Post:The TDP Post - 12/18/2010 - 17:50:42

The TDP Post · on 12/18/2010 5:50:42 PM	8255
Hey guys - Figured that since everything got quiet, I'd incite another pile of madness. TDPs will be changed in the following manner: Currently TDPs are calculated by summing the cumulative sum of all of your ranks and then dividing by 200. A cumulative sum of N ranks is 1+2+3+...+N. For instance, the cumulative sum of 5 ranks is 1+2+3+4+5 = 15. Each skill is summed individually - the sum of two skills at 5 ranks each is 30, not the cumulative sum of 10. Your new total TDPs will be calculated by taking the cumulative sum of your top 4 primary skills and the top 3 secondary skills in each secondary skillset. This number will then be divided by 100. This is how TDPs will be calculated going forward - Every 100 ranks in the above skills will grant you a new TDP. Boiled down into layman's terms, you will be gaining TDPs at double the rate that you did before, but you'll only be using a subset of the skills to do it. Anything that has cost TDPs in the past will be refunded. We will add 50+circle tdps for each circle 2-9, and 100+circle TDPs for each circle after 10th. After all of this is done, we will reset your stats to racial starting amounts. You will be able to spend your TDPs as you wish Questions: What if I would lose TDPs from this? If you would lose TDPs from this, the number of TDPs you would lose will be tracked in a pool of 'underflow TDPs'. Until you've emptied that pool, you'll gain TDPs at half of the rate of normal. Every time you gain a TDP at this half rate, you will subtract a TDP from this underflow pool. How likely am I to lose TDPs from this? Pretty unlikely. The surveys that I've been doing have had approximately 7-8% of people in-game having TDPs added to their underflow pool. Within that 8%, approximately 90% of people will be less than 500 TDPs in debt. Some people like Codiax will be a LOT more in debt, but cases like that are very rare. Why are you doing this? A couple of reasons: 1) With the skill combination, we can't continue distributing TDPs the way we have before - Everybody would lose a LOT of TDPs, and it would suck. Considering that the first tenet for the exp combination is to avoid making things suck, this is important. 2) The main reason to train a skill shouldn't ever be TDPs. This also ties closely with the skill rewrite - We want every skill to be compelling in and of itself, and if we let TDPs pretty up a skill (I'm looking at you, vocals), it's easier to forget that a skill is kind of useless. 3) TDPs need better tracking as it is, so now's the right time to introduce these mechanics. Let me know if you have any questions - I will be making gingerbread houses and exploring the world of holiday beverages all night, so don't fret or explode if I don't have replies for you as fast as I have earlier.
This message was originally posted in Abilities, Skills and Magic (4) \ The Experience System (11), by DR-SOCHARIS on the play.net forums.