Debate: Do people level up too quickly?

Ceara · Post by **Ceara** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 1:50 pm

I think a timer will not stop "twinks" from twinking. All it will do will cause them to twink skills and spells rather than levels.

As an aside, I've used the term twink as I've seen it used here. However, I looked up the definition and I don't see anyone giving low level players a ton of high level gear, not to mention the game prevents that by them losing it when they log off or at least it used to.

Can someone give me the definition of what it means here because I don't really understand what it is.

It is part of the game to increase your level and skills and a great achievement to do so.

Currently I am asuming it means anyone who only trains or levels and doesn't rp.

Hrosskell · Post by **Hrosskell** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:47 pm

I always have nice, long, beautiful responses typed up to these debates. Then I realize they have nothing to do with the subject. I don't approve of a level-timer. Before you scream, "Twink alert!" at me, I'll give you some statistics. Out of 3 characters I play regularly (the top 3 atm), there are 155, 1295, and 630 hours. That's a total of 2080 hours. That's -just- the top three, and I know I have more characters out there. A lot of my time is invested into a text-based video game, which while I love it, is only a game. In that 2080 hours, working at Subway (a sandwich shop for those of you who aren't "in the know"), I could have made 13,520 U.S. dollars. I think that any use of anyone's free time on this game is worth something. Be you a twink-grinder, or a roleplayer, it's worth something. I think there needs to be a happy MEDIUM, not a happy "We Only RP So Let's Cry". It's really not hard to make your character -decent- and have a rich, emotional storyline behind that character. I'm not asking you to GM everything. I haven't. I'm not asking you to spend every moment on the MUD doing three-line smotes. I don't. Just find a medium, and let's all get along.

Scylere · Post by **Scylere** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 5:20 pm

I think fast levelling could be reduced if stamina was dependent on Constitution.

For example, if your level ten character had hardened constitution, you could walk just as far as a level 50 character with hardened constitution.

I think this makes sense. Not being able to walk across town without having to rest, pushes people to level up more quickly.

Just a thought:D

Estrild · Post by **Estrild** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 5:24 pm

Ceara wrote:Can someone give me the definition of what it means here because I don't really understand what it is.

Like I mentioned, I agree that the timer won't stop twinks and shouldn't even be implimented. "Twink" has a huge variety of definitions, anything from "picks up a bunch of items" to "blazes through levels" to "speaks in 133t" but I think the following sums it up the best:

"A twink is a player who needs a clue, who seems to deliberately not 'get it'. He or she is often a person who has read one or two of the rules, and applies them when they are convenient to his or her overall personal goal, and who remains deliberately ignorant of the game's overall goal. When this happens, frustrated staff and players want to whack the twink with a 'clue-by-four', a term which means the equivalent of knocking someone upside of the head with a construction stud (2" x 4"). It is hoped that such a whack will help the twink 'get it', but more often than not, the twink is being twinkish on purpose so s/he remains a twink. Fortunately, most twinks get bored quickly and leave the game."

Ceara · Post by **Ceara** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 5:47 pm

Thank you

Kregor · Post by **Kregor** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 9:17 pm

Estrild wrote:"A twink is a player who needs a clue, who seems to deliberately not 'get it'.'
<snip>

I like that passage. The same site where that definition comes from also posts what the call their Top 10 Ways to Become a Twink (edited a little to make it more FK applicable):

• Mix up IC and OOC too much. Address other characters by name when you aren't supposed to know them. Do things in character that your character would not be able to do, or use OOC information that your character could not possibly know ICly.
• Play your character contrary to his race, background, faith, or class.
• Act destructively (bash doors, steal stuff, attack people) when your character has no reason to do so.
• Buy lots of stuff for no reason at all. Conversely, have your blacksmith character make 6120 copper bowls (or katanas??) and flood the market with them.
• Try to RP something totally out of the norm for the Forgotten Realms universe without an application and imm approval. Make sure to grandstand it for all to see.
• Try to role-play with other characters when there's no reasonable way to explain why their characters would want to interact with you (like trying to take your Cyrist to the Vanguardier of Torm to talk to them about the weather).
• Don't ever read the help files, even when you ask questions and the imms and newbie council point you there.
• Type and spell like a Neanderthal. Use ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME. Put two or three question marks (???) after every question and at least three exclamation points after every statement. Use c001 hacker lingo.
• When you do get into a role-playing scene with another person, walk out of the room while they're interacting with you, then come back in. Do this several times. Eat a handful of rations and drink several times from a fountain as if they're not there and expect them to ignore it. Just as the scene gets good, go OOC, idle, or better, quit in a public area. Frequently interrupt scenes by refusing to accept that In Character Actions = In Character Consequences, and challenging things OOCly when you don't like they way they're going ICly.
• Say nasty things out-of-character at other players when they make you angry. Call people names on OOC channels. Act like a brat in general.

