Regen, Health and Stamina

[Doer]

MA has recently given us two developer notes that have reinforced that efficiency is important for success in EU. In the wake of the upheaval this has caused, it would be a great time for a good-faith gesture by MA toward helping us be more efficient. They can do so while giving "pointless" attributes more purpose and value. As long as this is done without "nerfing" any existing functionality, this should create a positive response in the community.

Attributes and their perks

MA has slowly been giving Attributes more obvious and measurable perks: Agility gives a modest boost to running speed and Strength to carrying weight, Psyche and Intelligence are still to be implemented, and the rarest Attribute of all, Stamina, does nothing but contribute an unrivaled amount of health per level.

Regeneration, the nerf and a win-win proposal

Many players may not know that, until a "nerf" around 2008, every avatar regenerated 1/20th of his or her health every 20 seconds. This provided a bonus for those with higher health: a player with 180 health regenerated twice as much health every minute as a noob with 90 health. This incentivized skilling and rewarded higher skills, something that IMO has been eroded by many of the actions of MA and PPs in pursuit of short-sighted benefits. In any case, under the current system, the regen is much less dependent on Health, and much slower.*

My proposal is not a new one: to make both stamina and health a factor in regeneration, and give players a chance to increase their regen, which can be a significant boost to efficiency (saving FAP costs) and create goodwill toward MA in light of their recent comments on efficiency. This change takes "stamina" and gives it a perk that makes sense considering its meaning, which could be described as the ability to persevere or sustain effort. I have a proposed function for regen, tuned to keep the potential increase to a level that I think should be acceptable to MA in order to increase the chance of this being adopted, while also trying to keep things "fair" for players of all levels while motivating progress. The function uses a logarithmic progression according to Stamina (meaning that each additional Stamina point gives less increase than the previous) and an asymptotic relationship for health (similarly, the higher the Health, the less additional Health will improve the regen). The asymptotic relationship means that it's relatively easy to get most of the regen benefit of Health, whereas the progress with Stamina is more consistent.**

The function is:
regen_20_seconds = 2.5 + 6*LOG( Stamina ) * (1-70/Health)

Key:

• The constant (2.5) determines the regen rate of a newbie (1 Stamina). Increasing it will increase everyone's regen by a fixed amount and it may need to be increased, depending on how MA addresses the balancing issues, in order to avoid a nerf.****
• The coefficient (6) determines how much each level of Stamina increases the regen. I'd prefer it were larger, but the current old (9 Stamina) and new (1 Stamina) avatar issue make it hard to balance that way, again discussed in footnote ****.
• The asymptote coefficient (70) determines how much separation there is between an unskilled avatar's regen and one with high Health.

Here's how it looks:

Each line represents the regen per 20 seconds for an avatar with a particular Health.

Comparison with previous and current regen

Here's a comparison table of the regen rates at different times in EU, along with the new proposed rate. I'm not sure anything has been nerfed as repeatedly and substantially as regen. ETA: Now that I have tested the regen for a newbie, it's clear that the proposed function would represent a decrease in regen for a lot of avatars as a result of the old (9 Stamina) and new (1 Stamina) avatar balancing issue. In order to endorse the proposed function without changes I would expect to see one of the proposed balancing solutions described in footnote ****.

