Tehom Retainer Revision Clarifications

2018-11-25 05:40:49-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: I've read the retainer changes three times but I'm still not sure it's making sense to me.
2018-11-25 05:42:14-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: tldr is I nuked spare investigation assistant retainers
2018-11-25 05:42:44-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: If you had one, it's unchanged. If you had more than one, their investigation skill and investigation assistant ability are gone
2018-11-25 05:43:00-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: Okay so they're just... useless now?
2018-11-25 05:43:10-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte feels bad but only had 3, so uses the 'wasn't me' card xD
2018-11-25 05:43:39-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: You can still train them but it's more costly and you can't really stack them all on the same invest.
2018-11-25 05:43:58-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: You could retrain them if you choose. Until you do so, yes, they're useless.
2018-11-25 05:44:34-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: wouldn't that defeat the point of resetting them in the first place though? I mean, it took me a lot of time and effort to make the 2 I had, both in xp and in writs, and now one of them's just... gone.
2018-11-25 05:44:52-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Well, the resources were refunded.
2018-11-25 05:45:17-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: I had no way of determining whether the xp came from training, or from xp transfers, and the vast, vast majority would be the former, so I couldn't really return xp
2018-11-25 05:45:54-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: The XP spend isn't logged somewhere?
2018-11-25 05:46:48-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: If it had been, obviously I would have used it to do a refund
2018-11-25 05:48:00-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt if they tell me they transferred xp to a retainer and how much and just give them the xp. I just didn't want to do this for all 350 retainers
2018-11-25 05:48:31-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: I don't understand a lot of the terms used in the change. Is there a helpfile for investigation assistants?
2018-11-25 05:48:40-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: yeh, I've definitely done some training with it too, but like... I have a lvl 2 retainer now whose training difficulty is 19 but has no skills at all for being level 2, so it's a little frustrating that I'd spent months due to low teaching et. all training it up to have it disappear and still have the higher training difficulty and have to start all over again at the same time.
2018-11-25 05:49:31-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Hm, I don't think so, Andry
2018-11-25 05:50:21-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: especially with the cap now being what you transfer over to them because as it is I barely make 10xp a week most weeks and it's taking forever just to save up for the skills I want on my char, let alone the now useless retainer
2018-11-25 05:50:22-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: I didn't even know you could use yourself -and- a retainer on one investigation. xD
2018-11-25 05:50:53-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: I understand it is frustrating, Felicia. But the situation was not sustainable in terms of GM time being spent writing clues. I want to emphasize, again, that whatever retainer you had with the highest investigation/investigation_assistant total was unchanged
2018-11-25 05:51:11-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: Andry: basically the retainer needs investigation_assistant and then also investigation skill. The level of the skill is capped by the overall level of the retainer. It costs xp + social res to raise levels and akills.
2018-11-25 05:52:32-0500 [-] [Info] Giulio: Will it be possible to request the removal of existing retainers and refunds for all net expenses on those retainers?
2018-11-25 05:53:00-0500 [-] [Info] Leola: If staff can see how much expenses are on retainers, I want to give them nightmares sometime
2018-11-25 05:53:12-0500 [-] [Info] Bliss: I think a big question is - aside from investigations, what are some good uses for retainers as the system currently stands?
2018-11-25 05:53:26-0500 [-] [Info] Leola: Messengers, guards
2018-11-25 05:53:43-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Maybe one or two. Fixing retainers by hand is time-consuming. I don't understand why you would transferowner just for training
2018-11-25 05:53:54-0500 [-] [Info] Leola: I get a lot of milage from using animal retainers as scouts and such in big scenes
2018-11-25 05:54:03-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: Well, you'd use a Champion for a guard rather than an Assistant.
2018-11-25 05:54:24-0500 [-] [Info] Leola: Maybe you'll be able to tag retainers into @actions as well
2018-11-25 05:54:41-0500 [-] [Info] Leola: Not as additional actions, but to support yourself
2018-11-25 05:55:02-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: I get that Tehom, but well, the people that you're targetting are still going to have the resources et. all to rebuild them, and may have their sheet to a point where diverting xp to the retainer isn't a big deal. Albeit it will take them a while to get back to that point. But like, for me the extra retainer is now just pointless because for the foreseeable future I'm not going to be willing/able to divert xp to rebuild them.