It echoes my opinion, that there is more to being a twink than just someone who levels too fast. We can code out power levelling, or turn up the exp limit for each level, or slow down the amount that a person gains in skill by training it, but that doesn't really punish the person that does it non-stop, it punishes the ones who DON'T spend much time out actually training their skills or their levels, because their lack of time in the training fields actually makes them even weaker.

There is more to being a twink than just power levelling, or hoarding a bunch of magical gear, or bullrushing thru quests... these are only the outward signs of underlying twinkishness. In general, a twink is someone who has the attitude of "they is/are/must be > you". Someone who hogs Hartsvale, simply for the sake of being stronger than everyone else; or power levels a newb PC until it's 40th level, so it can punch up on all the other newbies (and even some established PCs) before it's even had any established RP; or grandstands their RP to the point of stomping on others RP in a room; or disrupts other people's RP with a thinly veiled IC justification, out of OOC motivation, or just to get bad attention; or just hunts people down that they know they can pound on and bullys and/or pkills them. It's the attitude that leads to refusing to accept the fact that every single player in FK shares the stage as heroes, anti-heroes, and villains (sometimes, even victims) in our big MUD world; and instead acting as if somehow the game owes them the right to be above everyone else.

Sure, a PC can have an IC attitude of their greatness, but it's when there is no distinction between the IC of the PC and the OOC of the player that it becomes a detriment to the fun of others besides themselves.

Mele · Post by **Mele** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 9:34 pm

Code: Select all

Twink
=====
Being a twink is NOT something to aspire to on Forgotten Kingdoms.  Twink
is a derogatory term for someone who power levels rather than roleplays, 
someone who dresses for what the equipment does rather than what they should
dress in for roleplay.  If someone is percieved to be a twink then it harms
their chances for special things in the games like hero of a guild and high
priest.  They will also be less likely to be invited on immortal run roleplays
and events.  Forgotten Kingdoms is meant to primarily be a roleplay mud, if you
are only here to level and gather equipment, then you have come to the wrong
mud.

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 10:50 pm

Kregor wrote:There is more to being a twink than just power levelling, or hoarding a bunch of magical gear, or bullrushing thru quests... these are only the outward signs of underlying twinkishness. In general, a twink is someone who has the attitude of "they is/are/must be > you". Someone who hogs Hartsvale, simply for the sake of being stronger than everyone else; or power levels a newb PC until it's 40th level, so it can punch up on all the other newbies (and even some established PCs) before it's even had any established RP; or grandstands their RP to the point of stomping on others RP in a room; or disrupts other people's RP with a thinly veiled IC justification, out of OOC motivation, or just to get bad attention; or just hunts people down that they know they can pound on and bullys and/or pkills them. It's the attitude that leads to refusing to accept the fact that every single player in FK shares the stage as heroes, anti-heroes, and villains (sometimes, even victims) in our big MUD world; and instead acting as if somehow the game owes them the right to be above everyone else.

That's quite close to my view on it. The three steps to being a twink.

Warning: I had nobody in particular in mind while writing the following. So... if you feel targetted or singled out, that's not my doing, I swear... But if the following sounds strangely familiar, perhaps it would be good to get a better perspective and see why you come to FK to do this.

STEP 1. I want elite skills, and good equipment. I do not bother to stop and talk with others more than necessary; I'd rather spend most of my time gaining glory, equipment, and skill increases. I focus on one thing mostly: getting more powerful in as short a time as possible. Of course, that leads me to do things that are quite unIC for my character, but heck, if they catch me, I'll play being offended that they would dare accuse me and I'll come up with some weak IC justification. Something like "My character wants to be able to protect others, and he needs to be tough and very good to do that, so he trains up a lot." or "Yes, my character completely despises those guys and would like to see them dead, but he's still helping them and doing their quest because you know, he's in there for the reward: that's what evil guys do."

STEP 2. While focusing on trying to reap up the best technical advantages in as short a time as possible, I find out nice tricks that allow me to do that even faster. Neat! Those slimes are not hurt by non-magical weapons and they can't hurt me... so I can just have my character fight them and go watch TV or get a drink while they continue fighting again and again and my weapon skill level shoots up with no effort! (that's no longer possible, by the way) Or... wow! that spell is great... if I spam-cast it, the mob is constantly stunned and I'm not even getting hit... and since it's an area of effect spell, I can just shove giants around, gather 10 of them in a room, and kill them fast! How l33t am I!

Now, I'm not only focusing on getting powerful fast, I'm also finding small tricks. I could report them as bugs... but, no... nearly nobody knows about them, and I'm pretty clever because I found them out, so I deserve to take advantage of them. I can either keep them to myself or... yes! I'm going to show off how clever I am and I'm going to tell those little tricks to my friends, and have them build elite characters as well. We'll rock... and we'll help each other out, no matter what character we are on. And if they catch us, we'll play offended or come up with IC reasons. Heh. It's always possible and easy to come up with IC reasons... and there's nothing they can do about it. Do I rule or what?

