XP and loot change?

I don't see how the exact amount is super critical here, but I'll get the actual numbers later, because I am confident this'll happen again soon. It is a HUGE amount less XP (and gold), and I am definitely not even remotely close to attenuated, as I am only getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 40k in an hour.

So I just got home, and once again, it has been at least 3 or 4 solid hours since I have been online. I got into Sequanna Colossus, and things are normal again. I can tell you that the normal amount of XP from a Zombie is 1600 for one kill. I guess I am in party mode, so there may be a very small difference between that, and multiplayer open mode (10% less?). Not important. The amount of XP I'll be pulling in later is 300 something I think. That is obviously pretty drastic. Also, the things you guys bring up don't explain the also SUPER drastic change in gold pieces and other items normally dropped.

I think some people are just straight up missing the point. It isn't like I am getting 10% less XP because of some game mode thing or being flagged PVP or not. We're talking about 60 to 70% less XP per kill (and 95% less gold). Again... actual numbers later so we can really know, if it makes some people feel better.

 

I am very curious about this whole thing, and if it is indeed some sort of "let's throttle back people who spend too much time doing monotonous killing in a zone," I'm really concerned.

 

If you're able to earn a million or more experience in an hour then the experience you earn for something like the next 15 minute will be scaled back. I'm not exactly sure, though, because I've never been able to earn that much experience in an hour.

 

Being a solo player, I am not up to date on the different play modes. But to me this sounds like a Party mode problem. I realize you are playing alone, but (and here I may be totally off base) have you left the party? Perhaps this could be the source of the "bug".

 

Definitely not attenuation of the XP. Like I said... I am only gaining like 40 to 50K per hour doing what I do.

 

No. Definitely not this. I have played something like 60 to 70% of my thousands of hours in that mode alone (in an actual party or not), because I generally play with a person or two in this game, and I have never seen anything like this before. I have typically watched very closely what I am gaining from kills in general, too.

 

You can see if your XP is attenuated because there is an attenuation logo by the XP display in the skills window.

You typically only get it during group content like Upper Tears.

 

There is definitely some sort of throttling back of loot as you stay in a scene, but I am noticing some REALLY strange things going on with the XP.

This is the amount of XP I gained from single zombie kills over the last half-hour or so...

2240
1120
1120
1120
2240
960
960
1920
2240
2240
1120
800
800
1600
800



Then a little later I grabbed some more XP data from single kills of zombies in that zone:

1280
1280
640
640
1280
1280
640
640
1600
1600
1600
800
1600


Seriously... WTF? I very carefully watched the XP gains and had all things shut off when doing this. The above numbers are from each individual kill. Keep in mind... every single number you see is from a single kill of the same mob.

I also watched as my average net gold per zombie was close to 30 in the beginning, and now I am averaging closer to 4 or 5 gold per kill (many times getting none). I really want to know what's going on with this.

 

I’m still unclear on exactly what is happening. According to your single kill XP list, the amount of XP gained varies wildly during the same time period. Do you get this variation in XP only after playing for an extended period of time as previously stated? Is it possible that the zombie mobs you are encountering are not all the same level, but simply look alike? Do they all have the same number of hit points? Since you are such an experienced SotA player, I assume you’ve already made sure the mobs are all the same and you are experiencing a bug. It would be useful for the devs I’m sure to have similar data for other named mobs in other scenes, and to have exact data on the amount of XP per mob initially and after playing for an extended period of time.

 

hehe - why am I so not surprised, the dmg, buffs and gear/player stats calculations are pretty bad in SotA. Now your showing another calculation being pretty off.

 

Thanks for the clearer and more concise data. I'd be curious about the gold as well. Unfortunately I have no idea about how it is happening.

It does make me wonder, though, whether my "bad days" when I work hard but have little to show for it is normal or if something in the engine has been robbing me (not a technical term but that's the best one I could think of in the ever important time-reward nexus). I always assumed that large perceived differences were the result of complex systems working normally in the background.

It definitely makes one wonder. I don't think it's super reasonable to demand the developers pull back the curtain, so to speak, but perhaps @Chris or one of the powers that be could confirm or deny working as intended. (I'm not one to tag people superfluously; I just found the idea quite intriguing and, if repeatable and real, quite signifcant.)

 

You'd think an agile team would have automated test suite that absolutely confirms each release has it's core mechanics working as intended but I digress.

 

Wow... So, to reply to @Kara Brae I am definitely fighting the same zombies. All same level, with 305 hp each. It is so odd.

Here's the thing... I used to do this a lot, and I knew exactly how much XP I was getting. This was months ago, though, and the game has changed quite a bit in just the last 5 or 6 months. I took a hiatus from the game for quite a while, and I just came back liek 3 days ago to refresh my real estate, and see if things are super different.

If I remember correctly, it was always 900XP from every single T5 (305hp) zombie in Sequanna Colossus. I used to chart it out and watch my gains. I could predict how much XP I would gain in 1 hour, or 4 hours, or the whole week, because it was the exact same number of XP every single kill. I'm one of those people, I guess. I know that "taking someone else's word for it" is not always ideal, but I'm 100% certain that the amount of XP gained from mobs was never something that would fluctuate.

I think you're right about going to other zones and fighting other things too. More data would do nicely here, and the further I dig into this, the more I realize that something is really off. I'll go and fight similar things in other T5 zones, and see if I can get some more data on this.

The thing that surprises me is that I know there are a lot of others that play this game like me, and watch every little number, and every gain from every kill. How am I the only one that has seen this? The gold pieces thing is also quite odd... It's like it scales back with the amount of XP I am getting or something.

I just logged in for the first time today, and I got the following gains from the same exact zombie type over about 15 minutes:

1600
1600
3200
1600
3200
3200
3200
1600


Notice some are 3200? How in the world? and I am making absolutely sure that I have looted all zombies I killed, as well as after making this kill, I jump up on a rock to make sure I'm not killing two by accident thus ruining the numbers. I kill one and loot it (because sometimes you gain the XP upon looting the undead), and then I jump up on a rock. Then I kill the next and loot it, jump up on a rock to record data, rinse and repeat...

I can't explain this.

 

One question is: Why should a zombie always deliver the same XP just because its a zombie? Is that the right expectation?

Are the hit points for those zombies exactly the same? Or are different hit point mobs delivering different XP?

Perhaps they just look like the same zombies, but really aren't. Some might really be 'green' while others are 'blue' but they all look 'blue' for example.

 

He already said they weren't different hitpoints and that in the past this didn't happen. Sounds like a problem to me, but I never bothered to look closely at any of this.

However, given the history of numbers issues in the game, and what happened last release with the pets getting incorrectly migrated, which still hasn't been fixed a week later, I'm inclined to believe it's a problem.

 

I literally just answered this 15 minutes ago...

 

Typing at the same time

Good luck in your zombie slaying!

 

It's either an unexpected behavior problem (bug), or it is something they now want to happen and have not spoken much about it. I still worry that this might be some new mechanic that discourages people from playing this way (sort of passively killing the same mobs over and over for hours while watching a movie). If it is the latter, I might have reached my limit for the control issues this development team seems to have.

 

That's certainly possible. I apologize.

 

Well, I don't think it is the latter, because UT exists and that is the way to get XP in the game quickly if you're of mid level or above. I doubt a complex mechanic where the xp is all over the place to discourage "farming" makes sense with UT in the game. It's far more likely to just either be a bug or something we don't understand mechanic wise.