2018-11-25 05:55:18-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes completely understands why this was done. And I have no dog in this fight, only having one spy retainer. But what are multiple Assistants good for if they can't be put on investigations?
2018-11-25 05:55:24-0500 [-] [Info] Giulio: Oh, I more meant, as in, I have 3 assistants and a spy.
2018-11-25 05:55:47-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: +plots probably gives them room to be useful, too.
2018-11-25 05:56:13-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: Can Assistants be used in Shardhavens?
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2018-11-25 05:56:32-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: I have my spy retainer for my investigations and the other two were there to help other people. So I don't think that use changes, Mercedes. It's just more costly to build them up.
2018-11-25 05:56:36-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: What is the difference between an assistant and a spy?
2018-11-25 05:56:40-0500 [-] [Info] Bliss: I absolutely understand people were gaming the system and agree with the need for the change, just trying to figure out what people can do with the sunk costs.
2018-11-25 05:56:55-0500 [-] [Info] Bliss: Use in actions is a good one, thank you, Leola
2018-11-25 05:58:59-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: Andry: different base stats and training costs. Plus a spy can have discreet_messenger ability.
2018-11-25 05:59:37-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: Was the problem that people had a lot of retainers so they were investigating a lot of different things at once? Or that they were dogpiling a bunch of assistants on one investigation? Or both?
2018-11-25 06:00:00-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: Assistants can have discreet_messenger as well.
2018-11-25 06:00:22-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: I think both. One could conceivably push through a diff:50 invest in a couple weeks with no other players on if they have a ton of 4/4 retainers
2018-11-25 06:01:00-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: both. The problem was assistants making investigations finish far faster than they should. It just wasn't sustainable from a standpoint of GM work. Continuing to increase the time required for investigations globally was something I did once before, but I didn't want to continue to punish normal usage for abuse cases
2018-11-25 06:01:02-0500 [-] [Info] Leola: If they have 21 investigations, they can probably push through 1/week
2018-11-25 06:02:03-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: That's also why I added a random roll that would act as a floor to investigations, because it was taking too long for people to finish who were on the low end
2018-11-25 06:03:01-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes could see limiting that. Like, you can only do an investigation yourself or put one assistant on someone else's investigation. I just think that if a PC can only have investigation_assistant on one retainer, then some other function needs to be added to make those superfluous retainers useful (forgive me if I don't realize if there are other ways to use assistants other than messengers)
2018-11-25 06:03:29-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: So you're now limited to one investigation assistant per PC, they now require XP investment and they're also worse at investigation then before?
2018-11-25 06:03:48-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: They always required XP investment.
2018-11-25 06:04:03-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: You have to train them up.
2018-11-25 06:04:36-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: You're not limited to one, I just didn't change the first/highest one each owner had. But it is accurate to state they require XP investment and they're also worse at investigation than before, yes.
2018-11-25 06:05:43-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes is confused. If they don't have the investigation_assistant ability, how can they investigate? Or is the one investigator a pool of all those resources at an increasingly deprecated value?
2018-11-25 06:05:56-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes laughs. It is late and I should be in bed so brain not working well.
2018-11-25 06:06:42-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: Won't you run into this issue again if people use retainers as a way to get around the xp tax by pouring all their XP into retainers?
2018-11-25 06:06:55-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: Oooh, you are saying that the one investigation assistant is not so good. Gotcha.
2018-11-25 06:07:21-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: I don't see that as an issue. I would prefer people use xp on external sources that can be lost rather than accumulate it on their characters exclusively.
2018-11-25 06:08:14-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes still isn't sure what people are going to do with extra assistant retainers though. You really only need one custom messenger and you can put that on your one assistant already.
