Remove Train HP/Mana/Move to Curb Power Gaming

I think this functionality should be removed from the mud. It allows power gamers to get an undeniable edge over non-power gamers. Any new character rolling up is going to be at a noted disadvantage. 

Correct me if I am wrong. I changed this to feral cleric to mask what I really played through to test this min/max dynamic, but I think I adjusted the numbers correctly. 

How a Normal Player Would Build a Feral Cleric

According to the wiki, a feral cleric has a base HP of around 600 +/- about 75.

Assuming the cleric accumulated about 150 practices over their life, and clerics have about 65 skills, two practicing uses 130 of those. You have 2 leftover trains to use from practices.

On top of that, you'd have your trains. You got 3 at creation + you accumulated 10, for 13 + 2 from practices = 15 total.

You spend 7 of those trains maxing stats, and end up with 8 leftover.

You dump your 8 trains into HP and you now have a feral cleric with on average about 680 HP on average.

How a Power Gamer Does It

You have the same 680, but you get some additional trains by leveraging random things you've learned about but aren't documented anywhere.

Those 15 trains? Don't spend 7 on stats, use CPs and service train. That's +7 for you. 

130 practices? Clearly have to 1 prac the cleric and get another 6 trains out of it. +13 now in total

Quests? Oh, I got all of those memorized and they are going to add another 3-4 trains at least! +17 in total

So now my feral cleric has 17 additional trains...and now I get to have 850 HP.

So the "new" player just following the system the way it was built has 680 HP and the player who min/max'd all the stuff has 850 HP. You create even more difference when you talk about adding in luck items to max the roll, and some quests directly give hp/mana/mv. 

How is a new player supposed to compete when vets know enough tricks to get a 25% bump in their HP?

Optimization through understanding of game mechanics and knowledge isn't necessarily a bad thing. Does min-maxing provide too much of an advantage?

I'd say no, but I also do it on every character I make. If a new player pops into the Discord and asks around they will be given all this information. They may have to spend a few hours more practicing skills etc, but they will get to the same hp level as the min-maxer. The exception will be quests, which is really its own separate issue.

Anyway. I don't like the idea of everyone in the game having 100-150 hp less than they do currently. The DPS classer will become much more lethal, and the attrition classes significantly weaker.

2 minutes ago, Lexi said:

Optimization through understanding of game mechanics and knowledge isn't necessarily a bad thing. Does min-maxing provide too much of an advantage?

I'd say no, but I also do it on every character I make. If a new player pops into the Discord and asks around they will be given all this information. They may have to spend a few hours more practicing skills etc, but they will get to the same hp level as the min-maxer. The exception will be quests, which is really its own separate issue.

Anyway. I don't like the idea of everyone in the game having 100-150 hp less than they do currently. The DPS classer will become much more lethal, and the attrition classes significantly weaker.

What if we just gave everyone the HP they'd get if they min/max'd by default? Then you get the perk, so you're not losing anything, and balance isn't upset, but it also removes a ton of grinding and weird mechanics that don't really make a ton of sense.

Optimization by understanding the game mechanics is typically good. The problem is I would be surprised if the original designer of service train even imagined it being used this way.

Nor do I think did they imagined a world where a huge chunk of the pbase knows every quest and can just stack them all on every new char they roll from now to infinity as a permanent bonus to some exploring they did 10 years ago.

My point was more 'catching up that difference isn't too hard'. But yeah, sure, you could have a game where every race/class combination has a set amount of hp/mana/moves at 50 without any randomness at all. It would just be a different games.

Personally, I would probably tone down some quest rewards and leave things at that.

16 minutes ago, Lexi said:

My point was more 'catching up that difference isn't too hard'. But yeah, sure, you could have a game where every race/class combination has a set amount of hp/mana/moves at 50 without any randomness at all. It would just be a different games.

Personally, I would probably tone down some quest rewards and leave things at that.

There's still randomness. A ton of randomness. +/- 75. The difference isn't the randomness, more often its how easy veteran players are able to game the system compared to new players due to how long they've been playing.

If you had to pick a percent that someone could get above a normal player by using these tweaks, what number would you pick? We are at 25% right now on this one example combo, mostly by accident, but maybe 50%? make it even bigger! or 15? make it smaller. 

To my personally, 25% seems too big, and the difference should be <10%, but that's just my personal opinion on how much power we should let vets have over new players. a 10% advantage is "good", a 25% advantage is "massive", in my mind anyway.

