Double XP, How much is too much?

That is the question we are discussing. Does it throw off the balance of the game? Some very strong points are being made on both sides of the argument. My concern is that anything as big as double XP has the ability to alter the fragile ecosystem of a game, I think it is safe to say, we all love. My hope is that the team at Portalarium is putting the proper amount of thought into this and its repercussions, and not just viewing it as a way to make more money from the stretch goals. I know that money may sometimes have a way of clouding better judgement. I would think that if this is going to become the norm, they should think about doing less with the low level areas and really start cranking out a ton more end game content, because once we all get to level 111, who is going to want to go to the rise with 400 other players and wait your turn for the mage room.

 

I don't think double xp should be calendar (i.e. once a month, once a year, etc.) based at all. It should either be event based like it has been so far or be in a rotation of "events" that happen every so often.

Game finally launchs? Double xp! X goal met for telethon? Double xp! All that was good.

There's some other good event-based suggestions here, but I don't think double xp should be permanent.

 

I like that we are getting double producer this time! Producer is wicked hard to come by. Talk about a grind!
However, I wouldnt want it to be too much , because it takes something that you have to really work hard to excel at and makes it commonplace.

but I want it THIS time, lol.

 

I agree with you here. If they want to encourage grouping, they should up the amount of XP coming off of yellow and above monsters if grouped. Its barely worth doing now and if you go to most places in a group, you have to limit it to 3 or 4 people to not have a huge xp drop off

 

I think every season with an event double exp is a nice idea. But abusing it too much is not good. Of course, I like to use it to level faster. But ones every 4 months seems fitting or with big events.

 

Seeing people with over a 100 GM'ed skills is nauseating as it is. Going beyond 100 in any given skill should have much harsher skill decay and the XP required per level should be even more. The grind should stay the same. If fact, we have it way too easy as it is.

 

Who is this person you're referring to? I 100% disagree with you here. If these people exist, there aren't many of them. I really don't think this is an issue at all. You can grind a character to adventurer level 90 in a couple of months, and the people that have been in the 100's are still only getting an adventurer level each month. The tiny return on your investment at higher levels COMPLETELY negates this is happening. Why do some people think there is such an enormous gap? .

 

If I remember correctly backers were suppose to get a week of advanced exp gain potential. Instead they got over a year. With no cap, how does it hurt your character?

 

While every incremental level may be "rubbish"... when you have your skills at GM and another player has 120, 140 or 150, it's not rubbish.

101 may not be much better than 100, and 102 not much better than 101 and so on, but the cumulative total of those tiny level gaps is stronger than your tiny returns on investment scenario.

If you turn all skills to 100 and all skills to 140 and check the damage on a thrust or a fireball and the difference is less than 10% then I'd say that's a small gap. I've never tried it.

 

I think that this is inaccurate. The "Backers" got nothing special, except a potion that lets you burn XP 3X as fast for 1 week a month, for a year. There has been no bonus to gaining XP for backers. Also, Shroud has never been in a locked out Beta since persistence, so anyone could have jumped in at any time and started developing a character. When you say "Backer" you are referring to "Player". Its like saying that if a party started at 8PM and those people who decided to show up at 8 got a drunkness advantage over someone who shows up at 1AM . No one stopped anyone from jumping into the game before "release".

 

How do you come up with this? there are hardly any players with that mindstate . There is a fistfull of players who are at level which won't be reached even with tripple xp. 'If' you caught up to these players you know what would happen? They would say Awesome job! More mature players here then you think

V

 

Exactly. This discussion wasn't meant to be an old vs new player thing. Its not about that at all in my mind. Its more about, what happens if a challenging game becomes too easy too fast, like WoW did. Do we lose a huge portion of our base players and fantastic community , who appear to be searching out a challenging, if not difficult game. The people here since persistence have overwhelmingly been helpful and supportive of new players. Not saying that a few bad apples don't exist, but the majority is great. I guess I worry about how long I will want to play if the challenge is gone and everything becomes attainable without thought, teamwork, cursing and death.

 

This is my take. I will enjoy double XP when it happens. It probably won't last so complaining about it is meaningless to me and even if it does become standard then it would be even more meaningless because it would then be the norm and less people would be adjusting schedules to take advantage. Whether I can play more during that time than usual or not, I still get a benefit. The only down side I see is that as some have said, you will spend less time in the lower levels, but this is how the game is designed from what I understand from @Chris ' comments. They want the journey to getting your avatar to a place were they can "compete" moderately well with others to be relatively quick. This is what causes the lower skull areas to become obsolete and will happen with or without double, triple or even quadruple XP.

 

I think with the tiny player base of roughly 500 players at peaks times, double xp issues is about the least of this games issues. Steamcharts showing about 185 people on at the moment. Our EU guild mates have almost no one to interact with in PVP which is what they want to do. So they're leaving.

 

The original curve has resulted in everyone grinding so much that it is assumed you will grind and if you don't you are considered lazy.

I think the 2x curve is much more accessible but no where close to "buying a wow character" as alluded to earlier in the thread.

It enables larger party sizes and more scenes to be profitable, which is desperately needed until we get proper end game content

 

Thank you. I can't even stand it when we have the discussion about people that have been around for along time vs. people that joined recently, and there being this "advantage" that the long-time backers have had. That was spoken perfectly!

 

They'll just have to get over it.

 

Double XP is certainly felt when doing normal hunting/farming/minor questing. There are areas I make small XP gains in with double XP where I otherwise "lose" XP at the normal XP rate if I don't turn off most of my skill leveling.

But 2xXP makes the most impact if you happen to be near completion of one of the big 100k XP milestone quests. I'm not sure if that deserves to be called good or bad but it certainly super-rewards a certain degree of luck (or deliberate planning) on where you are in the game. Making 2xXP a once per year or biannual thing, while making it rarer, swings those particular +100k gains even further to where you happen to sit in the game. Gaining or not gaining 100k maybe isn't the end of the world, but it is a pretty big deal when you're level ~60, especially since that's really +100k to Adventure XP and +100k to Crafting XP.

 

I am not comparing double XP to buying a character in WoW. I am saying that the current method of paying for double XP via stretch goals , seems to me, like the first step onto a slippery slope. The positive reinforcement of a 100K monthly telethon(Which some might say, had less desirable rewards substituted for the advertised cool ones at the last moment, and would not have had a very good response otherwise )COULD , encourage more frequent "Bonus Periods" if we can just reach 125K, this month, etc, etc. Taking that train of thought down the road, as the double XP becomes commonplace, what new incitement will be offered up to hit those big goals?

 

If you don't see them (whether unintentionally or because you don't want to believe they're out there), then you don't see them. Doesn't mean they don't exist.