Poll: XP Modification

[Calodan]

I never seen the spam tekst you describe :s
Any way it seems some options are missing out to vote on like more xp for all kills and rp xp ticks.

They had to narrow down the options because they are discussing what is the fix. I believe if Chad is putting up a poll then there is a discussion happening on what to do. Not if we do it. So now what does the server believe is the biggest issue? So far the poll shows that the server believes that a weekly bonus pool that doubles XP until gone and that epic spawns giving more XP are what is needed. They are neck in neck. Either one seems feasible to me however in my personal belief the XP pool will pretty much make it all better for the peeps who do not have much time. Also it means we do not accelerate things too fast at first. ALl we would be doing is making an already given XP more available to everyone doing what they want rather than the few who have no souls to quest for it. The Epic Spawns might speed things up for grinders and not really affect or effect the people with little time much since they still have to kill tons of monsters that way. With the XP pool you do what you want. Fishing, Campfire stories, killing whatever ticks off XP will get that reward that the server already has in existence but we want it to be more accessible. IF that makes any sense to everyone.

[aaron22]

if the quest xp is granted weekly as a bonus that is given, should then the xp from the weekly's be removed. i am seeing everyone who does quests for xp, still doing the quests for xp even if the quest xp is doubly granted as a bonus. those that feel the questing for xp is wasting valuable RP/adventure time will still do the quests because the xp is advantageous for them to do.

i do not do quests regularly for xp. so i am not inside this group, but i do know that if i was given (x)gold and (x)random items to replace what i do on my loot runs, i would still do the loot runs and just get 2(x)gold an 2(x)random items. that would be advantageous to me.

[Calodan]

if the quest xp is granted weekly as a bonus that is given, should then the xp from the weekly's be removed. i am seeing everyone who does quests for xp, still doing the quests for xp even if the quest xp is doubly granted as a bonus. those that feel the questing for xp is wasting valuable RP/adventure time will still do the quests because the xp is advantageous for them to do.

i do not do quests regularly for xp. so i am not inside this group, but i do know that if i was given (x)gold and (x)random items to replace what i do on my loot runs, i would still do the loot runs and just get 2(x)gold an 2(x)random items. that would be advantageous to me.

I would agree on this. The idea is to re-locate the XP from those in my mind. Not to shut down the quests completely. There are people who do those for Gold and that is fair to keep that part for them.

[dzidek1983]

if the quest xp is granted weekly as a bonus that is given, should then the xp from the weekly's be removed. i am seeing everyone who does quests for xp, still doing the quests for xp even if the quest xp is doubly granted as a bonus. those that feel the questing for xp is wasting valuable RP/adventure time will still do the quests because the xp is advantageous for them to do.

i do not do quests regularly for xp. so i am not inside this group, but i do know that if i was given (x)gold and (x)random items to replace what i do on my loot runs, i would still do the loot runs and just get 2(x)gold an 2(x)random items. that would be advantageous to me.

I would agree on this. The idea is to re-locate the XP from those in my mind. Not to shut down the quests completely. There are people who do those for Gold and that is fair to keep that part for them.

I agree with this.

[chad878262]

Ok, I'd like to clear up a couple things just to make sure expectations don't get too high.

1. While there have been and continue to be discussions in QC, this poll is something I am interested in and is not a 'staff poll'. While I, personally would like to see some change implemented, that does not mean the majority of QC or DM's or any other staff would. I can't speak for them, nor would I presume to know their beliefs on this or any other subject.

2. Regarding the question on the bonus XP pool, I can only speak to how I envision it, but it would look something like this. Every PC starts off each week with a incrementally increasing pool of up to 10,000 XP (2,000 XP from 1-3, 3K 4-6, 4K 7-9, 6K 10-12, 8K 13-14, 10K 15+ as an example). Questing still gives XP, but it draws from this pool. Until the pool is empty everything each PC does gives double XP (except quests remain the same). The point of such a system is that it does not increase the XP gain AT ALL. However, it does allow players to earn the weekly Quest XP while doing whatever they enjoy doing. If you like campfire XP, go for it, you earn double. Grinding, sure, double. Adventure RP with buddies, double! Running quests? Hey, no change, you are still getting your XP! This would speed up leveling for folks who do not like running quests a bit, but it really would only catch them up with those that do spend the time to run quests every week. It would also help the Underdark players who don't have as many areas to explore, don't have as much available quest XP and in epics don't really have an area to earn decent XP gains. So to put it clearly, the system would not increase XP potential, but it would allow XP to be earned playing on the server the way you want to play anyway. The argument against this is calling it 'free' XP, but I disagree with that. I think it is removing a tax on players time, as in if you want to level in epics, you must pay 3 1/2 hours per week or level up about once per 15-20 hours of play time or more (for me that equates to 3-5 weeks on average). Some players do like the quest so I wouldn't want to remove that as an option for XP, but the idea is that you have a 10K bonus cap, so if you gain 8,500 XP doing quests and you get another 1,500 XP while running them from monster kills, opening chests and RP, then your weekly bank is empty, all future XP gains for the week will be normal/not doubled.

