JB,1. I'm almost sure algorithm works okay for melee attacks, unless attempted to get tricked with high damage/low hitroll, but with the new AC engine it almost doesn't happen, really.
With mobhp and melee attacks, the progression is linear: mob hp/damage/hit are to be dealt with players' mana/damage. The thicker the mob, the harder it is to kill it - it's pretty obvious, isn't it?
Let me give you a few other examples.
a) You want to kill Aalkrost for the ring.
You make corpses, animate undeads, buff them, spend all your mana to kill him, and he gives you 13mil exp. Except your cap is 8mil, so that's what you get.
Aalkrost isn't an easy mob that anyone would farm for exp, it's an eq mob. It is also above your cap, but you only get your cap. It could be any eq mob you can solo: gildervine in arboretum, the chaos elemental, the balor demon or any other large mob you can solo with mare.
How is this fair?
b) A group of 5 comes to kill ankylosauruses.
They blast them to pieces, and since it's an Island day, they go to kill dimetrodons.
But dimetrodons are thick, and they spend time chopping the dinos.
Thanks to the age and bonuses, dimetrodon gives you 11mil, but your cap is 8mil.
So, while you spend so much time and mana on a thick mob, you don't get the full exp for it.
c) A group of 10 comes to Mount Mordin for exp.
They clean the area, cap slightly on wolves, and go to the avatar of Ithaqua.
It's a thick mob, so it takes more time and mana to kill it.
They kill him, and you get 15mil exp, but really, you only get 8mil.
An avatar of Ithaqua and a white wolf are different mobs, yet you get the same exp for them.
These mobs are not what you'd cycle for nocap exp - they take effort to kill, but you don't get full exp for them.
Why is it acceptable?
2. I understand that nocap would make people switch to lower effort/high exp mobs, but they already do kill similar mobs within their caps.
Even if there are some outliers, I'm sure removing caps would yield more exp, than we'd lose if you fix the outliers.
But the net result would still be more exp, obviously. Isn't more exp what the aged exp, bonus exp, continental/extra bonuses are made for?
Xerxes was definitely an outlier, because it provided astronomical exp for the effort. It was 400-600mil, irrc, so everyone got lots of exp from chopping for 2 minutes.
This is very different from a standard group of 7 killing 30-50mil mobs offlyme.
What if you add 1mil to the cap for every group member? Practically, that'd remove caps in groups with 5-10 people. Clearly that'd encourage people to group for nocap exp.3. As I said earlier, group cap is a good estimate, whether the group can handle the area well and not spend the mana quickly.
Without nocap, we'd get maybe 5-15% more exp from the same mobs, rather than start doing 50-60mil mobs 2-3man - I assume Lyme will still have nocap because of chop mobs.
4. You say that no one wants to nerf outlier mobs, but what about being an immort that'd remove exp caps? Surely that'd be awesome.
However, nothing is just joy, so the same immort would have to nerf the outlier mobs to make experience even. Such is life, really, anyone who wouldn't expect that would be naive.
5. Can you give me examples of mobs, which were made above cap to accomodate an immortal's idea?
Gorka,From what I remember, aged exp was *added*, it wasn't a nerf.
Splork,No one is trying to bait you. I try to get a discussion going about my suggestions, so we can find a solution that solves a problem. Especially that you make major decisions, no agreement or even a discussion with you means nothing will change.
You said:
Splork wrote:I also think the time it takes for mobs to fully age should be much longer, that would encourage more movement of players...
but then you don't explain this logic that contradicts what I'm seeing in the game: groups already don't kill the same areas in the same day, unless it's Lyme.