STEP 3. Yay! I not have one of the most powerful characters around. I have good skills, the best equipment around - I spent days trying to find the best combination (wow... how clever I am!) So it's time to go kick some ass, baby! I'll gather up with my mates and we'll make a list of targets we want to rob, or pkill, or make them pay because we don't like them, or they pissed one of use at some point with their roleplay, or they dared to find a way to escape us last time. My mates and I, we rock. We're like, you know, an alliance on WoW. Come to think of it, once I'm tried of having the best character around here, perhaps we should go there and have fun with graphics and pkilling noobs.

So now that we have our list of targets, we'll plan some weak IC reasons for us to hunt and make them pay. That's going to be tough for some of them, because well... we've spent most of our time with mates, and we have not met that many characters, but we'll sure find out excuses. Hah hah... those kids are going to suffer. Our elite characters will crush them to pulp, we'll own them big time! Man, do we rule or what?

Ceara · Post by **Ceara** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:18 am

Thank you for the definitions.

Kelemvor · Post by **Kelemvor** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:24 pm

Twinkle twinkle little twink
We all wonder how you think
Levels so high, charisma so low
mixed-up armour all aglow
Twinkle twinkle little twink
Don't you know how much you stink?

Scylere · Post by **Scylere** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 1:50 am

Scylere wrote:I think fast levelling could be reduced if stamina was dependent on Constitution.

For example, if your level ten character had hardened constitution, you could walk just as far as a level 50 character with hardened constitution.

I think this makes sense. Not being able to walk across town without having to rest, pushes people to level up more quickly.

Just a thought:D

No one commented on this. I was wondering if it were feasible or too much code hassle?

Moradin · Post by **Moradin** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 9:16 am

Stamina, or movement points, is/are dependent upon Constitution.

However, it would be difficult to justify the modifiers being spread so widely such that a level 10 with the constitution of an Ox is the equal of a sickly level 50. One consequence being that any sickly level 10 who didnt twink his CON score would be incapable of walking across the Square without fainting dead away

'I need to be a higher level because I cant walk very far' borders on being one of those made up IC reasons for notching up the levels.

Buy a mount, join a group, rest in the middle of a city street and set your pose to collapsed from exhaustion and prompt some roleplay. If we all stopped trying to flit along streets and highways at the fastest possible speed to get to our chosen destination there would ne a deal less pressure on folk to 'level up for stamina'.

Twinking comes down to just two things in my book...

me me me
now now now

...everything else follows from that.

Mele · Post by **Mele** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:48 pm

People using the word twink has always made me feel like people worry a little too much about what other people are doing and not what they're doing. Frankly, strictly in my own opinion, I think it's just as bad to sit as a low level in Market Square for ours on end and 'twink roleplay' you could call it. People will want you to go on big RP's, because you're that guy everyone knows, but you're still level 15. Your stamina is slow and you can't walk very far on the world map without resting. So your character in this land of adventurers does not adventure. Then of course there's the person who spends most of their time online working on trades. Alone in a room typing the same commands over and over. In the long run, this will make for excellent rp. But right now, it's no different than someone killing over and over.

To steal someone elses general idea : Everyone twinks something, really. Everyone finds their own aspect of the game that they pull to.

Do you call someone who only smotes an smote twink?
Do you call someone who only works on trades a trade twink?
Do you call someone who idles often an hours twink?

Just because Joe gets his level to 50 in few hours doesn't mean he uses those levels to zerg, act superior or any of the such.

I honestly think perhaps a bigger problem than how quickly we level is how often and quickly people notice we level. Frankly I'm a quick leveler because I haven't the patience for walking on that world map, five steps lagged to really slow, rest. AFK for five mins, come back, stamina not full, AFK again.. etc. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong. I am plenty active here and I have plenty of game time where I'm just plain bored and without roleplay.

I have a big pet peeve with the fact everybody always seems to know everything bad about everyones characters, but rarely, do they know everything good about even a single character.

Just to be clear here, if a player is leveling quickly to use levels to become KingPrinceTululu zerging lowbies/areas/quests all over the place so they p334!!!1one11! him they don't apply to my entire rant here. I'm talking about people who just level quickly here, who get the twink tag.

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:35 pm

Having to rest and sleep every 4 rooms sucks, I agree. I'd be all fine with modifying the evolution of move points.

That is, if currently, the evolution is:

10 move points per level (level 1: 10 mp, level 50: 500 mp),

I'd be all fine with turning it into

200 + 6 move points per level (level 1: 206 mp, level 50: 500 mp).

