Kill History vs Bonus Experience

[Josiah]

I would love if xp caps were removed from the game!

Currently my optimal xp run is solo, and it involves killing the entire continent of lyme, and a few off-lyme areas, and then calling it a day.

Aged xp factors fairly heavily into that strategy. I don't have to worry about which areas are best, because aged xp makes lesser areas better than ever repeating a zone.

Without caps, I'd have a whole new world to explore. Maybe I could find a small group composition that is better than soloing. Maybe soloing new areas like tomb of the forever king or matterhorn on bh day would be comparable to lyme xp. Maybe a bard and I could make a killing in kara'sa.

I've enjoyed very much the altered playstyle on nocap days.

I'm unconvinced that caps achieve any worthwhile purpose, except for the lowest level players. It would breathe new life into the game and open the world up if they were removed.

And lyme grip/stab/blast would still probably be the best xp in the game. There would just be interesting competition.

[Filk]

I agree with Josiah.
I dont know any mobs thats load so much exp and easy to kill at same time to be better then simple fast stab run.
Most biggies we kill are for eq. And thats 1-2 mobs for same 5-10 mins run and 50-100mils of exp. With way higher risk and efforts.
Thats speaking about 9x40 for sure. I see why caps needed at low levels. But when coming to the top - they change nothing in terms of xp runing.
So maybe formula of cap should be tweaked a bit, to be same at lower and mid end, but almost non-exist at the top.

Though speaking by true, that will not change anything for me - i will only run biggies for eq anyway, just will get more exp for them. And that will be way less exp then my usual exp run.

[*juggleblood*]

You don't think small groups would start coming into conflict over who gets to kill the ice mobs in Saurian Frontier over and over again? Crazy easy nocap exp for a few avatars.

Well, we could try to balance it out better you might say, so it's not such an outlier, we could dial down the vulnerability to ice, or apply a negative xp multiplier.

But who is going to be charge of watching over outliers like this? Not me.

When this becomes the dominant style of xping on the mud, who is going to want to go back to large groups? Are these nocap groups going to be very inviting? I doubt it.

If we had some particular admin who was keen on doing this and was dedicated to do all the balancing required to keep things in check, maybe it could be done. But this is not the case.

[Gorka]

It's like the system "created" outliers...
Now we can't change the system because of outliers...

It's a tangled mess. It shouldn't be that you can kill smaller mobs for less effort and therefore more xp, than big mobs. Mobs should be worth what they are worth.

Caps and bonus xp should go. The system needs straightening. These systems are fighting each other and have caused outliers, now we need more outliers to make the system work?

The longer the mud continues with this way, the more outliers that get made, which in turn make the mud harder to change. It's a no win.

We appreciate the work of the immortals, but just expressing our concerns, it's like we've backed ourselves into a corner here.

[*Splork*]

The current experience function is hundreds of lines of code which takes into account everything from a mob's total attacks, damage they do, procs the mobs have(dif procs have dif exp bonuses), hitroll, hit points, armor class, bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah bleah...


This function has been continually adjusted for the past 25 years in order to give us the result we desire. Any change to simplify this function to a few lines of code would have drastic effects on every mob, area, and continent in-game. Unless one of our programmers finds a needle in a haystack, there is not one algorithm which would closely match up to our current mob values. I completely understand that it's possible to come up with AN equation and we have done so in the past, just not anything we felt comfortable with. No system would be perfect though which is why having room/area bonuses, mob bonuses, etc, would always be needed.

I'll be honest, I am perfectly fine with removing the current equation and trying to come up with something. Just like I was fine with coming up with a universal algorithm for all skill based damage based on class order and other variables or the idea of a point eq system(Teker). Changes like these normally alienate at least half our player base, if not more which is why they are normally done with a pwipe I think we all hate the idea of caps(eq, exp, etc_ and wish the game was balanced without needing them, that is not currently the case though. Caps were the quick and easy solution to many huge issues...

There are two major changes on the lines of these which come to mind and went in-game as configs so they could be turned on and off until we felt comfortable with our adjustments(not including the addition of 4 new classes); new armor class system based on tenths rather than whole numbers, new timing system from tics to continual. Both systems were eventually adopted with player input and are live today. Both changes changed our game drastically, way more than we ever anticipated and were done when we had probably 10 active Immortals and 4-5 active coders.

[cyprimus]

Just a few observations...

taron- you get exp for damaging mobs ... so mob hp do factor in work exp, just not as much in the kill award.

Stab mobs being the best exp.... riiight.. thats why we are all playing active thieves!

Hand damage/grip mobs... yep, massive exp.. no practical cap.... problem? You saying we should cap it?


Cy never leveled from lyme solo.... could not solo lyme till max avvie. Primal did a good mix of lyme and off lyme.. Ip leveled same as primal mostly till max avvie boosters.. Paka... i play on lyme mostly, but could do well off lyme too..

Each classo seems to level completely different.... but i always end up on lyme now due to lazy leaderin!

Also:

No history day-Avoid lyme.. lol

No cap day- avoid anything i may wanna hit!... please?..p

I personally would prefer to see more exp from work than from just being in a group for kill... but i am fine with it as is now.

Also, can anyone present the fomulas for exp from work exp? healing raising damaging .. debuffs... etc..?


well, my two cents.. thanks!

[Filk]

Shrugs. Noone speaks bad about exp formula i guess.
Kill history and aged exp each doing its own purpose to move ppl around the areas. Fine with it
Only the caps breaks out of the logic.

And since we ALREADY have no cap days, do you really see some drastical changes during them? A lot of small groups dominating dinos? Dont laugh my shoes. We barely have ppl to lead anything 2 times a week now.
So no real changes are needed in code. Just put that nocap setting up on each server start and check what will changes. If we will see some negative result, it only will be required to disable setting off.

As for me - i dont care about caps, or bonuses, or kill history. Everything is fine and playble. But reasons to not remove caps seems irrelevant to me.

[Teron]

Cyprimus,

1. Work exp is negligible, because it's damage*moblevel*randomizer. It doesn't take into account anything but hps and mob level.

2. Nowhere did I say that splork mobs needed to be caps - reread what I wrote.

I simply meant that hp needs to multiply the bonus of all the other factors, because they only work, when there's a round. Anything that fights for a round or two, like the massive black dog, needs to give more exp - not just because it hits 700/round.

3. There have been plenty of groups this past year, and even more groups now that Splork has fixed the chop rate on Lyme.

JB,
I understand that there are many factors, but could you say, whether hps add to (+) or multiply (*) mob exp right now?

If you say that plenty of mobs were fixed with bonuses, then it *is* a mess. I see that an immort would have to look over most major mobs/areas and adjust exp bonuses, if the new algo would increase exp. It's a big task that would indeed require mob knowledge and lots of work.

Without the cap, the algo would take into account the damage multiplier and reduce dino exp accordingly. Though to keep the mob exp on level with the rest of the area, they'd have to be made thicker.

Right now, on nocap days, it's only worth 3-5manning ice dinos w/o a mage, and 2-3manning with a mage. I don't do it often for the lack of mages, but I see little competition there. 5 men wouldn't reach a cap without exp bonuses, and wouldn't cap on a fresh mob with bonuses. And then kill history kicks in noticeably.

So while it looks bad to you in terms of caps, players don't really cap much without mages and there's only a few of them. Though I do see that they would even be more popular w/o the caps.

The way I see it, someone needs to identify various use cases for mob kills for algo and for nocap killings, so that it'd be easier to find solutions for each of them.