The Chains Begin...

Oof · Post by **Oof** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 11:01 pm

The chains will continue to exist and will continue to provide "free" XP to the chain members who choose to participate in the experience chains. The chain policy pages will be updated to reflect the changes in quota, XP passthrough, chain removals, etc. Here are the most important parts of the new chains. Please read carefully. Feel free to post your thoughts.

RULES:
1) FC 6 million added XP (25 million hunted), OH 12 million added XP (50 million hunted) FOR NOW (See below for reasons.)

2) The automatic chain XP passthrough has been updated on the stats page to show the new passthrough rate.

3) XP pass up (from a vassal's direct hunting efforts) is assumed to be 25%.

4) Quotas WILL be changed as we learn more about what is reasonable.

5) Every chain member, please remind/encourage the other chain members to read the forums frequently, as we will post any changes or updates there.

REASONS BEHIND THE RULES:
1) The OH quota was 12 million XP passed up per week, the FC was 6 million. For right now, that is what quota will continue to be; however, quota will almost assuredly change as we learn more about how the new system will work. The current 12 million/6 million quota means OH members will need to hunt for about 50 million raw XP per week and the FC members will need to hunt for about 25 million raw XP per week. Hunting for that amount of raw XP is what you should base your planned hunting times around.

2) According to the latest information we've seen from Turbine the game provides an automatic XP passthrough rate of 10% from the grandvassal upwards (it used to be a 93.75% passthrough rate). The stats pages should be working again now, and showing numbers based on the new 10% rate.

3) According to Turbine, the MINIMUM percentage of XP that will be passed from a vassal to a patron, even if neither character has loyalty or leadership trained is 25%. FYI, the XP pass up rate will range from 25% to a maximum of 90% of XP hunted.

4) For now, quota will remain what they were before the last patch; however, that will very likely be modified within the next few days to a week, and again periodically as we get better data about the XP pass up. The goal isn't to be constantly raising quota, rather, it is to figure out as quickly as we can what a reasonable quota will be and then settle down with that goal for the longer term.

We are still figuring out what is realistic under the new system. When we get to the point to where we know that quotas need to be adjusted, we will let everyone ahead of time on the boards. We won't make crazy changes overnight, remember, we are chain members too, and have to live with the quotas just like everyone else.

5) Doh! The reason is self-explanatory for this one.

Chances are that we will raise the quota on the chain segments and/or begin a new chain segment for those members who want more XP for their chain efforts. Your feedback and comments will help guide the final product(s).

Thanks

Daikichi · Post by **Daikichi** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 1:24 am

When you say 6 million added (for the FC), do you mean that we have to passup 6 million PLUS what we receive from our chain vassal? In other words, if my chain vassal produces 30 million for me, and only 10% passes through to my patron, I have to make up the remaining 27 million on top of the 6 million added?

Heatmiser · Post by **Heatmiser** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 3:17 pm

Basically, what he's saying is quota is unchanged.
6million passup a week for Food
12million for Order

A level 40 could do either one standing on his head blindfolded with the new passup rates.

It has nothing to do with what your vassal passes you.

Kazsam · Post by **Kazsam** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 4:46 pm

Umm ........ whats the emote to stand on ur head blindfolded ? sounds more fun than vod

Daikichi · Post by **Daikichi** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:01 pm

I thought that the quota before the patch was 100% passup, capped at 6 million per week. I assumed that to mean that we needed to passup 93.75% of whatever was passed up to us from our chain vassal and add either the remaining 6.25% or 6 million, whichever was less. In other words, if my chain vassal passed up 30 million to me, I would be responsible to passup 93.75% of that (roughly 28.2 million) PLUS the remaining 6.25% (roughly 1.8 million, which in this case, is less than the 6 million cap). Therefore, before the patch, I would have been required to passup 30 million to my chain patron.

I'm just asking for a clarification as to what "6 million added" means. It could be read to mean that we need to passup 6 million IN ADDITION to what we receive from our chain vassal. It could also be read to mean that we need to passup ONLY 6 million to our chain patron, regardless of what we receive from our chain vassal. Since grandpatrons only receive about 10% of vassal xp passup now, there's a big difference in requiring us to passup 30 million and requiring us to passup 6 million.

Heatmiser · Post by **Heatmiser** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:38 pm

Flat quota. 6million for Food. 12 for Order.

Oof · Post by **Oof** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 6:19 pm

Heatmiser said,

Basically, what he's saying is quota is unchanged.
6million passup a week for Food
12million for Order

Heatmiser is 100% correct however it is almost guaranteed the required quota will change, and probably very soon.

That being said, here is an explanation of what is meant:

Under the old quota system, the stats page calculated your quota based on an assumed 93.75% passthrough rate. Your quota was capped at 6 million added for the FC.

Example:
If your vassal passed 100 million XP to you one week, the stats page assumed you would automatically passthrough 93.75% of that, or 93.75 million, to your patron. Your quota for the week was 93.75 million + the 6 million added for a total "XP passed up" of 99.75 million.

Under the new quota system, the stats page will calculate your quota based on an assumed 10% passthrough rate. Your quota will be the 10% passthrough + 6 million added XP for the FC.

Example:
If your vassal passed 100 million XP to you one week, the stats page will assume you will automatically passsthrough 10% of that, or 10 million, to your patron. Your quota for the week will be 10 million + the 6 million added for a total "XP passed up" of 16 million.

