U60 Lammania Preview 1 - XP System Adjustments

[Haramel]

On all worlds. It is both a significant increase in completion speed in addition to a larger pool of players achieving these speeds. It is essentially why, after the recent lag work, the community has been seeing increased lag, as the speed has pushed to the point that things have become somewhat untenable. That was one of the main reasons why the suggestion to move first-time XP to the Conquest system was tried; it allows players to earn more XP in general since they can get that bonus XP every time they run the quest rather than just the first time, but also discourages some amount of the hyperzerging that had been taking place. We recognized that it would impact people's XP/minute calculations, but the hope was to find a solution that both encouraged exploration and offered generally more XP with an acceptable level of slowdown of player speed. For players who wished to continue at their current pace they still could, although they might need to run a few additional quests per level, but others might be encouraged to take advantage of these new bonuses.

I'm trying to understand your point. Are you saying that the work implemented to "reduce lag" ended up increasing the lag?

 

[Cesaro - Tandy]

I'm trying to understand your point. Are you saying that the work implemented to "reduce lag" ended up increasing the lag?

Because of the players behave after that update, I belieave so.

But, one thing, getting in and out of quests more quickly, cause lag, is that it?

 

[paddymaxson]

Cool so shadow crypt first time per lift just took an XP nerf, thanks. Why would your "let's encourage new and returning pl;ayers" maths make things worse for people doing the RTR grind?

 

[Cesaro - Tandy]

Hum... I get it, but since the players will have to spend more time in quests to get the full xp they had before, maybe increase a little more the conquest bonus would be nice.
Conquest bonus suggestion:
Normal - 60
Hard - 80
Elite - 100
Reaper - 120

Will encourage more parties to split inside quests to get the conquest bonus faster ^^

 

[Neain]

My two cents.

I would LOVE if the optionals were worth spending time doing. I do most of the optionals in "a frosty reception" because they are good xp (maybe not actually good enough for the time spent, but it feels like it to me). If you make it worth going for the optional drow stronghold in search and rescue? I would run that optional and not care that im going off on a wild goose chase.

If what is wanted is "One Big Fix". Im not sure thats possible. But I bet if you increased the opt xp by 5k% and then mowed down the ones that are already gotten by 90% of the player base, you would get fairly close. (of course, you then run into the issue of the opts that are ALMOST worth it now being super worth it and not changing things much... aka, the main reason im not sure "One Big Fix" will work.)

A better idea would be if you have the data for what % of opts get completed, why not use that as part of an inverse xp bonus (not something temporary or that even shows up in the xp log, but a full change to the base xp of the optional). If an opt is currently ran by all of 2% of the players that play that quest, increase it by 98% or some such. Then after a few weeks or an update, check again and do something similar. Eventually, you will get to the point where the players see the opts as either worth it, or as more worth then completing the quest (imo, thats too far, but some people will do this). The largest part of why this would work would be that its incremental and once an opt is getting run by enough of the players, you stop changing it. And so you miss out on overcorrecting. and if you can set it up correctly in the first place with a script that just runs on the data, you can run it once a {insert time period here} and readjust when things change in the future again.
(Edited for clarification)

 

[nobodynobody1426]

Well... I mean if they really wanted to fix the player speed issue... just delete all the players. Quest completion time goes to infinity if there are no players to complete the quests.

But seriously, that entire wanting players to take longer to get the same results is a huge red flag to the community that shenanigan's are afoot and the upcoming experience isn't likely to be fun or enjoyable.

Also guys, the issue with optionals is their XP reward is fixed as a percentage of the base quest XP. Take Death House for example, on Elite it's base XP is 2,871 and the optional "Defeat the Nursemaid" has a reward of 20% of that base, so 574XP. But we don't get the base at the end, we get a massive stack of bonus's that multiple the final quest XP by 2~3x. Those bonus's are not applied to the optional XP received and thus practically all optionals are worthless. Now take "The Chamber of Raiyum" which has a base XP of 7,000 on elite and the optionals are worth 25 to 50% of the base and the 25% ones are directly in the path of the 50% ones, so the real bonus is 75%.

 

[Blu]

I'd love to see a +x% bonus for number of optionals completed. If I go out of my way to complete optional objectives, I should be rewarded for them.

This please implement multipliers for xp for doing optionals e.g. if a quest had 4 optionals the first one is a 5% boost then doing 2 of 4 is 10%, 3 of 4 15% and 4 of 4 gives 20%. Actually reward players for doing the whole quest you designed

 

[Dandonk]

We've had a lot of great feedback in this thread, but one thing that we haven't seen a lot of feedback on is suggestions to get players back to the XP/minute and general questing speed that was taking place prior to Update 59. We have seen a very significant increase in general speed of play since our recent lag reduction work, and as players have noticed, it's causing issues regarding game performance. Some of the goal here is to get players back to the pace they were prior to those recent changes. So, just to ask: How would you reduce player speed as it were to pre-Update 59 levels?