Some Comments

• Brand new, first day players start out with a really low regen (7.5/min) in the proposed system, but they can increase it to almost 9 just by gaining one Stamina... perhaps by doing the newbie stamina quest***, and also will see a rapid increase at this point as they increase their Health. ETA: Note that, even though that is slower than now, at that point they have full health in ten minutes, while a player with 165 health takes over 13 minutes in the current system to fully regenerate.****
• At no point with currently attainable Stamina does this allow an avatar to reach the 5% / 20 seconds of pre-2008 EU.
• The advantage of higher health isn't as great as it was in 2007, thus reducing potential complaints about ubers being given preferential treatment while still rewarding progress in Health and Stamina (e.g. Iron Missions).
• I'd be happy to see everyone new awarded 8 Stamina (early avatars started with 9 Stamina) or even give up my 8 extra Stamina to remove that unfair advantage if it meant this kind of thing being implemented, as long as the curve is shifted to prevent a reduction in regen. ETA: see footnote **** for more on this
• I'm aware many may not care about regen or think it helps their efficiency. That's fine. The running speed bonus of Agility is meaningless to crafters, and the carrying weight is meaningless to space captains... but this would allow those whom it does affect (hunters, etc.) to be more efficient if they care to.
• Like the perks of the other Attributes, it's subtle, but a perk is a perk and it gives another option to follow MA's advice. Options are good. Making the coefficient larger would make Stamina play a larger role in regen, something i'd be happy with. Again, I picked conservative values for the purpose of acceptance by MA.
• The "Ideal" version of this wishlist request is illustrated in the reply post here.
• Even if this isn't implemented, a simple commitment from MA to not ever nerf regen again would be something. This nerf seems to be their fetish.

* See the Entropedia health article and the thread it links to discussing a couple of the nerfs.
** From a programming and computational standpoint, it's cheap to calculate logarithms of Stamina because it's a discrete integer value that changes very infrequently. In any case, I imagine regen would be calculated from avatar stats upon login and maintained as a constant for the duration of the session, so the complexity of the function is probably moot.
*** It seems like a good thing to have newbies start out with a limitation that can be easily overcome by a bit of focus and effort, so this regen change would motivate and complement that first Stamina point through a Swamp Camp mission.
**** ETA: Because avatars used to start with 9 Stamina instead of 1, this proposal presents some balancing issues in that it is difficult to design the function in a way that gives regular progress for increasing Health and Stamina without creating a huge gap between early avatars and newer avatars. There are several ways to address these issues and, in my opinion, any of those proposed is better than the present system, which gives little to no reward for increasing Health and Stamina and has been reduced since 2007:

1. Subtract 6-7 Stamina from old avatars and shift up the curve. This has the potential of being the best, win-win option provided that two other changes are made: first, that the proposed regen curve is shifted up (by raising the constant in the function) to give similar regen values to low Health and Stamina players as they have today, and second that the Health contribution of Stamina be increased to something like 1 per 3 or 4 so that the Health loss isn't as great for old avatars and can be recovered through Stamina gains. This approach means that nobody experiences a significant functional "Nerf" while having the nice benefit that it makes the early gains in Stamina through missions more rewarding because of the early steep regen curve and increased Health contribution. This would probably meet with some resistance from old avatars but makes the most sense, again provided that the curve is actually shifted up as mentioned so that nobody loses regen from the current system. This version of the regen change is illustrated in this reply post.
2. Give up to 8 Stamina to newer avatars. This is the less desirable solution because it doesn't allow for as quick of a progression through mission Stamina gain, but it does have the advantage of taking away nothing and making the function, as proposed, about right.
3. Shift the curve up by increasing the constant. The curve can easily be shifted up to give newbies the same regen they have now. This would make the regen for low Health, high Stamina avatars possibly even higher than it was in 2007 (but how many of those are there active? That's basically a chipped-out uber), but for higher Health players the proportional change would be smaller, keeping them balanced. The curve can also be shifted to the left by adding 1 or 2 to the Stamina in the logarithm, reducing the effective difference between old and new avatars, but also reducing the gains in regen through Stamina increases due to missions.

 

[Xen]

Yes, please.

 

[BlueEyes]

Aye! (too short)

 

[BBpunisher]

Too good to be true....bump.

 

[Harmony.]

I like the idea. Gaining more health and thus healing faster was one of my main goals in my newbee days.

 

[remontoire]

*** I don't know if the swamp camp stamina point mission is still there, but if not this could be remedied and give a very meaningful motive to newbies to complete it.

Still there. Everybody who hasn't, go do it now.

 

[Kimmi]

I like the idea too... but I still think the gap the old ubers got from starting with 9 stamina vs. the 1 today is to great.

