Experience Sharing

Penwize

While you're all on a kick of newbie retention, I'd like to direct your attention to one aspect of the game that a lot of people have trouble with (though I obviously love): hunting/bashing.  After long enough it becomes extremely grindy, and a lot of people have trouble with that sort of thing.  This in and of itself isn't a particularly bad thing, but its tedium is exacerbated by the fact that it is a wholly solo piece of the game.  Solo tedium is only fun so far.  The xp sharing mechanism in the game is such that it is rarely worthwhile (from what I've been able to tell) to group up, which is in stark contrast to most other games where grouping is encouraged and rewarded.  I'm not entirely sure how the xp splitting works, but it certainly feels like it's a net loss overall by a considerable margin.  We really don't see a lot of hunting groups forming except for rare rp-driven things, or the occasional case where someone's taking another person leveling and leeching experience. 

This is, of course, coupled with the fact that the nature of Achaea's PvE content already means that all loot will be split in some fashion (gold drops from mobs, gold from handin quests), so you'll be overall gaining less.  You might think that sure, if you hunt with another person you're gaining half the gold/xp, but gaining it at twice the rate.  I'd argue that's not the case, since you don't quite double your hunting speed, and thus overall lose out by bringing someone along (let alone multiples).

I'd like to see this considered, since it would be great to take people along hunting and make it a far more group-oriented thing, without the feeling of loss it currently brings.

Yue

Having a magi cast reflections for you is useful. All other grouping is pretty derp, from what I have seen.

Regardless of level, I have been able to get more experience on my own then sharing with another person.

I haven't really bashed with a mentor. Supporting this idea.

Sena

I agree with making group bashing viable, but I'm not sure how it could be done well. My best idea so far is an experience boost based on the number of people in the group, but it's not easy to balance it so group bashing is as good as solo bashing without making it somehow abusable.

And just for reference, the way the experience splitting currently works is (Your experience share)=(Your level)/(Total group level). So If Penwize at level 130 and Sena at level 80 are bashing together, Penwize would get 130/210=~62% of the experience and Sena would get 80/210=~38% of the experience. And then if we have a level 5 novice tagging along, the shares would be 130/215, 80/215, and 5/215.

Eld

Sena said:

I agree with making group bashing viable, but I'm not sure how it could be done well. My best idea so far is an experience boost based on the number of people in the group, but it's not easy to balance it so group bashing is as good as solo bashing without making it somehow abusable.

And just for reference, the way the experience splitting currently works is (Your experience share)=(Your level)/(Total group level). So If Penwize at level 130 and Sena at level 80 are bashing together, Penwize would get 130/210=~62% of the experience and Sena would get 80/210=~38% of the experience. And then if we have a level 5 novice tagging along, the shares would be 130/215, 80/215, and 5/215.

Huh, really? I always thought the split favoured the lower level person. HELP EXPERIENCE does say proportional to level, though, so I guess that's right.

Sena

Eld said:

Huh, really? I always thought the split favoured the lower level person.

With the steep experience curve, it will probably seem that way. For example, with a level 50 and level 80 character killing a denizen together, the level 50 character might get 4.1% of a level while the level 80 character gets 0.1% even with the higher level getting a larger share, since you need so much more experience at level 80.

Trevize

I bash with others purely for the enjoyment. Bashing solo is rarely fun. Making it both worthwhile, and fun, that would be nice.

My main problem with medium to large sized groups is that areas get cleared fast. As a result, I rarely bash with more than one or two other people.

Achilles

Sena said:

I agree with making group bashing viable, but I'm not sure how it could be done well. My best idea so far is an experience boost based on the number of people in the group, but it's not easy to balance it so group bashing is as good as solo bashing without making it somehow abusable.

And just for reference, the way the experience splitting currently works is (Your experience share)=(Your level)/(Total group level). So If Penwize at level 130 and Sena at level 80 are bashing together, Penwize would get 130/210=~62% of the experience and Sena would get 80/210=~38% of the experience. And then if we have a level 5 novice tagging along, the shares would be 130/215, 80/215, and 5/215.

This formula needs to be tweaked then, as Penwize probably can hunt 3 times faster than someone level 80.  Would not encourage level 99+ in taking others hunting.

Also xp gain for killing super hard denizens (honour line ones mainly) could be adjusted.  Killing Ugrach for instance takes over a dozen dragons I think.

Valden

When Valden was level 1, Penwize (It was a long time ago so I could be wrong) took him on a leech hunting trip, ended up level 24 in a very short time and I asked him to stop before I got ahead of myself. At which point I got a "Whoops" response and it was all very funny. Thankfully I never needed those portals anyway.

