XP cap

[jdexter1]

If the XP needed for each level is the same, then the XP cap makes sense. From what I have seen, the XP is the same for each level, but that may change in the uppermost levels, I don't know.

If I need (for example) to cap xp at 3000 for 10 kills to get from 40 to 41 in Fight, then I would also need to cap xp at 3000 for 10 kills to get from 41 to 42. The same mobs give lower xp as you level, so you have to move on to higher mobs to cap xp.

Since this looks like how it is set up then the xp cap is the right way to do it. If, however, the xp needed increases each level up, then the caps would be a bad thing and you would need to kill an outrageous amount. In that case the xp cap would be bad, but that doesn't look like how it works here.

DAoC does increase the amount needed and decrease the amount given and also has a sliding scale. That works in their setup, here it probably wouldn't.

JDexter

[tetra]

From what you say vlad, I deduce that there is no restriction on teaming up. i.e. a level one could team with a level 50 and gain equal XP. If so, I understand the reasoning behind the cap now.

Perhaps kam, but I can't help thinking there'd be hundreds, perhaps thousands of extra lines of coding involved if it was based on a sliding scale as you suggest. (It's just a guess as I do NOT know this to be a fact) However, presuming that I am correct, I'd much rather see all those liines of code being placed in a more constructive manner, such as a fix for lag, or perhaps a potential exploit the devs manage to catch before its released to the live servers.

There is indeed a restriction on teaming up, which makes the cap rather silly in it's current form, since it makes teaming with folks using a skill more than a few levels beyond your own pointless. Currently EXP for the entire group is split after the exp is calculated for the highest skill that any player in the group uses. So if you have a player who is:

PlayerA doing melee
- level 47 melee
- level 100 range
- level 46 offensive elemental
- and level 100 defensive affliction/healing

And said player is using melee and offensive elemetal while grouped with a bunch of folks who are

PlayerB is healing.
- level 48 melee
- level 20 range
- level 100 offensive elemental
- and level 52 defensive affliction

and

PlayerC using nukes, perhaps single... perhaps dual.
- level 100 melee
- level 20 range
- level 40 offensive elemental
- and level 110 defensive affliction/healing

If during a fight everyone sticks to the things that I outlined, the exp would be calculated based on the level 52 healing of playerB. If during the fight for some reason playerC hits the wrong key and casts a single heal spell, the exp is now calculated as Level 110 instead of the lower level. If during the fight player C did 100% of the damage, player A was afk, and playerB healed playerC once with a sap heal 1 spell... the exp is calculated based on playerC's level 110 healing level.

In the current system, grouping is highly penalized because nobody wants to group with someone that might throw off the exp.

As to the whole lines of code argument though, it's bunk. There was already a system during parts of beta that was soft capped and didn't matter the level of the folks you were grouping with. In that system, you had the following things factoring exp.

- The difficulty of your successful attack/healing/etc is worth some value on it's own, i.e. acid 4 is worth more than acid 2, dual acid 4 is worth more than acid4, acid4 with a vamp brick was worth more than acid4, more of the same with anything that raised the difficulty of the spell/fight action.
- A mob had a modifier based on it's level.
- Every action placed on the mob would degrade it's modifier for new actions until it was litterally hurting your exp/hr to prolong the fight.

before someone jumps in and starts yelling about it... This is not the system that made spamming dual acid/cold 1 on mobs the best exp/hr because of the degrading modifier. Your exp at the end of the fight was a calculation of your specific successful actions going into their proper places (i.e. swinging a sword went into fight>melee>1 or 2 handed fight>etc depending on your level, casting a heal went into magic>defensive>healing). Because the values of a low level player would be lower it was still good exp to hunt with higher levels, but it wasn't completely off the charts since they would miss often. Likewise mages were encouraged to not spam their highest level spells and drop mobs as fast as possible... that was reserved for when things went wrong and what happens when a group wipeout is something that needs to be prevented, instead mages would pace themselves with a lower level spell that doesn't obliterate the mob too fast, but doesn't draw it out too long.

It meant that if you had leveled defensive magic quite a bit, and neglected elemental for a dozen or two levels, that you could still level them both on your own without having to never use fear because it causes the exp to drop to zip... and you could and often would group with anyone because it was fun and nobody really lost anything because of it. The only real downsides to that system were that leveling afflictions was annoying (like now still), and that it was sometimes a pain to level healing.

The healing issue was a nonissue however since you could level it faster than just about any other skill due to AOE's counting for every person they hit against every mob on those players hatelists... however this too was a benefit since it meant that just about any caster and most melee's eventually were able to do the healing thing to keep a group going if the current healer was leaving for some reason. It also made up for those fights where the healer pretty much got squat because of the lack of a need to heal much during the fight.

The upsides were pretty major since you could reroll, have a friend drag you kicking and screaming into the game, or simply just join a guild as a relatively new/low level player, and still be able to join up with your friends while getting exp that eventually lets you catchup some to your friends and feeling useful. You could go out on guild outings with a hanful of higher levels giving a "tour" (like often happened during beta) as a level 52 fighter and get pretty good exp with those higher levels simply wandering around the nasty parts of the continent killing things and collecting spawn points for the lowbie. It meant that it didn't matter if the trek somewhere was particularly rediculously dangerous because of super high level aggro's camping out at a narrow passage that you had to run through on the way, simply because you could easily just tag along with some higher levels heading through and maybe make some new friends instead of being "that guy following us who we hope doesn't do something stupid and pull a bunch of mobs onto us". And probably the most important factor about the old exp system of all.... nobody thought about exp or how another player would affect their exp beyond "hey Joe, use a lower level nuke since your killing it too fast with dual fire2's... use dual 6's or 8's or something".