Separate Stat Re-allocation from Class Change

[lemoness]

A bunch of new skill changes are in the works, and lots of people will probably want to change their stats around to try them out. Currently, the only way to do this is by changing class, which costs gems.

We can't make Change Class free because it is an important source of revenue for the site and so removing it would hurt HabitRPG, but we CAN separate out Stat Re-allocation and make it gold purchasable instead of gem-purchasable! This way, non-paying users can switch around their stats, and there is a new gold sink on the site:)

Since this is a Major Gold Sink, it should probably cost 100 gold to be consistent with other planned Major Gold Sinks like the Enchanted Armoire.

[deilann]

I actually am not sure I like this idea. It makes it far too easy to change your stats around, which takes away a lot of the gamification of Habit. It's one thing to sleep in INT pajamas, but it's another to be able to reallocate all of my points to PER once I've reached my drop cap that day.

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 5:25 PM, lemoness notifications@github.com wrote:

A bunch of new skill changes are in the works, and lots of people will probably want to change their stats around to try them out. Currently, the only way to do this is by changing class, which costs gems.

We can't make Change Class free because it is an important source of revenue for the site and so removing it would hurt HabitRPG, but we CAN separate out Stat Re-allocation and make it gold purchasable instead of gem-purchasable! This way, non-paying users can switch around their stats, and there is a new gold sink on the site:)

Since this is a Major Gold Sink, it should probably cost 100 gold to be consistent with other planned Major Gold Sinks like the Enchanted Armoire.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082.

[hairlessbear]

I like the idea, but I think it should cost a lot more, for the reasons @deilann stated. Something like 1000 gold, to at least discourage people from rapidly changing.

[Alys]

1000 GP puts it out of reach without significant forward planning (or encourages use of Fix Character Values more than a lower cost would, effectively making it free).

One of the reasons we are changing it to a gold cost is so that when the skill changes are made live, people can adjust their stats to help compensate for the changes, without being forced to pay real money. That could be an important factor in increasing acceptance of the new skills. Hence the stats re-allocation ability needs to be achievable without too much effort.

If a player feels that 100 GP is too easy for them, they can create a custom reward to make it more expensive. It is not an ideal workaround, but it is impossible to select a gold amount that is equally fair for all players.

[deilann]

I think it's a really, really bad idea to build a lasting feature to compensate for a one-time need.

Also, it doesn't address the fact that some people may want to change their class. They may no longer like the way their skills work.

I'd actually find a way to give away 1 free class change to every player.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Alys notifications@github.com wrote:

1000 GP puts it out of reach without significant forward planning (or encourages use of Fix Character Values more than a lower cost would, effectively making it free).

One of the reasons we are changing it to a gold cost is so that when the skill changes are made live, people can adjust their stats to help compensate for the changes, without being forced to pay real money. That could be an important factor in increasing acceptance of the new skills. Hence the stats re-allocation ability needs to be achievable without too much effort.

If a player feels that 100 GP is too easy for them, they can create a custom reward to make it more expensive. It is not an ideal workaround, but it is impossible to select a gold amount that is equally fair for all players.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96256149.

[crookedneighbor]

I think I'm with @deilann on this.

[Alys]

It's not just a one-time need. It also allows it to be a gold sink, which we need more of.

[gisikw]

Definitely agree that there should be a single free change. Speaking for us lowbies, having the mechanics change, while not having the gems/gold to do anything about it, would be very frustrating.

Would be fine seeing both (a single-use token, and a gold sink), whether it's a class change, or even just a stats reallocation, with a fixed class.

Pffft, you endgame raiders! I still can't afford my contributor gear :P

[deilann]

It's not actually an effective gold sink, unless you expect people to be micromanaging and rearranging their points all the time. Which would be very bad for productivity.

Yes, we need more gold sinks, but that doesn't mean we should rush into them without thinking about the consequences.

You know what would be a good gold sink? The ability to dye your equipment (you only have one, so clearly you'd have to pay to redye it), which I believe was put together in a way that didn't need a whole bunch more art made.

But really, what we need to address is the reason we need gold sinks. Primarily, as far as I can tell, it's because we tie drops and gold production. People have to produce a ton of gold in order to get the drops they want. So people spec rogue because they want drops, but they don't really want that much gold.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 4:53 PM, Alys notifications@github.com wrote:

It's not just a one-time need. It also allows it to be a gold sync, which we need more of.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96296197.