2 hours ago, Aidon said:

I think this functionality should be removed from the mud. It allows power gamers to get an undeniable edge over non-power gamers. Any new character rolling up is going to be at a noted disadvantage. 

Correct me if I am wrong. I changed this to feral cleric to mask what I really played through to test this min/max dynamic, but I think I adjusted the numbers correctly. 

How a Normal Player Would Build a Feral Cleric

According to the wiki, a feral cleric has a base HP of around 600 +/- about 75.

Assuming the cleric accumulated about 150 practices over their life, and clerics have about 65 skills, two practicing uses 130 of those. You have 2 leftover trains to use from practices.

On top of that, you'd have your trains. You got 3 at creation + you accumulated 10, for 13 + 2 from practices = 15 total.

You spend 7 of those trains maxing stats, and end up with 8 leftover.

You dump your 8 trains into HP and you now have a feral cleric with on average about 680 HP on average.

 

How a Power Gamer Does It

You have the same 680, but you get some additional trains by leveraging random things you've learned about but aren't documented anywhere.

Those 15 trains? Don't spend 7 on stats, use CPs and service train. That's +7 for you. 

130 practices? Clearly have to 1 prac the cleric and get another 6 trains out of it. +13 now in total

Quests? Oh, I got all of those memorized and they are going to add another 3-4 trains at least! +17 in total

So now my feral cleric has 17 additional trains...and now I get to have 850 HP.

 

So the "new" player just following the system the way it was built has 680 HP and the player who min/max'd all the stuff has 850 HP. You create even more difference when you talk about adding in luck items to max the roll, and some quests directly give hp/mana/mv. 

How is a new player supposed to compete when vets know enough tricks to get a 25% bump in their HP?

As we're generalizing, there's three types of players and you've addressed two.

1. The min-max player.

This player maximized everything they can.  If it makes them happy, more power to them.

Being at this level, they'd have 6-10 trains above the next type of player.

1. The lazy player.

I fall into this one.  Will I one-practice my skills and spells?  Yes.  Will I spend my trains on stats?  Also yes.

I know the land, the quests and everything else you do.  I may collect the quests if I'm bored, but I won't make it a point to go after those quests that give practices and trains.  I do this for various reasons.  One is those quests give me something to do during my down time.  Another is because I'm lazy and I just want to play.  I'm not going to go out of my way in the way a min-max player would.  The extra trains from one practicing is enough for me.

Being at this level, it would put me 6-10 trains above the next type of player.

1. The new player will likely spend trains on stats and 2-3 practice skills.

The base HP/mana/moves.  12-20 trains below the min-max player.

Will they be at a hp/mana/move disadvantage to the vets?  Yes.  Almost without question.

Does it matter?  I don't think so, no.

The reason being is even if you gave newbies 500 hp more than the min/maxers, those new players are going to get spanked.  We know the lands.  We know the skills and the classes and to train to 100% proficiency.  We know the equipment.  We know consumables.  We know noscan and nowhere rooms.

Their job joining us isn't to win, it's to learn the game.  While the emphasis is more on them learning skills and classes and the land, what to train, when and where.  Are they going to die?  Yes.  Repeadly.  Are we going to teach them and are they going to help us enrich the game in the process?  I would hope so.

Sure, there's variation in hp/mana/move based on class and race, but the issue I have with removing trains entirely is the customization for the character.  Even though most dump trains into hp, some people like to add 3-4 trains into moves and others like to have a certain amount of mana for their class.

That all being said, I would have no issue with not needing to put trains into stats at all.  Just give everyone the max possible and dock them accordingly.

The average number of trains needed to max stat is about 5.5.  If we make it to where you gain only one train per multiple of ten levels instead of one per five, I feel this would balance things out and remove one more level of hassle.

Now I'm curious as to where people stand in their customization.

Feel free to vote in the poll.

https://theforsakenlands.com/topic/46133-practices-and-trains/

In regards to the poll: To be fair, any trains you use as an Adventurer is deducted once you remort anyways. The only reason to go Adventurer first is to get all your skills mastered without risk of PK, and to get a decent suit of armor to power rank to 30 again, or wherever else you stop to start training. I fall under the using every last train into HP/Mana scenario, so I'll use EQ to max my stats out until I either Cabal, or remort to a different class. If you plan on applying to a remort class, you can't even do those quests unless you want to forfeit those trains later on anyways. If anything we could perhaps just sticky a post that anyone coming to the Forum can see that explains it rather than eliminating it altogether. Some races are going to gain a lot more trains than others due to intelligence and wisdom stats. They usually end up with really low bases though, but then it becomes an issue of should they really be able to get that much more HP over melee, or is it fine because of the output a melee can deal usually will negate those bonuses quickly depending on the person you're fighting and their skills in PK overall.