Another way of explaining the quota is to simply say that if you add 6 million XP from your own hunting efforts to your patron each week that you will meet quota. The absolute worst case scenario is that you will have to hunt for ~ 25 million raw XP each week.

Oof · Post by **Oof** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 6:40 pm

In answer to another question I suspect may arise, why are we going to raise quota?

Turbine says the 25% passup rate is what you get when the vassal has a loyalty of 0 and the patron has a leadership of 0. All of our chain members have loyalty skills higher than 0. Practically all of our chain members now have leadership trained (otherwise XP received will be greatly reduced). Turbine has stated that passup can get as high as 90%. With a 90% passup rate, a quota of 6 million can be met by hunting for 6.67 million raw XP, or about 15 minutes in VoD.

Nearly all of our chain members will pass up a higher rate than 25%; we just don't know how high yet, nor what the "curve" looks like between 25% and 90%.

The intent for any experience chain is to give the chain member XP in addition to whatever (s)he would normally make. We currently have three chains, the CC with practically no quota, the FC with a relatively easy quota, and the OH which was supposed to have been a hard to meet quota.

I suspect what we will end up with is at least one additional chain. The CC will probably turn into a rank chain, with little or no quota requirement. The FC will remain a relatively easy chain in which to meet quota (the quota number is yet to be determined). The OH will be a medium/high difficulty chain. We will probably start a fourth chain that will provide it's members with a challenge if they want to meet quota in it.

None of the chains are intended to make any character feel superior or inferior to another, rather, the different chains will be provided to meet the needs and desires of our various clanmates. Some people have a lot more hunting time than others; some prefer to visit or craft or tinker rather than hunt for hardcore XP. We will do our best to set the quotas for the different chains to offer differing levels of effort/reward from which our clanmates can then choose, if they choose to participate in an experience chain at all.

Experience chains will still be around, they just won't make as much XP as they did before the allegiance changes. We intend to offer a chain/rank structure for our clanmates to use if they want to. Those offerings should meet players desires, from a no/low quota that provides rank all of the way to a chain that will require 10 to 15 or more hours of hard hunting each week.

Daikichi · Post by **Daikichi** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 8:08 pm

Thanks for the clarification.

One more question. Does that 10% passthru depend on anything? Or is it a minimum passthru (like the 25% from a vassal). The reason I ask is because I don't have leader trained and won't be able to for a while (unless I drop something).

Oof · Post by **Oof** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 8:25 pm

My understanding is that Turbine said the 10% passthrough is based on having 0 leadership and 0 loyalty. Nearly everything is still theory at this point, or at least is unproven hypotheses.

For what it's worth, I gave up weapon tinkering on Borg and gave up war magic

on Oof in order to pick up leadership. I figure if I don't like the results I can always drop leadership and retrain those lost skills...

Phade · Post by **Phade** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 12:37 pm

Eep!
Guess things are back in full swing then heh, time to play catchup

TUSAMI · Post by **TUSAMI** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:18 pm

It never stopped phade lol.

Trekman · Post by **Trekman** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:40 pm

Oof wrote:Practically all of our chain members now have leadership trained (otherwise XP received will be greatly reduced).

I did not check ACStats of "practically all our chain members" lately - but I know for sure that *I* do NOT have Leadership trained.

The old chain policy said "Leadership trained or 11 direct vassals in addition to chain-vassal".

As far as I know this policy is still valid (i.e. not yet replaced).
I already broke this prerequisite by kicking out all server-trade mules that never had been logged in - as a reaction to the new Leadership bonus formula.

But I still do NOT have Leadership trained. If trained Leadership is going to be added as a prerequisite to the new chain policy you can as well post my removal orders the same day....

Another point to be aware of : Turbine says that the 90% passup from your vassal is only possible IF you have SPEC'ED+maxed+buffed Leadership AND your vassal has spec'ed+maxed+buffed Loyalty, being sworn to you for a sufficient online+RL time (for the best Loyalty Bonus).
And now be honest and tell me how many chances you see that this will EVER happen....
Even so called "highest output chains" will never reach this (IMHO spec'ing Leadership cannot be done in any viable template but Tinker/Trade/Portal-Mules, and those won't hunt for quota).

I do not know whether it will work to gain some bonus by buffing untrained Leadership - although its value is ~40 it might be necessary to have it at least trained.
For the time being I still will buff Leadership until we have real numbers, but I have no intentions to sacrifice a skill to re-train Leadership.

Heatmiser · Post by **Heatmiser** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 7:24 pm

The last time I tested my passup (about a week ago) I was passing 68% of my xp to my patron.

Just a bit of info on how much Im passing up.
I'd be interested in seeing the passup rates of others, just to get an estimate on what we can expect.

For me, at 68% passup, quota is a joke.
It can be made in less than one buff cycle. So much for high output.

If people's numbers are more in line with this, quota is going to need a huge adjustment. I suspect much of us are passing up similar numbers if you have had the same patron since the patch because everyone in the OH is pretty high lvl and has pumped loyalty many times Im sure.

TUSAMI · Post by **TUSAMI** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:06 pm

Well that hurts me since I lost my patron after the patch due to RL issues.But however I did drop Mit to p/u leadership as the new patch came in, I'm not sure if will help or not. For the time being I am planing to stay in the chain, as I would like to see what develops.