Food & Level Scaling Rework

[AtoB]

As long as characters are the sum of all their actions... any attempt to balance this game are doomed to fail, interaction with other players will suck for most and fuckups like spiced axes can not be mitigated without a world reset.

Uh... any RPG is this.

The multiplayer online ones usually are not, one way or another.
In WoW the character is the sum of his actions up to a point, then there is the level cap.
While in EVE character progresses is technically endless (as there are always more skills to train) the ship classes make PvP of too different level players simply is not happening (unless they meet in similar class vessels, but then the additional skills of the 'older' character does not really play a role as these don't apply to that kind of this) as it's ineffective for both parties (the small can't out-damage the big ones repair while the big can't target the small) so that is no problem - and Concorde makes sure that the ones who are completely not interested in PvP do not have to.
Competitive multiplayer ones (Counterstrike and offsprings) mainly have no character statistics to have an even playing field.
In case it is possible to take stuff with you then only as the result of the player performance in the most recent past (like last round, days, max weeks) - not over the timespan of months or even years. at least not in case that this gives a relevant advantage over other players.
Most rouge / permadeath ones are smart enough to make sure that the death penalty (effective loss of time spent on building the character) is limited by having all characters die often enough so that people don't get attached and loss through this being limited.

Problem with this game is that it picks the worst choices: Character growth is endless. Top characters are free to roflstomp absolute newbies, effectively without having to fear any consequences and the newbie having no means of retaliation. Meeting higher level players, especially in in higher quantities, is a non-recoverable death sentence (in the sense of basically guaranteed defeat in combat and, in case the game allows a way to kill the lower character, certain death). And, as characters are the sum of all their actions, not starting at the beginning of the world, dying, holiday, having a life - basically any reason for not playing top effective for even a moment results in 'game over' in regard to the number game. Shitty consequence is the inability for the developers to fix exploits (or just not thought through mechanics) that allowed a subset of the population to inflate their statistics, mid world without doing a character wipe or ending up with massively unbalanced characters in the world that can't be reached by anyone who didn't exploit the shit out of the defect.

You don't get to be the top level, top geared player in any other RPG by just sitting at the "new character start spot" all day.

No one is expecting that to happen. Though average computer game players expect to be able to join a game any time and have no permanent penalty from not stating at 'the beginning' - or the world / shards / whatever being reset frequent enough to be able to start at a beginning without excessive wait time.. This game does neither.

Characters being the sum of their recent actions (like what they did the last 5-10 weeks, instead of everything they did from their inception as we have now) would remove the worst problems of this game, while playing better than others would keep to have a meaning.

There are games out there with little to no character progression and it's all about base building, but even that provides certain character progression meaning you go back to...

Which then, I guess, have rounds over a week or two, not years.

"the character is the sum of all their actions." Maybe you mean something other than what I'm reading here, but there's only so many ways I can try to understand your post.

The issue is: endless character growth, long running worlds, open PvP - pick two to have a fun game. The developes don't seem to want to get rid of open PvP, as it seems they also don't want to reset every 2-3 months... meaning their options to end up with a fun game are limited as the only option left is to make characters less permanent. Either by killing each and all of them often enough in an unavoidable manner or making them more realistic in the sense that long past actions have less (up to none) effect compared to more recent actions.

Conclusions: characters should be good in what they keep doing, instead of in everything they ever did.

[MagicManICT]

In WoW the character is the sum of his actions up to a point, then there is the level cap.

And then there is dungeon, raid, and PvP gear progression. You don't earn these sitting on your butt.

While in EVE character progresses is technically endless

Again, you have to do something to earn the ability to train new skills. New skills are always being added, and you can't just sit around doing nothing to earn the new skills unless you park yourself at the "gate tackler" running in a t1 interceptor. Of all the currently available multiplayer RPGs, EVE probably is influenced the least by this, but it still exists. I mean, there is an absolute limit of effectiveness on any given platform--ship/weapon setup. (Other than those "train everything just because I was one of the first accounts and have been training a character non-stop since 2003.") In some cases, that's a few years time if you're starting a character from the beginning, and billions of ISK in skills, ships, and modules.

Competitive multiplayer ones (Counterstrike and offsprings) mainly have no character statistics to have an even playing field.

These aren't RPGs, though. They're FPS, RTS, or one of many other labels you can give. Many include RPG elements, but they still aren't full RPGs. It's like comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they're both video games, but the flavor and means of consuming them are very different. Unlike apples and oranges, you can crossbreed RPGs and FPS games... with some having been more and less successful. In these hybrid games, you can't expect to develop a character or "be competitive" without actually grinding out the extras, be it weapon and mod unlocks or character skills.

There are caps in this world based around farming and such (see the w11 prelude and world start patch notes). This is going to limit character growth. Let's see how they turn out before too much more criticism on the matter. Maybe it's going to work and let the "infini-grinders" have their fun while preventing them from getting wildly spread values from the "average player."