Is this the end? Are chains going to be nerfed?

Post by **Panzerfaust** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 3:04 pm

Long term, chain members will see more XP with a strict quota.

Fiction · Post by **Fiction** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 3:49 am

Accounting and Calculus have fried my brain for the day... can anyone speak in really really easy english so I can comprehend

Thx

Phade · Post by **Phade** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:03 pm

You will get xp still

that easy enough?

Retread · Post by **Retread** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 5:13 pm

Long term, chain members will see more XP with a strict quota.

I disagree, here is why:

So if I see 50 mill/day now, that is 350 mill/week. Let's ignore grandkids passup. That means I would need 7 direct tree vassals to equal what I get today if each vassal makes 50 mill/week in passup. To see more xp as the above statement says, just include the grandkids xp.

OH shows 38 folks on the stats page. Each cell would then be comprised of 8 people. A taker and 7 givers. That means less there would be less than 5 takers in the tree because (8 X 5 = 40) >38

You can arrange the tree in any fashion but you could only ensure 4 people in the tree received the 50 mill/day they get today.

I'd like to see how anyone could arrange anything better. My arguement rest on a fixed quota and the fact that only the direct passup matters. So any other details to be provided by Turbine don't matter. Additional info only affects how hard it will be for a person to make quota.

Therefore, it is possible for to make an arrangement where a small number of folks see as much or more than today( around 10% of the participants in my example), but 90% of them will see a whole lot less than today.

Q.E.D.

Gruhen Do

Town Crier · Post by **Town Crier** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 5:28 pm

Since you didnt have any specific pass up per person numbers it is a little hard to follow your argument.

Here is how I understand it will work:

You have 1 chain vassal making 50mil XP per week. Assuming you have the required Loyalty/Leadership levels (this is still unknown), you would receive the following 25%-90%:
25% = 12.5mil
50% = 25 mil
90% = 45 mil

If your vassal is required to produce 100mil per week (or you have 2 @ 50 mil per week) your numbers would jump up to:

25% = 25 mil
50% = 50 mil
90% = 90 mil

Chains should still work, we just dont know how the Loyalty/Leadership will factor in (as to cost to train, cost to raise, lenght of time as a vassal, etc) to move up to the higher percent of pass up.

Retread · Post by **Retread** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 8:34 pm

Yes I did, I assumed 50 mill/week from vassal as was stated in earlier post. My assumption ignored the fact that you won't really get 50 mill from the vassal. Your numbers just show that the taker will in fact make less than my idea assumption.

To say chains will still work is factual. But to imply that a chain in todays sense would generate the kind a xp anyone would be happy with is another thing. Multi-leaf trees will be the only possible structure going forward. A chain is just a dengenerate tree with 1 leaf per node. Since the trickle of xp below the direct vassal is so small, it can be ignored in calculations as it will be 10% of the grandkids production only in the best case scenario. Since it will not be possible to have truely static tree, you will not be getting that 10% and hence the error is small and can the contribution can be ignored.

What's even worse is that due to the longetivity necessary for any patron/vassal passup, either trees will be semi-static or managers must throw out the idea of meaningful P/V bonuses. But then, who gets one of the few high xp producing members as a vassal? How do you do that in a fair way. If the chain is static, you will likely never get such a person under you if you don't start with them.

Right now with the new chain that is forming. Someone asked the good question about how placement will be determined for the new chain. This is very important as it will determine your fate in the post change tree as the managers have stated that they are started the new chain now to allow for P/V bonus accruement. That means, where you are placed and with whom you are attached will make all the difference in the post change tree structure.

If you throw out the idea of a semi-static tree then reduce that maximal xp calculation a whole lot more. If the idea is for a semi-static tree, then it will be interesting to see how that works when folks find that they dont have high producing vassals and start deciding to drop out of the tree. There goes all those P/V bonuses.

