The point of my comment was you can make your own channel and do your own work and not wait for someone to carry you to 60. Say in alliance chat 'Looking for more enc/wiz for pbaoe group /join Wilshirepbaoeorgy' and depending what you end up with pick an appropriate zone to blow up. Karnors (non-basement) can be done with 1 enc, Velks can be done with 2 with a 59+ bard playing bereavement, Hole can be done w 3 enc and a 59+ bard.
bringing this discussion back to original poster's topic looks like last patch changed the exp distribution when levels 60s group with level 40s in a significant way level 60s now take full share of exp (even tho it's green), and thus the PLing technique is order of magnitude slower now rough test I did in droga with some AE pulls: lvl 40 char grouped with 60s got 4% exp in a pull, ungrouped was 15% wasn't overly scientific, didn't count exact number of mobs, but the difference is pretty drastic anyways just sharing FYI, I'm sure people noticed already
I feel very strongly that we should be trying to preserve AK exp mechanics. I think they were an important part of the server we are re-creating. I am sad to see OOR group experience dismantled, and now this? Not sure why this would be nerfed, but I am disappointed.
It does kick the leg out from the arguments against other things with no downside but arent "classic" to al kabor, doesnt it. Why is this difference okay but something like showing dot damage or mana totals isnt? Very arbitrary.
As stated everything related to groups has rules that can be toggled to change its functionality. OOR was an admin decision. The green group change however is open to discussion because the truth is, we're not exactly sure how it worked on AK. There are common beliefs held by many, but there has also been evidence to support that it maybe didn't work like everybody remembered. The code is now very flexible and we can easily change its functionality by toggling rules in the database. I did this because of the uncertainty. If I was 100% sure how it worked, I would have just written it that way. It would have been a lot easier trust me. Discussion should probably be done in another thread with links and logs from AK to help me figure out how the rules should be set. Edit: And now I can admit, a big part of the change was made because the old system didn't work like any of the 3 ways mentioned in the original post. We were way off.
Believe me, that's been a bone of contention on P99 for years. People complain over there about how the devs have made arbitrary changes that aren't 'classic'. Sometimes they truly aren't classic, but there are good reasons for making the change anyway, and sometimes they actually are pefectly classic but people don't remember the era accurately and/or just don't like the change. What they never are though, is arbitrary. I never played on Ak, so I don't know what is or is not Akurate. I trust these devs though, as I do the P99 devs, and if they think a change is warranted then it's OK with me. I am living in their house.
No, that reply was the worst. I *know* dot damage and mana totals weren't in AK. That was the ******* point.
Highkeep giving TWICE as much XP per kill as Sebilis/HS really should fall into the 'this is too fucking stupid to reproduce' category with Quarm's invincible AEs, perma pacify, and so on (AND MONK AC. I'm not biased at all here; this is a critical server issue!) Boxed dungeon crawls in HS/Sebilis are simply not an efficient way to level solo for first time characters, especially if you didn't include a cleric in your box setup. Sure, I could do the Sebilis entrance with my 52 monk/shaman combo. But it was slow and dangerous and I had to get CR help a few times. And after a while /w all 48 55, /t xx 'wanna come to sebilis', 'no thanks, that sounds dangerous' gets tiresome, especially when you know they aren't wrong. Staying at the zone out is unquestionably the fastest and least stressful way to L60. Taking your time leveling is all well and good until half your guild gives you shit about being 55 or whatever. 3 raids a week + leveling up + doing quests requires a lot of time. All that being said, with the massive XP bonuses and boxing here leveling isn't really that hard.
Good job cussing in public general forum. There are kids who play. May want to read the rules before you get suspended or banned followed by you rage posting. Ps- go back to p99.
* Group exp split rewrite. Simplified the code and added comments and logging to make it easier to read. It is also less likely to cause issues due to counter variables with invalid values. The counter variables are now set in a single loop, instead of being set and then possibly changed later on." At risk of stirring up this hornets nest of a thread... it looks like OOR xp is gone as well as the ability to kill greens with a 60 for a 40? I assume this is the part of the patch that reworked the xp and got rid of OOR xp and the green giving no xp "features". Also there was a quick line in a recent patch about adjusting for damage shields? It would make perfect sense that if its not Akcurate to keep it simple rather than create an even more convoluted system. Anyways, I was wondering if anybody has come up with any good info on how to be efficient in the new system.
This seems like an area with a ton of side effects. Any change is likely to produce unforeseen consequences. Cavedude, do you guys have any automated tests of any kind, like a unit testing suite? I think Selenium or something like it can drive UI tests. Or even a scripted test that simulated a party and ran it through various exp scenarios. I don't know much about the setup on your dev side, but I know what a pain it is to do core changes without a test suite of some kind.
