Option to opt-out of rested XP

[Meopala]

Hello

I would like to make a suggestion to add a feature that allows players to opt-out of receiving rested XP. My idea for how it'd work would be along the lines of how players can use chat commands to change their XP rate. For example, perhaps players would be able to type ".settings disable rested" to prevent any further rested XP from accumuliating while in a city, inn, or while offline. And of course a command to enable rested XP again, for example ".settings enable rested".

If approved, personally I would super love it if this feature was also usable by Ironman characters.

What follows will be some of my thoughts for why having this feature in the game might make the game more enjoyable for some players. Feel free to stop reading here if you're not interested. Thank you.



"Why would anyone want to disable rested XP?"
Because it adds "pressure". Let me explain. Picture this. You're playing on your first character on TrueWoW. This being your first character on the server, you feel a desire to reexperience the game as close to the old, "authentic" retail experience as possible. For this reason, you're choosing to play on x1 XP rate even though you've seen there are ways to increase it.

And now you just hit level 79. Just one level to 80. You've been playing for a good few hours today already, and yesterday you played a lot as well. But you're feeling good, you're having fun. You're in the mood to get all the way to 80 today. You start killing some mobs for a quest when suddenly, "you feel normal" pops up in the chat. "Oh", you think. "I'm out of rested XP. That's unexpected."

As I'm sure many of us know, if you level slowly during the higher levels at a x1 XP rate, it becomes a rarity to ever run out of rested XP, since it accumulates at a constant, percentage based rate. You get used to being rested. Now answer me this. If you yourself were to find yourself in the situation I described above, how much more likely would you be to stop playing for the day to let rested XP build back up? Not at all? Perhaps a little? A lot more likely? The answer here will be very subjective I think. This is what I mean with "pressure". Depending on your personality, your mood, your temperament etc. Rested XP - just by being in the game - might "pressure" you to stop playing for the day, even though you originally wanted to keep playing.

And since rested XP also has a cap on how much it can accumulate, it might also "pressure" you to start playing again if you've been gone for two or three days, since you know that you wont gain any more rested XP until you use some of it up. You might feel like you don't want to "waste" or "miss out on" rested XP.

I think that for some players, being able to avoid this "pressure" would make the game a more enjoyable experience. Even if avoiding it would penalize them by reducing their levelling speed. Thank you for reading.

[Nyeriah]

I don't understand, is the rested XP supposed to have a psychologic, motivational aspect that would otherwise drive your will away from finishing that level 79 bar? If so I don't see how taking the rested bar away completely helps with that, it's like perpetually being in the "Oh. That's unexpected" state.

I don't understand your argument of why would someone strip it away completely just to not feel pressured to miss the rest bonus out, because by blocking the gains they're directly taking away the bonus from themselves, thus missing the rested bonus anyway.

It's neither hard to implement or a bad suggestion, it's just not very likely many will ever use it lifetime

[Meopala]

I don't understand, is the rested XP supposed to have a psychologic, motivational aspect that would otherwise drive your will away from finishing that level 79 bar? If so I don't see how taking the rested bar away completely helps with that, it's like perpetually being in the "Oh. That's unexpected" state.

I don't understand your argument of why would someone strip it away completely just to not feel pressured to miss the rest bonus out, because by blocking the gains they're directly taking away the bonus from themselves, thus missing the rested bonus anyway.

It's neither hard to implement or a bad suggestion, it's just not very likely many will ever use it lifetime

Thanks for your response.

Indeed, the way I see it, it is very much a psychological thing. It's also a thing which I would expect most people not to be bothered by, hence my section on it being a very subjective thing.

Let me try to explain it some more, imagine if you give a child some candy. The child will probably be happy to receive candy. But what then if you take the candy away? The child will probably be upset. Rather than having to go through this emotional loop of happy -> upset, perhaps the child would have preferred to not receive candy in the first place, and simply be left in whatever mood they had before. This is where the subjectivity comes in, whether the child wants the candy or not depends on the child.

Building on that, assuming I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, I disagree that not having rested XP in the first place would have you perpetually being in the "Oh. That's unexpected" state. Since if you never had rested XP in the first place, you'd have no reason to expect to remain in the rested state. It's about expectations. "If I know that I'm never going to receive rested XP, I might as well keep playing to level 80 now, since waiting wont help me at all".

