Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Thoughts on experience...

    • 287 posts
    September 22, 2017 6:48 PM PDT
    Higher level mobs should give a nice experience bonus.
    • 411 posts
    September 23, 2017 8:03 AM PDT

    Iksar said:Eh, I'm not so sure making it harder to level for progeny would be the way to go...especially each subsequent generation. In fact I think the opposite would hold true and each would level slightly faster than the last because at that point you've already put in hundreds if not thousands of hours to the leveling process. From a "lore" standpoint I'd argue that each generation following the first is coming into the world more knowledgable, experienced, and all around prepared based on their "parent" character & family tree. 

    You have a valid concern and a different take on the topic and I'm glad you brought up this point of view. I would like to reply to a couple of the aspects at play here.

    1: I like that you bring up the point that the subsequent generations should be primed and ready for advancement through the world. It seems reasonable to expect that this would be reflected in their leveling speed. However, we should also consider that the players themselves will be more knowledgable about the world (kind of reflecting the lore/fables/stories passed down from their elders) and that the progeny characters will have distinct gameplay advantages (reflecting the genetic heritage of successful adventurers?). These two things will already speed up the leveling process for subsequent generations regardless of any new mechanic.

    2: The idea of making productive farming spots more restrictive as the generations pass seems worth exploring to me. If I were to have 5 generations of dwarf (if you count alts, then I did) in EQ1 via a progeny system, they would all follow the exact same path through Butcherblock - Crushbone - Unrest - Guk - etc., but if a progeny mechanic existed that forced me to branch out, it might make subsequent playthroughs different and maybe more enjoyable. I don't really know if any mechanic tweaking the relative enemy level vs. experience curve would be able to get people to branch out. Maybe it would just make it so that you go through the same farm spots, but you would have to advance when you were still "underleveled", making the experience more challenging (more enjoyable? maybe, maybe not). My hope would be that a mechanic would exist that would encourage you to venture to new spots, rather than sticking to the tried and true ones for the umpteenth time. 

    3: Tweaking the experience curve to remove experience from greens doesn't necessarily slow things down. Maybe each progeny generation causes lower level enemies to yield less experience (or none at all), but higher level enemies now yield more experience. After 10 generations, perhaps you have to farm only the toughest mobs to get decent experience, but successfully doing so allows you to progress quickly compared to a new character. If the devs agree that the progeny leveling process should be sped up, then they can certainly do that.

    4: A light touch (dropping the experience gained from only the lowest tier mobs) probably wouldn't impact much, but it might be seen as a nod to the passing of time and to the advancement of the family line. A heavy hand might drive players to dramatically change their approach to leveling in the world for better or worse. I don't think we can reasonably predict the results of a heavy handed approach with our current knowledge of how the game world will be set up.

    Sorry for derailing the OP, hope you don't mind too much :).

    • 323 posts
    September 23, 2017 9:31 AM PDT

    These ideas for tweaking the progeny leveling process could be cool . . . but none of them will really make the progeny system any better at keeping a robust leveling population unless power leveling is kept in check.  Most people who run through progeny multiple times will presumably have friends/boxes at their disposal to trivialize the leveling process for the progeny, if game mechanics allow it.  And no, I will not stop beating this old drum!!!  =)  

     

     

    • 999 posts
    September 23, 2017 11:07 AM PDT

    @Angrykiz

    I think ideally there would be a sliding scale where if your group is capable of killing "red" con mobs then you should be rewarded.  Whether that be by having debuffers to allow for casters to land spells on higher level mobs or other means - I'm a firm believer that risk/reward should come into play.  However, I also always liked groups to be "efficient" and finding that sweet spot, so if that is with Red Con Mobs, Yellow Con Mobs, or Blue con mobs for the best experience I would be ok with it - basically as a puller, I would want to gauge the strength of the group and adapt to it.

    @Ainadak

    I don't want to derail this thread on progenies; however, I don't think the progeny system will be used as hoped unless artifically incentivized by some sort or reward by forcing players to group with new players (cycnical view I know) - I definitely wouldn't want to see restrictions put in place to make it even less likely that a progeny would group with a new player.  If Progeny A is not getting exp from mobs and Original Player A is, Progeny A is going to move on to different mobs without Original Player A.  Then, you may make it more complicated if Progeny B is /reroll x2 and gets even less exp based off cons, etc.  I'm not sure how you could properly incentivize progenies to group with truly new players, but perhaps have some bonus tied to players /account played time or /account creation date - the less they have/newer they are the better reward and be rewarded with some sort of leadership exp like EQ or even Veterans type rewards after a certain period of time.  The reward would need to be great enough to not have progenies continously /reroll for new innate rewards and power level/level quickly with progeny guildmates/friends/family etc.

    • 220 posts
    September 23, 2017 12:31 PM PDT

    If you ignore the idea of character levels, in favor of a sustained skill point system you can create the motivation for veteran players to re-train their skills, and essentially rejoin the newplayer community, each time you release new content.  All you have to do is similar to what WoW did early on with elementally themed raid zones, and give every class a set of retrainable toolkits that can be specialized to meet those changing themes.  Maybe you have descended Treant God to fight next week and the melee need to train Logging, or Axe skills.  The casters need to train Fire specilization.  And everyone needs to train some defense against Life and Growth magic. 

    As long as the skills need to be retrained situations can be created that organically place veteran character along side new characters, with mobs the can con exactly the same to both of them.

    Maybe to train Life and Growth magic defense, new magic specialization, and logging skill, you need to start again with the same creatures that a new character would in their initial training, because all mobs also use floating point weakness and strength scaling.  And that blood red con Fire Dragon might turn a shade of yellow when you learn a powerful enough Ice Comet spell, or you train that Spear to skill to Dragoon.

    Levels are for buildings.  Something as weak as "a tiny hornet" might con yellow to a veteran player with nothing but a +200 Warhammers skill and a love for Fine Smithing to defend them, but to the freshly initiated Wizard, or nimble fingered Rogue, that same "a tiny hornet" might only con grey.

    That sort of thing.

    • 411 posts
    September 24, 2017 6:28 AM PDT

    @Raidan - As usual, I completely agree with you. I believe your cynicism is well founded. Getting players to fill out the world and interact between generations is daunting and I'm not sure I would bet even odds on it working out, but I would still like to see the devs fully throw their weight behind it and try to show us all that it can work.

    To your specific point: I was kind of hoping that tweaking the experience curve upwards would just cause a level differential and not discourage grouping altogether. I believe your hypothetical takes into account a level X progeny and a level X newbie and saying this would discourage them grouping, which is true, but let me throw out a different take. If you're a level 25 tier 5 progeny, then you need to hunt level 30 monsters for good exp. Making a group composed entirely of level 25 5th tier progeny characters would be challenging, since you're all so low for the content, but the exp rates would be good. On the other hand you could join a group of level 30 newbie players who are taking on "less challenging" (from a purely numbers-based standpoint) content for them, but it would still be challenging for you to pull your weight and your personal exp would still be good. Maybe first/low gen players would be a desired commodity for their natural advantage of being relatively overleveled for the content they take on.

    You might think I'm a gymnast with all this stretching, but that's what I was hoping would happen. I would definitely put this whole concept in the category of "artificial manipulation of experience rates", which is inherently off-putting, but I think if something works (not saying this necessarily will) then people may be able to overlook the undesirable details.

    @Gnog - Too true. If your vision relies on community and healthy population, then allowing players to bypass the whole concept is like lost capital.


    This post was edited by Ainadak at September 24, 2017 6:31 AM PDT