Also if agility should be a part of this, the advantage of the old ubers are to great, more attribute missions should be added and made available ingame, to minimize the unfair advantage that still exsist.

 

[Doer]

I like the idea too... but I still think the gap the old ubers got from starting with 9 stamina vs. the 1 today is to great.

I was able to find the regen for an unskilled avatar and added that to the table in the original post along with additional comments. It turns out the regen rate is constant, or nearly constant, now. This makes it really hard to balance the proposed curve in a way that gives progress without nerfing newbies or unbalancing ubers. I propose some solutions in the new comments I added.

Also if agility should be a part of this, the advantage of the old ubers are to great, more attribute missions should be added and made available ingame, to minimize the unfair advantage that still exsist.

I'm not proposing Agility be part of regen. I don't think that would make sense or be "fair" and Agility already has a perk that makes sense for its meaning.

 

[RickEngland]

A well written post doer, so top marks for your time and effort with this.

As much as you're looking for fairness for a Stamina curve for all avatars, EU had offered many advantages to many old school avatars from an historical basis, Stamina being just one of them.

We could argue that if we want entire fairness we could remove all old school weapons from the community, as these where regular drops before I started.

I see that the extra stamina I have got as a "perk" for starting at that particular time. just like the current irons missions, future avatars will not have the opportunity to collect as many rewards as some of us due to the forth coming adjustment on 21st august 2012. so my point being how far do we gowith this.

Even if there was a complete overhaul, whats to say that future changes wouldn't put us in this position in a few years.

However I agree that it would be nice if attributes did have more use. MA already stated some months ago that Attributes have nothing on actual skills gained in game.(i refer you to the debate of attribute nerf and the many responses from MA at that time).

I'm not sure if the community are preared to accept more change right now, a lot of the adjustments and announcements lately have hit a lot of people hard, it is the wrong time I think for yet changes to an already battered community.

I like to think that all those years skilling was worth something, I have said before that everytime I skill to take on harder mobs, a nerf is brought out, to stop me personally progressing up the mob ladder. I do not want to be in a psotion that in two more years I still can not move up to mobs I want to hunt due anymore adjustment.

Your heart is in the right place, and I agree with your principles, yet somewhat reluctant to want to accept more downgrades.

From a polictical point of view I think it is important to respond, as miminal resistance will send a message to MA that maybe the community are ready to accept this, I do not.

Again thank you for well wrttrn post, an enjoyable read

Rick.

 

[Xen]

As long as there is an absolute value to stamina subtracted and not some proportional amount to current stamina (and of course more health is awarded per stamina so I don't lose health, I wouldn't mind the stamina decrease. Stamina is somewhat an indicator of how many missions you've completed.

 

[Doer]

As much as you're looking for fairness for a Stamina curve for all avatars, EU had offered many advantages to many old school avatars from an historical basis, Stamina being just one of them.
…
I see that the extra stamina I have got as a "perk" for starting at that particular time. just like the current irons missions, future avatars will not have the opportunity to collect as many rewards as some of us due to the forth coming adjustment on 21st august 2012. so my point being how far do we gowith this.

Thanks for your comments.

Well, I expect the amount of Stamina available through missions to increase in the long term, especially if it is given a role/perk. The big mob Iron Challenge missions will keep their Stamina, and it's not clear yet how many of the small ones will lose theirs (if any). There will be new missions over time.

It also could be given as a prize of sorts in endurance hunting events now and then, as well. A couple points of Stamina would be basically a non-transferrable FAP bonus.

Regarding the fairness and trying to work around the old/new avatar thing, the 8 Stamina difference wasn't a big deal while it only gave a little health, but if it represents the difference between the new regen system being a nerrf to an avatar or a buff, it needs to be dealt with in some way.

Even if there was a complete overhaul, whats to say that future changes wouldn't put us in this position in a few years.

No need to borrow trouble. Start out the system on as level a playing field as possible and then trust that the guidelines being established on mission rewards will keep things more stable in the future.