I can see why you wouldn't understand why someone would choose to opt-out of rested XP. Indeed, it isn't logical at all. It's just less XP received, a slower levelling experience, which is generally considered an undesirable thing. I also agree that very very few would be likely to use this feature if implemented. I was actually a bit apprehensive about posting this suggestion for this very reason, it feels like something that just wouldn't be used by basically anyone other than me. ^^'

I hope I was able to help you understand a little better? If still no, I wouldn't mind trying again, if you like.

Edit: Typo

[Nyeriah]

I understand what you tried to say, but I respectfully disagree and stand by what I said. I understand your reasoning from a psychologic point of view but I believe those considerations to be far too deep and too complex for a videogame.

The more likely outcome of someone being left without a rest bar is to finish leveling anyway and that won't have any further impact in their overall esteem, or they may chose to leave it and come back another time, but they might also do that because they got bored of leveling, tired, or got better things to do, without the traumatic experience of the depleted rest bonus playing any role in their decision.

But as I said it's a "eh, why not" suggestion, so you don't really have to convince me. I just don't think the psychologic impact argument sells the idea well, because it's unlikely.

[Meopala]

I understand what you tried to say, but I respectfully disagree and stand by what I said. I understand your reasoning from a psychologic point of view but I believe those considerations to be far too deep and too complex for a videogame.

The more likely outcome of someone being left without a rest bar is to finish leveling anyway and that won't have any further impact in their overall esteem, or they may chose to leave it and come back another time, but they might also do that because they got bored of leveling, tired, or got better things to do, without the traumatic experience of the depleted rest bonus playing any role in their decision.

But as I said it's a "eh, why not" suggestion, so you don't really have to convince me. I just don't think the psychologic impact argument sells the idea well, because it's unlikely.

Very fair points. Other than the point about these considerations being too deep and complex for a videogame, I agree with everything you said. I also see it as an "eh, why not" kind of suggestion: It's not a terribly big deal if it doesn't get implemented. Though for my part I can say I'd be very happy if it was.

As for why I disagree on just that one point, two things: First, from the perspective of a game designer (not that I am one mind you), I believe considering these things is important for business reasons. In addition, I'd also like to argue that considering these things is also important for ethical reasons, since when scaled up to more prevalent game mechanics other than something as innocuous as rested XP, "pressuring" players like this could be thought of as manipulative. Lootboxes and the recent discussions around them come to mind.

And secondly, from my perspective, thinking about and discussing these things is quite enjoyable. ^^

Thank you for the discussion.

[Kniteknite]

So basically You just really enjoy the content enough to slow Your progresion enough so that as You level, the content You are progresing through does not becom 'obsolete' or 'redundant' by levelling fast enough to cause the mobs to become grey instead of only green not giving xp, sort of a Pavlovian reward visual that stimulates a sense of progress aquisition, thus giving You the psychological environment to believe that a more challenging progression through the quest and environmental content exists ? hmmmm...

[Meopala]

So basically You just really enjoy the content enough to slow Your progresion enough so that as You level, the content You are progresing through does not becom 'obsolete' or 'redundant' by levelling fast enough to cause the mobs to become grey instead of only green not giving xp, sort of a Pavlovian reward visual that stimulates a sense of progress aquisition, thus giving You the psychological environment to believe that a more challenging progression through the quest and environmental content exists ? hmmmm...

I love the way you think. And I also think you're very much onto something here.

[Dymond]

I turned off the resting flag for your character but not sure how long it will stay disabled.
My best advice is not to leave your character in a city or inn.

[Meopala]

I turned off the resting flag for your character but not sure how long it will stay disabled.
My best advice is not to leave your character in a city or inn.

Thank you very much!

[Kniteknite]

So basically You just really enjoy the content enough to slow Your progresion enough so that as You level, the content You are progresing through does not becom 'obsolete' or 'redundant' by levelling fast enough to cause the mobs to become grey instead of only green not giving xp, sort of a Pavlovian reward visual that stimulates a sense of progress aquisition, thus giving You the psychological environment to believe that a more challenging progression through the quest and environmental content exists ? hmmmm...

I love the way you think. And I also think you're very much onto something here.

I'm just making an attempt at understanding Your perspective, and realizing that since You seem to want less of an advantage in leveling progress, You must want to take steps, however unorthodox, in order to be able to savor moments, and insure a greater duration of these chains of events in the world, thus bringing more longevity to Your experiences.