Edit. I just talked with Mask about this possible change, and he's fine wtih it. So, if the opinions are mostly positive, Todd, can you Bugzilla it please?

Zuldere · Post by **Zuldere** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 7:08 pm

After reading these post (and a slow day at work) I had a idea. Something like a bonus per hour of rp. Basicly it works for ever hour you are in a area rp with someone you get x-amount of bonus point.which in turn would benifit those who like to rp more than just maxing out there lv/skill/spells.
The bonus point could be use to lv up a skill/spell to the next lv. Or it could be required that so many bonus points be need for that next lv.
In this way 1-be lot hard to just max out your lv in a short time and 2 benifit those who do mostly rp over going out and maxing there skills/spells

Just a idea I had at a slow day at work

Kregor · Post by **Kregor** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 7:50 pm

Dalvyn wrote: Edit. I just talked with Mask about this possible change, and he's fine wtih it. So, if the opinions are mostly positive, Todd, can you Bugzilla it please?

Consider it Zilla'ed, Dalvyn. I'm up for giving lowbies an extra oomph on their travel time across a HUGE world map. IMO, the delay to stop and rest can only go so far. Once on a walk across the map is one thing, maybe twice, but having to rest every few rooms, especially when some of the places young rangers/thieves/wizards/etc travel is across the map back and forth to learn, can be very not fun.

Although, I might want to put up there the thought of tweaking the combat usage of stamina. This change above will also give the lowbies a better advantage in combat of retaining stamina, and a high level fighter pretty much never has to rest, I would like to see a little more useage of points during regular combat, so that the warrior classes have to rest a little more during a kill rush, like the casters do now.

Leohand · Post by **Leohand** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 3:00 pm

Another thing that causes quick level ups, and I'm guilty of it, is getting on early in the morning and having noone to roleplay with. I spent about 4 hours in waterdeep yesterday morning, a lot of the time in the square, before I saw another person.

I take that back, I saw one character on my way to waterdeep when I first logged on, but for the most part, no one. Now, no one can really fix this problem, I know, but what else is a person to do? It's really hard to sit in the square that long doing nothing. Normally I go train to pass the time, yesterday was a saturday, and just for the heck of it I decided to see if anyone turned up.

Oh, and when someone finally did enter the Square, a few people entered moments later. That was a bit odd after it being abandoned so long.

Ninde · Post by **Ninde** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 5:52 pm

Leohand wrote:Another thing that causes quick level ups, and I'm guilty of it, is getting on early in the morning and having noone to roleplay with. I spent about 4 hours in waterdeep yesterday morning, a lot of the time in the square, before I saw another person.

I take that back, I saw one character on my way to waterdeep when I first logged on, but for the most part, no one. Now, no one can really fix this problem, I know, but what else is a person to do? It's really hard to sit in the square that long doing nothing. Normally I go train to pass the time, yesterday was a saturday, and just for the heck of it I decided to see if anyone turned up.

Oh, and when someone finally did enter the Square, a few people entered moments later. That was a bit odd after it being abandoned so long.

People might choose to roleplay in different areas then Square in Waterdeep. Just a sidenote

Hrosskell · Post by **Hrosskell** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 7:14 pm

I was reading the couple posts after mine (it seems my math didn't impress people as much as I had hoped), and I noticed that Mele made a post about us -knowing- the bad things about other characters. That lead me to think on what the nature of this whole topic is - why are we commenting on anything other than our own characters? It seems to me that we all mystically know who the twinks are and what twinking is, but upon closer inspection, either we don't, or we're not saying it. And if no one is coming forth to say, "I'm a twink", then where is our twink problem? If our twink problem is small enough to point a finger at, then take the people aside and say to them, "This is the twink patrol. We've come to tell you that we suspect you of twinkism." I think if you look at people more closely, you'll see that a lot of them aren't as guilty as they're painted, and a lot of the "innocent" people aren't as pristine as they're seen. It can't be wrong to have a strong character, or you wouldn't be allowed to get strong. It can't be wrong to aspire to greatness, or you'd just be playing another drab game. This is a FANTASY roleplay game, and it's not MY FANTASY to get pounded on by whoever wants to, no matter the length of their playing (or mainly, lack there of) or their skill. So, I'll play for a long time. I'll make a rich storyline. I'll do whatever you want. But don't tell me not to have a strong character, because it's not a crime.

As a side note, I could be completely wrong about all of this. It took me a long time to make my strongest character good, and he's not even as good as some of the fighters out there. I'm proud of him, and all the time I invested in him, RP and otherwise.

Exer · Post by **Exer** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 8:50 pm

This thread makes it look like twinking is an epidemic on FK. If it is, then do what needs to be done to fix it (code, restrictions, etc..) If it's not, then perhaps it's best to get non imms involved and talk to the person directly.

Just a thought.