[deilann]

The most effective gold sink would be a Gambler feature, that takes a quarter of your gold win a minimum of say 10gp and gives you a food drop, regardless of your drop cap.

This would deal with the fact that everyone has a different gold economy and would also allow people to "bleed off" surplus gold when they have a bunch, but don't want that much because of the economy of their custom rewards.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Ryan yandoryn@gmail.com wrote:

It's not actually an effective gold sink, unless you expect people to be micromanaging and rearranging their points all the time. Which would be very bad for productivity.

Yes, we need more gold sinks, but that doesn't mean we should rush into them without thinking about the consequences.

You know what would be a good gold sink? The ability to dye your equipment (you only have one, so clearly you'd have to pay to redye it), which I believe was put together in a way that didn't need a whole bunch more art made.

But really, what we need to address is the reason we need gold sinks. Primarily, as far as I can tell, it's because we tie drops and gold production. People have to produce a ton of gold in order to get the drops they want. So people spec rogue because they want drops, but they don't really want that much gold.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 4:53 PM, Alys notifications@github.com wrote:

It's not just a one-time need. It also allows it to be a gold sync, which we need more of.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96296197.

[deilann]

I'd actually argue that if we had such a feature (and maybe you could only use it five times a day) this would fix the food imbalance issue without screwing up hatching potion rates for new users, and definitively solve our need for gold sinks.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 5:06 PM, Ryan yandoryn@gmail.com wrote:

The most effective gold sink would be a Gambler feature, that takes a quarter of your gold win a minimum of say 10gp and gives you a food drop, regardless of your drop cap.

This would deal with the fact that everyone has a different gold economy and would also allow people to "bleed off" surplus gold when they have a bunch, but don't want that much because of the economy of their custom rewards.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Ryan yandoryn@gmail.com wrote:

It's not actually an effective gold sink, unless you expect people to be micromanaging and rearranging their points all the time. Which would be very bad for productivity.

Yes, we need more gold sinks, but that doesn't mean we should rush into them without thinking about the consequences.

You know what would be a good gold sink? The ability to dye your equipment (you only have one, so clearly you'd have to pay to redye it), which I believe was put together in a way that didn't need a whole bunch more art made.

But really, what we need to address is the reason we need gold sinks. Primarily, as far as I can tell, it's because we tie drops and gold production. People have to produce a ton of gold in order to get the drops they want. So people spec rogue because they want drops, but they don't really want that much gold.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 4:53 PM, Alys notifications@github.com wrote:

It's not just a one-time need. It also allows it to be a gold sync, which we need more of.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96296197 .

[Alys]

That sounds like a good idea to me but can you suggest it in Trello. Otherwise it will get lost when this issue is closed.

[crookedneighbor]

I second that.

[deilann]

I still maintain that we should not create a feature due to a single site change.

I maintain that this won't be an effective gold sink, won't be affordable for most users, and takes away quite a bit of the gamification of the site.

I propose that we do not run into this rashly, as something like this, once it's offered, will be hard to take back.

What I would do:

Separate stats allocation from class change. Make it cost 1 gem instead of

3. Give one gem to all players.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Blade Barringer notifications@github.com wrote:

I second that.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96298128.

[Alys]

There's a lot of points that have been raised, so I'm summarising them to help us assess them all. I am paraphrasing your comments in some places for brevity - tell me if I have lost your original meaning. These are summarised by topic rather than chronologically, to keep similar comments together. I have added my own responses to some of them (in non-bold text) - these are not meant to be a final response to any of the points; they are just my contributions to the conversation.