2018-11-25 06:08:32-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Take em into Shardhavens and tell them to be very brave
2018-11-25 06:08:57-0500 [-] [Info] Audric: someone's gotta check that weird wall that looks like it's covered in holes
2018-11-25 06:09:10-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: Would limiting the # of assistant/spy retainers one could have, and capping how many can be on any particular invest, not have accomplished the same thing?
2018-11-25 06:09:52-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Not necessarily. They could have sold off the excess retainers to 20 other people
2018-11-25 06:10:22-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: The problem was an aggregate one of investigations finishing too quickly. Not one dude getting too many clues
2018-11-25 06:11:20-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: I meant a nuking of the superfluous retainers over x amount owned by any one player, but I getcha.
2018-11-25 06:11:39-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: That's essentially what I did
2018-11-25 06:11:45-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: where x is 1
2018-11-25 06:11:50-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: He just left the bits.
2018-11-25 06:12:15-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: If other retainers can be trained with the ability though, what's to stop the problem from reoccurring? And is it possible to switch the retainer type or something, then? I'm just... not sure what to do with a lvl 2 retainer with no skills and no purpose at this point. And it's late here and I can't brain properly either.
2018-11-25 06:12:21-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: since they can still be used for things, like PrPs and probably as support in actions and whatnot.
2018-11-25 06:12:35-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: Gotcha! Next question: how much primum do these extra retainers have and can I use them for blood magic sacrifices?
2018-11-25 06:12:41-0500 [-] [Info] Audric: The thing is, Felicia, retainers will eventually be able to, say, be viciously murdered
2018-11-25 06:12:46-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: If people don't want the bits, can they nuke them in for the initial resource buy back? Since to make a retainer at all costs 100 writs? (Is that code that already exists?)
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2018-11-25 06:13:01-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Pax is working on the magic system now so that question might come up, Duarte
2018-11-25 06:13:15-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: I don't know a lot about investigations but it sounds to me you want to add some diminishing returns to the high end of investigations. Too many cooks, 9 mothers can't make a baby faster etc.
2018-11-25 06:13:16-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte rubs hands together "excellent"
2018-11-25 06:13:29-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: Duarte, don't sacrifice your retainers.
2018-11-25 06:13:30-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: There isn't code for destroying/refunding retainers, no
2018-11-25 06:13:37-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: Bad mojo.
2018-11-25 06:13:51-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: I will sacrifice Eduardo and Sophia and not lose a wink of sleep.
2018-11-25 06:14:18-0500 [-] [Info] Giulio: It 100% can reoccur, Felicia, but, with the needing to spend 50% in /personal/ XP to raise those retainers, it will become a lot more expensive.
2018-11-25 06:14:55-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: How can it reoccur if only one asst retainer per person can have investigation_assisant ability?
2018-11-25 06:15:14-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: Mercedes: that's not the deal. That's just the rest
2018-11-25 06:15:18-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: *reset
2018-11-25 06:15:53-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: "The investigation assistant ability now acts as a cap to the rolls of npc assistants" What does that mean?
2018-11-25 06:15:53-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: People were extremely, extremely reluctant to spend personal xp on retainers. I'm largely relying on that in the interim until more sustainability steps are introduced
2018-11-25 06:16:04-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: plus investigate_assistant is 150 xp. That's a lot of xp to sink into Mr Phillus the helpful retainer.
2018-11-25 06:16:08-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes ooooohs
2018-11-25 06:16:23-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: I was reading that post completely differently.
2018-11-25 06:16:26-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: That's just 50xp because of the 3:1 ratio isn't it?
2018-11-25 06:16:51-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: 25 if you're training to do xp-matching
2018-11-25 06:16:58-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: And yet.
2018-11-25 06:16:59-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia isn't the sort to murder my retainers Audric, and given that they were purchased for the intention of being assistant I'm trying to work out what to do with it now. Cos yeh, right now I just want to nuke at least one of them cos I'm not seeing a point to having 'em. Which, again, totally fair enough for staff sanity, but I've already got 2 animal retainers that are pretty much there just for 'looks' so I really don't need to add a human one to that stable XD
2018-11-25 06:17:04-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes thought a PC could only have one investigation_assistant, not that it was just wiped and one had to start over if they so cared.