[Sun Wukong]

2. Regarding the question on the bonus XP pool, I can only speak to how I envision it, but it would look something like this. Every PC starts off each week with a incrementally increasing pool of up to 10,000 XP (2,000 XP from 1-3, 3K 4-6, 4K 7-9, 6K 10-12, 8K 13-14, 10K 15+ as an example). Questing still gives XP, but it draws from this pool. Until the pool is empty everything each PC does gives double XP (except quests remain the same). The point of such a system is that it does not increase the XP gain AT ALL. However, it does allow players to earn the weekly Quest XP while doing whatever they enjoy doing. If you like campfire XP, go for it, you earn double. Grinding, sure, double. Adventure RP with buddies, double! Running quests? Hey, no change, you are still getting your XP! This would speed up leveling for folks who do not like running quests a bit, but it really would only catch them up with those that do spend the time to run quests every week. It would also help the Underdark players who don't have as many areas to explore, don't have as much available quest XP and in epics don't really have an area to earn decent XP gains. So to put it clearly, the system would not increase XP potential, but it would allow XP to be earned playing on the server the way you want to play anyway. The argument against this is calling it 'free' XP, but I disagree with that. I think it is removing a tax on players time, as in if you want to level in epics, you must pay 3 1/2 hours per week or level up about once per 15-20 hours of play time or more (for me that equates to 3-5 weeks on average). Some players do like the quest so I wouldn't want to remove that as an option for XP, but the idea is that you have a 10K bonus cap, so if you gain 8,500 XP doing quests and you get another 1,500 XP while running them from monster kills, opening chests and RP, then your weekly bank is empty, all future XP gains for the week will be normal/not doubled.

How would this work out in your system:

I start a brand new character and head to the bandit cave to kill enough bandits to claim the initial 2k experience bank. Will I be able to get experience points from doing quests, or do I have to wait for a week?

Another example, I create a character with access to the invisibility spell that opens up a lot of quests at early levels, etc. Will this experience bank limit how many quests I can do per week?

[dzidek1983]

I really like your proposition in nr 2. Both my hands up for this.

[Calodan]

Ok, I'd like to clear up a couple things just to make sure expectations don't get too high.

1. While there have been and continue to be discussions in QC, this poll is something I am interested in and is not a 'staff poll'. While I, personally would like to see some change implemented, that does not mean the majority of QC or DM's or any other staff would. I can't speak for them, nor would I presume to know their beliefs on this or any other subject.

2. Regarding the question on the bonus XP pool, I can only speak to how I envision it, but it would look something like this. Every PC starts off each week with a incrementally increasing pool of up to 10,000 XP (2,000 XP from 1-3, 3K 4-6, 4K 7-9, 6K 10-12, 8K 13-14, 10K 15+ as an example). Questing still gives XP, but it draws from this pool. Until the pool is empty everything each PC does gives double XP (except quests remain the same). The point of such a system is that it does not increase the XP gain AT ALL. However, it does allow players to earn the weekly Quest XP while doing whatever they enjoy doing. If you like campfire XP, go for it, you earn double. Grinding, sure, double. Adventure RP with buddies, double! Running quests? Hey, no change, you are still getting your XP! This would speed up leveling for folks who do not like running quests a bit, but it really would only catch them up with those that do spend the time to run quests every week. It would also help the Underdark players who don't have as many areas to explore, don't have as much available quest XP and in epics don't really have an area to earn decent XP gains. So to put it clearly, the system would not increase XP potential, but it would allow XP to be earned playing on the server the way you want to play anyway. The argument against this is calling it 'free' XP, but I disagree with that. I think it is removing a tax on players time, as in if you want to level in epics, you must pay 3 1/2 hours per week or level up about once per 15-20 hours of play time or more (for me that equates to 3-5 weeks on average). Some players do like the quest so I wouldn't want to remove that as an option for XP, but the idea is that you have a 10K bonus cap, so if you gain 8,500 XP doing quests and you get another 1,500 XP while running them from monster kills, opening chests and RP, then your weekly bank is empty, all future XP gains for the week will be normal/not doubled.

Hey man fair enough! As usual we speak for ourselves. QC and DMs included!

I would like to point out to the staff though that telling people the squeaky wheel gets the grease on NERF things and then ignoring that ideal for this would be hypocritical at best. It quite clear the player base is squeaking on this quite a bit and not doing something would be a perceived slap to the face of the player base at this point. Not directed at you directly as person Chad. I also love the staff here currently and the player base. I just say it like I see it.

