NPC Experience Gain

[Voxaroth]

Breaking experience gain into two threads because it can get muddied up a bit.

I feel like trying to gain XP is a solo activity, because grouping up typically makes it take a lot longer to do. Lengthy solo activities don't promote roleplaying.

So either gaining experience alone needs to become faster to accomplish, or grouping up needs to come at less of a penalty for the people doing it.

It could be as simple as rewarding the person who collapses the target full experience value, even while grouped. Or, it could be the tweaking of how much experience certain NPC's reward. Or it could be a little of both. Or it could be something completely new and innovative.

Either way, I don't think it'd be detrimental to the game. Because players are gated by spheres, there are still time checks in place (some kind of consideration may need to be made for dual-focused dreamers who have those gates removed, I admit). And the people who play most often will still improve faster than the rest who don't; but for those who don't, it will free up more playing time for roleplaying while allowing them to continue to advance (which promotes playing the game more, which leads to a larger more stable player base, which is a really good thing).

[Koi-Spark]

To be honest, I feel like this suggestion would have been more applicable two years ago, before the xp rewards for shamblix and horron were increased to ten times their previous values. That was done to encourage a team hunting activity while still giving absurd amounts of xp for party members.

Hunting agoknights isn't going to give you a whole lot of orbits very quickly once you get to about 5th sphere or higher and it's also not meant to. People in those higher spheres complain that advancement is too slow. Well, yeah, it is. It is supposed to be. The fact that we have players breezing through 6th, 7th, and even 8th sphere as fast as they used to get through 3rd, 4th, and 5th says a lot. If every sphere was meant to be completed in the same amount of time, there wouldn't be an increased xp per orbit at each sphere. If your entire plan of advancement is via hunting solo, you're going to have a hard time getting through those higher spheres. As GMs, we do grant xp for RPs, as well as RP Points, which can also be used to gain xp. Bequeath could be great, but few are selfless enough to spend their own xp to reward someone else.

Of course, I don't want to give the impression that I don't think improvements can be made. I think we can (and should) make some adjustments, but I don't think making it easy to go from orbit 60-69 in a week is really in the best interest of the game or its players.

[coltdorsey]

..If your entire plan of advancement is via hunting solo, you're going to have a hard time getting through those higher spheres.

From my experience, the limitation of party experience getting wastefully distributed to maxed party members means I almost exclusively hunt alone because most are characters are maxed at their spheres.

[Cherokee]

..If your entire plan of advancement is via hunting solo, you're going to have a hard time getting through those higher spheres.

From my experience, the limitation of party experience getting wastefully distributed to maxed party members means I almost exclusively hunt alone because most are characters are maxed at their spheres.

Now that's something from SoT I wish we still had. If a person is maxed, all the XP should be distributed to the party members that are not. And if all of them are except for one, that person should get the full gain.

[Koi-Spark]

..If your entire plan of advancement is via hunting solo, you're going to have a hard time getting through those higher spheres.

From my experience, the limitation of party experience getting wastefully distributed to maxed party members means I almost exclusively hunt alone because most are characters are maxed at their spheres.

You can hunt with other players without being in the same party.

Also, I'm trying to determine if most characters are at their sphere's maximum, then either:
a) Nobody has any issues gaining xp quickly enough because they spend all their time maxed;
b) Sphere tasks take longer to complete than gaining a sphere's worth of xp does.

Maybe one of these is true, or maybe both. In either case, I fail to see how experience is not available enough.
If you are going to hunt with someone and you are currently maxed, maybe Bequeath them some xp and hunt until you're maxed again? Then you both win.

With that said, I think the point Voxaroth was trying to make is that xp advancement is difficult when you have limited time to play and would rather spend your time roleplaying than hunting (which yes, it is a grind, and it's the same as other online games). By design, Underlight just requires some time investment. You can play other games (like WoW) and have a reasonably good time without ever speaking to anyone or emoting or putting in any effort at all, really. Underlight is different. It requires some level of character development, talking at length with other players, doing actually unique quests from actually unique players (not NPCs), and all the other things that lead up to advancement, all of which require substantial time to do. As fast as you want to go, you'll always be slowed down by someone else typing slowly when talking or writing a quest or whatever. That's how a simple quest report can erase 2 hours of your life and now it's past your bed time.

