Regarding the xp penalty on respawn (with GRAPHS!)

[Corrigo]

When you die, you can respawn for a third of your total XP. This is a completely unadjusted penalty that does not change according to your level, and the basic idea is perfectly sound. The problem is, however, with the height of the penalty, and there's a very simple reason for it that can be demonstrated with a bit of mathematics and graphs.


I'm going to touch on a few basic concepts of the way DnD works here, and I have a tendency to ramble, so feel free to skim a bit.


First of all, let's take a look at level progression. The way it works is that the amount of XP needed to reach your next level is always 1000 more than the XP you needed to get to reach your previous one. So basically it's your current level times 1000. Because the amount added to your total increases each level up, the total amount of XP your character has depending on his level increases exponentially.

Take a look at this graph:



It demonstrates the idea quite simply. The curve of the red line becomes ever steeper, demonstrating how it becomes ever harder to reach the next level. The difference between the two only becomes larger over time. Now, you can imagine that the amount of XP lost on death will also be higher on reaching higher levels. That's the idea, and because it's a fraction, the pattern of the line will be about the same. The amount of XP needed to gain a new level, however, does not increase exponentially. The line is always just as steep.

This means that the XP lost on death will at low levels be far less than the amount of XP needed to reach a new level, and at higher levels will start becoming more and more.

Take a look at this next graph, which demonstrates the penalties in place in the current death system:



As you can see, the death penalty becomes ever more severe the higher your character level is. The purple line is the penalty for respawning, the orange line is the penalty inferred by a raise dead spell.

What's very important to note here is where the lines cross.

The purple and green lines cross at around level 7. This is the point where you will be mathematically GUARANTEED to lose a level if you respawn. At lower levels, you will not necessarily lose a level if you are close to gaining your next one (while needing to be exceedingly less close the lower your level is). After reaching level 7, however, there is no doubt. You will lose that level if you respawn. EFU does not go into the level range where you will ever lose two levels on a single death with this penalty (that would start around level 12). Nevertheless, suffice to say, level 7 is where dying becomes exceptionally harsh and hard to return from.

Conversely, we see that the orange line never reaches the green one in this range. So the 1/6 XP penalty will never lose you a full level on EFU, even if you are level 11 or perhaps even 12. So getting raised, while still taking a chunk of your XP, will never be a very big setback no matter what happens.

So what does this mean?

I think it's very genuinely possible to argue that the spot where the green line and the penalty line cross are the times where death becomes hard. If you take the risk and lose, coming back to where you were from level 7 onward is a big challenge. But do we want it to be?

It's been stated quite clearly by DMs that EFU is easy to level up in. This is very true, and if you take it carefully you'll be able to get there easily enough. However, if you happen to be one of those unfortunate players who has decided to take it on his own with his concept, or who is prone to taking risks that turn out badly, you'll probably get stuck around the crossing point - the lower border of level 7.

To put it simply, even though it has been easier to GET levels on EFU over time, it is still just as hard to KEEP them as it was at the beginning.

Is that where we want people to get stuck on the curve? I don't think it's a particularly exciting place to be stuck in if you want to generate conflict and not get your ass handed to you. After all, the established characters with allies and supplies tend to be averagely at least a level higher.

So what to do?

Well, lowering the XP penalty to 1/6 might be a bit rich. The struggling point as far as brawling with the death penalty goes would be around level 12 - that's just way too high! So it needs to be somewhere in between. Take a look at this:



The blue line in this graph demonstrates the XP penalty if it were lowered to 1/4 of total. You can see the lines cross at a point a little higher, namely the border of level 9.

I think this would be an excellent point to put the penalty at.

Players who succeed because they don't take risks or are just that good (and conversely, don't die) will have as hard a time as ever to reach their level. However, the players who struggle a bit more against the odds will get stuck on the curve at a very favorable point - almost level 9. So your XP range would be in the high level 8s, which I do believe is the main level of fun activity for conflict-heavy PCs in this iteration of EFU.



DMs, please lower the respawn XP penalty to 1/4. It will make EFU become hard at the time it needs to be, rather than well before that. Everything else about the respawning system is fine - the 1/6 penalty is basically a breeze, and it should be (and is, as such, not suitable for use as a primary penalty for respawning).

[Mr Howardson]

[Tips off his hat]

[Pup]

While I don't personally have any issues with the death/quest/loot system as it is now, it is hard to deny your logic.  You make a good point. I still kind of like how harsh the penalties are, though.  And I'm no powergamer.  My only lvl 9 char lived in Lower Sanctuary...

[Teeth in a Bowl]

good lord

[Corrigo]

By the way you can also go for a 2/7 penalty putting the sweet spot at level 8 instead of 9 if you think the difference is too much.







What it all comes down to that if you play it safe, you're up against the green line and have it much easier at higher levels. If you take risks, you're gonna be up against the penalty line which at a point simply becomes way steeper.

Do you want to reward risk-takers or do you want to reward characters who take it safe? I think the decision is simple.

[Howlando]

Nice post, but the truth is that it has always been our aspiration for level 7 to be the normal level that can be easily approached by almost all players after a little time. Although I'm sympathetic to situations in which players die multiple times and go from a high level to a very low level (and how dispiriting that must be), generally speaking I don't think it is in the interests of the server to see getting to level 8+ be easier.

[Corrigo]

If this is true, then why does the scale of receiving XP no longer echo this?

You've said yourself that it's become much easier to get the XP needed for higher levels. Nevertheless the XP penalty keeps dragging you down to a level you're not going to be at.



The situation as it is right now is quite frankly that getting more and more XP is easy, but if you lose it you jump down a lot.

So what you do is you carefully, low-profile quest a bit and keep your head down, and if you don't take any risks you'll be able to get that XP back quickly enough to once again be able to start taking risks until you die again.