I'm not sure if the community are preared to accept more change right now, a lot of the adjustments and announcements lately have hit a lot of people hard, it is the wrong time I think for yet changes to an already battered community.

That's exactly why it's a good time for MA to make a change that is only for the better that enables avatars to be more efficient. I also don't necessarily think the community is as battered as all that. Yes, some have taken the news hard, but it's not like there's actually been a major change in the game.

I like to think that all those years skilling was worth something, I have said before that everytime I skill to take on harder mobs, a nerf is brought out, to stop me personally progressing up the mob ladder. I do not want to be in a psotion that in two more years I still can not move up to mobs I want to hunt due anymore adjustment.

Your heart is in the right place, and I agree with your principles, yet somewhat reluctant to want to accept more downgrades.

From a polictical point of view I think it is important to respond, as miminal resistance will send a message to MA that maybe the community are ready to accept this, I do not.

I think you're misunderstanding the intent of my proposal. I propose this long-expected change now because it's one of the (highly?) anticipated little things that is both easily implemented and possible to be done in a way that only benefits the players -- we have the 2007 regen as an indication of what might be the limits for balancing purposes, and can stay well within them while implementing this change. Cookies for all!

 

[Doer]

Stamina is somewhat an indicator of how many missions you've completed.

And this is becoming increasingly more relevant and meaningful than it as an indicator of ancient avatars, I think.

If MA were to go with option one, it would be nice to get some valueless mark of the ancient avatar status, though. Maybe after tattoos are implemented...

 

[Dr.D.C.]

agree but first reset the skills of the old players that gained them before the skill nerf.

oh my bad! MA is dynamic.

sorry

 

[RickEngland]

doer

Look mate, this is why Im scared.

I remember too when high regain came out on trox, and MA promised better loot for regain mobs. What this done was make guns like LR32+ the standard for hunting trox rather than justifier MkII.

This made costs double over night. Now I have never had a problem if return covers costs, but there is a trust issue becasue lets face it, those promises didn't happen.

I try to speak the truth, but posting in this forum on such issues scares me. I both want to stay in MA good books, but also prepared to discuss future proposed changes which may upset MA. Hard call.

It is clear that MA are trying their best to address the problems THEY created. Lets face it the Dev-2 message was simple, the hidden message was as follows: "we will no longer compensate you for excessive spend, becasue days of big loots are over, so change your ways".

I love the game, and I know things have changed, plus it's unlikely those big loots will return on a big scale unless MA can grow their business substantially.

My real issue is that MA have a real problem with skilled players in EU, in my opinion they really don't know how to deal with the hard core skilled players. How do they pay them based on the current rules of loot return. What I just said is really deep s**t if prepared to think about it, and how MA triggers loot. I bet there're too many skilled people based on the original rule setup, and Ma are struggleing to cope how they pay out.

I have missed the big loots yet again, so move forward with what ever MA sees as their future.

My point being dont make their life any easier, you earned what you have, why offer to give it away for nothing, especially if still waiting for your big reward.

I say hang on to anything you got as long as you can.

Very deep discussion sorry about that.

Rick

 

[Doer]

agree but first reset the skills of the old players that gained them before the skill nerf.

oh my bad! MA is dynamic.

sorry

I really don't see what this has to do with using Stamina to increase regen… One of the nice things about giving Stamina a perk is that, until recently, it couldn't be increased. If they will address the old avatar (9) / new avatar (1) issue we can all start more or less at the beginning with this particular buff and all have a chance to progress as we see fit.

 

[Doer]

Anybody else have comments on balancing or other aspects of this proposed change?

 

[Xen]

Anybody else have comments on balancing or other aspects of this proposed change?

At no point with currently attainable Stamina does this allow an avatar to reach the 5% / 20 seconds of pre-2008 EU.

I'd like to see that attainable, maybe even surpassed a little with enough stamina. As it is, we would have to earn something back that was taken away from us.

 

[DoctorH]

Interesting ideas....
I have to admit however, I would be pissed if they take away the 8 stamina....that would be like saying we should take away ancient status for many weapons....or easily attained attributes/skills from fapping fish.....
Just my opinion....