If you remort, you also can lose stats further so you're stuck either getting more EQ with more +stat items over saves and such in some regards, but there's not much to hoarding trains for HP and the likes.

17 INT means you can practice non Cabal skills/spells twice to get to 75%. At 22 or 23 you can practice things to 75% in one practice, but I'm not 100% sure on either stat as I haven't rolled a new character in a while now to tinker with it.

18 WIS means you get 3 practices per level. Below 18 you only get 2, and I believe at 22 you get +4 practices and at 25 you get +5 practices.

That just means Elf, Drow, Gnome, Illithid, and Faeries (RIP) are the only races to really take advantage of it to the fullest. Illithid and Gnome will get +4 practices and + 5 practices respectfully. The others will get only +3 if I recall right. All of them can take advantage of 1 practice to 75% though which means you can save them up easily enough and convert them to HP or Mana (unless you're a psychopath and really use them for moves because I've never done that and don't see a feasible reason to ever do so because of my play style).

All but Illithid can become an Invoker and you usually want to hit about 1200 mana as quickly as possible. Though each race has a high mana base compared to most others, I have used trains to get to 1200 much more quickly to gain a fully charged staff because there's more of an advantage to having a fully charged staff pre 50 than there is to fully charging a staff at 50 unless you're neutral and don't run the risk of PK depending on Cabal.

If anything though, with the drop in saves to EQ happening in the rebalancing, it would make more sense in lowering those races particularly from gaining as many trains as they can because you potentially can end up with a base HP much higher than normal due to practice conversion, add in high damage spells that will become more difficult to save against as time goes on, and their ability to focus on Saves & HP where a Melee EQ is almost primarily +hit/dam and either a few saves to none, and very little +HP gear or not at all, and some Saves EQ are -HP even. Invokers can eat through their HP more quickly with maxed staff, Illithids can be Necromancers which their pets do a lot of damage as well on top of their ability to hit high damage spells if not saved against, where, correct me if I'm wrong, but with hit/dam being scalable with diminishing returns, a melee wont necessarily hit with the same kind of damage unless they catch you unawares.

The only Lich I ever played, I pumped everything into trains for HP and at the end with the +HP gear I had more HP than almost any other melee I've ever played. The downside was my AC was really shitty, but at least my Saves were great on top of it.

When it comes down to it though, HP wont mean shit if your PK skills are garbage. If you are caught unaware, even with an extra 200 HP, the only thing it gives you is time to throw up sanc or something, but by then you should be running because you will lose, especially if they dropped it inside of a round or two of combat. I've had it happen on both melee and mages, and without fail, it's almost always someone who is far more skilled than I am in PK that manages to do it. Skill will always trump your power gaming of saving trains for HP regardless of who you are. If you're able to do both though, that's more power to you, but there's solutions for those players as well as no one will live forever, whether it's a strategy used, someone tags them in a group, or someone gets lucky or outskills them even.

Personally I don't see an issue with it overall. I think with the EQ being tweaked in different areas it will weed out some of the issues that are of a greater threat to the game than anything else. It all will come down to your own skill in PK whether they have that +200 HP or not, the only difference will be the margin of them beating you. Maybe it could be something that can be revisited though once the EQ tweaks have finished before we start toning things down that haven't been a huge issue before like this. It's not a bad idea, just one that doesn't seem to have a ton of merit at the moment since new players could learn it by asking, but as I stated before, perhaps it should be a sticky post for new players to see rather than removing it altogether at least for the moment.

while i understand the idea behind this post, I cannot support the proposed solution. Elf casters routinely pinn with 600 hp. Even after buffing with trains and eq to over 1k you have trouble getting things handled. You telling people that their hp is capped at 600 is just a recipe for killing off low con races like elves, drow etc. Maybe it would be better to have a hard HP cap if that is your goal. Even then I don't reallly support the idea as it takes away from your build options.

31 minutes ago, Tantangel said:

In regards to the poll: To be fair, any trains you use as an Adventurer is deducted once you remort anyways. The only reason to go Adventurer first is to get all your skills mastered without risk of PK, and to get a decent suit of armor to power rank to 30 again, or wherever else you stop to start training.

You can use as many practices you want as an adventurer.  Go wild.  You don't lose anything when you do.  Your skills that transfer to your chosen class retain their proficiency, thus saving practices as you level your chosen class.  Most classes get about 20 practices out of it.  It's 2 trains.  Now up to 3 for very specific classes.  So it's not the only reason.