I remember as a kid, going to a mall with my family , and a being treated to a maple sugar candy. My brother and I were told that we will only get one. Trips to the mall were very infrequent, since my father hated 'shopping' and the mall. We polished these candies off pretty quickly and wanted another. We were reminded of only being afforded one maple sugar candy, and we longed for that taste, it becoming the best flavor we had ever experienced in our tiny lives .
The next time we went and were bought these maple leaf shaped candies, I remember breaking off tiny pieces, just enough to once again embrace that otherworldly sweetness, and insted of the candy lasting half an hour, it lasted the rest of the day.
That was the day I learned about conservation. Instead of having something for a short time and then left wanting after it was squandered, I was able to unconciously reassure myself this resource of joy would be there to relish under my administration, gaining added longevety instead of vanishing prematurely,
Your description of request reminded me of this experience, and maple sugar candies are still by far my favorite sweet in the world (of Sweetcraft) ~

[andriuspel]

well resting state flag pretty much is dynamic, it can be applied while on transport, while in sanctuary areas or basically while being in some friendly areas or inside of some buildings. Currently I won't comment much but will wait for more opinions. I have ideas already how this feature could be designed

[Kniteknite]

would an easy solve for this situation be if the player just decides to log out not in a city or inn , but out in the world ?

[MerelyASetback]

Eh, just write an addon that sets xp rate to 0.5 when rested and 1x when not rested? Same outcome as disabling rested exp. (Without maybe creating unwanted side-effects of not 'resting'...)

This whole reasoning is really weird since resting was literally implemented to stop people from pressuring themselves to keep on going indefinitely. Initial implementation was even inverted, at a certain playtime you would stop gaining experience 'till you rested. Seems pressures differ from person to person...

[Meopala]

Eh, just write an addon that sets xp rate to 0.5 when rested and 1x when not rested? Same outcome as disabling rested exp. (Without maybe creating unwanted side-effects of not 'resting'...)

This whole reasoning is really weird since resting was literally implemented to stop people from pressuring themselves to keep on going indefinitely. Initial implementation was even inverted, at a certain playtime you would stop gaining experience 'till you rested. Seems pressures differ from person to person...

Oh, I hadn't thought about your idea about writing an addon. Very interesting, good idea. Though, it does pose one problem for me personally... For those of you who have seen my other suggestion on this forum, it might not surprise you to hear that I very much like the idea of playing on 0.5x XP rate as a "baseline" XP rate instead of 1x XP rate. And of course, if I wanted to do that, then there would be no way to write an addon to change between XP rates since 0.5x rate is the lowest available. I would need an XP rate of 0.25x to be available in order for the idea to work for me. It's a very good idea nonetheless though, thank you very much.

Your perspective on the reason for why rested was implemented in the first place is very interesting to me. I hadn't thought of/knew about any of that. What you're saying makes a lot of sense to me though, and I'm getting an idea for why it might have been implemented. In short, it's at least partially about social pressure to "keep up", am I correct? Someone might pressure themself to keep playing more than they'd normally be comfortable with in order to "keep up" or "excel" at the game because either they themselves, or other people expect them to do that. It ends up feeling like a responsibility on some level, which could deteriorate one's enjoyment of the game. Am I on the right track here?

Another idea I have for why someone might play more than they'd normally be comfortable with - and thus why rested might have been thought to be a good idea in order to combat it - would be "addiction"/"compulsion". I don't really know much about this topic though, so I'm not sure if this applies. What do you think?

I understand that this suggestion feels weird to you - I imagine it does to most anyone who sees or hears of it. What I will say though, is that even if a mechanic might have been implemented for a specific reason, it could easily have ramifications and consequences far outside of its intended purpose.

I very much echo your sentiment about pressures differing from person to person. Thank you for your reply.

[Axis]

Other than personal and psychological/placebo reasons for this suggestion, I don't see any actual justification for this suggestion.
Practically speaking, what is accomplished with this?
You could just avoid going to any town/city/Inn to avoid the rested XP flag and minimize its effect that way without actually requiring a server-side modification for it.
The difference built up upon the next login is hardly noticeable - barely negligible at most.
You can also just submit a ticket and ask a GM to disable the flag for your character.