Upcoming Experience Changes

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

  1. Thunderace

    Thunderace People Like Me

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    I get, I could see Bragon taking Yarnee's lunch money on the school bus, vibes

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  2. Haynar

    Haynar Administrator

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    Maybe it only looks like a reduction in exp when there are OOR characters, because OOR didn’t work like we think it did?
     
  3. sowislifesowislove

    sowislifesowislove People Like Me

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    I think it's important to note what Darchon said and what Hobart said. Hobart mentioning the simple and obvious exp penalty for having charm pet take exp if not enough damage, or no damage done by PC. Darchon mentioning that this would be an OBVIOUS mechanic, much like the charm pet and xp penalty. I'd have to go back and dig and see what zones you actually looked in Torven, but maybe just those zones had some kind of penalty, or there was something else going on, who knows. There were clear and obvious preventions of AE with unstunnable mobs. But otherwise, I think all the evidence you've laid down does not prove a server wide, all zones, AE exp penalty, especially with a trusted and respected Al'kabor dev stating that they don't remember anything like that.
     
  4. gardnerjens

    gardnerjens People Like Me

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    Which would make total sense
     
  5. Verdent

    Verdent People Like Me

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    And the lord said, "I don't remember any code like that"

    Can we not look more into possible other explanations?
     
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  6. Devour_Souls

    Devour_Souls People Like Me

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  7. Mokli

    Mokli I Feel Loved

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    If the concern is AOE xp with the new high ZEM's in PoP zones, perhaps this could be tailored to just those zones without breaking AOE entirely for the current population. AOE in PoP zones really wasn't a thing on live that I recall.
     
  8. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    The vast, vast majority of my AoEing was done without OOR characters. My 126 kill video had 6 characters in range. (paladin is not visible by I have log of him getting exp) The Necro data also had OOR characters added to the group in the middle of level 34 which is 3 levels after I had started AoEing there and 8 or 9 levels before any reductions started becoming evident. (group bonus is clearly listed on the sheet) Also the reduction amount varies with player level even while group composition stays the same; if it was OOR bug simply not working then it wouldn't scale like it does. Furthermore if the experience loss was a result of some OOR fluke, it would appear in the PoValor kites which it does not.

    I didn't notice it when I was AoEing on AK, nor when I started checking exp data a couple years ago, so how could I expect anybody else to. I did think it a little strange that it took so many caller cave kills to equal the exp of a single PoP mob, but there are so many exp multipliers involved that you cannot know what is going on without seriously doing the math.

    Nobody actually looked at the data carefully so how would you know.

    Reductions were evident in Grimling Forest, Karnors, PoNightmare and Fungus Grove; so the likelihood that it is somehow limited to specific zones is basically nil.

    Hobart couldn't even remember when HBMs were added and incorrectly stated that they were after AK's time. That was something that was added twice during Luclin: the first time for levels 30-50 and a second time for 51-60.

    "I don't remember" "Only thing at one point was charm stuff reducing exp if you didn't do a specific amount of damage" he said.

    The mechanic of needing to do 1 damage to NPCs to get 100% of exp (25% otherwise) was a June 5th 2002 change to all pets and not specific to charmed pets. The Dire Charm exp logic was also introduced at that time.

    In April 2003 they also added this: "Charmed pets now take up to one third of the experience for each NPC killed. This amount scales down based on the percentage of damage to the target that the pet does." AK didn't even have this as far as I'm aware. Suppose I could check for it.

    The game is much too large for a single person to fully understand everything inside the code and certainly not 20 years later when their version is constantly evolving. These guys couldn't even implement the Ykesha era group bonus to AK correctly so some of them didn't even realize what they were adding to the game. Logs are far more trustworthy than developer comments. Devs say wrong stuff all the time. I've said wrong stuff about things I'm actively working on let alone 20 years ago.

    Ironically the reason why we had AAExp at 24m exp was because of an old developer quote saying that 1 AA was nearly equal to that of 51-52. That turned out to only be true for classes with a class mod of 1, no racial bonus and (most importantly) AFTER reducing the level's exp required by ~23% by adjusting for the HBM multiplier applied to experience gains in the level which I just figured out two days ago. (it was 1.3) So a dev comment can be misleading without being untrue and it's important to fully understand what is happening.

    Hartsman is probably the guy most likely to know about exp stuff anyway.
     
  9. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

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    Devs getting the date something was implemented wrong, yeah absolutely, devs messing up what the numbers were back then, can totally see that too. But dev not knowing of the existence of a pbae nerf at all (nor anyone else)? That seems a lot harder to buy.

    Did you lock down a date range this nerf had to occur in? Like, ALL ae exp was unnerfed before a certain date, and ALL ae exp was nerfed after another one, with no exceptions where data date overlapped?
     
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  10. Cerberus

    Cerberus Active Member

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    AHA we got you now straight from the horses mouth. Now you need to cater to all the player's demands !!!!!!

    I tried to Warn you AOE group's going to be trouble way back when I asked for AA gains to implement with AA effects off for slow gains over time but now you needed to Nerf it twice,
    But that's the past you need to look too the future there's a bigger issue coming your way after pop been out for 6 months too a year and your player base starts to dip because player's only log in to raid time and the player's start to demand 6 boxing . Get out in front of this now!

    Also Hook me up with a fable sword of truth !
    I just keep asking until I get one anyway be safe everyone
     
  11. Bragon

    Bragon People Like Me

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    [​IMG]
     
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  12. Haynar

    Haynar Administrator

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    So your saying? There is a chance?
     