2018-11-25 06:17:16-0500 [-] [Info] Audric: I did not mean murder them yourself
2018-11-25 06:17:45-0500 [-] [Info] Audric: so you could say, invest everything in one dude and then he gets shivved taking a pee out behind a bar and now you're out all that, or you can spread it around in case of shivving!
2018-11-25 06:17:57-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: I can turn them into animals if you want. I'm just saying.
2018-11-25 06:18:07-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: Can my retainers join the Valorous Few?
2018-11-25 06:18:27-0500 [-] [Info] Audric: i think at that point they would become my retainers
2018-11-25 06:19:16-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: Will you turn them in to animals, tho?
2018-11-25 06:19:48-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia really doesn't want more animal retainers, either. And yeh, but well, honestly, I'm not going to invest any xp in my retainers for the foreseeable future, like I said, I've got a lot of stuff I'm working on and don't generally make a lot of xp on average already. So it's just... an empty lvl 2 shell that's no longer got a purpose for me.
2018-11-25 06:20:26-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: You can always retainer/delete
2018-11-25 06:20:42-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: Or, you could put it up on a shelf, and wait a little bit.
2018-11-25 06:20:46-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: Speaking of retainers, a little side track: are spies going to get sneaky abilities at some point? Or is their benefit just that you can max their social stat column?
2018-11-25 06:21:05-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: I'm certain that other uses for them will be developed, as the dust settles from this change.
2018-11-25 06:21:36-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: To give you an idea why I made this change: there are currently 52 active investigations. Of those, probably like 40 or so have rolls of around 0 to 80. The rest have rolls of around 300-600. After wiping investigation retainers, I re-rolled, and the high end ones dropped by a median of around 300
2018-11-25 06:21:51-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: Geez
2018-11-25 06:22:17-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: No change is gonna be perfect right out the gate, especially not in a game this size.
2018-11-25 06:22:45-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Having people who make staff write 10 clues a week is -not- sustainable. My most recent project, the plots system, was about reorganizing how lore is stored in the game. There's roughly 1500 clues right now that are marked as 'placeholders' that need staff to write
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2018-11-25 06:22:57-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: What would it have looked like, out of curiosity, if you hadn't touched the retainer issue and instead had removed the ability to lower difficulty with writs? Do the retainers still make more of an impact?
2018-11-25 06:23:36-0500 [-] [Info] Giulio: It's pretty ridiculous, tbqh. I have a level 5 spy, and two level 4 assistants, as well as one level 1 assistant. And also, Mercedes, removing the ability to lower difficulty with writs hoses PCs.
2018-11-25 06:23:54-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Yeah, by far. The difference in difficulty is pretty modest for resource investment. Retainers, by contrast, were free and permanent, and far more pronounced at the high end
2018-11-25 06:24:19-0500 [-] [Info] Giulio: err, when I say ridiculous, I mean that having that and some help let me pop a diff 50 clue in a week.
2018-11-25 06:24:51-0500 [-] [Info] Duarte: ^
2018-11-25 06:24:54-0500 [-] [Info] Giulio: Whereas reducing difficulty lets everyone involved (PCs, etc) from shining.
2018-11-25 06:25:00-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: Atleast you helped stress test Tehoms code
2018-11-25 06:25:25-0500 [-] [Info] Giulio: Oh god, I can't imagine I'm anywhere /near/ the top offender there.
2018-11-25 06:25:43-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: I know who the top offenders were, but I don't want to name names :p
2018-11-25 06:26:08-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: I'm not faulting the reasoning, Tehom, in fact I could see limiting people to 1, period, to avoid it happening again in future. But it doesn't change that I now have an empty shell that tired brain would prefer to just have refunded because while it does make sense from a sustainability standpoint it doesn't make sense for me to keep the retainer that I can see.
