Allow "opt-out" for XP/craftXP tied to Steam account

[Taralin Snow]

I was thinking about the change to the XP curve in Patch 9.7 today, and wondering what tools the developers have to identify the best shape of the XP curve.  For example, how many players get stuck at rank 5 for a long time because the required XP for rank 6 is a big jump but their ability to gain XP doesn't go up as much?  Is there a way to measure this?  If you make an adjustment, how easy is it to measure the effect when you don't reset things?

 

How are the developers going to test whether the new curve is in the right shape if there are no testers left at rank 1 to try the new curve and see?

 

It occurred to me that in order to test how long leveling takes for a new player, you need the ability to reset your XP to 0.  Very few players will be willing to do this for their entire account, but you could reasonably expect some players to do this if they could do it on a specific server only.

 

So my suggestion is this: On character creation, allow a player to specify that for that character, XP (and crafting XP) should be stored in the server database and not synced to their Steam account.  If the flag is set for that character on that server, XP is 'local' to that server and doesn't sync from/to Steam.  If the flag is not set for that character on that server then XP is synced to/from Steam as before.

 

This would allow players to keep their XP on their 'main' characters and still make new rank 1 players on other servers for testing purposes.  Or they could even delete their main and start from scratch, knowing that they can regain their 'parked' XP by making another character with Steam sync enabled.

 

And perhaps more importantly, it would allow players to do this via self-service rather than requiring admin intervention.