FCV = Fix Character Values

• lemoness: We believe that people will want to change their stats (possibly multiple times) while they experiment with the new skills and currently they can only do that with the change class option.
• lemoness: Class changes are an important source of revenue for the site and so removing the gem cost for that would hurt HabitRPG.
• lemoness: But stat re-allocation can be separated out and made gold purchasable.
• lemoness: A cost of 100 GP is suggested for consistency with other planned Major Gold Sinks.
• hairlessbear: Cost should be 1,000 GP to discourage rapid changing.
  • alys: for many users, 1,000 GP will be out of reach without significant forward planning or inappropriate use of FCV (if you think you'll never be able to earn it, you won't even try). But see also my contrasting comments below about using FCV. However I think 1,000 GP is so large that it will seem unreasonable to many, regardless of workarounds.
  • alys: Players can make their own custom reward to increase the cost if desired.
• deilann: [100 GP] "won't be affordable for most users"
  • alys: I think it will be with some effort, and that's probably reasonable if we want the users to be productive to earn it and not use it too often. See also my comment below to gisikw about using FCV to compensate.
• deilann: "Separate stats allocation from class change. Make it cost 1 gem instead of 3. Give one gem to all players."
  • alys: That allows only one free change of stats, but players experimenting with skills are likely to want more. A gem cost won't be affordable for more users than a 100 GP cost.
• deilann: "It makes it far too easy to change your stats around, which takes away a lot of the gamification of Habit." Also: "It's not actually an effective gold sink, unless you expect people to be micromanaging and rearranging their points all the time. Which would be very bad for productivity."
  • alys: Players can make their own custom reward or other condition to limit their use if desired.
  • alys: Avatar customisation and pet feeding can also waste time, but we permit that (and some players make their own conditions to limit it successfully).
• deilann: "some people may want to change their class. They may no longer like the way their skills work. I'd actually find a way to give away 1 free class change to every player."
  • alys: But this could reduce site revenue, making it harder to pay the bills this month
• gisikw: There should be a single free change... having the mechanics change, while not having the gems/gold to do anything about it, would be very frustrating.
  • alys: I do understand that not being able to change class could be frustrating, but I am also concerned about site revenue.
  • alys: Lack of gold could be compensated for by using FCV. If a player's preferred task organisation results in them earning far less gold than average, I think it's a legitimate solution to decide on a fair "exchange rate" and then use FCV to increase their gold when they have earned enough in their own terms to deserve an in-game reward. (I would definitely recommend this for buying Contributor Gear you have earned, if it is out of reach.)
• deilann: "It's not actually an effective gold sink, unless you expect people to be micromanaging and rearranging their points all the time."
  • alys: I'm not sure it needs to be a frequently used gold sink. It's just there if you want it.

[deilann]

I'm just going to bow out of this conversation. I don't have the emotional bandwidth to deal with it apparently. Yes, original meaning was lost here and there, but it's not worth it to try and fix that in the long run.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 8:38 PM, Alys notifications@github.com wrote:

There's a lot of points that have been raised, so I'm summarising them to help us assess them all. I am paraphrasing your comments in some places for brevity - tell me if I have lost your original meaning. These are summarised by topic rather than chronologically, to keep similar comments together. I have added my own responses to some of them (in non-bold text)

• these are not meant to be a final response to any of the points; they are just my contributions to the conversation.

FCV = Fix Character Values

-

lemoness: We believe that people will want to change their stats (possibly multiple times) while they experiment with the new skills and currently they can only do that with the change class option.

lemoness: Class changes are an important source of revenue for the site and so removing the gem cost for that would hurt HabitRPG.

lemoness: But stat re-allocation can be separated out and made gold purchasable.

lemoness: A cost of 100 GP is suggested for consistency with other planned Major Gold Sinks.

hairlessbear: Cost should be 1,000 GP to discourage rapid changing.

• alys: for many users, 1,000 GP will be out of reach without significant forward planning or inappropriate use of FCV (if you think you'll never be able to earn it, you won't even try). But see also my contrasting comments below about using FCV. However I think 1,000 GP is so large that it will seem unreasonable to many, regardless of workarounds.
  • alys: Players can make their own custom reward to increase the cost if desired.

• deilann: 100 GP won't be affordable for most users.

• alys: I think it will be with some effort, and that's probably reasonable if we want the users to be productive to earn it and not use it too often. See also my comment below to gisikw about using FCV to compensate.

• deilann: Separate stats allocation from class change. Make it cost 1 gem. Give one gem to all players.

• alys: That allows only one free change of stats, but players experimenting with skills are likely to want more. A gem cost won't be affordable for more users than a 100 GP cost.

• deilann: Makes it too easy change stats - removes gamification, wastes time (bad for productivity).

• alys: Players can make their own custom reward or other condition to limit their use if desired.
  • alys: Avatar customisation and pet feeding can also waste time, but we permit that (and some players make their own conditions to limit it successfully).

• deilann: Some people may want to change their class because they no longer like the way their skills work. Suggest giving away 1 free class change to every player

• alys: But this could reduce site revenue, making it harder to pay the bills this month

• gisikw: There should be a single free change... having the mechanics change, while not having the gems/gold to do anything about it, would be very frustrating.