This has been a topic of conversation from the player base at times since before Luna left. I know that myself and Neginfinity started multiple threads on this multiple times. At the time we felt we had a good reason and it was always talked about but never gained traction. I think the polls that have been run over the last few weeks on the matter have indeed shown that we were right and should have got more traction on it from the server staff.

As for the way Chad sees the system. I think that is world's ahead of what we envisioned and really solves the issue that always stopped this before and that was WHAT ABOUT THE ONES WHO LIKE QUESTING FOR XP? The way he has envisioned it pretty much does exactly what others like myself are trying to get done. Please stop forcing all of us to do quests for that XP! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! How much begging I got to do here?

[chad878262]

How would this work out in your system:

I start a brand new character and head to the bandit cave to kill enough bandits to claim the initial 2k experience bank. Will I be able to get experience points from doing quests, or do I have to wait for a week?

Your bank is empty, you won't gain quest XP, but will still get any monetary or item rewards. The bank would simply be something that quests, RP, fishing and kills draws from as you play. So, if you have a 2K bank and get an RP XP of 20, you instead get 40 and now your bank has 1,980 XP left in it. Complete a quest for 200 XP you don't get double, and the 200 XP brings that bank down to 1,780 for the week.

Another example, I create a character with access to the invisibility spell that opens up a lot of quests at early levels, etc. Will this experience bank limit how many quests I can do per week?

Yes. Your bank expands as you level. While not a required aspect it's kind of silly for a character at level 1-4 to be able to immediately gain an extra 10,000 XP. At the lower levels, the additional XP is less necessary as leveling is at a good pace anyway. In a perfect world you would actually do each quest once and that would 'unlock' the weekly bonus pool from that quest, so you would build up your pool by completing each quest 1 time. However, that would maintain the current discrepancy between surface in UD since UD toons could only unlock a little over half of the bonus pool that surfacers could unlock.


As I said, this is only how I envision such a bank/pool to work. Doesn't mean it's how it would end up looking.


*punches Calodan, just because*

[K'yon Oblodra]

I like it.

What I find strange is that some people seem to generalize RP xp to sitting around a camp fire only talking. While my RP experiences usually happen wherever I meet people and are often just accompanying what we were doing anyhow or they are rituals like gaining ranks in an organization by passing tests.

These things often give like 100xp in like 30 minutes or an hour while just beating down the same monster over and over again gives the same amount of xp in like 5 minutes.

I think that is a bad thing it just leads to more grinding and less Rping or maybe to people that start Rping once they hit level 30.

Would really like to see something done in that regard, the xp pool is already very cool as I think doing quests over and over again is just as ridiculous as killing the same monster a gazillion times.

I don't mind people repeatedly doing the quests I just don't like doing it myself cause it's just dull.

How would this work out in your system:

I start a brand new character and head to the bandit cave to kill enough bandits to claim the initial 2k experience bank. Will I be able to get experience points from doing quests, or do I have to wait for a week?

Your bank is empty, you won't gain quest XP, but will still get any monetary or item rewards. The bank would simply be something that quests, RP, fishing and kills draws from as you play. So, if you have a 2K bank and get an RP XP of 20, you instead get 40 and now your bank has 1,980 XP left in it. Complete a quest for 200 XP you don't get double, and the 200 XP brings that bank down to 1,780 for the week.

Another example, I create a character with access to the invisibility spell that opens up a lot of quests at early levels, etc. Will this experience bank limit how many quests I can do per week?

Yes. Your bank expands as you level. While not a required aspect it's kind of silly for a character at level 1-4 to be able to immediately gain an extra 10,000 XP. At the lower levels, the additional XP is less necessary as leveling is at a good pace anyway. In a perfect world you would actually do each quest once and that would 'unlock' the weekly bonus pool from that quest, so you would build up your pool by completing each quest 1 time. However, that would maintain the current discrepancy between surface in UD since UD toons could only unlock a little over half of the bonus pool that surfacers could unlock.


As I said, this is only how I envision such a bank/pool to work. Doesn't mean it's how it would end up looking.


*punches Calodan, just because*

[Calodan]

*punches Calodan, just because*

Runs off to tell Chad's mom he is bullying him......

Just to re-iterate. I love this place and the people who run it!

Hidden: show

Chad is not a person running this server.....

[Sun Wukong]

As I said, this is only how I envision such a bank/pool to work. Doesn't mean it's how it would end up looking.

Have you thought about its implementation? For example, if a character reaches level 4 during the first week, will they gain +1k bank experience on that level up or are they stuck with nothing until the start of the new week?

