Hi all,
I was trying to think about the xp scale last night, trying to go
backwards from what we've generally agreed upon as our 'levelling
experience' -- i.e. that it gets duller and more difficult at 40ish
and above. But rather than thinking, this is the problem, how can we
change to code to adjust for it, I was trying to think up why it is
a problem in the first place.
It strikes me that the problem underlying the xp scale is that while
our abilities go up steadily from levels 1 to 35, they rapidly level
off after that. Each level, we have more rent, a practice, and a little
better on the level-based hit table -- and that's a constant increase.
(Here I pictured one of those slanting lines on an x-y coordinate plane)
But with the uses of skills, our abilities tend to get a stair-stepped
bonus. The weapon proficiencies, the fight skills, etc. You learn a
new skill every level or every other level or every three levels or
whatnot, which jumps you up to a higher ability level, gives you
more flexibility, etc.
But at lvl 35, that ability drops off, to where you're back at that
x-y slanting line again. In my mind it's lvl 35 and beyond that are
the real problem, and perhaps the reason that people estimate it at
40ish is because it takes a few levels to get tired of it.
So....there's a couple different solutions to this, as I see it. I still
think it should be difficult to level up to 50, but we might want to
consider addressing this 'bump' to soften it out. One possibility would
be the old favorite, mob xp. Another possibility is an adjustment to the
xp scale itself, where rather than 20+your level to go up a level, it's
20+35+((your level-35)/(2? 3?)). It also strikes me that, tired as
everyone is of hearing this, skill trees addresses this bump by having
both more skills and a more complicated system of proficiency.
-LadyAce
From: Ishtar
Tuesday, January 19, 09:59AM
Change it from a linear to a power-function (negatively accelerated)
so experience needed to level increases with level but at a
decreasing rate =P
Or something.
Ish
From: Adolfus
Tuesday, January 19, 01:17PM
Seems to me after 35 there isnt anything you can learn thats
gonna help you that you couldn't have already learned. Having
an extra skill doesn't help much cuz you can only use one
skill every other round. The reason this is I think is
mainly because the system was set up for before when dex
was the only way to go, etc etc.
Maybe its just me but I still only see mobs being upgraded.
After reading Wraiths post about his update I went back
through there, and its a pretty hard zone now. Not sure
exactly which mobs were changed etc, but overall the
zone is pretty tuff. What with mobs weapons being
poisoned etc. Having hard areas is good, especially if its
rewarded with good xp. I especially like some good xp mobs
in an area, with a really dangerous wandering mob that
assists. Though not one where the mobs call em, poke scannell.
I still say we could use a bit more xp loss from dying,
and of course this be transferred back to xp gained by mob
killing. Second the low levels are way too easy now, imo.
I like to think the low levels, and level6 in particular
served as a bit of trial by fire, a way to separate players
etc. I mean, which is better, for ppl to have trouble
and learn things at low levels, or have a bunch of lvl 35's
that still havent learned the mud. My first few chars I made
stopped at lvl 15 or so, til i finally got over the hump.
Now it need not be as bad as before, with the lvl 6 being
so hard. My new chars I made recently usually got to
lvl 35 in around 60 hours, totally solo. Just killing mobs
that conned are you crazy. With wimpy 0, if I died,
it would only take an hour or so to make up for it, and
the extra aggressiveness made up for the occaisonal death
in xp. The only penalty in this system I see is after lvl40
or so where dying really isnt an option, if your wanting
to level anyway, just cuz getting that xp is so slow and
boring. On the other hand if you want to stop leveling
at 39 or 40, then dying is perfect, takes just xp away
so you dont level accidently when messing around.
I urge those in charge not to come to the conclusion that
ppl don't want a challenge, but that at low levels there
isnt any challenge to speak of, and at high levels the
xp dissapears. Thats just from my experience. Simply, id
like the time it takes to get to lvl 35 raised, and the
time it takes to get from 35-50 lowered.
Also Im thinking a lot of this is artifacts from when
you imms had to do everything in your power to keep us
from being able to solo anything under the old system.
Ie, silly specials that took a certain amount of hp of
every round no matter what, hope were getting away from
that.
danka
From: Mo
Tuesday, January 19, 06:22PM
The problem is the power of skills and the hp of mobs as lvls
go up. As Rufus pointed out, a lot of the high lvl mobs are
made with the sanc in mind, so they tend to have ridiculously
high hps.
Also, low level skills are seriously over powered -- I've had
lvl 2 chars kick/flee mobs that gave roughly 1.3k (which makes
it roughly 3 kills to lvl? 5?) and at lvl 6, it's not too hard
to kick/flee mobs that give up to 4k xp. As a matter of fact,
my char who died twice at lvl 7 is lvl 8 with barely over one
hour of playing time, with a small practice sword and HoL eq
(those that can be bought) and kick.
It is true that after lvl 35, your character seems to stop
improving -- before, you had the sanc ring to look forward to,
now it's +hp/+hit/+dam gear, or a better weapon -- none of
which drastically improves mob killing ability as another lesson
in weapon proficiency might. Skill trees (god forbid that i
still actually rely on them to be imp'd) will definately
help, but in the meantime, i think it would be safe to introduce
some other skill around lvl 45 (which, in my opinion, is
when things get really boring, unless you quest to 50, which
I guess isn't too bad) that allows for (only against mobkill,
and if you make it work only on non-human thingies, it won't
technically be an excess code that separates mobk with pk :p)
players to inflict additional damage to mobs.
Also of note in the xp scale is that although chars improve by
having their hit table changed as they level, the fundamental
things they CAN kill remain largely unchanged from then on, while
the xp of the things they used to kill (re, elands) start
dropping sharply. I am not so sure if it would be too terrible
to have the drop-off in xp as your level becomes higher than the
mobs less steep (but have it decrease prestice by 10 everytime,
or double the damage inflicted to you if they do hit you :p).
Mo@
eek
