More balance ideas! Specifically regarding hp, classes, and xp, ready your salt shakers

Lord_Acererak

9 and 10 should feel like, "oh man. I'm old. How can I shape myself into more of a leader and less of a follower, as I've achieved this."

Not that you -must- be a leader, or -must- be doing this, but understand this is the max level of our server, you're stronk and this should be reflected.

Acemvi

This is a case of game design rearing its ugly head and clashing with the ideals of the DM team. It will never feel good to slaughter mobs and get nothing from it. Even a single tick of XP might be enough to sell the illusion of progress.

If the concern is that so many mobs giving XP would speed up progression too much, I would suggest lowering the number of mobs but making them tougher.

O-louth

@Lord_Acererak said in More balance ideas! Specifically regarding hp, classes, and xp, ready your salt shakers:

9 and 10 should feel like, "oh man. I'm old. How can I shape myself into more of a leader and less of a follower, as I've achieved this."

Not that you -must- be a leader, or -must- be doing this, but understand this is the max level of our server, you're stronk and this should be reflected.

In that case, progression is way too fast from 4-8. 8-10 works. 4-8 way too fast

A Former User

@O-louth

The only problem is when we had 4-8 much slower, there was such a huge gap between the 8-10’s and the 4-8’s that lowbies couldn’t interact with established characters. It’s a difficult balance

Lord_Acererak

I think a good question, for me at least, is what does the level range of 7-9, and 8-10 represent to you guys?

The way I see it, 7-9 is meant as our average range. 9 begins to have some pretty wicked power compared to 7, but 7 and 8 and still survive pretty easily given the various aspects of our server. 10 the standard spawns on the server become less an obstacle more of a gold sink. where 4-6 you're recommended to stay within Arabel/Bospir areas.

To me, a character shouldn't have issue getting to 7 within the first few hours of game play, and typically those RP connections should really start to take form after 6, your character in theory will begin to branch out to those connections and blossom into.. Whatever. Slowing down 4-6 will make people feel like we're senselessly gatekeeping that character growth while throttling where they can go, what they can do, and of course who they can do it with because of a stupid thing like Levels.

I think the 4-8 range is operating fine, and the reason exp stops coming in as readily around 9 is for the obvious reason, that 9-10 are meant to represent the pinnacle of our server and the endform of a characters mechanical development. (note, a character can still grow and change, even at 10. But one hopes by level 10 they have achieved some level of personal story growth already, and they will be more rigid in their ways).

disclaimer - its a RPG, what I said above isn't fact, its just my general feel of how to server works right now. I've had characters sit around at lvl 10, fully flushed out. Not like you hit 10 and we're watching for your whitelight moment.

Acemvi

I think 8 is a perfectly good average. My complaint is, again, completely irrelevant to the speed at which you gain XP after level 8 and has to do with the fact that you just don't get anything when killing mobs. It just feels... dull, to kill a bunch of monsters and get nothing.

This has nothing to do with reaching level 10 so much as the feeling of doing so. Hence why I'm fine with monsters giving as little as 1 XP on quests. I understand this is a subjective matter, it's one of those "it wouldn't matter if it wasn't a video game" things.

It's also possible my thoughts aren't coming across as well as I'd hoped.

The more important thing here is 1 hp per level to non-d4 classes and more class gear, anyway.

Lord_Acererak

Nah, I can agree with that. Killing stuff for no net gain, not even 1 exp per could definitely get dull when out and about. Baring the crafting reagent animals and such, I'll pick my brain. Maybe we can come up with some ways to make that more fun.

edit-

Spitballing here, and @Zool feel free to ban me, but I wonder if we could add some kind of system to track kills per monster. Like Orcs, Gobinoids, Kobolds, and undead, and at the end of each month the player with the most is rewarded a small Prestige Package. . . . . . .

Hrm....

At least this would make it feel like each kill was represented in some way.

and personally, I wanna know how many orcs we kill a week.

gDarDog

If the mobs dropped items as well it would probably solve that same issue.

V-Rage

There used to be minor bounty items in V4.

Like orc heads, kobold teeth and things that were worth a small amount of gold with various factions.

Maybe put em in again but make them worth a small amount of prestige?

HellzYeah

It's more about the instant gratification feeling of seeing that xp gain tick up over time. Putting xp on stuff you can turn in doesn't really solve that problem.

But really the problem here in my eyes is the disparity between these two sections of the level range. It goes decently fast for a good chunk of the range before coming to an almost complete stop once you hit a certain point.

This is sort of moot, again, because the server really doesn't have enough content for the highest level players in my opinion and while I think the progression one you hit a certain point does feel patently unrewarding for the amount of time needed I think it's secondary to giving players at the level cap more things to do.

Lord_Acererak

🤨I could get behind more comment for the higher end range.

Zool

@O-louth That's pretty much intentional. There was a lot of feedback about it taking too long to level up.

We modified the XP gain ranges to make it fast to get to 8, slower to get to 10 from there.

Zool

@Latok Did it with my fighter.

Zool

@V-Rage said in More balance ideas! Specifically regarding hp, classes, and xp, ready your salt shakers:

There used to be minor bounty items in V4.

Like orc heads, kobold teeth and things that were worth a small amount of gold with various factions.

Maybe put em in again but make them worth a small amount of prestige?

This is basically being worked on kinda.

Zool

@HellzYeah said in More balance ideas! Specifically regarding hp, classes, and xp, ready your salt shakers:

It's more about the instant gratification feeling of seeing that xp gain tick up over time. Putting xp on stuff you can turn in doesn't really solve that problem.

But really the problem here in my eyes is the disparity between these two sections of the level range. It goes decently fast for a good chunk of the range before coming to an almost complete stop once you hit a certain point.

This is sort of moot, again, because the server really doesn't have enough content for the highest level players in my opinion and while I think the progression one you hit a certain point does feel patently unrewarding for the amount of time needed I think it's secondary to giving players at the level cap more things to do.

Disagree on the tick up thing you mentioned. I think picking up items after kills works in a similar way regarding the whole endorphin burst thing which appears to be what you're eluding to.