Silas

The problem is, even if you're not significantly faster, the risk while group bashing is significantly lowered. XP doesn't seem to be assessed by time spent bashing so much as it is assessed by risk vs. reward, which is why xp/gold drops in UW/Annwyn are/were so much higher. UW trash isn't going to kill anybody, but the xp/essence/gold from all of it seems to be much better than anything on-plane.

Santar

First of all, Sena is correct about the xp split to my knowledge.

Second of all, I think it's perfectly fine as is. I've never noticed a problem with xp gain in groups whatsoever.  Yes, it's true that you'll gain half the xp/gold while probably not doubling your efficiency, but you gain other things, such as what Silas said. You also have to realize that you, Penwize, along with other Dragons are going to find this much more of a problem due to the fact that dragons can already efficiently bash most everything in the game without any help.

Personally, I've group bashed probably about as much as I've solo bashed, and it doesn't bother me at all.

I say: leave it as is.

 

On a different note, however, it would be nice to have some areas specifically designed for groups to combat, but that's a different subject entirely.

Trevize

Santar said:

On a different note, however, it would be nice to have some areas specifically designed for groups to combat, but that's a different subject entirely.

Agreed.

Santar

Also, I'm in before someone accusing me of suggesting WoW dungeons.

Cardan

Santar said:

On a different note, however, it would be nice to have some areas specifically designed for groups to combat, but that's a different subject entirely.

The problem we've had with this in the past is that by making denizens tougher/smarter/harder to beat, instead of getting group combat where several players work to defeat them, we get two players running through and brazier/boomerang/deliver/yank/etc-bashing them which defeats the purpose of making them harder in the first place. We need to identify a way to make the combat more challenging to encourage groups but not so much more that a newbie making a wrong turn at Albuquerque gets annihilated walking into the room by mistake. 

ETA: Don't get me wrong, I am also keen to see new areas that encourage group participation in both bashing/questing instead of solo efforts.

Nizaris

Something I just noticed, doing some back of the envelope calculations. It's probably easier to show some examples, rather than trying to put it into words:

Example: Level 70 + Level 20 + Level 10 Hunting

Current System

70/100 + 20/100 + 10/100 = 70% + 20% + 10% = 100%

Possible Square Root Formula

80^0.5 / 100^0.5 + 20^0.5 / 100^0.5 + 10^0.5 / 100^0.5 = 83.6% + 44.7% + 31.6% = 160.0%

A few findings:

• All party members benefit by grouping (save for highest levels). More members mean more benefit. Ideally, returns would diminish with each new member, but this is not provided in this formula.
• The biggest bonus is applied to the lowest levels. Higher levels still receive a bonus, just less of one the higher their level.
• The higher the exponent used (eg. 0.7 versus 0.5), the lower the total bonus. I suggest playing with this exponent to achieve the result deemed acceptable by IRE.
• It is damned hard to rein in all of the variables desirable. Been playing around with multipliers to the exponent to raise/lower based on number of people in the party, and it's difficult to accomplish the desired effect.

Penwize

@Cardan: I can think of a lot of ways to make encounters more interesting and challenging without making them all one-shot monstrosities like they are now.  Give them crazy more health, make their damage reasonable, but give them interesting mechanics.  Maybe there's a wind-up attack that you need to shield against quickly, or leave the room during?  Maybe it has ranged attacks and runs to a room adjacent.  Maybe it summons adds that, if they don't die in time, explode for huge damage?  That was just off the top of my head.  I'd love to help with ideas for encounters, if you still had some kind of mortal builder process for them, and I'm sure there are others who could do the same.  Something to think about.  PvE has a huge amount of potential in a game like this but right now it's not being tapped at all, and I think it would be a huge attraction if it was.

Eld

Nizaris said:

Something I just noticed, doing some back of the envelope calculations. It's probably easier to show some examples, rather than trying to put it into words:

Example: Level 70 + Level 20 + Level 10 Hunting

Current System

70/100 + 20/100 + 10/100 = 70% + 20% + 10% = 100%

Possible Square Root Formula

80^0.5 / 100^0.5 + 20^0.5 / 100^0.5 + 10^0.5 / 100^0.5 = 83.6% + 44.7% + 31.6% = 160.0%

A few findings:

• All party members benefit by grouping (save for highest levels). More members mean more benefit. Ideally, returns would diminish with each new member, but this is not provided in this formula.
• The biggest bonus is applied to the lowest levels. Higher levels still receive a bonus, just less of one the higher their level.
• The higher the exponent used (eg. 0.7 versus 0.5), the lower the total bonus. I suggest playing with this exponent to achieve the result deemed acceptable by IRE.
• It is damned hard to rein in all of the variables desirable. Been playing around with multipliers to the exponent to raise/lower based on number of people in the party, and it's difficult to accomplish the desired effect.

