Some thoughts about XP cristals...

[lathan]

The many stages of neutral prevent pleasing everyone.

Or, the way it is set up at least, anyone.

[sidusar]

PS: sidusar also posted a nice dissertation that fits in this scope, quoting:

(now to be taken in the context of OP live). With outposts now producing them, I wish I could buy them with dappers too...

I thought this discussion fit better in this thread

Anyways, what I said back then was:

If we could buy experience, I would just have to rush to level 250 forage as quick as possible to get a maximum dapper income, and then levelling any other skill would take no time at all. I think that if having one skill at a high level would make it very much easier to level any of the other skills, the skill system would loose some of it's richness and diversity.

Now that we have outposts producing XP crystals, this is partly reality, but not quite. The way to get the XP crystals is either to take control of an outpost (for which you'll need some high combat skills) or to buy them from a guild owning an outpost (for which you'll need high forage skills).

But the current system has the important limiting factor of the outposts only producing so many crystals per day. And a limited amount of crystals circulating is I think actually a pretty good idea. We'd like all skills to be perfectly balanced, but fact is they're not; some skills (launcher, h2h) are far harder to level than others (elemental, heal).

Most players already train multiple skills. A lot of players train some skills that are easy to level as well as some that are hard, others train some skills that they like to level as well as some that they hate to but do out of necesity. If these players have access to a limited supply of experience crystals every day, they can choose to use those on the skill that's harder to level, or on the skill they don't like to train. This makes the skill system a lot more balanced.

It also balances things a bit between the hardcore levellers and the more casual players, since both would get the same number of exp crystals per day.

But being able to buy exp crystals with dappers would give us an unlimited supply of them, so that those rich enough can use them on every skill. This I think would only widen the gap between the 250s and the lower level players. So no, I still think even with outposts you shouldn't be able to just convert dapper into experience.

Ofcourse the real situation isn't as I described above. In reality not everyone has access to the same amount of exp crystals. Those who don't own an outpost or forage large amounts of materials to trade for crystals are dependant on charity to obtain them. At least some of the owning guilds have been quite generous with their crystals, but that's more courtesy of the people than of the system.

So, though I like a limited amount of exp crystals coming into the game daily, I don't think they make very good outpost rewards. I see us ending up with either:
- A stable situation where the guilds that own outposts give crystals to the guilds that don't, so that those guilds don't take the outposts from them. In that situation what's the points of having an outpost if you get the crystals anyway?
- A stable situation where a few powerfull guilds hold the outposts and keep the crystals for themselves, so the smaller guilds can't obtain crystals except for buying them at outrageous prices. That's not a desirable Atys in my opinion.
- An unstable situation where the outposts change hands all the time and no guild holds an outpost long enough to produce any worthwhile amount of crystals.

[fiach]

After reading all the posts here, and seeing how most people tend to favor the use of crystals (I dont BTW), I'm going to have to use them or get left behind in the XP stakes.

I have no problem grinding my levels (Ex-Lineage player), but I feel foolish not using this resource, if everybody else is going to use it and if i'm teaming with people that use them, they will out-strip my levels twice as fast and I wont be able to effectively team with them >.<.

Why dont Neverax get rid of the crystals and just halve the distance betweeen levels....oh yeah...People reach level cap to fast and leave, better to introduce crystals cause friction between the "haves and have nots" (BTW I have access to them), and generally keep pi$$ing people off, its what they are good at.

I am really delighted to have returned to Atys and meet all my old friends again, but thay are what will keep me here, not XP Crystals/Outposts.

Sorry for the rant sometimes Neverax just get to me

[blaah]

After reading all the posts here, and seeing how most people tend to favor the use of crystals (I dont BTW), I'm going to have to use them or get left behind in the XP stakes.

you are weak

i have never used them and never will (not even in "secondary" skills)

where's the hurry ?

[gudule]

After reading all the posts here, and seeing how most people tend to favor the use of crystals (I dont BTW), I'm going to have to use them or get left behind in the XP stakes.
(

we'll be 3
i don't use them either (just tried some today, and felt too strange about that)

[fiach]

we'll be 3
i don't use them either (just tried some today, and felt too strange about that)

OK, well here's a statastic, I went from level 112 to 133 in Elemental in 6 hours, that is just plain wrong, I havent used them since!

I'm not saying I wont use them again, I dont know, I most probably will, but I'll try not to use them.

I have no real desire to be a crafter or a forager, all I want is Heal, Melee and
Elemental....hey you cant have everything....or...(IMO) shouln't have, there should be some sort of restraint if a game proposes a shelf life of 8 years.

To all intents and purposes, you can now have a One-Person Guild LOL!