I don't want to make anyone think that you can't play if you don't play six hours every day. Everyone can play, but just by the very nature of this game you have to understand that advancement requires time. If you cannot invest the time required, then you're going to stagnate. It's going to be slow and it's going to be more difficult. Underlight is not like other games where you can just power-level through the entire thing in a few days on just a few hours per day.

I know you hate it being part of the discussion, Voxaaroth, but I'm going to bring up Bequeath again because I think it is the best route to the answer you're looking for, and it's really an existing mechanic to the Quest/Orbit idea you've presented.

Bequeath uses a Power Token (it was initially intended for Guardians/Rulers to reward stuff without having to go through mission boards). It also costs the evoker twice the xp they are granting. This seems like a total rip-off and makes the art virtually useless to everyone. But the idea behind that was to prevent abuse - you're not likely to give your best friend an entire sphere worth of xp if it's going to cost you twice as much to grant it. In that sense, there really was no way to abuse it because it costs you to do it and GMs didn't have to monitor/track yet another mechanic.

So people suggest dropping the double-xp requirement and just make it 1:1, but then it's easy to blast your friend's newly awakened character to third sphere max in a week because you haven't even lost an orbit doing it and you'll make it up with an hour hunting shamblixes. So it gets shady. Oh, but we could make a quest codex a requirement so GMs can track the use of Bequeath to make sure every xp grant is legit based on a given quest like Train, even moreso if the xp limits for Bequeath were raised to 250k. More work for the GMs to make sure everyone is being fair and playing by the rules, which takes more time away from being able to actually provide in-game RP support and new storylines and characters and all that.

If the point of the game was to get to 9th sphere max with all of your arts at 99 within a month of playing (looking at you, every other MMORPG), the game mechanics would be very different and Underlight just wouldn't be unique. This game absolutely depends on player interaction more than anything else. You can get all the xp you want, but you're not going past your 9th orbit without other players and that is where the real time sinks happen.

Even with limited time to play, you can still make friends or join a house. Simply ask people for help. If you ask for help with gaining experience and nobody (especially teachers) will do whatever they can to assist, then we have a much bigger issue than game mechanics to worry about. Nobody may Bequeath xp to you for free, but sometimes you have to get creative and make it worth their sacrifice.

It sucks and sometimes it's a grind, but there are ways you can do it, slow as it may be.

[Voxaroth]

I think more than anything, the situation I'll find myself in is:

1) I'm out hunting ago's for XP, getting 1000 per and a pretty decent rate (still slow, but I can live with it).
2) Playing at off hours, I'm the only one on Sense. So as more start to play, they come find me (perfectly happy about that).
3) They party up and chat from the sanc with me while I keep at it, making conversation in between.
4) Party grows, I'm doing all the work, and getting half the XP now.
5) I want to be sociable, but I also want not to be penalized half my experience because I'm being sociable.

I agree that my mentality should be to go hunt bigger game with more people, but a lot of the time the people who have come along aren't interested in hunting (or are bad at it) and just want to be sociable. So for the sake of the argument above, I'm stuck hunting agos, but I'm gaining at a painfully slow rate. Likewise, they aren't going to leave party with me to chase me from room to room, because it's tedious for them and very difficult to keep going if someone is midsentence in a conversation before I hop the portal.

I'm wondering how terrible it would be if the person who collapsed a target got full value in a party, rather than a reduced amount (the other party members would still get the reduced amount). Is that even do-able, or do all values have to increase together? Obviously a problem with the Shamblix, now that I'm thinking about it.

Perhaps it just is what it is.

[coltdorsey]

I think more than anything, the situation I'll find myself in is:
4) Party grows, I'm doing all the work, and getting half the XP now.

I think xp split between party members who can gain experience will improve the situation drastically. This way you're being sociable while helping your party members out. If you have a party of two, you collapse an Agoknight for 666xp and 333xp goes to party member. If they are helping hunt, you'll get that 333xp back when they collapse an Agoknight. So you're still gaining the same amount of experience if they help, and you can both be sociable and enjoy party benefits like not while not being in the same room within the same plane.

5) I want to be sociable, but I also want not to be penalized half my experience because I'm being sociable.

Often times I just have to draw a line when someone wants to join party and to Tman while hes hunting, Tman asks if they are maxed. If they are, he declines and explains why. If they are not maxed he generally allows them to join as long as they are contributing.