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Shouldn't it be that you have to take big risks to get where you want to be, and once you are up there, you have to play things very safe to stay where you are?


The playing field is now leveled in favor of boring safe play rather than ecxiting stuff. If you lower the XP penalty, it'll always go in favor of risk takers.


You might even decide to combine it with a global XP nerf (though that's another point entirely), which is also in favor of those players that make things exciting and take risks, rather those who are boring and quest train with the same old powerbuild groups every reset.

[NudieJones]

While I think there should be some way to help unlucky players that wish to see their characters achieve higher levels, I don't think shifting penalty in death to a lower amount, which favors higher levels, should be put in place. Which in turn brings the average level to 9. Doing so, would just change players opinions, and make the players that wish to be able to be the "Strong men" of the town to go to greater means to get that next level, or depend on the DM's attention for loot making them able to achieve their title within the town.

What level would a character have to become, if the average level was slowly brought up to 9, if he wanted to be viewed as stronger, and more capable then most?

[xXCrystal_Rose]

Pentaxius had a really cool idea which he presented on IRC. Make him post it here!

[The Beggar]

I don't have a view either way, but I need to say that this post is one of the most lucid arguments I've seen on a position in a long time - supported with GRAPHS.

I love it.

[Johnston]

You can't argue with graphs, man.

Well, I mean, evidently you can-- but still, dude, GRAPHS.

[Numos]

Awesome, and some excellent points Corrigo.

Players are always pretty quick to adjust their behavior in favor of risk and reward. There's a reason Granary and Tainted Well are favorites. You invest very little time in them, everyone knows them well enough to survive, and you get nice experience or a heap of healing trinkets. Whereas harpies are seldom tried anymore because the risk of desert travel has become immense.

I think a huge part of EFU's success does stem from the fact that you can die and lose a lot in an instant. Running from a big monster makes your heart pound, and the constant influx of new characters keeps the server dynamic. Its important, however, to keep in mind that there are a lot of people who prefer to avoid punishment rather than seek reward by nature. I do think heavy handed penalties (such as 1/3) can sometimes discourage these kinds of personalities from contributing all they can to the game-world.

[Outcast]

SCIENCE!

(Though it'd appeal to me more if you used memes.)

[Johannes]

As much as I am thrilled by your excellent efforts to substantiate your argument with statistics, I must call you out on the Statistician's parlour trick/sophism of making a convenient, unsubstantiated and superficially reasonable assumption to support your claim. I make reference, mostly, to this statement:

I think it's very genuinely possible to argue that the spot where the  green line and the penalty line cross are the times where death becomes  hard. If you take the risk and lose, coming back to where you were from  level 7 onward is a big challenge.

Which I shall interpret as follows:

The point at which recuperating lost XP from a death becomes difficult is the XP threshold where respawn penalties are equal to the XP required to gain a level.

This assertion is extremely qualitative, and extremely open to interpretation. But suppose that it was possible to substantiate. I would like to make a reductio ad absurdum argument to demonstrate that no statement like this can be made without factoring in the rate of XP gain.

As graphs are clunky and inefficient to work with, I will be consolidating the XP-level sequence into a formula instead. The correspondence is a partial algebraic series of the form :

S_n = 0 + 1000 + 2000 + ... + 1000(n - 1)

...and in accordance with any algebraic series :

S_n = 500 (n - 1) n

As you have done in your graphs, we can consolidate this into a smooth function:

f(x) = 500 (x - 1) x

...where x is a PC's fractional level. Correspondingly the XP required to rise in level is:

g(x) = 1000x

The fraction of XP lost on death can be taken as p, and so the net XP lost on death at any fractional level is expressed as follows:

h(x) = p f(x) = 500px^2 - 1000px / 2

We confirm that the point of intersection between h and g is at level 7 (p = 1/3):

g(x) = h(x)
1000x = 500px^2 - 1000px / 2
x^2 - x (1 + 2 / p) = 0
x(x - (1 + 2 / p)) = 0

We ignore the case x = 0, as it does not interest us. We may thus divide by x.

x - (1 + 2 / p) = 0
x = 1 + 2 / p, p = 1 / 3
x = 1 + 6 = 7

Let's say that the average XP gain per second is represented by the variable z. We assume that the statement is true, and thus XP recovery is "easy" at level 10 > 7. The time taken to recover this XP can be calculated by :

t(x) = h(x) / z

...and so for arbitrary z at level 10 :

t(10)  = 500 * 100 / 3z - 1000 * 10 / 6z = 15,000 / z seconds

Suppose, absurdly, that the average XP gain per second is 1000. The time to regain any lost XP would be as few as 15000 / 1000 = 15 seconds. Although the term "easy to recover" is very difficult to substantiate, I think that we can all agree that a 15 second recovery time satisfies this simple criterion.

Conversely, let's take level 5 < 7 where it is assumed that XP recovery is easy:

t(5) = 500 * 25 / 3 z - 1000 * 5 / 6 z = 10000 / 3z seconds

Let's take the average XP gain per second due to concerted questing, z to be 1/30000. The time to regain lost XP would be 100,000,000 seconds, which is almost 1200 days. Again, the term "difficult to recover" is very difficult to substantiate, but I think that we can all agree that 1200 days qualifies as a difficult recovery time. We therefore arrive again at a contradiction.

I appreciate your industriousness, but it's clear to me that unless you can satisfactorily justify your simplifying assumptions by dismissing the rate of XP gain as a relevant factor, or otherwise incorporate the rate of XP gain as a factor in a new argument, your current and excellently graphed argument has little purchase in the discussion of EFU's death XP penalties.

[Valo56]

Graphs? Algebra? OMG I'M BACK IN HIGH SCHOOL!

... May I please be excused?