Fleurs and Krakii on the officials

[Gelston]

No, you said that my analogy of giving the richest people even more silver (which is accurate) would only hold true if we were talking about giving everyone the average of the 50 largest bank accounts.

Considering no one is being given a gift of free experience your analogy is false.

Lumnis was implemented to allow casual players to keep up with power hunters. It was a flat amount, but doing it as a dynamic system would really be best. There are things that occurred after it's implementation, such as the bounty system, that sped up experience gain further for power hunters.

Hunting pressure is a good example of a dynamic system, the more a creature is hunted, the less treasure it has.

So GMs felt the static Lumnis system wasn't keeping up, and they felt that a dynamic system would perform better, but to truly know how much help the casual player needed they needed to know how much experience the power hunter was getting. So they devised this little "contest" to measure that value.

They're now adjusting the modifier in a dynamic way to achieve the predefined ratio they have in their head of the competitiveness of the casual player vs the power hunter.

No one is being given free experience, no one is having experience taken away from them. This system now works very similar to how the hunting pressure works, only more individualized. The less you hunt, the more you get per kill, which was always the intention.

Saying you want those top power hunters to have every more experience because they're so good at getting experience is like saying you want someone getting the most treasure to get even more treasure because they're so good at getting treasure which is not the same thing as saying give every player the average of the 50 largest bank accounts in game.

This need not be so complicated, think on it thoroughly.

Where once did I say anyone was being given free experience? I look back and realize you were probably trying to pretend Methais was saying the stuff you had in italics though. We're arguing the same bullshit.

[Jhynnifer]

I have LNet chat in a window. If it gets too stupid I just stop looking at the chat window. Everyone should do this, maybe we would have fewer people quitting then.

I just untune it. Every once in a great while I'll tune back in, for old time's sake or because hearing half an interesting convo is no fun. It lasts -maybe- half an hour before I have to shut it off again.

If only the game had an ;ignore function that didn't cause so many issues. =(

[Methais]

You are actually making my point. If you were maximizing exp gains before the changes, you already had logic enhancives and a gem/skin stockpile. There is no incremental cost to using what you already have available. Since they gave us a heads up about the contest, it was pretty easy to save a few bounty boost if you planned ahead and even more so for the March contest.

The return for those who put in the most work is going to become less under this system because of those who are at the bottom pulling down the average and setting the floor yet still benefiting from the work of the top earners did to set the ceiling. I don't have a problem with people benefiting off of that, but I also don't think that the top earners should be forced to take a hit on what they earned to help set the ceiling.

That totally makes me a terrible person, I know.

I can tell you are getting off on being Fleurs' white knight, but it highlights your ignorance when you poorly advocate a position for someone else. I am "one of the people who worked the hardest" and I consider this an improvement, not a nerf.

Yes, totally white knighting. Except for the fact that it could be anyone else instead of Fleurs and I'd be saying the same thing. It could be Warclaidhm. It could even be you. It is an improvement for most people. It's an improvement for everyone except for those who put in the most work. And when March rolls around, the average will go down for that very reason.

You said you were in the top 50 earlier, so I assume that means you were in the bottom 25 or else you probably would have said top 25. If this is correct, then no you weren't "one of the people who worked the hardest".

Between Fleurs and Zarston's characters, they accounted for nearly half of the top 25. Do you really think if they sit out the next round that the average isn't going to drop by a nice chunk? I seriously doubt anyone is going to step up to fill in for either of them, and it's proably a safe bet to say that some other top earners will sit out the next round too.

If you are such a baller at exp gains, why don't you actually make an attempt in March? I'm sure you will come up with some imaginary excuse about the silver cost to avoid it though.

Why would I do that, when I could instead just sit back and watch the average take a shit because the top earners said fuck all this noise and then say I told you? Even if I was one of those people that only made it to like level 23 since 1994 and was the worst exp earner in the world, my opinion still wouldn't be any different.

Breakage wouldn't have had any real effect on my character either when they put that back on the table. That didn't make it any less stupid or caused me to not post about it being stupid.

Maybe you should just go back to the officials and cry more about how GS is too hard because you can't one shot immolate everything.

Feel free to link or quote any post where I said GS was too hard in any context, as opposed to saying that plinking shit to death with unreliable bolts is a lot less fun than blowing shit up with Immolate, along with side by side comparisons to other pures and their big kill spells at cap that are still on par with pre-nerf Immolate if not more powerful, and with a lot less lore requirements.

Oh right, you can't produce any posts like that, because you're full of shit don't have a clue what you're talking about.

I've actually said for years that GS is one of the easiest games ever. Time consuming as fuck, but not exactly difficult for anyone that knows basic math or has a pulse.

Oh yeah, that complaining on the wizard forums (not just from me, there were plenty of others) that you're complaining about resulted in some shit getting fixed and/or buffed. You're probably either a Simu cheerleader or you don't know shit about wizard end game. Probably both.

Regardless, the only thing you've proven so far other than not knowing what the fuck you're talking about is that you're mad. So mad. The maddest.

[Jhynnifer]

Between Fleurs and Zarston's characters, they accounted for nearly half of the top 25. Do you really think if they sit out the next round that the average isn't going to drop by a nice chunk? I seriously doubt anyone is going to step up to fill in for either of them, and it's proably a safe bet to say that some other top earners will sit out the next round too.

I guess I don't understand why this is? Aren't they going to screw their own lumnis as well? Is it just that it's not worth it? (I don't read the officials very often.)

[Fallen]

I guess I don't understand why this is? Aren't they going to screw their own lumnis as well? Is it just that it's not worth it? (I don't read the officials very often.)