• alys: I do understand that not being able to change class could be frustrating, but I am also concerned about site revenue.
  • alys: Lack of gold could be compensated for by using FCV. If a player's preferred task organisation results in them earning far less gold than average, I think it's a legitimate solution to decide on a fair "exchange rate" and then use FCV to increase their gold when they have earned enough in their own terms to deserve an in-game reward. (I would definitely recommend this for buying Contributor Gear you have earned, if it is out of reach.)

• deilann: Not an effective gold sink unless players micromanage and rearrange their points all the time.

• alys: I'm not sure it needs to be a frequently used gold sink. It's just there if you want it.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96318884.

[Alys]

@deilann I'm sorry about losing the original meaning. I was too concerned with brevity. I've replaced all comments attributed to you with direct quotes. before and after. If you'd like to continue the discussion later, that would be good.

[deilann]

@Alys I'll see. :) I just know that this may need to be taken care of before I get more bandwidth, as things do, and I didn't want to just ignore the conversation without explaining my absence when I had been so loud for some time.

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 9:24 PM, Alys notifications@github.com wrote:

@deilann https://github.com/deilann I'm sorry about losing the original meaning. I was too concerned with brevity. I've replaced all comments attributed to you with direct quotes. before https://i.imgur.com/c55OG3M.png and after https://i.imgur.com/uShQ7he.png. If you'd like to continue the discussion later, that would be good.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96321740.

[Alys]

The way I see this, re-allocating stats is a separate thing from changing classes, and so free class changes aren't part of this issue (but might be worth discussing separately). Once a player has changed class (for free or otherwise), they might want to experiment with different stat allocations and this issue is about how we let them do that. So here all we are discussing is whether we let them change stats with gold.

The options are:

• Stats change costs 3 gems (current situation)
• Stats change costs 1 gem
• Stats change costs 100 GP (or any other gold amount; the economy is so variable across all users that we might as well consider all gold amounts together)

From HabitRPG's financial point of view, I don't think there is any benefit to keeping the 3 gem cost. Gems have too many uses and the number of players who would spend 3 gems just for stats is probably limited.

Also from the financial view, a 1 gem cost probably doesn't have much advantage either. You'd get more players willing to pay it, but perhaps not enough more to make it a sizeable source of income. User happiness from being able to change stats without gems is probably more valuable.

So we're considering only user-focussed reasons for making stat allocations cost gold.

Advantages of Stat Re-allocation for 100 GP:

• User satisfaction (users who realise it would waste their time / destroy gamification would be unsatisfied, but they could ignore the feature, and perhaps later we could add a difficulty setting to help them avoid the temptation).
• It's a gold sink (perhaps not a very effective one, but there will be others too).
• Fewer complaints about how "everything" costs gems (well, maybe not fewer, but at least we can point to another thing that doesn't).
• Better acceptance of the skills changes (a short-term reason but I think it has value).

Disadvantages of Stat Re-allocation for 100 GP:

• Too cheap / too expensive. That's a site-wide problem because it's impossible to pick a price for anything that is fair to all users. The best we can do is settle on something that seems mostly reasonable and suggest workarounds for other cases. Perhaps later we can make an inflation/deflation option for all gold-purchasable features. Also, any gold cost will always be cheaper in real terms than a gem cost (especially when you consider the use of FCV to gain gold).
• Reduces gamification. Gamification might not be something I'm qualified to comment on because I have very little gaming background, however, neither do many of our users now. Perhaps users who care about gamification can choose to ignore the option or limit their use of it. Do we care about the impact on gamification for those users who don't really understand it? (That's a real question, not rhetorical.) I am not yet convinced that reduction of gamification is a reason to retain a gem cost.
• Wastes time if a user re-allocates too often. Yes, it will. But so does avatar customisation and pet feeding and a lot of things in real life. At least if we're wasting time re-allocating stats, we'll then want to go off and do tasks to make use of the stats. Users who care about not wasting their time will implement their own control mechanisms (and we can add a difficult setting later to help). Users who don't care will waste their time on something else if they can't waste it on stats.
• Any other disadvantages for 100 GP stats re-allocation?

Advantages of Gem-Purchasable Stat Re-allocation:

• Retains gamification - but does that matter?
• Prevents users wasting their time - but see above. I don't think this is a good enough reason to retain a gem cost.
• Any other advantages for gem-purchasable stats re-allocation?