2018-11-25 06:26:20-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: is like a dumpster fire right now, which is too entertaining to just roll over and sleep. >.>
2018-11-25 06:26:33-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: I assume a few people had been using all their training slots on retainers for a longish amount of time.
2018-11-25 06:26:40-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: One thing we'll probably do next in the short term is tie investigations explicitly to the search tags that clues have, and make investigations that require a clue to be written have a confirmation that'll make it cost way more AP and take longer. Not exactly an IC thing but yeah
2018-11-25 06:27:25-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Essentially we wanna funnel people to researching clues that already exist if possible, and otherwise bottleneck it some to make things sustainable
2018-11-25 06:27:47-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: But I had to address the investigation assistant problem worse, or it would have just been a speedbump to the people at the high end
2018-11-25 06:27:53-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: well, sort-of an IC thing... if no-one else has found it beforehand, must be pretty obscure maybe?
2018-11-25 06:28:07-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: *first. And yeah, I guess I could explain it that way, Felicia
2018-11-25 06:28:12-0500 [-] [Info] Preston: Sadly half the things I went for during the break didn't have clues.
2018-11-25 06:28:16-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: That reasoning makes sense to me
2018-11-25 06:28:20-0500 [-] [Info] Preston: But, poor inquisition chars.
2018-11-25 06:28:46-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia doesn't mind that change, personally. I just... useless retainer :(
2018-11-25 06:29:00-0500 [-] [Info] Preston has two retainers, but one is a bird.
2018-11-25 06:29:06-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: A -lot- of clues aren't hooked up properly to search tags. I have about 1300 I need to go through
2018-11-25 06:29:20-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: That's a lot of clues!
2018-11-25 06:29:25-0500 [-] [Info] Bliss: And then plots are going to be linked to those, somehow, right? For findcontact?
2018-11-25 06:29:31-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: might plots help with that as people (hopefully) associate them with plots?
2018-11-25 06:30:04-0500 [-] [Info] Preston: I think the Faith has a pretty big appetite for theme, so we probably do chomp it up as fast as Apostate can write it.
2018-11-25 06:30:13-0500 [-] [Info] Preston: That is, related to our stuff
2018-11-25 06:30:58-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: /findcontact is for clues that are secrets which are marked as hooks, Bliss. One thing I want to do is introduce some mechanism for two players to collaborate to set that. Like if you're helping someone create a character, or create a backstory for them, or whatever
2018-11-25 06:31:04-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: Would it be at all possible to make clues have context? And possibly tell you when your character got the clue? Since as someone who took a character off the roster, I have a lot of clues I don't know when, where or why my character got them.
2018-11-25 06:31:22-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: Yes, you can set that already with the clue command
2018-11-25 06:31:31-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: clues/addnote
2018-11-25 06:31:31-0500 [-] [Info] Mercedes: What is a reasonable length of time for a higher end difficulty investigation to complete? I've only done a handful of investigations, most of the unadjusted difficulties have been around the 50 mark. I think I had one turn over in a week because I had a lot of people jump on and help me but the rest, with 3-5 people helping, would take anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks.
2018-11-25 06:32:18-0500 [-] [Info] Tehom: If it's for a new clue, I'd say about 2-3 months would be fair. For an existing one a few weeks
2018-11-25 06:32:48-0500 [-] [Info] Andry: The backlog must be horrific for 2-3 months to be the baseline.
2018-11-25 06:32:59-0500 [-] [Info] Bliss: Odd unintentional side-benefit to this, I think, is that people who were blowing all their AP on helpinvestigate now have it to share clues.
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2018-11-25 06:33:09-0500 [-] [Info] Felicia: for new clues, Andry, the existing database is p. huge
2018-11-25 06:33:45-0500 [-] [Info] Bliss: Or maybe that was intentional actually
2018-11-25 06:34:25-0500 [-] [Info] Auda: It isn't just about backlog, either. That could probably be cleared faster if, say, less active STing was done. There has to be a balance.
2018-11-25 06:35:41-0500 [-] [Info] Giulio: And also, clues come from actions as well. So, there's a lot of sources for these things.