, under the current curve, would require well over 5 years to reach an endgame status on their character. If there was a slight increase in UE per day (1) then staff could make it so that players who only are able to log on and play a single session for a few hours a day could be netting an additional one UE a day during that time, which would bring them to today's progression, which we all seem to think is pretty okay.

Finally, to address the multiple responses of 'UE doesn't matter!' I'm sorry, but UE absolutely matters in certain circumstances. There's entire careers that are UE gated behind a fairly steep UE walls, and we seem to be chronically short on these careers in the three or so years I've been here now. I fully understand that combat power and relevance is entirely relevant to the current metagame and who you're trying to beef with. A global change to the UE gain rate fundamentally does not change the inter-player dynamics of how rivalries work as it stands today. If you play a similar amount to your rivals, you'll still be neck in neck with them.

Just to refresh, I'm usually one of the people here on the BGBB saying that sheets don't matter when it comes to building out your character's impact in the game and being a good roleplayer. This simply isn't the case when you have a job that requires you to do coded actions, where your stats and skills do matter. Or if you're doing a job that actually does require sheet checks, either codedly or via GM puppets. If we shave a couple of months off the lead in time for these careers, it's only going to result in more competition for these jobs, and between these jobs, which is something sorely lacking in certain parts of the game.

Miscommunication on the quoted section? If you logged on for say, 4 hours a day, you're making more than one UE in that time played.

You'll never probably be top dog of whatever game you choose without accumulating UE to spend on your stats/skills, but the UE on its own isn't what's going to get you there.

It's gated behind time for reasons that I don't pretend to fully understand, but the idea I think is it's something granted for RPing. For example, I believe idling in an apartment won't grant you any UE, regardless of how long you idle there for.

If you don't know for certain what something does please don't try and reveal it because often times it is incorrect and people read it and start believing it is what I meant.

Sorry , didn't want to come off as rude there. :)

Didn't think it was rude anyway, don't worry, and TY for correcting my bakaness :D