Kill History vs Bonus Experience

[Teron]

Well, I was under assumption that you do call the shots.

If it is more democratic, then I apologize for the comments I made about you. I kind of try to keep others civil, and should try to be such myself, too.


As for nocap, I'll just clarify one more thing.

This isn't a whim of mine. As a leader, it's my responsibility to lead groups to mobs they can kill easier to get more exp. However, I also need to lead groups to mobs they won't cap, because then group would be wasting time/mana/effort on exp they wouldn't get - with a few thin mobs as exceptions.

So on every mob that we kill in a group, I look at my cap and try to assess others' caps, whether we hit them or not. And when we cap, I wince at the amount of exp we do not get - and I/we do it so often, mostly by 5-20% - that it prompted me to write what I knew would have been hard received.

[*juggleblood*]

I'm sorry Taron, but you don't know what you're talking about with regard to the xp algorithm. It is a very blunt tool. And the thing that you are ignoring is that not all classes are the same, nor playstyle. Let's imagine a 250 hp point mob. It could be designed for a newbie warrior to hack down with his sword, or a supreme mage to blast down with a single bolt. Trust me when I say that the xp algorithm will end up cheating the newbie warrior. It is a BLUNT TOOL. Because it is a blunt tool, there exists an xp cap. The xp cap is the upward end of what a player deserves for any given kill. Then we designate another tier of cap for encounters with epic mobs, because it's understood that such mobs are much more of an ordeal. All mobs are imperfectly designed and all xp settings are imperfect because they are set up by player volunteers, i.e. builders.

I don't really think this system is up for debate, because I don't know what would replace it. I think I speak for all the admin when I say we aren't up for turning on nocap for all time.

Give me an idea of what days you want me to turn nocap on, and if you're announcing in advance that you're going to lead an open group that day, we can prolly accommodate that (turn it on manually for a day).

[Teron]

I did say that there were exceptions.

If you are saying that the exp algorithm doesn't work for all the mobs, then maybe it needs to be improved, no?
Interestingly, it boils down to the relation of damage/mana/hp of mobs and players again, as it does in eq stat values.

I'll take you up on your offer, but it won't be soon.

I guess I have hijacked the thread inadvertently - Gorka does have a few questions for you.

[*juggleblood*]

There is no such thing as a universal algorithm that doesn't take the player into account. Think about it, the amount of damage the mob done largely depends on how many rounds of combat it goes, which depends on the player character in question. This is why the xp system needs to be complex and why bonus xp scales with player level.

[Gorka]

There is no such thing as a universal algorithm

That's sad if that's true... That would mean everything must be maintained individually, and the bigger the mud grows, the bigger the maintenance tasks grow with it and the more burdened everyone becomes and the harder it becomes to change anything.

Hung is right ya know, I read his post from ages ago about sloth becoming open source... sloth needs to become a community project if it's to have a future because it needs a certain amount of modernization to become more maintainable and that work can't be achieved through a small team of overloaded immortals. Slothmud needs SQL abilities with managing Player/Mob/Area data and without this I think the game will die with this generation of players. This is kinda sad, we love this silly game.

[*juggleblood*]

I don't get what's so sad about. There is a system and it is working. Players just need to understand that the cap is part of what makes the game work and that its not somehow "stealing their xp". Also figuring out which mobs to kill is part of the game's strategy.

[Teron]

There is no such thing as a universal algorithm that doesn't take the player into account. Think about it, the amount of damage the mob done largely depends on how many rounds of combat it goes, which depends on the player character in question. This is why the xp system needs to be complex and why bonus xp scales with player level.

It also means that more people can kill a single mob faster - but they also share the exp with more people.
And if mob hp make a mob harder to get killed, then max hps need to be rewarded more.

If we look at it from a player standpoint, right now thick mobs give bad exp - and that's an objective reality, because it takes lots of time/effort to kill them, even if they do low/medium damage.

Of course, you could kill thick mobs for nocap, but it'd take lots of time to do it, reducing the exp/hr you get. It's essentially more efficient to do thin high damage mobs, which my runs and popular Lyme mobs prove.

So, perhaps you need to give more exp for mob hps, and that'd at least solve the issue of thick mobs being useless. Not sure how it'd help with the caps, though, I guess it'd only make us cap easier, but it'd also add many more mobs to our runs.

[*juggleblood*]

You ignore my main point. The issue is that all players are different. There is no objective measurement of how much experience any given mob is worth.

What is thin? What is thick? To Josiah a 1500 hp mob is relatively thin.

What about AC? It affects low level characters on a matter of scale differently than higher level players. And it doesn't really affect mages at all if they intend to blast it down. So how do you possibly factor AC into the algorithm if it's going to be universal?

