You are failing to read my posts. I already explained most of this. Here, I'll quote myself: I will elaborate on this. The reduction amount seems to be very low or non-existent at the caller caves on my level 54-56 characters. There is significant reduction at 52 (indeed the bard showed even less than 60%) then it seems to reduce for several levels before starting back up again. This is kind of strange, however it would make some sense for their reduction logic to treat different level ranges differently somehow; also it would agree with the grimling data for lower level 50s to not see much reduction as much of the exp is from level 50s and 51s so wouldn't be far from their level. However level 52 is very out of place. As for the paladin's 58 AAs, that was an extremely rough estimate with a very large margin of error. That includes deaths, wipes, group composition changes, and the kill tallies were entirely estimated and not counted. It was many days of activity. You cannot simply average every AA point listed there together. Some data points are better than others. The cleanest most reliable data shows ~60%. Again, I tallied more AAs than is listed there but it was redundant to list it all because it showed the same 60% under the exact same conditions. AAs at level 60 are the most reliable because MLM and HBM are non-factors; and except for the magician's AAs, I wasn't doing any nuke-and-run stuff for AAs.
Again, respectfully, I'm reading everything you're posting. I'm analyzing and interpreting the data that you made public. Your conclusions are not supported by the data. The only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the grimling data is that having a group is an additional variable. That cannot, reasonably, lead us to the conclusion that there was an AE XP reduction mechanic. The data indicates that there was no reduction vs expected except when the clvls start to reach lower end of xp. In fact the Grimling and FG trend lines show the same thing, that as the characters level up they start to get less xp. That is the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from this data. The Magician and Necro have very similar trend lines. They both show that the the xp return vs expectation trended downward as the clvls increased. Obviously they are not the same. If there was more of the same data I could preform regression to show that they correlate. A single point of data, 1 AA, is not clean or reliable. It is a point. You'd need dozens to reach any substantial conclusion and hundreds for there to be confidence in your results. Including the Paladin data may not be clean and perhaps it is not correct to include but, again, I'm relying on the data provided publicly. 11ish other data points aren't significant enough to rely on. I realize that your mind is probably made up. I've presented what the data shows, your conclusion is not supported by it. If all of that is not compelling, I beg you to consider Occam's Razor. What is more likely, that you discovered a hidden mechanic 18 years after its implementation that has never been discussed or that there are variables in this data that we don't understand?
Disnt at some point light blues got changed to give half the exp they would otherwise be expected to? If higher level characters killing the same mobs were getting less exp, is that part of why, since they would have more light blues in their data?
I don't know the answer to this question for AK but on live yes. I'm wondering if this is a factor here but I didn't want to posit a theory that I didn't have evidence to support.
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I would say that Occam's Razor works in my favor. What other possible reason could be causing this exp gain mismatch between observations and expectations? Exp while not PBAoEing is not reduced and is highly predictable. Exp while PBAoEing is significantly less then expected. Sony didn't like AoE groups and took steps to make them less viable in the past. After next patch, somebody go AoE FG and pull the caller caves+mushrooms+bandits+dregs. (don't include shik`nar) If the number of kills in a 6 man group is higher than ~340 per AA, then come get me and I'll check for the problem. Otherwise that is about how many kills it took me on AK. (or ~280 kills in a 5 man group) I need to remind you here that the reduction I implemented scales with level difference (because that's what the data supports), so killing higher level NPCs will result in less reduction. The 60% figure comes from caller caves, which have level 45s mixed in them which is lowering the aggregate reduction rate. Level 51s by themselves reduce to 71%. So if you're pulling higher level NPCs (like shiknar) then the reduction will be less than -40%. That's the entire issue. They're not supposed to give lower exp at all if they're still dark blue. EQ exp doesn't work like that. My druid's leveling had no reduction. What EQ does is dramatically increase the amount of exp required to level instead of reducing experience gained from kills like most games. The one exception to this is light blue exp. Basically in EQ you have one gigantic experience number that is the entire sum of all of your character's kills ever done, then your level is computed from that single number. This is why Sony had to use HBMs and added class modifiers to exp gained to cancel out the class penalty in Velious, because they couldn't change the exp required to level formula otherwise it would screw up everybody's levels.
