I’ve published my first island and I’m starting to understand that awarding XP is not realistic for me.
The Island is a race and it’s designed to be intrinsically fun to play, but I would like to award XP for completing each checkpoint to attract the XP grinders.
The problem is that to award XP my island must complete XP calibration by achieving a minimum number of plays/play time/unique players. What those numbers are, I have no idea, but they are bigger numbers than my island is getting.
On top of that the XP calibration starts from scratch when I update the island.
So the net effect of this system is
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a “rich-get-richer” situation where established creators reach the calibration criteria and then attract all the extra plays from the XP grinders while the small creators get passed over even by players who enjoy playing their islands because they get only playtime XP for it.
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Everyone is disincentivised from updating and improving their islands since they will have to start the calibration process again.
I’m feeling pretty disheartened by this situation and I’m wondering if there are any plans within epic to improve the situation by awarding an estimated XP amount during the calibration process (or any other solution). Since suppressing small creators and disincentivising island updates is surely not good for anyone.