If you philosophize about it long enuff, as I have over the past 10 years or so, you will realize that experience is supposed to represent challenge / effort, which is always relative to the player in question. So maybe one day we'll have a sophisticated AI that can act as dungeon master and decide how much experience the player really deserves. But in the mean time, the best we can do is say, the experience for any given encounter with a mob will fall within such and such range, i.e. between zero and your exp cap. And then we have the builders who have the ability to play around with their mobs and manually adjust xp a bit and admin who can adjust on a somewhat wider scale. It is a pragmatic system, born of necessity, and I wish you could see that.

The xp algorithm will definitely not be tweaked. Firstly, because that would change how the builders zones play, without consenting them. Secondly, it wouldn't help address the issue of relativity. It would be an attempt at the impossible. Xp values don't exist objectively. I can't repeat that enuff times.

[Teron]

1. Of course we need to take into account how hard it is to kill mobs.

A thick mob has several times more hps, than a thin mob of the same exp.

However, when you compare Josiah to a 3x40, do remember that Josiah spent hours and hours (years, in fact) to get to 9x40 and buy all the damage, earn drachma and buy the drachma eq.

If he can kill a 1500hp mob in a few rounds, then he earned this. Same with Cizin, who can splork a 15mil mob. They also need billions of exp to gain improvements, though.

Mob hp, damage, hitroll, ac, a number of players are all numbers - so you can create a balanced algorithm, provided you want to define a math problem and solve it, rather than relying on a crutch that the cap is.

I'm not saying it's easy - there are many factors, but if we think long and hard, it's possible to account for most of the factors and make the exp algo more objective. After all, someone did estimate how much exp each proc gives, which factors did he take into account?

2. AC is what it is. If you bring mages into this, compare mirror image to parry, aerial servant or shield of thorns. It's still a math problem. However, you can keep it simple and accept the advantage(?) mages get in gaining exp for using their prime skills.

3. I'll think more about how to relate this relativity, but to me, it's all a math problem that can be solved. After all, algorithms are written by humans, and can be adjusted as well.

I don't think you found many objections from builders to change the backend for creating mobs/procs and such, why would they object to a more objective exp algorithm that wouldn't rely on cap to work? If anything, increasing exp for more hps would add a bit of exp to all mobs, not just thick mobs.

[Gorka]

Give up Taron You keep coming back for more... You only have to read the tone of JB's many replies to know that arguing with the content is futile. I think I made a strong point, we have a conflict in bonuses and caps in xp calculations... it's simply the truth.

I get where you are coming from, you see the problems, you see the path to improvement, you see how better things can be, you can even detail how we all get there... but at the end of the day people don't want to follow. I understand your frustration, because the assumption is we follow logic, and logic follows the way of efficiency.

At my work, I designed a system for calculating sales and cost prices using a single core formula, despite the fact our products and services are completely unrelated and with different calculations and attributes. I know it can be done... how maintainable it would make updating every mob... but at the end of the day, even with the best intentions, plans and ideas we are not in charge of other people's decisions.

Not many days pass in my own life, where I feel myself trying to swallow this truth.

[*juggleblood*]

Wow Gorka/Taron. This is not hard to understand. There is no conflict between those two things at all. They are complementary. And no, YOU CAN NOT MAKE A MEANINGFUL UNIVERSAL XP ALGORITHM BECAUSE THE PLAYERS ARE SO VASTLY DIFFERENT. You and Taron both just keep disregarding everything I am explaining to you and come back and say "Nuh-uh". At this point please just drop it. Cuz you are going to continue to resist understanding and it's not up for debate anyway.

[*Splork*]

At my work, I designed a system for calculating sales and cost prices using a single core formula, despite the fact our products and services are completely unrelated and with different calculations and attributes. I know it can be done... how maintainable it would make updating every mob... but at the end of the day, even with the best intentions, plans and ideas we are not in charge of other people's decisions.

I think things are getting a bit confused here. We do have a core function which calculates the experience of mobs. We also have several ways to adjust said results...

That formula has been tweaked dozens of times by dozens of people over the years with similar results.

As JB said, it's not something we are looking to alter at this time, as the results will piss off as many people as it appeases.

[Teron]

JB, for the sake of enlightment, care to clarify, where you can't analyze different players with numbers? Can you give an example? If we don't understand it, surely we need something more, than the same thing repeated in CAPS.

Thanks.

Also, we aren't assuming that players of vastly different levels will be killing the same mobs, are we?

[*juggleblood*]

Maybe this is better:

There is no algorithm we could write which would accurately assess the proper reward from any mob to any player.

When you write one, post it here for debate.

[Teron]

I did think about what you wrote above.

Firstly, I thought you meant players ac, because incoming damage depends on it, not mob AC. But even then, players ac matters too (or whether the mob splorks). I understand this , but this is where we need to take additional median data about players and factor it in, depending on playstyles for the mobs.

Secondly, the longer the mob lasts, the more chances it has to hit players, to proc and such. It means that hp needs to scale all the other procs, not just with hp/damage (ie, hps need not to add to the total exp, but to multiply all the other stats). I wonder if this is why hp doesn't give lots of exp at the moment.

Yes, I'll think more about the algorithm.