32 minutes ago, Tantangel said:

If you remort, you also can lose stats further so you're stuck either getting more EQ with more +stat items over saves and such in some regards, but there's not much to hoarding trains for HP and the likes.

If this happens because you're wearing +stat equipment, try logging out and back in.  If that fails to fix the problem, bug it.

34 minutes ago, Tantangel said:

17 INT means you can practice non Cabal skills/spells twice to get to 75%. At 22 or 23 you can practice things to 75% in one practice, but I'm not 100% sure on either stat as I haven't rolled a new character in a while now to tinker with it.

18 WIS means you get 3 practices per level. Below 18 you only get 2, and I believe at 22 you get +4 practices and at 25 you get +5 practices.

This info is on the wiki.

38 minutes ago, Tantangel said:

When it comes down to it though, HP wont mean shit if your PK skills are garbage.

Exactly.

I want to be a power gamer, and I want to put effort into building my character.  I want my time invested to pay dividends as my character progresses.

2 minutes ago, Izzzzy said:

I want to be a power gamer, and I want to put effort into building my character.  I want my time invested to pay dividends as my character progresses.

I agree. 

Effort should be rewarded over the course of a character. Its the same in a lot of other games.

Investment + learning the game = stronger characters.

That being said, on the poll I voted 15-19. I don't always min/max. I waste some trains or double prac skills out of laziness. For a long time I used to take adventurer as my perk before ranking was made easier.

7 minutes ago, Trick said:

That being said, on the poll I voted 15-19. I don't always min/max. I waste some trains or double prac skills out of laziness. For a long time I used to take adventurer as my perk before ranking was made easier.

I don't sit here an look for every quest.  I do things like that when I'm bored.  I do not need all the HP/Mana to get a kill.  Eventually I will get around to it, but I agree, if I 1 prac everything and then don't train my STR/Dex whatever.  I am still at a HUGE disadvantage until i get into a cabal, then once I'm in a cabal I still need the cps to train those skills.  I am tired of people thinking its easy.  You want something then you got to work for it.  Just my Opinion.

To me this post is like saying "I want my rent paid, but I don't think I should go to work in order to pay it.  Just hand me the free money."

@Kassieti I meant more in the sense of remort from 50 to a Psi, Crusader, Lich sort of situation. You can go into it with max stats because someone used trains instead of CPs, and once you remort you get randomized stats that have put me at a disadvantage if I were to have chosen to do any of the number of quests that give you trains towards that investment if I've already used my trains for more HP and the likes. There's no great travesty of it though as I learned that the hard way, but that is not going to help newer players or players who have never played those classes before either.

Even if it is on the Wiki though, I'd say sticky a post still, at the very least sticky it and leave a link to help newer players navigate it because not everyone will instantly jump into the game and look for information. I didn't even know there was a forum for the game until nearly a year after playing or so. It's less likely to happen now, but it would help fill in cracks that are there that most of us would miss as we've been playing forever.

I did forget about the practice thing. That's actually one of the reasons I almost always go Adventurer first, but I could've swore you only got half of your practices back and not all of them. It could be for a different change since I don't pay that much attention to it, but it does help me ever so slightly. +HP helps me survive MOB attacks more than PK at any rate, so that +10 HP or so can be the difference between recall lag and needing a new laptop if it causes me to snap.

3 hours ago, Trick said:

I agree. 

Effort should be rewarded over the course of a character. Its the same in a lot of other games.

Investment + learning the game = stronger characters.

 

That being said, on the poll I voted 15-19. I don't always min/max. I waste some trains or double prac skills out of laziness. For a long time I used to take adventurer as my perk before ranking was made easier.

I see your point, but...I just don't agree in the case. These aren't secrets from the game we've learned. They are bugs/glitches we've all been taking advantage of for so long its become a feature. No one intended service train to be used this way because its horrible design. It requires a ton of grinding for current players and raises the barrier to new players at the same time. Why not just give everyone the extra hp/mana they'd get from utilizing this tactic but not make them go through this rigmarole/backdoor?

7 minutes ago, Aidon said:

I see your point, but...I just don't agree in the case. These aren't secrets from the game we've learned. They are bugs/glitches we've all been taking advantage of for so long its become a feature. No one intended service train to be used this way because its horrible design. It requires a ton of grinding for current players and raises the barrier to new players at the same time. Why not just give everyone the extra hp/mana they'd get from utilizing this tactic but not make them go through this rigmarole/backdoor?