Regen speed is an excellent purpose for stamina tho.....

 

[Serica]

I find it interesting that you think they'd only change Stamina back to it's pre-Jan'07 values.

Have you forgotten that the 'old' avatars started with 20 points for Psyche, Intelligence, Agility and Strength, while newer ones start with 1 point of each ?

Have you considered the impact of all pre-Jan 2007 avatars being potentially asked to give up 19 points of those 4 attributes as well ?

Also, these attributes were changed at the same time as the skill-curve was changed, the trade-off being that 'new' avatars gained skills faster, and the top end of the spectrum skilled slower.

I'd be wondering just where MindArk might find the 'balance' in this proposal, and that it might not be the simple 'old avatars give up 8pts of stamina' that you're suggesting.

 

[Xen]

I find it interesting that you think they'd only change Stamina back to it's pre-Jan'07 values.

Have you forgotten that the 'old' avatars started with 20 points for Psyche, Intelligence, Agility and Strength, while newer ones start with 1 point of each ?

Have you considered the impact of all pre-Jan 2007 avatars being potentially asked to give up 19 points of those 4 attributes as well ?

Also, these attributes were changed at the same time as the skill-curve was changed, the trade-off being that 'new' avatars gained skills faster, and the top end of the spectrum skilled slower.

I'd be wondering just where MindArk might find the 'balance' in this proposal, and that it might not be the simple 'old avatars give up 8pts of stamina' that you're suggesting.

1-20 in an attribute (except stamina ofc) is very easily gained now, it can be done in about a week, and starting at 1 instead of 20 has had almost zero affect on attribute gain.

 

[Serica]

1-20 in an attribute (except stamina ofc) is very easily gained now, it can be done in about a week, and starting at 1 instead of 20 has had almost zero affect on attribute gain.

True, still someone starting in February 2007 would be 19points less in each of the 4 attributes than someone starting only a month or 2 earlier.

Perhaps I'm being overly cautious, but I think the maxim 'Be careful of what you wish for' might well apply here. MindArk may well 'balance' things in an unanticipated way.

 

[mastermesh]

True, still someone starting in February 2007 would be 19points less in each of the 4 attributes than someone starting only a month or 2 earlier.

Perhaps I'm being overly cautious, but I think the maxim 'Be careful of what you wish for' might well apply here. MindArk may well 'balance' things in an unanticipated way.

still pisses me off that I started in early 2007 instead of late 2006, lol.

 

[Doer]

Xen, i'd be happy if it could be done that way, too.

I wanted to propose something, already worked out in details of implementation, that fits inside of "known good" parameter space, in order to maximize the chance of it being taken seriously and used.

In the case that MA wanted to be charitable, so to speak, then here's the "Ideal" proposed implementation, which includes removing 7 Stamina from old avatars (leaving them with a single point advantage over new avatars), and increasing the Health contribution of Stamina to 1/3. No Stamina gained through missions would be lost, of course. Old avatars with no Stamina missions completed would lose about a third of a health point, but that would be more than recovered by just getting the Stamina point from the Swamp Camp Stamina mission (or any of the other Stamina missions).

By my count, there are currently at least 31 points of Stamina available to colonists on Calypso besides the Swamp Camp newbie point. Maybe some of those will go away in August, and a couple may only be attainable by very insane people like EMW, but that's a LOT of Stamina that could theoretically be gained, and that doesn't include any available on other planets or in future missions.

The ideal parameters (constant=3, coefficient=7.5, and asymptote coefficient=50) start newbies with a 3 Health / 20 second regen, 3/4 of the current one, but they can do the Swamp Camp mission to immediately reach the existing 4 per 20 seconds (and get an extra 1/3 Health point). Old avatars who have the Swamp Camp Stamina (for a total of 3) would have a regen around the level of the 2008 nerf that they were familiar with for a couple years. You can see from the plot that these "Ideal" parameters let avatars "maximize their potential", reaching and exceeding the original 2007 regen rate at increasingly higher Health levels as they increase their Stamina. With 2-3 Stamina-awarding missions done, an avatar of up to 120 Health will have a higher regen than ever possible in the past. With 8 missions done, the regen for up to ~160 Health is higher than before. A hypothetical 35 Stamina avatar with up to 240 Health would have faster regen than ever before possible, and so forth.