I bring all this up because while the chain managers say they have discussed the issues, I think it should be discussed openly by all interested folks. One of the managers should also writeup a summary of the discussions and present a complete essay on the current thoughts. The trickle of information about future plans has been less than satisfactory to me. And I see no reason for a closed forum on this. The best ideals may reside with someone who is not a chain manager and it might benefit us all.

Hopefully, my interest in this does not offend anyone. It certainly is not intended to but I've never been one to follow the crowd blindly. If someone really has a reasonable plan, lets see it. Right now, I'm convinced that Turbine has done a good job of thinking this through and the xp chains are dead and so is any reasonable large scale cousin.

If there is a structure that differs from a few benefiting largely while the many benefit just a little, I'd like to see it and discuss it. If the only significant benefit is my direct vassal, then that is not an xp chain, that's just a normal P/V relationship and I don't need a chain manager to assign me a vassal, I can find one myself and I will hunt with them and teach them and they will earn much more than 50 mill/week and because they are someone I chose and like, they will get much more from me in non-xp related stuff. In other words, it will be like guilds and P/V relationships were designed to be.

Another reason I bring this up is because of what I don't hear. What I do hear is guild management talking about maintaining xp chains in some form or fashion. What I don't hear is discussion about adapting to the new mantra and recognizing this as an opportunity to build a true guild predicated on good P/V relationships. Every guild will now(or later) have to face the fact that some are only there for the xp.

I would have like to see this guild stand up and say, "Well chains were good, but that aspect of the game has evolvled and we are now going to work on providing a more solid guild via good old fashioned P/V relationships."

The days when guilds fell apart due to lack of a chain will be gone. Instead, guilds will thrive due to good people being good patrons, the number of available quest that are run on a regular basis and generally the number of services(website, tinker chars, loaner equipment and armor for newbies(something I want to suggest), corpse recovery, etc.) provided.

We should adapt and be on the forefront of the "new" guild. People like me will still attempt to maximize xp gain. But I think the need for guild management of such an activity is past it's time or soon will be. The new chain is just a refusal to accept this. The fact that it is being done with no clear workable strategy being made public is sad. We should keep the chain we have going strong until the last moment. If some other opportunity becomes available later, there is no reason it can't be done later. The P/V bonus arguement presented is weak in my opinion. It really is not seen much in current structures, with a new structure coming and people wanting in and out, there will be no significant gain by trying to establish it now.

Just my long opinion.

Gruhen Do

Oof · Post by **Oof** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 1:40 am

I'll probably give a long answer later.

It's my dinner break right now and I don't have time to properly digest your post (no pun intended).

I will try to work up an adequate response to your post within the next day or so, but will respond briefly to part of it now.

Multi-leaf chains probably won't be viable, assuming the time to build a strong loyalty bonus is measured in weeks or months. A multi-leaf chain with a slow rotation period will basically be a pyramid scheme: the ones who get in early benefit greatly, but eventually you run out of new leafs to add. If there is a short-term rotation you might be able to get people to stick around long enough to rotate up.

If we try to do a relatively static chain, which is what we will in effect have without a restructure, the only way to maintain it effectively, and the only way to "get" a good vassal moved to you, is to maintain very strict quota requirements. If you don't make quota, you are removed quickly. Then, either you vassal provides you with XP or else they are moved out of the way to make room for a higher producing vassal.

I will provide a write-up, and have already posted parts of it elsewhere in the FC forum, but I won't provide a write-up of all of the things we talked about because a lot of what was discussed was basically brainstorming sessions and never intended to be scrutinized after we realized one idea or another was poo.

Regarding the best ideas may lie with non-managers, I absolutely agree with you. It would be awfully conceited to think that a handful of managers can outthink the hundreds of clan members. That's also why the discussion thread was started in the FC forum about the new chain.

You are also right in stating that having good, real, vassals will provide as much or more benefit than a chain. As I stated elsewhere, most people are too lazy to get and build good vassals; the chain simply provides them with an XP producing vassal without them having to do that themselves.