[Alys]

Comments from @deilann, sent to me by chat because of bandwidth issues:

There's an option you didn't bring up: rearrange stats for free. We could also limit the number of times it could be done within a calendar month. I think I actually quite like "free but limited" -- and we could only start the "limited" bit the month after the stats change goes in effect.

Also, the difference between costume changes and whatnot and making stats allocation is that the game at higher levels would seriously reward you for regularly changing your stats. So the game is actually encouraging it. You'd want to spec STR or PER during the day and then INT at night, so there'd be multiple changes going on and a lot of micromanaging. While folks could make rules for themself about it, the game is literally encouraging doing it. Or like "oh noes, I didn't get enough Dailies done, I should spec CON for tonight."

[lemoness]

There have been a lot of very good points and interesting alternatives listed in this thread, and I'm going to want to take some time to consider them. That being said, here are a few of my initial responses:

• We want to allow people to rearrange stats multiple times, especially in the interim period right after we've launched skill rebalancing, so the 1-gem approach definitely isn't as useful as the "X number of stat changes per month" or the "stat changes for X gold." I think that one of those two options will be our winner.
• for the "X number of stat changes per month," is that including class changes? Personally, I'd rather have a number such as "X free stat changes per class re-allocation," because I could easily see someone use up all their stat re-allocations and then get gifted the gems to change classes and not be able to re-allocate stats to fit their new class for a month. That would be extremely frustrating.
• The chief worry seems to be that users will spend a lot of their time re-allocating stats. However, 100 gold is a fairly daunting achievement for many players (particularly since Rogues are about to be weakened), and will be in direct contrast with other planned rewards such as the Enchanted Armoire - i.e. they will have to actively choose to spend their 100 gold on that instead of on something else. That means that if a user really wants to be able to reallocate stats twice a day, they have to be working hard to earn at least 200 gold a day - which means that this will become a new source of motivation for those players. Traditionally, our motto has been "if it motivates you, it's good." (Of course, you could simply give yourselves the gold with FCV, but we aren't really concerned with cheating.) This isn't intended to be a custom reward replacement - but some users may use it that way, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
• I actually worry that simply giving users X number of free "stat rearrange" tokens, per month or per class change, is more of a waste of users' time, because they don't have to do anything to earn it. If they are simply given those tokens, it is totally divorced from productivity and becomes simply a micromanaging time sink that they can use an arbitrary amount of times based on the number that we choose. If we make it gold-purchasable, it is the USER who gets to decide how much they want to use this tool, based on how motivating it is to them versus other things they can spend that gold on.

I'll keep turning these options over in my mind to see if I come up with any more angles. I'm interested to hear more responses!

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 12:11 AM, Alys notifications@github.com wrote:

Comments from @deilann https://github.com/deilann, sent to me by chat because of bandwidth issues:

There's an option you didn't bring up: rearrange stats for free. We could also limit the number of times it could be done within a calendar month. I think I actually quite like "free but limited" -- and we could only start the "limited" bit the month after the stats change goes in effect.

Also, the difference between costume changes and whatnot and making stats allocation is that the game at higher levels would seriously reward you for regularly changing your stats. So the game is actually encouraging it. You'd want to spec STR or PER during the day and then INT at night, so there'd be multiple changes going on and a lot of micromanaging. While folks could make rules for themself about it, the game is literally encouraging doing it. Or like "oh noes, I didn't get enough Dailies done, I should spec CON for tonight."

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96335930.

[crookedneighbor]

Just a thought, what if the price of the stat re-allocation increased slightly with every use? Maybe capping out at a certain price and returning to the minimum price after using the orb of rebirth.

This would allow people to use it, but discourage frequent uses of it, since it would increase the price each time.

Alternatively, the price could rise with each use throughout the day/month and reset at the next one.

[gisikw]

I like that idea! Taking a page from Blizzard with regard to class respecs :) I'd suggest that we should probably auto-reset the minimum price at any point in the future where skills are significantly changed.

With regard to @Alys's point about FCV — I'm very hesitant to see this as a viable workaround. At least for me, the instant I start using "cheat codes" in a game, it becomes much more challenging for me to avoid the temptation to make tweaks and adjustments in the future. This could just be a personal thing, but psychologically, I'm trying very hard to avoid the use of that feature.

(As an aside, the biggest thing that's been holding me back is having a negative habit for smoking, which is a multiple-times-a-day activity. From an operant conditioning perspective, it's best to have to lose the HP immediately after performing the bad habit, but it does make the gameplay balance pretty challenging. If I were to open up the pandora's box that is FCV, it would be very hard to close it again.)