So two level 100s bashing together each get the same amount of experience they would without grouping? Seems questionable.

Nizaris

Eld said:

So two level 100s bashing together each get the same amount of experience they would without grouping? Seems questionable.

Negative. That would be 100^.5 / 200^.5 = 70.7% for each. The 100^.5 used in the above example was meant to denote total levels. Apologies; should have defined variables.

Santar

Cardan said:

Santar said:

On a different note, however, it would be nice to have some areas specifically designed for groups to combat, but that's a different subject entirely.

The problem we've had with this in the past is that by making denizens tougher/smarter/harder to beat, instead of getting group combat where several players work to defeat them, we get two players running through and brazier/boomerang/deliver/yank/etc-bashing them which defeats the purpose of making them harder in the first place. We need to identify a way to make the combat more challenging to encourage groups but not so much more that a newbie making a wrong turn at Albuquerque gets annihilated walking into the room by mistake. 

ETA: Don't get me wrong, I am also keen to see new areas that encourage group participation in both bashing/questing instead of solo efforts.

Well, this is clearly due to the uncreative attack mechanics involved in bashing denizens. There's so few factors taken into place that it's hard to find a decent balance that rewards players for playing well together rather than just having more HP and manipulating the AI. Look at denizens like Ugrach. There's nothing creative about the battle design. and there's no skill involved in beating him, he just hits for 3k every 0.3 seconds. And that's the design that most denizens in the game follow.  As such, none of the denizens that are supposed to provide a challenge really provide much interesting conflict. On top of that, there's only one skill we can use to fight against these denizens, just simple "do damage" spells. There's no strategy in it.

Bashing and group PvE in general is a really underdeveloped concept in Achaea. I'm not proposing that bashing as a whole be changed, but there should definitely be some specialized challenge areas introduced where players do more than simply use their bashing attack on monsters and try not to die to the monsters bashing attack. Perhaps each class could have a few new skills introduced purely for use against denizens. Perhaps some denizens could have unique attacks that the player can take action to mitigate(similar to how PvP works) such as by moving, shielding, using abilities, etc. The fun in PvE type adventures is in figuring out a strategy to win, and currently the denizens we fight against are pretty bland. I'm all in favour of such challenge denizens being ridiculously hard, but they should be hard in a way that makes us think of ways we can counter them and get through with a bit of preparation and tactics.

Eld

Nizaris said:

Eld said:

So two level 100s bashing together each get the same amount of experience they would without grouping? Seems questionable.

Negative. That would be 100^.5 / 200^.5 = 70.7% for each. The 100^.5 used in the above example was meant to denote total levels. Apologies; should have defined variables.

Oh, my mistake, I missed that the 100 was the total level in your example. So N people of the same level get 1/N^.5 of usual, instead of 1/N.

Nellaundra

Put it this way.  If my system can reliably heal me against whatever I'm fighting, I can mash one button and literally go mow the lawn or whatever I need to do and the rest is automatic.  I don't do this because it's against the rules, but it's bad design that I even can do this.  The entire system is balanced around 3+ afflictions per hit and doing ungodly damage.  It's NUMERICALLY hard, not STRATEGICALLY hard.  The latter is actually fun.  The former is boring and lazy.

Nizaris

Oh, my mistake, I missed that the 100 was the total level in your example. So N people of the same level get 1/N^.5 of usual, instead of 1/N.

Basically, yes.

I've been thinking that a formula like this might be preferred:

experience_earned = [member_level ^ (multiplier / number_bashers)] / [total_levels ^ (multiplier / number_bashers)]

EDIT: The problem with this formula is that you can always increase the number of bashers until the exponent (multiplier/number_bashers) approaches zero. When this happens, the experience earned will increase dramatically, approaching 100% for each basher. Thus, it would seem that the multiplier would need to increase based on the number of bashers.

Nizaris

Possible solution to the above problem: pick a suitably high multiplier, and then limit the number of participants allowed somehow so that we don't approach the limit.

Silas

I don't think this is a number crunching problem. I'd much rather see it approached from the stance of changing/adding mechanics for bashing and making the whole experience more interesting and attractive for groups.

Wysteria

From what I've noticed with group hunting, it's decent enough up to level 50 if you're in a group/bringing along the protege, but anywhere after that and it's a bit pointless.

I can net myself about 4% in under an hour if I clear out 4 places on the mainland solo at lvl 84, but if I go hunting with @Exelethril (lvl 120 or something) and we clear out UW, Annwyn and Tenwat in the same amount of time, I only get like 1.5%. It's a crazy distribution so I consider those trips as good for gold and essence gaining, over the xp thing.

Group bashing is good from a social standpoint, really, and to help get that honours line if it's applicable.