I would just like to say that I used to think I was smart. But then I go into these forums where everyone is posting all these crazy graphs, charts and calculations that make my brain go numb. Heres what I do know. I like EQ. I like getting more xp than less xp. I know that Predator is an amazing movie and the fact that Yarnee doesnt know what it is, is disturbing. All the other math things that I dont understand I will just leave the rest for all of you to figure out and will just hope AE isnt ruined... because well... like I said earlier. More xp > less xp OK, back to hitting auto attack once and kick every 10 seconds or so. Good day
I’m with slay on this It is all over my head. on a side note I’d love to see dev discord chat before making these posts, drawing straws on who has to post it lol.
I dunno. I wonder if Hobart knows about this server? If someone can get a hold of him he would probably do some kinda AMA. Or not. Lmao that’d probably go off great. Just asking questions about all the nerfs we have. Guess it just depends how fond he is of his work here and on EQ.
In that stream, he told a couple of stories that makes me think any NDA he signed doesn't matter anymore, how he was treated by management when they shifted how dev and design worked among other stories. He actually commented on quite a bit more than I expected.
Perhaps can ask him about what he envisioned for the server as well in terms of changes. He was willing to come back for another interview with the guy and used up the full three hours to talk. He seemed like he wanted to talk as much as possible about EQ. He even mentioned that he wanted to talk about his memorabilia in the background, but didn't have enough time. One item was an Al'Kabor poster on the wall. You guys should watch that video if you haven't. Perhaps I didn't hear this right, but he also hoped that Vanguard would be relaunched and that last year he ran it on his work computer at SOE when he still worked there and it ran well? So there are plans to relaunch? Wasn't clear.
I dunno it seems like too many if conditions to be an actual change made by the dev team. They definitely did try to prevent AE. But they did this through adding unstunnable mobs in the Grey and in Acrylia Caverns to outright prevent the stunning of piles of mobs. I’m still highly skeptical there actually was a piece of EXP code where it performs multiple IF checks. “IF mob is higher than level X” AND “IF mob is dealt large portions of damage through AE” THEN “Reduce EXP by X”. I think when looking solely at logs there is plenty of information that may have gotten missed like maybe you’re zoning when a group member changes and you go from 3 to 4 players. Or maybe a character or three were out of range for X number of kills. Or maybe some kills just weren’t grabbed in the logs. Or some mobs fluctuate in level. Or someone in the group dies and the EXP split changes. Etc. etc. The solution here seems to me to be too unique a solution that actually existed with no one finding out about it ever. Hell people found out naturally that Lord Feshlak had quest text, you know that dragon that’s stuck in a corner facing you that is surrounded by KoS see invis NPCs you’d have to FD past him and then sneak to even test and that got found. But a 40% EXP reduction seems like a huge thing that would’ve been noticed. Especially since AAs added a huge amount of content for max leveled players and many of them used AEing to obtain them. I’ve supported most AE changes on this server. I agree that the entire zone ME kites sort of broke the game and that zone (though I do miss walking around it freely), I do agree that some level of leashing was necessary in Fungus Grove to prevent entire zone pulls. I did agree with updating resists in the Deep to reflect AK values. But this nerf just to all AE everywhere seems too extreme to the point of completely removing the purpose of those groups. Sure a lazy trio can still do a few spots and earn OK exp but the full 6-character groups were often the most likely spots you were to find 4+ humans working together to earn EXP on the server and they won’t be as motivated to do that any longer since you don’t need as my concurrent rolls filled by different humans to ensure you’re not constantly wiping like in a normal grind group where boxes easily fill most slots. In the grand scheme of things, this will become immediately irrelevant upon PoP launch. You have zones in PoP where you can get 10-20% AA Per kill solo and 10-12% AA per kill in a trio. AEing 55< mobs is for the birds at that point in time. The server is so top heavy I would expect for any group some PoP zone would exceed Luclin AEing. But for as long as we remain in Luclin I can only see this reducing player engagement. Once PoP launches though I can see people completely forgetting about this change.
Much can be said for the Master of Element nerf too, but one thing MoE did do was bring people from separate guilds together and playing together and chatting together and forming bonds or something approaching friendships.
PBAOE massive slaughter will always go down as some of the BEST in-game experiences I've had as an Everquest Player. This is going to be my last EQ server - I could care less if it takes a few min longer to move that xp bar. Pro tip: When you are making love, take your time and enjoy the moment.
Was Chardok another zone they added unstunnable mobs too? Or was that just p99 to avoid the AE PL groups?
heaven forbid you should have to kill a mob with melee damage in an elf simulator, you people whine too much
Yarnee, I understand your avatar now. I can totally picture you as that avatar pointing and wagging your finger saying "You people wine too much"