[Koi-Spark]

Often times I just have to draw a line when someone wants to join party and to Tman while hes hunting, Tman asks if they are maxed. If they are, he declines and explains why. If they are not maxed he generally allows them to join as long as they are contributing.

Sometimes that's just the way it goes. The problem I see is that the server can't tell if people in your party are just socializing or if everyone is actually contributing to hunting. I mean if they're just there for the chit-chat, then they shouldn't really get any experience, right? But if they're maxed and actually helping you hunt (which is pretty generous of them), then why should you get all of the experience for doing half (or less) of the work? Yeah, I agree it's just wasted xp evaporating into the ether, but it's not your experience to claim, it still belongs to them.

If someone is maxed and wants to join your party to hunt, tell them the price of admission is to bequeath you 10k xp. Or collapse them for their insubordination, then apologize by letting them hunt with you. Don't really do that, that's not advisable. Like coltdorsey said, the idea of splitting xp is that everyone is doing his or her part. If you are in different rooms and each find an ago, you get 666 from one you collapse and 333 from the one your party member collapsed. Okay, so that doesn't add up to 1000 but one of you is still getting 1xp per second you're in party together. That took you no longer than hunting alone and you've collapsed twice the number of nightmares doing it. That other 999xp isn't yours - you didn't do anything special or extra to deserve double xp for collapsing one mare.

If you're hunting while others stand around and chat, it's completely reasonable to be upset that you're not getting the full xp. But that's not really the fault of the game mechanics - that's the fault of those freeloaders stealing your hard-earned xp. The least they could do is gen sit and give you all the best items, or bequeath some xp to you, or write up a nice quest that says "Go hunting while I'm in your party and doing absolutely nothing constructive and I'll plateau your Bitter Resentment to 20!" Okay, that's a little harsh, but you get what I'm saying.

If you go to a bar and someone wants to buy everyone a round of your favorite frosty adult beverage but 3 other people are designated drivers or otherwise don't partake in the drinks, that doesn't mean you automatically get to claim those drinks as your own. They can offer you their share, but you can't expect to drink it until they do.

Be social, just don't feel like you have to do it for free

[Cherokee]

The problem with this is hunting in general is boring and time consuming. Having others in party makes things a little more interesting, as you can at least converse in between mare spawns while the other maxed players are either sitting around talking or genning.

Why should the person genning have to compensate for an XP penalty to the hunter because they are maxed and have to hand over all of the good items? Not only would they not be gaining XP, but they wouldn't be collecting items for themselves or their house. Some people like helping others hunt, even though they're maxed. It would help greatly if XP didn't go wasted. It may not be technically theirs, but if the work is put in and the other maxed players don't mind, why shouldn't it all go to those that aren't maxed? If maxed players that are fighting do not want to share the XP they're otherwise wasting by collapsing something, they can choose to not be in a party.

My question is this: would this even be a simple code change, to cut off XP distribution to those that can't gain anything?

[coltdorsey]

But if they're maxed and actually helping you hunt (which is pretty generous of them), then why should you get all of the experience for doing half (or less) of the work?

I was thinking that if YOU collapsed an Agoknight in party with someone who is maxed, you (the collapser) should get 1000xp. If your party member who is maxed collapses the Agoknight, you would just get your normal cut of 333xp and their 666xp gets wasted since they can't gain.

[Koi-Spark]

But if they're maxed and actually helping you hunt (which is pretty generous of them), then why should you get all of the experience for doing half (or less) of the work?

I was thinking that if YOU collapsed an Agoknight in party with someone who is maxed, you (the collapser) should get 1000xp. If your party member who is maxed collapses the Agoknight, you would just get your normal cut of 333xp and their 666xp gets wasted since they can't gain.

That makes moderately more sense, but still doesn't take into account of either player is hunting or just standing around. The the latest ideas at viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2397 for a potential answer to all of these concerns

[Uthanatos]

I really have trouble understanding this. I mean, I understand that at higher spheres it takes significantly more XP per orbit, but I've only ever been concerned about wasted xp when I'm helping pad someone. Since most planes barely have enough ages to keep one person going, everyone else in our party is normally at a gen and we supply each other equitably. The exception being LC where you can easily have an ago hunter 2 on the sham and one genning.

[Malarky]

I like the quest boards. I wish I could get them to work. Could be my sucking. Still trying to figure them out. In principal, great idea. Make those greater!