[lemoness]

I really like that as an option! Definitely reset after orb of rebirth. Probably also reset with class changes.

Note that we will get a lot of user questions, though. We'd need to find a way to make it as simple as possible.

Maybe: 25 50 100 200 400 capped

400 every time is daunting enough that I think the majority of players would not use it frequently.

That being said, I am still not totally convinced that we need to add this level of complexity to address the fear that users will be constantly re-rolling stats, for the reasons I outlined last night. If people are very worried about that, though, then this seems like a good compromise.

On Sunday, April 26, 2015, Kevin Gisi notifications@github.com wrote:

I like that idea! Taking a page from Blizzard with regard to class respecs :) I'd suggest that we should probably auto-reset the minimum price at any point in the future where skills are significantly changed.

With regard to @Alys https://github.com/Alys's point about FCV — I'm very hesitant to see this as a viable workaround. At least for me, the instant I start using "cheat codes" in a game, it becomes much more challenging for me to avoid the temptation to make tweaks and adjustments in the future. This could just be a personal thing, but psychologically, I'm trying very hard to avoid the use of that feature.

(As an aside, the biggest thing that's been holding me back is having a negative habit for smoking, which is a multiple-times-a-day activity. From an operant conditioning perspective, it's best to have to lose the HP immediately after performing the bad habit, but it does make the gameplay balance pretty challenging. If I were to open up the pandora's box that is FCV, it would be very hard to close it again.)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitrpg/issues/5082#issuecomment-96392499.

[SabreCat]

My few cents: :+1: for escalating costs. Very elegant! :-1: for free allocation or introducing yet another currency (respecs/month) to the system :-1: for FCV as a go-to for any design concern. I cringe any time it's suggested as anything but a way to straighten yourself out after a bug incident.

[crookedneighbor]

:+1: to all that ^

It is my hope that one day FCV will be removed, once the site has fewer recurring syncing bugs.

[Alys]

I strongly recommend against removing FCV at any time. Even if we were bug free, there'd always be situations like a player being unable to log in due to network problems leading to them and their party taking a lot of undeserved damage. Also, I've seen several users discuss useful ways of using FCV, e.g., reducing Health to make the game harder (optionally with a matching increase in MP or GP as incentive to try harder), gold banks to save for specific things so they don't fritter their gold away on other rewards. It's a very useful tool. Giving the users flexibility is a good thing.

[Alys]

@deilann sent me some comments to post (bandwidth issues again)

Regarding gamification (and this greatly clarifies it for me), he said:

"when you allocate your points, you're building a character. Easily being able to move those points around makes the points kind of... not really have meaning and not feel as much like a game/character. A big part of RPGs is making choices about where to put your skill points... and just like in Habit, you give some things up to be better in other things."

Regarding an increasing gold cost for stats reallocation:

"I'm really not really in favour of it. It feels like it takes away from the whole point of attribute points, at least for me. The class change feels like a 'reroll' and having it be a gem cost makes it be a significant barrier. I do, however, like the idea of gaining the ability to reallocate your points every five to ten levels."

"I realized that what's been upsetting me the most about this conversation, is that it feels like this is not being treated like it's a massive change, more like a minor one. However, for some users, this is a very significant change."

[lemoness]

It seems that most opinion has been coalescing around the increasing gold cost, although @deilann has brought up the point that making changing stats a more prominent part of the game will hurt the classic RPG feel of the game for some players.

I've been trying to brainstorm more options for us to see if we can reach a good compromise between letting people change their stats and keeping it from becoming an overwhelming strategy change. How do people feel about this:

• Rerolling Stats costs gold, but there is a hard cap of the number of times that you can do it (reset with class changes + orb of rebirth).That way, experimenting becomes accessible to all players (if they work hard enough to earn the gold for it), but at some point you have to commit to the stats you have, and that's simply the character that you've built for yourself.. unless you change class/use the Orb of Rebirth.

Good idea? Terrible idea? Idea that can be saved with a bit of tweaking?

If opinion continues to vary on this substantially, I would suggest creating a poll from the top options and deciding that way. We've only had to do that a few times in the past, but it has worked well!

[gisikw]

I like where you're going with this, as far as restricting it as a strategy device. But I worry that if someone decides they like their current stats, or makes once change and sticks with it for a while, the remaining "rerolls" become a tempting strategy change.

