The XP reward for sailing has been rebalanced to bring it more in line with other game systems. In particular, it now takes into account the duration of your voyage, in order to ensure that crews of all speeds are given a fair reward for their time.
I've put further details below, but I also want to explain the thinking behind this change, and make it clear what will and will not happen in response to player feedback.
Firstly, the reason for the change. This is a high-XP mission, which means that a balanced reward for the fastest crews looks very different from a balanced reward for the slowest crews. Before this change, the fastest crews were being awarded too much XP for the amount of time spent earning it. This had to be fixed, since efforts to avoid power creep are a major reason why the MUD has stayed fun and sustainable for thirty years. We could have just balanced the entire mission by setting the reward in line with the speed of the fastest crews, but that would be very unfair on slower crews, and we want sailing to be worthwhile for as many types and combinations of players as possible.
Secondly, we do not plan to make any tweaks to the actual mechanics of this change for at least six months (and hopefully not even then, if none seem to be needed), but if you think any of the messages or helpfiles are unclear or confusing, please make a rep explaining why you think so, and we'll take a look at them. Feedback of other kinds is also welcome, but I will be collating it and responding to it in one go, rather than trying to answer every single person individually.
Thirdly, if you don't want to start having to care about your speed during the voyage, you absolutely do not have to. The idea of this change is that whatever speed you go, you will get a fair return of XP for your investment of time.
And finally, here are the details:
- People whose sailing bonus is less than 200 can no longer attempt the mission.
- The monster XP has been halved.
- For each stage of the voyage, if your crew completes that stage in less time than a specific threshold (which varies by stage), then you might get less XP than if you'd taken the full time. This is "might get" rather than "will get" because there's a smoothing effect that will to some extent let slower times in earlier stages offset faster times in later stages (but you can't get a huge offset by just idling in the ship for half an hour before starting).
- To make this make narrative sense, Smith has a new type of leaderboard, both her and Chidder's pre-voyage and post-voyage chats have been changed, and the "here is your XP for the stage you just completed" message now includes a notification in cases where the XP has been reduced.
- Only XP is affected - ambergris and cash rewards remain the same as before regardless of how long you take to complete the mission. |
