suggestion for lower level grouping

[zenoko]

with groups being based on total levels, finding a group before level 40 can be hard and heres why i think it is

consider yourself to be a 1x20 with no other levels than 20 in your prime level you finally get a group with someone but he has 4 classes at level 20 and hes also level 20

the person with 4x20 levels would receive a substantial amount more in exp per kill and the person with 1x20 would basically receive almost nothing since he has basically 4 times more levels than you

as another example lets say your around level 35 with all other classes up to your quad class to level 15(total level 80) and nothing else and you group with a level 30 who has level 25 classes up to quad and 5 in each after quad (total 125) the level 30 has 46% more levels than you do so he will gain much more exp despite being level 30

as my examples sound silly i would like to show real life examples on the who list on people differentiating in total levels but have the same or higher prime levels



prescience a level 20 has 101 total levels (not that far from the level 30 in my example) grouping with umaro at 61 total levels there is roughly a 40% difference in levels

and if you group prescience up with a level 38 zenoko (total level 91) youll notice prescience actually gains MORE although not a huge amount more exp than zenoko despite zenoko being a level 38


some people may ask "why not just get your sponge levels and close the gap?"

some classes like mage druid and necro i think (just me) would want to rush their prime levels to get the biggest nuke(mage), get the best shapeshift form(druid) more summons/also more powerful ones(necro) and while they do this their other levels become skimpy causing others their level (and sometimes lower) to out exp them in groups to a point where soloing is a lot better than grouping
people have tend to also blatantly rush their levels for a skill/spell (like stone skin,sanctuary,circle, etc) forgetting all other levels

what i suggest to do (and this can be debated) is
-base the grouping exp formula on prime levels for everyone whos not a level 40 prime or higher to encourage lower levels to group with others at similar prime levels but much higher total levels while keeping the group exp formula after level 40 prime as total levels

[Dragoth]

I believe what the developers were thinking - the exp should be distributed equally according to the person's requirement for EXP and his contribution tp the group.
IF you do what you have said, then anyone who is below 40 will share the same EXP (which i believed used to be the case before anyway) and if you are for example 39 prime/37 secondary, you will receive the same exp as 39/20 which would be unfair, since 39/38 needs a lot more exp to level and will probably have contributed much more to the actual fight.

However, what i will agree with you on, is that despite having a lot of thought in it - The group EXP formula calculator NEEDS to be changed to reward smaller groups.

The crucial thing here, is that there is absolutely no need for for people to REDUCE exp they get from the mob when they form small groups, this is the devil which stops people from grouping altogether.

Almost every game has now gone away from the model of split/shared exp:
I understand that the idea is that me + another person can kill a bigger mob than me alone and hence get more exp to share around. HOWEVER, most of the times, this is impossible to achieve and with the introduction of necromancer class and undead pets being what they are today (stealing group exp), they are not used in groups, as a result: When you try to form a 2-man or a 3-man group, you are not actually gaining the full power of another player, you are gaining his power MINUS the loss of the power of your undeads, which sometimes can even be greater than the powers of the player that you just added AND on top of that, the exp of the mob you killed is reduced by the share of that other player, which just outright kills the idea of grouping for exp.

This needs to be given some serious thought and not just for the sake of low level groups, but for the sake of all the smallish groups.