I didn't see anything in the original proposal about completion times, but I could be mistaken.

Personally I don't see any difference in my completion times, that I've noticed, apart from less time wasted on selfhealing out of combat in reaper.

I'm not sure I see how completion times themselves add to lag. Unless you mean that people are running past a lot of mobs, of course. If that is the case, then sure, something should be done. Strengthening DA might help, but there are a lot of places DA happens without players being to blame.

EDIT: To be clear, I don't see faster completion times as a problem in itself. When you have a huge amount of PLs to grind, and reaper xp as well, then some players are going to want to do that as fast as they can. Making a long grind even longer is not a good thing. The grind should not be getting longer for new players, or those still on the run up there.
(my main has all PLs, and while I'm not at 156+ reaper points yet, I do have 147. So this is not meant to make my own life easier, but to make sure newer players don't feel discouraged from the start)

I'm not a fan of artificial forcefields blocking progress, but I suppose that, or doors being locked until DA has gone down, might help.

Also, this problem is somewhat selfinflicted. For a long time, the only way to add challenge to quests has been to put more and more - and bigger and bigger - mob packs in there. Players grew tired of the slog, and started to find ways to not deal with it. Going back to fewer but more meaningful mobs might help there.

 

[nobodynobody1426]

This please implement multipliers for xp for doing optionals e.g. if a quest had 4 optionals the first one is a 5% boost then dong 2 of 4 is 10%, 3 of 4 15% and 4 of 4 gives 20%. Actually reward players for doing the whole quest you designed

None of those numbers would be very big. All XP bonus's are added together, other then Tome, Sov Pot and VIP. The results of adding them is a number that is usually +180~220% XP or a 2.8 ~ 3.2 multiplier. Lets say we added 20% to that optional, it would go from 2.8 to 3.0, a 7.1% increase, or 3.2 to 3.4 for 6.25% increase. So it would take 2x as long for 6~7% increase in XP gain, very bad idea. Any sort of "optional" bonus would have to be measured in 100% increments to have a real effect.

 

[Cashery]

We've had a lot of great feedback in this thread, but one thing that we haven't seen a lot of feedback on is suggestions to get players back to the XP/minute and general questing speed that was taking place prior to Update 59. We have seen a very significant increase in general speed of play since our recent lag reduction work, and as players have noticed, it's causing issues regarding game performance. Some of the goal here is to get players back to the pace they were prior to those recent changes. So, just to ask: How would you reduce player speed as it were to pre-Update 59 levels?

Does your data state if the mobs along the quest path are being killed or bypassed?

1: If the mobs are being killed and the quest is being completed faster then you have to do something to increase your servers ability to handle player performance. I.E upgrade servers.

2: If the mobs are being bypassed, then put up blue barriers throughout the quest until a certain kill count is achieved.

Don't make changes just to make changes if players are legit killing the mobs in the game.

Also, if you truly want to get rid of lag. Get rid of DA, this will alleviate a lot of unnecessary calculations server side. DA was a terrible design system when it was implemented many years ago. Have the mobs white light back to spawn point, put blue barriers up at various point to force players to kill the mobs along the direct A-B path to completion.

 

[Rage]

Huh. How about optionals instead of giving XP by themselves, giving a +XP% bonus to the final XP at the end of the quest?

 

[Dandonk]

None of those numbers would be very big. All XP bonus's are added together, other then Tome, Sov Pot and VIP. The results of adding them is a number that is usually +180~220% XP or a 2.8 ~ 3.2 multiplier. Lets say we added 20% to that optional, it would go from 2.8 to 3.0, a 7.1% increase, or 3.2 to 3.4 for 6.25% increase. So it would take 2x as long for 6~7% increase in XP gain, very bad idea. Any sort of "optional" bonus would have to be measured in 100% increments to have a real effect.

To get optionals in general (a few are actually decent xp) to be worth it, they would indeed have to be improved more than a little. Adding to quest xp somehow is a decent option, as long as it adds to reaper xp as well. But yes, the numbers would have to be worth it.

Also, adding named loot chances to all optional chests would help as well.

 

[Aelonwy]

• Increase optional Xp especially those optionals off the beaten path to completion
• increase named loot in optional chests
• decrease mob spawns, especially as difficulty increases - mob spawn rate does not need to be exponential
• increase mob hp somewhat to compensate for less mobs
• decrease mob leash for having aggro
• decrease # of mobs required for conquest in those quests that cannot or only rarely get conquest, some require waiting for respawns
• Soul sealed or life sealed doors requiring a certain number of guard mobs deaths or certain named mobs deaths, more acquiring key from specific mob death

When we had the previous XP revamp we were told we would have future quests with worthwhile XP optionals.... make that reality.

 

[Scrag]

To get optionals in general (a few are actually decent xp) to be worth it, they would indeed have to be improved more than a little. Adding to quest xp somehow is a decent option, as long as it adds to reaper xp as well. But yes, the numbers would have to be worth it.