How do you know it’s not by design?

Just now, Trick said:

How do you know it’s not by design?

I can't know for sure,  but I know it existed for a while before most people were doing this. Years, in fact, as players slowly started doing it more and more as they heard about it from other characters.

Do you think, if you are honest with yourself, that the original designers intended it to be used this way, or that its good, logical game design if it was built to be used this way?

If not, then why allow trains to be used for hp, mana, or movements at all? The fact that they ARE allowed, leads me to believe this was intentional and part of the character building process. 

It’s why some races get more trains and practices per level. In fact, the typical low hp races are the ones allotted trains and practices to make up for it.

So, yes, I do believe this was intentional game design.

1 hour ago, Trick said:

If not, then why allow trains to be used for hp, mana, or movements at all? The fact that they ARE allowed, leads me to believe this was intentional and part of the character building process. 

It’s why some races get more trains and practices per level. In fact, the typical low hp races are the ones allotted trains and practices to make up for it.

So, yes, I do believe this was intentional game design.

There is a difference between using leftover practices/trains to train hp/mana/move, which I absolutely believe was intentional, and gaming the system to generate MORE trains to do so.

Its like saying "If they didn't want me to rob the bank why they make such good stuff to buy" because the presence of a way to spend training sesssions does not mean all ways of generating training sessions were considered into the game design or should be considere good design. I honestly struggle to understand why we would want people to get caballed without max stats, have to most likely avoid fights while finishing out, having to 1 prac everything, etc. Does it contribute to the game? Make it more fun?

I 100% disagree that cabal point training stats is horrible or unintended design. You have this way of phrasing everything you dislike as borderline abuse of game mechanics or taking advantage of unintended systems, but this is the way FL was built and it is the way people have been playing the game for years. I think it is a reasonable argument to put forward that this is causing powercreep or putting newer players at disadvantage, but I find it disingenuous to claim it was never intended to be used this way or that the people that play numerous hours at a stats disadvantage to get that slight health edge are somehow borderline cheating the game.

Who cares about what was originally intended when making the game? The Forsaken Lands of today is miles and miles away from what was originally intended, and that is mostly for the better. A better question to ask is: what do we want out of the game now. Clearly, the opinions in this particular matter differs. I like being able to put in work and be rewarded for it. I wouldn't denounce the game if cabal trains were removed, or if remorts didn't get the skills of their previous class, or if quest rewards were toned down. It just means now everyone has less health.

I just would prefer things staying the same.

7 hours ago, Aidon said:

There is a difference between using leftover practices/trains to train hp/mana/move, which I absolutely believe was intentional, and gaming the system to generate MORE trains to do so.

Its like saying "If they didn't want me to rob the bank why they make such good stuff to buy" because the presence of a way to spend training sesssions does not mean all ways of generating training sessions were considered into the game design or should be considere good design. I honestly struggle to understand why we would want people to get caballed without max stats, have to most likely avoid fights while finishing out, having to 1 prac everything, etc. Does it contribute to the game? Make it more fun?

You mention generating more trains, but your bank analogy is flawed.  Robbing a bank implies that you're getting something from nothing.  Somehow putting in some work and you tap into something that would give you as many trains as you want or could carry.  It would be more analogous to taking your allowance to the arcade and trading in your dollar for tokens.  You have a finite resource that you trade in for another resource.  You've decided that to play the most video games possible, or for the longest time, you skimped out on meals and are living on bread and water, where anyone who didn't save trains at every turn, is eating a ham sandwich (or merely has more expensive bread) at the cost of a few tokens.

Or, you were give $20 and told to buy an outfit.  So you chose a onesie so you could scrimp and save $17.50 to buy that lobster dinner while everyone else who bought a t-shirt and jeans is left with $9.25 and has to make do with the salmon.

I wrote out more, but I thought of an easier way to sum this up.

You're concentrating on one race/class as an example to support your entire argument in this.  Which is fine until you realize that not all races gain practices the same.  @Tantangel touched on it a little.

If trains, and by proxy practices, are such a problem, why don't we see more gnomes running around?  Assuming they max out their wisdom, they get 250 practices from leveling.  This is more than enough to 3-practice every skill and spell they get and still have practices left over.  But they get an intelligence of 23, so they can one-practice everything.  This would generally leave them with over 190 practices, or 19 trains.  The math was once done to show that a gnome, due to the high number of practices compared to a fire giant, would end up with only about 70 hp less.  Is that extra 70 hp the reason people roll fire giants?