Would the quests retain their weekly limitations? I imagine that it would be relatively easy to loose track of how much quest experience you have left in the bank, and thus you could do a quest and get nothing out of it - you tend to get a little bit more experience by turning down the quest rewards. Not to mention how there are builds that can only rely on quests to level up certain level ranges. For example, a sorcerer that has not properly planned out what spells to swap out on level up. More specifically, I actually have a sorcerer/gish that is literally useless without a party until level 10, and becomes useless again nearer to epics and useful again on level 22.

Additionally, if the amount of quest experience is capped based on bank experience, why not make the repeatable quests reset daily? Instead of having to grind through several of them you could just do one or two per day and go see what else is going on with the server. I do not know about you, but for me that would be a genuinely beneficial change. I tend to grind quests and after that 1.5-3.5 hours I am just too tired. I turn down requests to party up and cannot find enough interest to heed the only RP that I actually like on the server - random adventurers meeting up.

Now, I have to admit, if the quest experience limitation was reduced to a day then I would most likely end up killing Puddleboots almost every single day or something like that. From Nexus to Soubar, Soubar to the bridge, and back to Soubar is just 3 transitions and it could be done fast for 750 experience points, ten minutes tops even with super long transition times, which means that I would still have 50 minutes left out of a spare hour without being lobotomised by the quest grind.

Edit: just saying, if the quest experience becomes capped with a bank experience pool, there really is no reason to maintain the weekly quest limits.

Let people help farmers whenever they log in to Eastern Farmlands, or just hunt for orc heads if that is what they fancy, or run errands from Nashkel and back.

[chad878262]

Have you thought about its implementation? For example, if a character reaches level 4 during the first week, will they gain +1k bank experience on that level up or are they stuck with nothing until the start of the new week?

From an implementation standpoint and an exploit standpoint my guess is the simplest and most likely implementation would be that whatever level you are at the start of the week, that is what your bonus XP pool is based on. You would not gain an additional pool mid-week by leveling up to the next tier.

Would the quests retain their weekly limitations? I imagine that it would be relatively easy to loose track of how much quest experience you have left in the bank, and thus you could do a quest and get nothing out of it - you tend to get a little bit more experience by turning down the quest rewards. Not to mention how there are builds that can only rely on quests to level up certain level ranges. For example, a sorcerer that has not properly planned out what spells to swap out on level up. More specifically, I actually have a sorcerer/gish that is literally useless without a party until level 10, and becomes useless again nearer to epics and useful again on level 22.

There are potential issues that would come along with allowing quests to be done more often so in the interest of a faster implementation I would want to leave quests untouched other than the mechanic to check against the XP pool and only award XP that is available in the pool.

I am all for letting players play the game however they enjoy it most. If that is logging in only to run quests, go for it. However, I would say it would need to be a change reviewed on it's own merit only if and after such a change as XP pool was implemented.

With regard to your question about knowing the value of your XP bank, other implementations of similar systems have populated a message in the combat log saying "you have XXX XP remaining in your pool" or something to that effect so I would envision every time you gain XP you get a message saying "You gain 200 quest XP <next line> you have XXXX bonus XP remaining" or "creature killed, 40 XP <next line> 40 bonus XP awared <next line> you have XXXX bonus XP remaining"

With the above kind of messages the player should have plenty opportunity to know before accepting the reward on a quest.

[Calodan]

There are potential issues that would come along with allowing quests to be done more often so in the interest of a faster implementation I would want to leave quests untouched other than the mechanic to check against the XP pool and only award XP that is available in the pool.

I am all for letting players play the game however they enjoy it most. If that is logging in only to run quests, go for it. However, I would say it would need to be a change reviewed on it's own merit only if and after such a change as XP pool was implemented.

With regard to your question about knowing the value of your XP bank, other implementations of similar systems have populated a message in the combat log saying "you have XXX XP remaining in your pool" or something to that effect so I would envision every time you gain XP you get a message saying "You gain 200 quest XP <next line> you have XXXX bonus XP remaining" or "creature killed, 40 XP <next line> 40 bonus XP awared <next line> you have XXXX bonus XP remaining"

With the above kind of messages the player should have plenty opportunity to know before accepting the reward on a quest

There is the option of adding a widget to the Character options or a granted feat that when used it tells you how much is left. Probably the easiest way is a activated Feat. Which could also serve as a way to reset the damn bugged feats like Expose weakness and such......

[Sun Wukong]

There are potential issues that would come along with allowing quests to be done more often so in the interest of a faster implementation I would want to leave quests untouched other than the mechanic to check against the XP pool and only award XP that is available in the pool.

All that I can think of is someone doing quests in order to pile up on gold, which they could do faster by just running through low level dungeons and emptying every chest they encounter. A handful of +1 items nets you more gold than what you can scrounge up from the quests that require you to run back and forth along the server - a simple loot run is just about clearing areas and stopping to sell your goods.