Also, adding named loot chances to all optional chests would help as well.

Each optional worth 10% end exp, maxing at 50%, would be reasonable. WAY better than this DA nonsense. The optionals are generally not so hard as to need a team, so divide and conquer would do well.

However.
This would trip DA though.

Two or more teams moving through a quest is going to activate two or more teams worth of monsters. Even if they are dealt with immediately, it will put real time consequences on both teams, making the optional completion potentially at risk, or very at risk if the players are new or newish and do not know how to handle the DA mob buffs that occur when another party triggers it.

Whatever you do, if it involves moving through a quest in anything more than a tightly huddled mass, you are going to trip DA.

Divide and conquer tactics will be essentially lost as an option.

 

[Cesaro - Tandy]

One point too, this penaulty in xp maybe won't make people to kill everything and continue to zerg, if so... that won't fix the problem.

 

[dogonovo]

I honestly think this thread should be closed, and a new, clearer one made. The OP and first reply from staff hinted that we were on the right track discussing the proposed XP/Progression nerf (because a nerf it is), its numbers and conditions. The second reply from staff clearly asked us to focus on how to slow ourselves down, claiming that "significant increase" in progression speed and number of players able to achieve said speed.

The conversation shifted from "let's talk about sticks and carrots" to "let's choose the kind/length of stick you want" in my view. This is what's causing the disconnect between people suggesting improvements to the OP, and the people discussing their thoughts about the kind/length of the stick, or even it's reason of being.

 

[Zaszgul]

I honestly think this thread should be closed, and a new, clearer one made. The OP and first reply from staff hinted that we were on the right track discussing the proposed XP/Progression nerf (because a nerf it is), its numbers and conditions. The second reply from staff clearly asked us to focus on how to slow ourselves down, claiming that "significant increase" in progression speed and number of players able to achieve said speed.

The conversation shifted from "let's talk about sticks and carrots" to "let's choose the kind/length of stick you want" in my view. This is what's causing the disconnect between people suggesting improvements to the OP, and the people discussing their thoughts about the kind/length of the stick, or even it's reason of being.

Agreed this thread has run its course, and devs should start a new thread about the data that concerns them, which is HOPEFULLY about red DA (they can measure that directly right? not inferring it from other statistics??) and not quest completion times or XP.

 

[Dandonk]

I honestly think this thread should be closed, and a new, clearer one made. The OP and first reply from staff hinted that we were on the right track discussing the proposed XP/Progression nerf (because a nerf it is), its numbers and conditions. The second reply from staff clearly asked us to focus on how to slow ourselves down, claiming that "significant increase" in progression speed and number of players able to achieve said speed.

The conversation shifted from "let's talk about sticks and carrots" to "let's choose the kind/length of stick you want" in my view. This is what's causing the disconnect between people suggesting improvements to the OP, and the people discussing their thoughts about the kind/length of the stick, or even it's reason of being.

Yeah, it did seem a little like moving goal posts. We could definitely use different threads for the distinct topics being discussed.

 

[House Elf]

We've had a lot of great feedback in this thread, but one thing that we haven't seen a lot of feedback on is suggestions to get players back to the XP/minute and general questing speed that was taking place prior to Update 59. We have seen a very significant increase in general speed of play since our recent lag reduction work, and as players have noticed, it's causing issues regarding game performance. Some of the goal here is to get players back to the pace they were prior to those recent changes. So, just to ask: How would you reduce player speed as it were to pre-Update 59 levels?

It seems to me that your biggest problem is the quest end rewards. No tweaking of monster kills is going to change the behavior you don't like without a total redo of the way XP is rewarded.

Get rid of the default end-quest reward and replace it with a reward based on what was accomplished in the dungeon. Each side objective (side quests, secret doors, traps disarmed, etc.) is worth X experience, do progressive XP rewards based on how many monsters killed (like in wilderness areas and Temple of Elemental Evil) then add it all up at the end and reward accordingly.

It seems to me if the reward is based on what you do, rather than how fast you get to the end, there is more incentive to do things. With the largest rewards being at the end there really isn't a reason for speed levelers to expend the time. It seems to me with your current plan they will continue to rush to the end and just accept that they have to run it 2 or 3 times instead of once. If it only takes them 5 minutes to get to the end, rather than 20 minutes to do entire clear of the dungeon, 2-3 times is still faster.

 

[CaptainSpacePony]

I still don't get this. Why not tie xp to DA instead of kills?
(more good stuff cut)

Cheers,
Titus.

The more I read and think about this thread, the more I'm sure it's not a good fix for the problem.

Too much active monster pathing affecting game performance is the problem.

It seems monsters not pathing (never saw you) would not be a problem.

DA is an alert indicating there's too much pathing going on. Titus' suggestion of further discouraging players from accumulating too much pathing seems much better to me.

Perhaps a 5-10% xp penalty for each time/lvl DA was activated.
Perhaps lower thresholds for lesser DA tiers.
Perhaps some quests need fewer mobs.