Solo Limit Amendment

[Saber]

Would it be possible to lift the Solo AP Limit on Story Quests like CA? Or maybe just raise the limit to a higher number?

I'm saying this both because at this rate, I'm personally going to have so much backlogged AP that I'll be stuck for about 3 months worth of claims and I don't think that's really fair, especially since I'm doing something pertaining to an event provided. I've noticed that a good number of people who are following the CA Story Line are also soloing and the AP limit placed could hinder how people write their stories, and they would probably have the same problem that I have at the moment. Soloing is a choice and the penalty is the AP Limit, but with the deadlines set by the Questline, churning out posts for the event will backlog some people with their claims.

Personally, I would suggest doubling the AP limit from 30 AP to 60 AP, or even raising it 80 AP. The current limit restricted to 7.5k words. 60 AP is 15k and 80 AP is 20k. I'm suggesting this only be applied to Story Quests like CA, not solos in general and again, it's mainly because of the deadlines set by CA as well as the requirement to hit word goals and post goals. Those of us who like to go above the minimum word count have the potential to get stuck with AP floating around.

[Murasaki]

I'm considering this especially since we have multiple high-level people now and the solo limit is a slightly arbitrary barrier keeping some from catching up. However I do want there to be more incentive for people not to completely solo everything in the storyline. Does anyone else have any comments toward this issue?

[Fletcher]

I'm of two minds on this:

1) In the presence of a cap, it gives a weekly goal for myself to meet on a weekly basis and keeps my activity up knowing I need to reach my goal to get the most out of the week lest I fall behind.

2) At the moment I'm finding no reason as it stands to do party RPs aside from it being uncapped EXP, because it's slower and generally the thread will be concluded after a few week's work for something that's not comparable to the speed and volume of soloing.

When it comes to CA or events specifically though, Saber pretty much hit what I was thinking on the head. Having a time limit makes people work harder, but if competing with a solo cap then it also stifles that activity at the same time. I think the easiest solution would be to make the CA plotline quests uncapped in AP gain similarly to party threads, but only for the first completion.

[Murasaki]

Chatbox discussion has led me to design the following:

8b. Event Solo Threads
In some events, particularly the Celestial Arms questline, players can perform solos that count toward event completion in order to expedite their progress through the event. In order to reduce the likelihood for a normal progressing player to cap out on AP during the event, the AP from any event solo threads will first count toward the Solo Event AP cap. Event Solo Threads have a weekly limit of 30 AP resetting every Sunday at midnight PST. This cap is initially separate from the weekly cap described in 1b. However, once a player hits the 30 AP cap for event threads, any remaining AP will start to bleed into the regular solo cap for a theoretical combined cap of 60 AP. Event Solo Threads are subject to the same limitations as regular Solo Threads whenever it may apply.

Some examples:

A. A person writes only solo threads and these threads are not part of the CA questline. What will happen?
The person will cap out at 30 AP for that week. Any remaining solo AP carries over into the next week's cap.

B. A person writes 10 AP worth of solos as part of the CA questline and then writes 20 AP worth of solos for non-CA threads for the week.
At this point, these are treated as separate caps. The person is considered to be at respective caps of 10/30 Event Solo AP and 20/30 Solo AP for the week.

C. A person writes 31 AP worth of solos as part of the CA questline and then writes 20 AP worth of solos for non-CA threads for the week.
The person has reached their 30/30 solo cap for event threads for the week. The remaining 1 AP goes toward the person's regular solo cap. Thus, their current regular solo cap is at 21/30 AP.

D. A person writes 60 AP worth of solos as part of the CA questline and then writes 1 AP worth of solos for non-CA threads for the week.
The person has reached their 30/30 solo cap for event threads for the week. The remaining 30 AP goes toward the person's regular solo cap. Because the person has capped out, the remaining 1 AP goes toward the person's Regular Solo AP cap for the next week.

E. A person writes 90 AP worth of solos as part of the CA questline.
The person has reached their 30/30 solo cap for event threads for the week. 30 AP then goes toward the person's regular solo cap. Finally, the remaining 30 AP goes toward the person's Regular Solo AP cap for the next week. Even though the person only did event threads, this leftover AP is NOT applied to the character's event solo cap for the next week.

[Sark]

Oct 6, 2015 4:45:31 GMT Murasaki said:

I'm considering this especially since we have multiple high-level people now and the solo limit is a slightly arbitrary barrier keeping some from catching up. However I do want there to be more incentive for people not to completely solo everything in the storyline. Does anyone else have any comments toward this issue?

My thoughts (I love the sound of my own voice):
1 - Make quest events exempt from the solo AP cap. I am guessing that the intent of the solo cap is to encourage people to play together. As we are on a social RPing site, I support 100% writing in groups. To me a solo career is not something I would enjoy as it is basically boils down to just writing posts that most people which never see, and more importantly, never interact with. However, the time limit on events causes a degree of friction, as group threads generally run slower than solo threads. If we are to actually complete chapters within the ideal time frame, this makes me feel that we need to either: (a) not penalise solo threads, or (b) extend the time for each event. The danger with (b) is that people will get bored and momentum will be lost, so to me (a) seems the safest route.
Making them exempt makes it easier to track AP and makes it easier to mod AP claims :) It also encourages people to continue their non-quest posts which makes the site active.
2 - Encourage party play in quest events. Some people like to do threads by themselves, and that's fine. But at the moment I think the time-pressure discourages group threads because group threads are equal work, but have the drawback of needing to wait for other people. I think Saki's scaling AP bonus is a great start to encouraging party play. I think the other thing which may help, is changing the requirements between group vs solo posts. At the moment a group thread has the same post requirements as a solo thread such as 3 rounds of posting. This becomes a bit awkward in practise as in a group it often means Poster #1 does the premade plot, and Posters #2 onwards get to write "gosh that's cool as I watch Poster #1 do stuff"
3 - Tangent: Encourage Community I think Saki is doing a good job here trying to get people to vote and contribute on best storyline and giving out rewards for art & the like. I really appreciate seeing an active community working together - especially when it then feeds back into itself (like characters from the most voted storyline becoming canon). So this part is more just saying I like what has been happening and look forward to more forum* community building.

*As opposed to c-box community, which is much larger, but also heavily timezone based and does not tend to do cool stuff like making stories, just fun stuff like chatting