Upcoming Experience Changes

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Torven, Jun 24, 2020.

  1. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    I think you're being a little melodramatic here, Brag. PBAE is not going away anytime soon. I've done hundreds of AAs on several toons via PBAE. I've done hundreds of AAs on several toons via charming. I did my PBAE AAs in a suboptimal place (ME after the kite limit nerf). My PBAE exp rate was around 1 AA per hour. That's very similar to charming in Ssra and much slower than PBAE in FG or the Deep, as you know.

    I loved my suboptimal PBAE anyway, though. I could do a ten-minute PBAE pull then AFK for twenty minutes until respawns. That's a much more relaxing playstyle than constantly watching for a charm break. I consider myself pretty good at charming, but I can't really keep it together in an intense charm session for more than an hour at a stretch.

    Let's think for a sec about what that AA per hour number means. It's an efficiency ratio: AAs earned divided by time invested. When I charm, every hour of exp gain is an hour invested. An hour I spend glued to the keyboard. When I PBAE, though, I'm at the keys for maybe 20 minutes per hour. The other 40 minutes I can work or do chores or troll the forums or w/e. So for me, a PBAE exp rate of 1 AA per hour elapsed on the clock is more like 3 AAs per hour at the keys. That's insane. It would still be insane even if PBAE exp was cut in half, which it won't be. We're talking about a 10% nerf here.

    Letting spells hit an infinite number of targets is just a silly mechanic. Casting Jyll's Wave of Heat on 50 mobs does 16,000 DPS. That's the equivalent of a full raid of 72 endgame rogues furiously stab-stab-stabbing away. PBAE is silly overpowered now and will still be silly overpowered when these exp changes are done.
     
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  2. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    I don't know what mobs ssra charm groups are killing so I'll take your word for it, but if they're killing in the mines then they are killing a significant number of level 54s. Currently 54s are giving over twice the exp they should be. There are no 54s in FG.

    Frankly it's not our job to balance AoE with charming and I wouldn't try. Although I should probably double check the revs to make sure their stats are correct.

    When I was clearing two caller caves on AK with 4 kegs each, I was getting 35 minute AAs in a 5 man group assuming no deaths and no breaks after I had the pulling down very well. Before yesterday we were seeing AoE groups getting AAs in like 25 minutes. For a long time I wasn't quite sure why they were getting AAs faster than I was, but now we know.
     
  3. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Do revs on Live dual wield if given two non-identical weapons? Or do we have AK logs with weaponized revs dual wielding? I didn't charm them on AK, so I donno what's AKurate.
     
  4. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    This is actually not as complicated as it looks.

    My necro required 8118110 exp to go from 44 to 45. This required 69 kills.
    My necro required 9564940 exp to go from 46 to 47. This required 113 kills.
    64% more kills required to get 18% more exp.
     
  5. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    That's a good question actually. Some Luclin NPCs refuse to equip gear given to them. I didn't check ssra for this. Doomshade equips weapons, but shades in ME don't; so you can't assume just from NPC type. I'll check this today.
     
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  6. Bragon

    Bragon People Like Me

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    Good for you, that's not what we're talking about. I enjoy a lazy AOE in maiden during work hours like the next guy, but again, off topic.

    i'm talking about optimizing XP rate for people who want to, and pushing the boundaries of what can be done.

    Yeah i'm sitll not conviced there was a reduction to aoe exp, and if there was i'm not convinced this was 40 percent. We do not see this across the board on your findings. And coming out and saying 'it's a 40 percent reduction' is ....odd?

    No one in 20 years has ever brought this up or found about it even thought there has been some pretty crazy data mining/discovering on a LOT of mechanics in the game. Never have a i heard of a check that would reduce xp if killed with AOE. i've heard of lot of methods xp was tweaked/MR was tempered / summoning mobs were added randomly or non stunnables etc.

    Anyway, RIP AOE XP. (or should i say rip GOOD AOE xp so pithy can understand i'm not talking about lazy xp :p)
     
  7. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

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  8. showstring

    showstring I Feel Loved

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    you're comparing 1 person 5-6boxing versus what, 5-10 humans all playing together to have fun AEing?
    I would hope multiple humans playing together would be more optimal than 1 person boxing
     
  9. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

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    Hey you have a merc! Mercs now AKurate, I assume implementation is imminent.
     
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  10. Dasidarius

    Dasidarius Member

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    Ok but you skipped the hell level and you're not acknowledging the fact that the clvl vs mlvl is playing into this equation.

    I made the data in to a graph so it is easier to visualize. All data is from your expected xp table vs your calculations for sum. This does not show a reduction in incoming xp until you begin to out level the zone.
     

    Attached Files:

  11. showstring

    showstring I Feel Loved

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    I do like the irony of how PBAE groups are the most fun and social aspects of this game (along with raids).
    And the devs are working hard to nerf and crush it as much as possible because, given optimal skills, composition and gear, they are slightly faster way of exping.

    Brilliant!
     
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  12. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    Skipping the hell level is irrelevant. I selected those two levels to remove the HBM as a factor for simplicity since it's 0.9 at both levels. After accounting for HBMs, all that matters is the experience required to level and that the NPCs are still dark blue at both levels and that group composition is the same.

    That group had 4 characters and two were out of range and thus were not subject to the weighted division. The other character was a wood elf bard at the same level. They had both powerleveled from level 1 together.

    The NPCs are all dark blue at level 47 and only the 35s are light blue at 48 and 49. Avg exp/kill at 49 would still be nearly as good as previous levels if there were no PBAoE reduction.
     