You are wrong about the loyalty bonus not being seen much in the current structures. The OH sees very little movement and long-term P/V relationship and even most of the FC is pretty static. The thing about it is the bonus is hard to measure so people forget about it being there.

I'm out of time on my dinner break. This went longer than I thought I would have time. Maybe I'll post more later, especially if you list the areas I missed and/or holes in what I said.

Retread · Post by **Retread** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 3:53 am

Thank you Oof. I always appreciate you taking time to answer my questions both on the board and in-game. Your responses are well thought out. I look forward to hearing anything else you may add.

I am glad you see that the multi-leaf trees are not a good solution although they are the structure necessary for maimal xp production if that is the sole goal of the structure(Note: I assumed that this was the structure planned by the managers from a post on another thread that talked about restructuring the new chain later after you know more about the changes.).

I purposefully left out the term pyramid as I felt it would be a trigger word that would not be conducive to a good discussion. But the many/few reference was my not so subtle way of pointing that out.

I'll also accept that I may be dead wrong on the churn in current chains. It was just my feeling that there is a lot of churn and that people generally don't max out the P/V bonus. You would know this better than I. Most of my time was on the bottom of the food chain and there was, of course, a reasonble amount of movement there.

I guess one major problem I have is that I want someone like me under me in the chain, if I were going to it. For me, 50 million a week quota is not even a challenge. With guest at my house this week, my output has dropped a lot but still, that quota is no challenge(so glad the server move was this week!!). I was excited about the high output chain initially because I felt it would only have folks who like to produce a lot of xp above any quota and I would get as much as I give(btw, I'm doing fine in OH right now with what I get.). Turbine put a damper on my excitement. I accept that and plan to adapt. The new chain after the changes will have major "hot spots" where a few have a really high producing vassal. In the past, a great deal of that was felt several members up in the chain via the passup. No longer. Hence the importance of the question of how will you determine who gets what vassal. Also, I don't think I read anywhere whether the new chain is lvl 126+ only.

Anyway, I'm pretty much done. Anything you, or anyone else, has to add is great.

Gruhen Do.

acaddict · Post by **acaddict** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 5:07 am

My intake of this is that the only way a pyramid sceme can work (to start with) is to just start with 2 chain vassals and hope you have another good vassal you can hunt with consistantly.

200 million xp/week pass-up for the high end chain and we would see similar xp as what we see now.

The reason I suggest 2 vassals in the chain is for just the simplicity of it to start out. There would be way too many posts for moves in a 4 pyramid sceme and this is far too complex for a chain unless we have a manager for each segment of the pyramid!

Oof · Post by **Oof** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:22 am

Even with a 2 chain vassal scheme, the numbers required to fill it get unmanagable very, very quickly. With a chain that is only 10 characters tall (I know there is no need to stack us that tall anymore) it takes 1,023 characters to give everyone 2 vassals each. Using 1,023 characters also gives us no one at all sworn below each of the bottom people.

With all 82 of the characters who curently show in the OH and FC pages, that makes for a chain that is stacked up 5 characters deep, with a few people left over.

The chain will to be open to anyone 50+. If a 50+ character can handle the quota they will be allowed in.

We have to have a viable promotion policy, even for the 126+s. It probably will need to be XP (hunted) based in nature. The exact nature of it, no one can know until after the changes are understood.

The 50 million quota passed up was simply a starting place and nothing more. It was considerably more demanding than the 12 million the OH has. One of the stipulations of the new chain (see that application thread for more of the rules) is that quota can and will be changed periodically as the managers see fit. Any changes would be based on current production numbers but we need to see how drastically the changes affect things.

If anyone has any questions, concerns, or whatever please feel free to post them here or in the discussion thread that was started. I'll keep tossing out answers until everything is addressed that can be addressed at this point in the development of things.