If they wished to try to influence the process, for instance. I'm really hoping the situation continues to evolve. Seems like a wasted opportunity.

[Zarston]

I can't speak for Fleurs, as I think from our conversations that she had different goals/expectations from what I did. For the contest, I went super hard on my main, put in a lot of effort with another, and pretty much phoned it in with the third character. Before the contest started, I even shared all of my methods for scoring high on Lumnis, not saving any tricks for myself to keep myself high on the list because I didn't give a shit about where I ended up place-wise on it. I, being an experience hungry bastard, wanted the bonus to be as high as possible and hoped against all hope that I wasn't in the minority

When the results came out, I was disappointed. Even my third character was in the top 10. There was plenty of room for someone to overtake that one, but very few did. I found that I was one of only a small handful of people taking the contest seriously, and it made my efforts over the last week feel like a waste of time. It probably was, but that's life. I could tell from my pre-contest interactions with Wyrom that Simu wasn't going to budge from their initial announcement of only rewarding the top with their name on a list that people would glance at once. I was prepared to move on from the start.

I haven't felt the need to throw my hat into the ring because Methais has been accurately representing my side of the argument, and because I don't think that its something that needs to be re-hashed over and over. The long and short of it is that I feel the contest is flawed. There's no incentive for people to seriously fight for the top spots, and even if that situation WERE occurring, there's humongous inequalities between player potentials just because of race. I mentioned earlier that I went HARD with Zarston. I had a near flawless run with him, a level 215 pure bard, and I fell far short of my other character (who isn't even capped) just because Zarston is a half-elf and the other character is a burghal gnome. I even fucked up the gnome's start pretty badly. So if the point of the contest is pride, why even fight for that when the playing field is laughably uneven?

It's not like I'm going to hide in a cave and do nothing on the next contest. I'm still going to grind it out with Zarston, but I won't be playing like every point matters because as the record shows: it doesn't.

[Leafiara]

I do agree with the sentiment that the contest average is going to sink really hard next time. I'm expecting something like 2000-3000 experience less--and that might be severely underselling it--unless the community really comes together in a huge way that I haven't seen happening yet to share logic enhancives, gem stockpiles, etc. Even if we did come together, would it even be worthwhile for a top 30-50 to sink millions and millions of BPs into recharging logic enhancives for an extra 2500 exp a week? I don't see that.

[Narthsin]

I found that I was one of only a small handful of people taking the contest seriously,

I don't feel this comment is very fair. I spent the contest saturated, grouped, on a node, burned all my bounty boosts, lots of gems, and I didn't make the list, likely because I haven't invested in +40 in logic bonus enhansives. I also kept poor Leafiara very busy getting me herbs. I ran ;pulsetimer for the first time ever. I disabled my offline exp for the few times I had to step away during that 6 hour stretch.

I had maybe 1-2 hunts that I tried to do fast because I was running low on bounty boosts. It was also the first time I'd ever even used a bounty boost. That should tell you something about how casual my play style typically is.

I was surprised when I didn't make the top 50, and was pleased that the average was so high.

To say people like me didn't take it seriously isn't very fair or accurate. I tried, but I may not have the min/max experience to get it done like some of you. And I may not have realized that not having 100 logic would make that huge of a difference. Lessons learned, I still was impressed by the effort of so many. Just because you can get to 23k and others to 18 or 19k doesn't mean they didn't put in an effort or didn't even try.

I also don't have multiple accounts or the means to stock up on hundreds of skins and gems, though I do have a pile of gems I keep around as best I can on a F2P account, but their inventory is so limited it's silly.

Anyhow, you seem to assume everyone has your experience, or can mimic what you do based on a few posts on the PC. I am one who read your posts, tried to emulate them, and still failed.

Your apparent jaded attitude is what irks me a bit and makes me not want to put in any effort at all if I'm going to be told I didn't even care because I should be easily in the top 50. That's not accurate. That 6 hours was a miserable and fairly boring experience compared to how I normally play, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try again in March.

[Zarston]

I don't want to get into fights with anyone over something that I've wanted to forget. It's the reason I haven't typed anything up to this point. I felt slighted by the whole thing, so my words are going to have a bitter slant to them. People were going to see my words and feel like I'm an entitled prick for putting in effort and then flaunting about how I'm better at something that I put a lot of time and effort into before it was a contest (I mentioned before that I'm an experience hungry bastard, didn't I? Ask Heartfire for a story about the lengths I'm willing to go for an RPA).

Let's just drop it, guys. Fleurs and I aren't going to multibox the next contest. It's just one aspect of the game nerfed for min-maxers. The experience count will drop a few thousand. The only ones who care will be a few people who righteously lift their noses alone in a room far away from you. Everyone else will still enjoy a bonus far better than they were getting before the contest thing even started. And, like in the last Grand Auction, Plat will make off like kings while the rest of us make off like people who have to stare longingly at someone who got the toy I wanted because I'm not Premium. God damn you Japhrimel! That flute was supposed to be mine!

[crb]

There's no incentive for people to seriously fight for the top spots...

I don't think anyone ever put forth that notion that there was supposed to be.

They could have done this all in secret, no "contest," no "list," just an announcement "We will now be adjusting lumnis on a dynamic scale based on how a sampling of players hunt."

But they did us a solid, they dangled this meager carrot of another fame list (list with no importance), and called it a contest, to inspire people to boost the average. But in general they are not looking to help the populace as a whole to advance faster (as if this isn't already fast enough), they just want to help the casual players keep up. The average can go up, the average can go down, it is the ratio that matters. And giving a reward to people who are already at the top would actually make the ratio worse.