  13. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    Perhaps you should direct your ire at the Sony developers who came up with it in 2002. I saw Hobart on twitch recently. Maybe you can track them down on twitch some night.

    If devs had wanted to arbitrarily nerf AoE entirely on our own volition, we'd have done it two (or more) years ago. In fact I argued in favor of allowing it when there was a discussion about it. All the other emus put a target limit on spells. If we had wanted to 'crush it as much as possible' you'd be stuck with a 25 target limit like p99 or worse.
     
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  14. Dasidarius

    Dasidarius Member

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    So, we're clear, you're saying that PBAE reduction kicks in when things are a level above lb and not before. That is the conclusion you're drawing from this data.
     
  15. shorttin

    shorttin Member

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    A ton of inAKurate talk in this thread. I, pretty much like everyone here, appreciates all the work that goes into running a server. With that said, I personally came here hoping to keep the Al'Kabor type of server experience but unfortunately in my eyes it continues to makes strides away from that which is fine as that's the path the server owner/staff want.

    For the purposes of my future I'd like to honestly ask a question, is there any plans to make an AKurate server down the road for the people that wanted to keep playing on Al'Kabor??!?!
     
  16. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

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    P99 crushed it because Chardok rmt was out of control.
     
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  17. Bragon

    Bragon People Like Me

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    What's his name on twitch?

    I have no shame i'll ask him straight up if he knows anything about this.
     
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  18. ingwit

    ingwit Member

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    Last edited: Jun 26, 2020
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  19. Devour_Souls

    Devour_Souls People Like Me

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    Off topic but around 1 hour 18 minutes he talks about Al'Kabor.
     
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  20. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

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    These interviews are pretty incredible. The discussion about Veeshan's Peak dragons at 1:50~ how they put a -1 in the regen column and it would regenerate differently based on the amount of lag in the zone. Also the fact that Feshlak was supposed to have a quest he offers to a monk sneaking behind him.

    He has interviewed quite a few developers from the Velious-PoP development timeframe. Would be interesting to ask one of them about the AE nerfs in early Luclin see what they recall.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2020
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  21. Devour_Souls

    Devour_Souls People Like Me

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    "Vex Thal was done by me in one week" ~ Bill Fisher

    Blind on trash mobs....FFS.....thanks for sharing Darchon.
     
  22. Lenas

    Lenas I Feel Loved

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    According to his LinkedIn profile, he also:
    • Wrote the Bard, Necro & Warrior epic quests
    • Itemized the entirety of ToV, Kael, Velks
    • Designed all Velious armor quests
    • Implemented the CT revamp in 24 hours with a team of 4

    On the topic at hand... The stream has (date TBD) an interview planned with Steve Burk, who it cites as being Former EQ Game Designer & Lead (Velious, Luclin, PoP, AAs). It seems to me that this man would have the answers we seek regarding this exp mystery and probably knows some other interesting bits about everything in our era.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2020
  23. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

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    I would never have guessed that. Twenty minutes, max, while someone was repeatedly jabbing him in the kidneys with a stick.
     
  24. showstring

    showstring I Feel Loved

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    *spills ink on drawing paper*
    Fuck it, looks good. Ship it!

    ~ the story of how "Kaas Thox Xi Aten Ha Ra" mob was designed
     
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  25. showstring

    showstring I Feel Loved

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    These original EQ dev interviews are so cool. Some serious insider info on all the mechanics!

    I wonder if they would be interested in some work? Bill Fisher linked in says independent game consultant. We could use the TAKP donation money to hire him for a couple of days to do an audit/review of some of the eqemu code and give us all the secret sauce info that we may be missing? How much would that cost, $300 per day? more? Could be a good use of the collected TAKP funds to shortcut some of the data collection and demystify a lot of the mechanics...
     
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  26. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    CT revamp in 1 day? I have trouble believing that. Revamp CT has like 50 named mobs, tons of items, lots of NPC types with full emotes etc and a ring event along with several others. I mean they would do it a lot faster than I can when they can make up NPC stats and copy and paste them instead of me parsing one NPC at a time for several hours each, and scripting original events is also MUCH faster than researching them, but still

    Maybe 'implemented' means something different than I'm thinking of
     
  27. Dasidarius

    Dasidarius Member

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    Incidentally this is expected/observed for the FG leveling AND AA rates, combined. I also added and averaged ALL of the AA which reveals a number of .67 and not .60. This included the 58 aa from the Dwarf paladin as well as all other AA on the AA tab that were collected in FG. The XP from other zones is assumed to be not PBAE unless you tell me otherwise.

    I also compared the Magician's xp rate in Grimling and found it didn't fall off as quickly as the Necro. If there was some kind of reduction it should be seen in both but this tells me there is another variable in play.

    Both of these charts tell me that there isn't enough data here to reach a reasonable conclusion. The one inference that I think is reasonable to draw is that there does not seem some wholesale reduction of xp from use of PBAE.

    Mage FG.PNG mage grimling.PNG Mag v nec.PNG
     
  28. Lenas

    Lenas I Feel Loved

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    For a dev consultant? Try $100/hr minimum. We might be able to afford to have him click a link to our repository and close it immediately without looking at anything.
     
  29. showstring

    showstring I Feel Loved

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    He'd do it for the love and nostalgia. We could even make him a plane of mischief tshirt courtesy of @shortok
     
  30. sowislifesowislove

    sowislifesowislove People Like Me

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    nice post man, I’m bad with numbers so I appreciate this! Can you by chance create a graph the correlates @gardnerjens activity on the server and nerfs?