Throwing this out there - what if instead of capping it on quantity, we cap it on time? The idea is to give folks a bit of time to experiment with new stats, yes? So howabout having some sort of "One-Week" Item (with whatever Fantasy trappings we want to add. "Freaky Friday Potion", or "Empathy Potion" or something).

Single-use, and you don't need to use it right away (to account for people who may be out-of-town during the stats rollout), and once you've used the item, you can change your stats, but only within that time window. We could do this with a gold cost, or even make it free. As soon as your 7 crons (or however long we want to make it) are up...that's it. No more re-rolls.

But that way, people get a brief period where they have the opportunity to play around with the new stats before settling on something, but it doesn't become a permanent mechanic that affects strategy?

[lemoness]

I’ve been turning this issue over in my mind, and while I still feel that we will need to address this topic, I think that we should release skills rebalancing before we make a final decision about this feature.

It looks like the conversation about how to best handle stats allocation may continue for a while, and given the amount of debate, I am not comfortable making this decision quickly. However, for scheduling reasons, it really makes sense to release the skill changes sooner rather than later.

What we can do instead is to link people to this ticket in the announcement, which will give the people who are most passionate about this issue a chance to share what would make them happy. It will also help us assess the true demand for this sort of feature. If there's a ton of demand, that leans in favor of the gold-purchasable options... if there's no interest, a change may not be necessary at all.

For those unhappy in the interim, Alice has proposed creating a script that she can run to reset people’s stats. In her plan, we'd give people a week or so put their UUID in this ticket, and she will reset the stats for a bunch of UUIDs every so often. This will alleviate immediate stress without locking us in to a feature change that hasn’t been well-thought-out.

If nobody feels strongly that releasing skill rebalancing without this feature is a terrible idea, we’ll proceed with that launch, and take our time with this decision.

[ghost]

Making it easier to experiment is great since experimenting is fun (and I'm a min-maxer at heart) but I don't want that to be a big thing in Habit since that would undo a lot of the productivity that Habit fosters.

I'd be happy to see the fee change from gems to gold so long as there is some kind of limit on how frequently stats can be reallocated. Once per day would probably do.

[Zelah-Meyer]

(I mentioned this on Facebook as I couldn't find a suitable Trello card but have now seen this thread. Apologies for any duplication.)

What I would suggest would be to create a potion that resets attribute points on use (rather than on purchase). Any time you make an adjustment to the mechanics that might affect how people distribute their stats then you can give everyone one free potion.

The rest of the time the potions can be gem (or gold if you prefer) purchasable for less than the 3 gem cost of resetting class AND attributes.

I play Lord of the Rings Online and they reset everyone's legendary points whenever they make a change to the system. Obviously, some people might not want to reset their stats at that point in time, so having a free potion that they can use if they want or save/stockpile if they don't, seems like a good option. It lets people choose if and when to reset their stats rather than imposing it on them. :o)

[jonnysooter]

5d713e3f-dedf-449d-84fb-1589bb046dc1

[Chaudie]

59877d92-8da9-4baa-a4b7-7b84b379e47d

[terozen]

b313296e-5b42-4e7a-a59a-e5614e54ff5b

I've entertained the idea of being able to reallocate skill points without using gems, and even though I do pay for gems, it sounds like fun to be able to do it more freely.

[gaballison]

f527a20c-8fb8-41b5-86c3-a606bd160d79

I'm definitely in favor of being able to reallocate stats with gold instead of gems.

[TotalSinnlos]

eb5607a3-51ba-481e-b0ff-532d9693e381

[LiliumIon]

50bb05e6-b155-4c89-80f7-1bbec4c32af1 It'd be nice to be able to use gold to reallocate stats. At a certain point you kind of run out of things to spend gold on.

[kendrakleber]

12a3cb7f-abb9-4524-a0f6-6380953fa405 I like the increasing cost then reset.

[phoenixdoll]

I've only skimmed the comments so I'm sorry if I repeat things that have been said too much.

I support the 100GP stat change - or the stat change that gets expensive based on how many times you've done it - but I think the cap ought to be much lower than 400GP for average users (unless this is in a day or something?) having different difficulty settings that set all the gold prices for things at different levels would also be amazing - but perhaps a different topic.

Personally, I actually use in game rewards to motivate myself. I don't see the problem with someone who finds the 100GP cost and restating motivating to help them to achieve their habits. The only problem would be if the GP cost was too high for people to be motivated by it. Maybe what's more fair is a price based on what level / how many stats you want to reallocate or something?