As stated before, the issue is nobody has given me proof or any sort of data to show how this system worked on AK. It does not work the same on Live, so that cannot be used. I have found some information but it is dated before AK (pre-Luclin) so I can't exactly use that either. The rules were chosen truthfully to be conservative, which is our general rule of thumb. Also, in private I have received some evidence that green XP wasn't as high as people remember and information from another person saying the same thing (the second person did not provide evidence however.) I have absolutely no problem changing rules around, I just want things to be correct. But, and I don't mean to sound rude but I am hearing a whole lot of complaining and no data or anything we can use. OOR was disabled long ago, it wasn't done recently. That was done on purpose by admin decision. It is a rule that can be toggled as well. The damage shield commit was done because I had overlooked ds in a recent death overhaul and broke them in the death mechanic. The followup commit fixed it and restored the functionality to its previous state. That wasn't some sort of evil nerf or anything it was simply an oversight and followup fix. It happens.
Cavedude was alot nicer than I would be in this thread. But he is 100% spot on. I will never sign up to change OOR xp to "on". I also played on AK, I know it was a royal pain in the rear to level my alts to be groupable with my main. Countless hours in EC. If green xp was as you say it "should be" I would have had an army of 65s before closing. Either way. We will choose at our discretion any setting to game mechanics towards the more difficult side of things if PROOF is not provided. Cussing, swearing, crying, flaming each other or the devs as well as telling us to "test our stuff" is not going to be met kindly. You want it a certain way? Provide logs, parses, screenshot and test on DEV yourself. None of the code that gets to TAKP is sprung on you outside of hotfixes. The dev server is there for a reason. For YOU to test. Before anyone gets critical about cavedude's work, remember this. No cavedude == no server. I suggest reading the first few lines of the new dumbed down adhd version of the rules before losing your mind due to nerfs.
I don't think anybody is going to provide logs and evidence to the contrary, because I don't think it's really technically nor practically possible. Also because evidence would likely suggest the previous exp method was incorrect (whereby lvl 60s took no exp from green cons). For what it's worth, the current exp mechanic (post patch) feels more accurate and is probably more appropriate. It makes sense that every member of the party would take their share of the exp for all kills, regardless of con. No ezmode lvling alts anymore. People will deal with it.
There are a few people that said they had loads of logs as they always had logs on. But due to privacy reasons have not shared the bulk of them. We just have to do the best we can with collective memory and err on the side of not so easy mode in cases where no one, not even us can verify what it was.
So, when I read that changes had been made to the exp distribution mechanics I was a bit bummed because I was in the middle of leveling my last alt through Droga (along with another guildies chars) having already completed the process with 2 other alts. But last night we decided to see how much things had changed for us and put some time in murdering the gobbos in Droga with happy results. In a group with three (and later four) alts between 40-51 and one 60 bst doing the heavy lifting the xp rate still feels very good. If you are despairing quickly getting your alt up, I suggest trying a similar group configuration - one strong pet class as the 60, along with 3-4 alts each taking their share out of the distributed xp pool. Happy trails!
I want to pipe in and say the exp mechanics are fine from my end. We already have a server wide exp bonus. I have leveled up three toons to 60 and one to 58 the old-fashioned way by dungeon crawls. Yeah, Highkeep may be faster exp. It needs to be to keep people exp'ing in that boring zone.
I just wanna say that the Grimling Forest bug on AK (where 90 mobs spawned in one spot) was an AMAZING place to green exp. I had a lvl 60 warrior who would shakerpage. It would take a lvl 40 to lvl 49 in 2 hours. Fungus Grove caller event would take someone 49-55 in 12 hours (because the 60 would be receiving exp) I would sell PL 1-55 and it would take me a weekend with a lvl 65 druid and a lvl 60 warrior. Now that I think about it though... perhaps the 40-49 in 2 hours was possible because I would be OOR too. *edit I mean Zamiel's guide says green exp you don't split with the higher levels, and imo that guide is pretty accurate and hasn't been proven wrong on anything. Honestly if a dev could kill 90 grimlings in Grimling Forest at lvl 40 on the dev server or their local server then you will know right away if 40-49 is possible in 2 hours... (but again pretty sure I had 4 OOR toons) unfortunately the only evidence i have of that being 2 hours would incriminate me on some other stuff. Pretty sure the spawn was 20minutes so about 540 blues to kill from 40-49 with the +260% oor bonus... that does not sound unreasonable at all...
I do hope the infinity spawn in Grimling is replicated on here. It surely wasn't an intended feature but it was a staple of AK. Whether you PLed there, farmed acrylia or just felt like taking out your anger on Grimlings that day. Many people used it.
I will need information on Grimling forest and how the war works here. Same with AC. I caught all I could before sunset with Gnostica.