  13. Bragon

    Bragon People Like Me

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    Missed opportunity for a gif there! :p
     
  14. Hove!

    Hove! People Like Me

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    For your next mission you have to get Brad McQuaid to admit this never existed. Good Luck.
     
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  15. Linkamus

    Linkamus People Like Me

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    Too soon...
     
  16. Verdent

    Verdent People Like Me

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    Thanks Devour, pretty sure people have offered numerous alternate explanations. We have 2 devs saying they don't recall this. Exploring other possibilities is prudent at this point.
     
  17. sowislifesowislove

    sowislifesowislove People Like Me

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    savage
     
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  18. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    It's possible that this reduction is caused by something unintended. Or it was temporary (a year or whatever) so they just forgot about it. (3 man GoD log showed no reduction) Regardless until somebody points out what is mathematically wrong with my conclusions, I'm not removing it. The goal is that AAs on TAKP require as many kills as is shown in logs and videos, not any more than that.

    I tested exp at FG caller caves with the new logic and AA gains came to around 85-86% of previous as expected. So try not to get too bent out of shape over it.
     
  19. Kithani

    Kithani Well-Known Member

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    I don't have anything to contribute but I'm just waiting for Bragon to bust out with "oh yeah I just called John Smedley and he sent me some snippets of the source code..."
     
  20. Bragon

    Bragon People Like Me

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    Man smed would be the last guy to call for anything dev oriented.
     
  21. Dasidarius

    Dasidarius Member

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    Torven, are you so proud that int he face of 3 devs, logic, and statistics that you're sticking to your guns on this? It is ok to admit you interpreted the data incorrectly.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2020
  22. Mokli

    Mokli I Feel Loved

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    Yeah, I was going to say earlier if you had just combined these two patches, this thread would be probably 1 page and you probably wouldn't have had nearly as big a headache from this.
     
  23. showstring

    showstring I Feel Loved

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    Pretty sure devs who were responsible for exp mechanics, would know about this "one weird trick to stop PBAEing" that may have been implemented.
    People exp all the time, this isn't some weird obscure mechanic or side quest... Fairly sure someone would have noticed this exp reduction in all these years.
    Seems like a very unusual and specific piece of code to implement, considering much easier solutions are have been implemented in the past. And it was never to be repeated again in any other example in future expansions.
     
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  24. Devour_Souls

    Devour_Souls People Like Me

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    I'm in the PBAE kills were never parsed for XP on real servers camp. With that said. At the end of the day, regardless of the cause, if 200 kills = X% of AA xp on AK and those same 200 kills will = X% of AA xp on TAKP. I really don't understand the problem aside from the correction being split, which Torven already admitted fault for.

     
  25. Linkamus

    Linkamus People Like Me

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    I haven't been too involved in this conversation, because honestly I'm not overly bothered *that much* one way or the other concerning this particular issue (aside from what I already voiced earlier in the thread). The other reason I haven't been too involved, is that past experiences have shown me that once the devs make a decision, it's incredibly unlikely for that decision to be overturned. (It is THEIR server, after all.)

    And honestly, I've come to terms with that. I get that while the devs do communicate with the player base a LOT here (props!), we definitely do not seem to have much of a voice on most final decisions on contentious issues (See archery thread as a good example). However, I will still play here, and donate $ to this server, despite my reservations, because I truly love this game, and think the devs have done an unbelievable job replicating the 2002 era.

    When things start to become contentious between the player base and the developers like they are here in this thread, or with archery, or with DA aggro, or with monk AC, etc... I do wish the community would have more of a say, in the form of polls, perhaps. But that's not how it is currently, and it is what it is. I still enjoy playing here.

    Much love!
     
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  26. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

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    Yeah this is the most reasonable conclusion. Something caused a reduction, it wasn't a direct pbae hit, but it hit where pbae was being done. It could have been anything. Even lost to server lag or other weird things. Or temporary changes to zone or mob experience. Or the level ranges of light blue changed. Or something.

    Did shakerpaging get hit with the same reduction?
     
  27. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    This is all in 5 man groups and nobody OOR at caller caves, on Druid. To estimate the number of kills in a 6 man group, multiply by 1.2.
    Code:
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  28. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

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    This thread would be moot if we had PoP. Let's just do PoP instead.
     
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  29. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    None of this is akkurate, especially PBAOEing, you couldnt pull an entire zone on AK without either crashing the zone or the terrible pathing killing you during the pull. People did this stuff, and as Im sure torven would agree, 90% of the time you died. It wasnt a viable exp route because the code was just bad. All this PBAOE crap is just everquest reimagined TM from your TLP experiences.
     
  30. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    Nah PBAoE was doable. I was doing it in 2000 in Kunark even. It was certainly harder to do on AK though. Pulling for AoE groups required real practice. Sony's pathing had mobs running backwards randomly so you'd lose mobs or sometimes they just refused to follow at all. You gotta stay as close to the train of death as possible to keep them. Also when I was pulling Acrylia Caverns on my warrior in Jan 2002, if you had more than 3 mobs in melee range of you, the rest of the train would just run back to their spawn points and deaggro. Sony had weird code like that. (don't think I recall that behavior in AC on AK though so may have been removed) I would also (on AK and PC EQ) fetch mobs multiple times and drop them all at the enchanters then go out for more before the wizards lit them up. Leashing required this because it limited pull sizes. Also HTs and such. That's why in my videos you see me coming in with mobs already locked down. Often I would pull 3 times before nuking.

    Another issue was lag. On AK I stopped at around 80 or so mob pulls because of this. Anything more was too dangerous. Wiping of course kills the exp rate so you have consider pull sizes carefully.

    I did have older AK players watch me AoE and they reacted as if they had never seen it before though.