It could be a free thing - I currently set GP prices and rewards for in game things and so I'd just set it as being 100GP to restat as one of my rewards - but I didn't even think of doing that until I did a survey that suggested in game rewards as being a thing I could use to motivate myself.. so you might find that many people don't use it as a gold sink if it doesn't have a set price on it.

[grlgoddess]

96c03edd-0d75-409f-aa5c-9ec45b3d3b31

I like the idea of having stat reallocation separate from class changes. There should definitely be a limit to how often people can switch them up, though. I don't know whether having it time-limited (once a week or whatever) or using the increasingly prohibitive cost method would be preferable (both code-wise or user-wise), but I think either of those options sounds best.

[SynapticWanderer]

I would really like this, especially since I have a grip of gold and no real money to buy gems with.

918ffa67-e9c3-4db2-9b5f-3b7383c82ca6

[caths]

00104d37-a6c7-4513-b631-1438e7cb6b78 Agreeing with others, I'd like more reasons to spend gold.

[Alys]

Attribute points have been reset for the players listed below. If you have added your UUID to this issue and do not appear in this list, please comment here again.

00104d37-a6c7-4513-b631-1438e7cb6b78 Catherine 12a3cb7f-abb9-4524-a0f6-6380953fa405 NightOwl 50bb05e6-b155-4c89-80f7-1bbec4c32af1 liliumion 59877d92-8da9-4baa-a4b7-7b84b379e47d fatedBaroness 5d713e3f-dedf-449d-84fb-1589bb046dc1 jonnysooter 918ffa67-e9c3-4db2-9b5f-3b7383c82ca6 GypsyDarkness 96c03edd-0d75-409f-aa5c-9ec45b3d3b31 grlgoddess b313296e-5b42-4e7a-a59a-e5614e54ff5b Josse eb5607a3-51ba-481e-b0ff-532d9693e381 Frontier Psychiatrist f527a20c-8fb8-41b5-86c3-a606bd160d79 Allison

[batig]

aaec07b5-b48b-4c91-b59f-a56369f7e3f7

[Subrosalux]

030d0e1a-21df-4d53-bc05-4fb0f7f8ffcd

[AustinPuk]

4472c281-8684-4063-b6fc-d79841f1e286

[ghost]

My UUID: 6743eeaf-5985-49a8-9119-76bf6ffdcf8b My wife doesn't have a Github account, so here's her UUID: 609b6eec-a459-4096-93f9-770174c2072f

Thanks! :)

[mayajosyula]

I'm aware that I'm in the minority here, but I wanted to say it anyway: I'm not sure I like this idea. I usually have a lot of gold at any given time, so a 100 GP cost (or even a 400 GP cost, on some days) would never be a hurdle. The temptation to allocate everything to PER during the day (drop cap) and INT during the night (MP gain) would be huge. And I can't ignore it, like I can with Fix Character Values, because FCV is just there to help users whenever there's a bug but this is actually part of how the site will work, it's meant to be used to reallocate stats. Ignoring an entire feature of HabitRPG is completely different from ignoring something made to fix bugs.

An idea I was bouncing around in my head for a while is making the cost scale as a certain proportion of your total GP (say, 1/5, but a bigger one might work better). The minimum can be 100, but maybe if you have 600 GP it can be 120, if you have 800 it can be 160, and if you routinely have over 1500 GP like me it would cost 300, and then I might think twice about allocating whenever I want to.

tl;dr: please think about this.

[Alys]

@agentx999 Thank you for taking the time to make those comments! We are definitely interested in hearing both sides of the debate. Most of the comments so far have been in favour of the gold-purchase option, but those who have been against it have made strong points, as you did, about not being able to ignore the option.

I like your idea of making the cost a fraction of your gold. It is not something we currently do for gold-purchasable items but we might want to consider it. (@lemoness FYI)

One other thing we could do is make a preference setting that removes the option to change your attribute allocations using gold (you'd still be able to by using gems). Obviously, you could turn off the preference setting at any time you wanted to, but perhaps the act of initially turning on the setting would be enough to reduce the temptation? You'd effectively be saying to yourself "I choose to always play HabitRPG without the ability to change stats with gold." I think that would work for me, but I have no idea about anyone else! What do you think about the idea? (I also welcome comments about this from anyone else who would prefer to not have the gold-purchase option available.)