We are doing some updates to the XP system to increase incentives for killing monsters, and to make it a little less confusing. This all ties into a series of changes to make running past large numbers of encounters a less desirable behavior because of what it does to our servers due to pathing costs.
Changes:
1. Bravery Bonus is being renamed Delving Bonus. (this is mostly so people coming back to the game don't still think they need to worry about streaks, which came up a bit when we tried to talk about this to our surprise....).
2. The "First Time" bonus that appears per difficulty is being removed and its value is being absorbed into Conquest and the Delving bonus. It was redundant, a bit confusing and we need the numbers elsewhere.
Details Below:
First Time bonus Changes - These bonus are being absorbed by other bonus types.
Difficulty | XP Bonus | In New System |
Solo, Casual, Normal, Hard | 20% | Move to Conquest |
Elite | 45% | Move to Conquest |
Reaper* | 95% | Move to Conquest & new Bravery aka Delving tier |
DELVING = BRAVERY BONUS
Increase Delving Bonus by adding a Reaper Tier
New Delving Bonus 50% on Reaper so...
Hard 50% Bonus
Elite 100% Bonus
Reaper 150% Bonus
Uses the same logic as bravery bonus did before meaning if you play on hard then elite you'll only get a 50% bonus for reaper, or if you JUST played on hard and then reaper the bonus would be 100%. Playing reaper from the get go would be 150%.
Conquest Updates - Conquest bonus now scales with difficulty some and is a larger bonus.
Note: We will be doing a pass to address certain dungeons that have usual configurations that make getting these bonuses perhaps more difficult than they should be. We are still working on the details but Castle Ravenloft and the Vault of Night Dragon Raid are some examples.
Normal Difficulty:
- +10% Aggression bonus
- +15% Onslaught bonus
- +45% **Conquest** bonus
Hard Difficulty:
- +15% Aggression bonus
- +25% Onslaught bonus
- +50% **Conquest** bonus
Elite Difficulty:
- +25% Aggression bonus
- +50% Onslaught bonus
- +70% **Conquest** bonus
Reaper Difficulty:
- +25% Aggression bonus
- +50% Onslaught bonus
- +70% **Conquest** bonus
This change is Net neutral except for a very slight boost in hard.
TOTAL BONUS COMPARISON:
NORMAL | old | new | HARD | old | new | ELITE | old | new | Reaper | old | new |
| | | | | | | | | | | |
conquest | 25 | 45 | | 25 | 50 | | 25 | 70 | | 25 | 70 |
1st time | 20 | 0 | | 20 | 0 | | 45 | 0 | | 95 | 0 |
Bravery | 0 | 0 | | 50 | 50 | | 100 | 100 | | 100 | 150 |
Ransack | 15 | 15 | | 15 | 15 | | 15 | 15 | | 15 | 15 |
Tome of Learning | 50 | 50 | | 50 | 50 | | 50 | 50 | | 50 | 50 |
Tamper | 10 | 10 | | 10 | 10 | | 10 | 10 | | 10 | 10 |
Observance | 8 | 8 | | 8 | 8 | | 8 | 8 | | 8 | 8 |
Total | 128 | 128 | | 178 | 183 | | 253 | 253 | | 303 | 303 |
TOTAL BONUS COMPARISON REPEAT PLAYS: The increased conquest bonus does increase replay XP but a fresh quest is still X2-3 the bonuses, so this shouldn't really be a problem.
| Normal old | Normal new | HARD | old | new | ELITE | old | new | Reaper | old | new |
conquest | 25 | 45 | | 25 | 50 | | 25 | 70 | | 25 | 70 |
1st time | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 |
Bravery | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 |
Ransack | 15 | 15 | | 15 | 15 | | 15 | 15 | | 15 | 15 |
Tome of Learning | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 | | 0 | 0 |
Tamper | 10 | 10 | | 10 | 10 | | 10 | 10 | | 10 | 10 |
Observance | 8 | 8 | | 8 | 8 | | 8 | 8 | | 8 | 8 |
Total | 58 | 78 | | 58 | 83 | | 58 | 103 | | 58 | 103 |
I know this isn't a super exciting change because we're basically just trying to encourage most players to do what their already doing, but monsters are a major component of the game play in how time is spent, and our reward structure should reflect that so completely avoiding them doesn't seem as attractive and becomes a less common practice.
Note On Stealth - It is its own subset of game play and one that doesn't actually hit our perf problems. We would like to eventually get to some "stealth" game play bonuses to offset the Conquest adjustments but we want to do stuff that isn't exclusive from killing monsters or about just about walking through the quest without engaging anything. We're thinking about Assassinate bonuses (not the enhancement per say but just killing a mob from behind before it aggros on you), never triggering dungeon alert or maybe we'll even introduce picking pockets (but I warn you most monsters are full of pocket lint with the occasional rubber ducky, or a ring of power, that thing is sooo cursed). These things won't make it into this pass though as we'd probably want to do a focused pass on stealth and fix a lot of other rough edges while were at it.