So that's an "Ideal" proposal based on the discussion and function from the first post, assuming a generous MA willing to allow past regen rates to be exceeded in certain cases.

 

[Kimmi]

But doesnt your picture show that with 35 stamina we are kinda back where we left of little over 5 years ago.

So the best posible ending we can ever wish for is how it was in 2007

 

[Fifth]

Aye, you hit the nail on the head - MA took from many people the theory that was very important for them, this needs to be compensated and it has to be done now.

Words are not enough. Make a grand gesture and give us back regen, this is the language that everybody can understand and believe in.

 

[Doer]

But doesnt your picture show that with 35 stamina we are kinda back where we left of little over 5 years ago.

So the best posible ending we can ever wish for is how it was in 2007

Yup, the pre-nerf way was better, most of all for ubers. Even now, newbie avatars have only slightly lower regen than they had from the beginning. I'm not sure that 1/20th ever 20 seconds is balanced at the high end, and obviously that's the end MA also was concerned about the most since that's what they nerfed down to the 4 regen of a beginning avatar. By proposing an alternative function that allows progression but limits the relative regen possible at the uber end of Health and increasing Stamina, it addresses those balance issues in a similar fashion to the way skill gain works. You always progress with skill gain, but the progress gets slower the higher the skill gets. The advantage here with Stamina is that we're all starting from about the baseline, with no amount of pre-nerf skilling and/or "cheats" providing an unfair, unattainable lead.

 

[Doer]

True, still someone starting in February 2007 would be 19points less in each of the 4 attributes than someone starting only a month or 2 earlier.

Perhaps I'm being overly cautious, but I think the maxim 'Be careful of what you wish for' might well apply here. MindArk may well 'balance' things in an unanticipated way.

There would be no reason to adjust other attributes because they play no role in the proposed algorithm and "balancing" them would only create ill will, and be exceedingly pointless considering that getting to 20 from 1 in attributes is not remotely as difficult as getting to 9 from 1 Stamina. I daresay completing any single one of the Iron Challenge missions that give Stamina would get an avatar from 1 to nearly 20 in the main attribute used during the mission.

I think the paranoia that MA couldn't possibly do this in a way that doesn't bite us in the buttocks is all the more reason they should do it as proposed in the "Ideal" way posted here. Good will without giving up anything they had in 2007.

 

[FallenAngel]

ah the health regen nerf, i remember that.
i like your idea to make stamina relevant and to bring back regen even if i have always been quite happy with the fact that i joined entropia universe the day before they changed stamina for new players

 

[Dan59]

Cool idea but i smell possibility of future indirect nerf - mobs have usualy a lot of stamina waiting that MA apply new regen formula lol...

 

[Stefan 008 Bond]

Very nice work Doer looks good to me. I think most all would agree that a regen boost would be a natural fit/use for stamina (other being maybe a dash function). One contribution I could make to the discussion would be the possibilty of creating 2 such formulas.. 1 for 9 stamina and 1 for 1 stamina avatars (I'm thinking of the 2 difft formulas used between L and UL armrs used here). That way, no fuss made about any distinct advantages as the 2 formulas would create same end result, and everyone can keep their shiny attributes in place

While we are on the topic of uses for attributes, I would like to neatly tuck my simple idea for a use of Int attribute in here:

Int attribute - can give avatars the ability to carry more items over the current 200 limit.
I think its a good fit and we have so many vehicles/boxes nowadays that offer more item strg anyway it would be an easy bonus I feel. We do have so many more items in game nowadays than ever before and in some places the sheer amount of items you can loot in a single hunt can be cumbersome at times (Im looking at you NI papoo lol)

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