Kenway

For making 

Cardan said:

Santar said:

On a different note, however, it would be nice to have some areas specifically designed for groups to combat, but that's a different subject entirely.

The problem we've had with this in the past is that by making denizens tougher/smarter/harder to beat, instead of getting group combat where several players work to defeat them, we get two players running through and brazier/boomerang/deliver/yank/etc-bashing them which defeats the purpose of making them harder in the first place. We need to identify a way to make the combat more challenging to encourage groups but not so much more that a newbie making a wrong turn at Albuquerque gets annihilated walking into the room by mistake. 

ETA: Don't get me wrong, I am also keen to see new areas that encourage group participation in both bashing/questing instead of solo efforts.

Most classes have one ability they use for hunting. I believe I discussed this with @Tasleus once upon a time and we decided that it'd be cool to make larger enemies(named enemies) fight in stages, similar to a classic Zelda or Secret of Mana or numerous other games. Basically, adding the ability to target limbs on 'boss' enemies to make fighting them a bit easier. Spider Queen webbing you too much? Break her torso to add time between webs. Other-enemy-that-I-don't-know-because-I-don't-hunt keeping you prone? Render its arm unusable so you stay on your feet. Basically just adding some semblance of strategy to hunting, since as it stands it's all about damage/balance which requires no thought and more people helping just adds damage. Thinking before you enter Belladona's room and saying to your mate, 'Hey, you keep her leg broken to slow the speed with which she kicks out respective asses.' would add a lot, even if it takes strengthening some enemies to balance it out.

Sasiya

Santar said:

Also, I'm in before someone accusing me of suggesting WoW dungeons.

You mean... like this: IRE dungeons!

Trevize

I'd simplify it. Give denizens 'wind up' abilities, give players 'interrupt' abilities. Separate them into mental/physical attacks, and the same for the interrupts, so they must be matched up.

Skye

Cardan said:

Santar said:

On a different note, however, it would be nice to have some areas specifically designed for groups to combat, but that's a different subject entirely.

The problem we've had with this in the past is that by making denizens tougher/smarter/harder to beat, instead of getting group combat where several players work to defeat them, we get two players running through and brazier/boomerang/deliver/yank/etc-bashing them which defeats the purpose of making them harder in the first place. We need to identify a way to make the combat more challenging to encourage groups but not so much more that a newbie making a wrong turn at Albuquerque gets annihilated walking into the room by mistake. 

ETA: Don't get me wrong, I am also keen to see new areas that encourage group participation in both bashing/questing instead of solo efforts.

why not make it so that there are areas you cannot enter without being in a group of at least three? Or that your total / average level must be a certain amount or else the difficulty ramps up / denizens become automatically aggro or start tracking you down because you lack the numbers / strength to intimidate them.

Or multi-part dungeons, to draw from some of the old Final Fantasy type dungeons, where you need two parties (or 2 players for those hardcore types) to get through a dungeon where one group had to pull a particular lever or stand on a certain tile to make sure the passage was kept clear before they could proceed.

And of course the rewards would be that much higher for needing to take the effort.

Another problem would also be that denizens don't seem to have an actual randomized target. They generally tend to attack the last person in the party unless they have a particular hatred for someone. Wouldn't it be possible to code different kinds of party formations that will only work provided everyone is in the room? So, for example, if Penwize is in the party, he can take the foreguard and he will be the denizen's priority attack and also the full brunt of attack, while there might be younger, squishier players behind who take reduced damage.

Having said that, I'm no longer entirely sure how group bashing even works. When I first started playing, all you needed to do was follow up and add everyone to your allies list. Then they did some changes to the numbers or how it worked or something, and then they introduced the party channel or something and sometimes when I'm in a group bash, I wonder if I needed to start a party or if I could just follow up, and whether allying people made any difference now.

Eld

@Skye Experience sharing is just based on following, no parties or allies necessary.

Nizaris

Silas said:

I don't think this is a number crunching problem. I'd much rather see it approached from the stance of changing/adding mechanics for bashing and making the whole experience more interesting and attractive for groups.

I agree with what you're saying that the nature of encounters ought to be changed such that they are more interesting, and indeed, that seems to be one of the two main points of the original post. That said, the original post brought up this separate point, which I was attempting to address: that experience sharing ought to be looked at (hence the title of the thread). I personally have no feelings on whether or not the present experience sharing system is broken, but was attempting to post a helpful solution if a change was adopted.

Sarapis

Generally we'd all like better PvE interactions, but we also have a tiny staff, and more things to work on than we'll ever get to. IRE has always intentionally focused primarily on PvP for the simple reason that most MUDs and MMOs are heavily PvE.

We can have a look at how experience is shared based on following, but a total overhaul to how PvE combat works is very unlikely in the near or medium-term future.