XP and loot change?

Later today I'm going to see if I can reproduce your results with same hp zombies at Sequanna Colossus, and then I'm gonna check on a single mob type in another area.
I'll let you know what I find here.

 

That's awesome FrostII. I look forward to seeing the results of that. Try to stay in that zone for at least an hour. Watch the amounts of gold you get from the zombies, too... I'm curious if you'll ever see it dip down to the eventual nothing 80% of the time. It is so weird.

 

OK. I think I know what may be a huge contributing factor. Not positive, but this is very likely. It almost certainly has to do with amount of time being idle. I started working on something on my work laptop just now right in front of my monitor on the same desk as my gaming rig is set up on. I look up every now and again, and I'm still fine. No problem. I finish an email and close my work laptop, and then I go look how much XP I got from my last kill and it was 300XP. I loot the zombie and it gives nothing. Now we sort of know what's going on.

This is intentional. They have some sort of idle detection thing in place now, apparently. Wonderful. I can't even. WAAAAY to much of the "control freak" stuff going on here.

 

Where are these zombie I can go test some.

 

I have probably mentioned about seven times that I'm primarily talking about T5 Zombies with 305 hp. They are in many zones, including Sequanna Colossus, and Deep Ravenswood.

 

You are pretty confident about what you say. So I am going to help but I Had to search thru and found where you said Sequana

Went there and killed 20 305 HP zombies
There where TWO different Exp 1920 an 3840 I am going to sit in corner for a few and see if it resets.

Also Gold Averaged 37 but had a lare range from 17 - 58 now I stayed in the island at the bottom of the slope

are you going anywhere else, it appears there are two types in here that are the same HP

I will come back in a few.

In post 33 I see you are about in the same area I am and this is correct since it is 8% different which is wrong as it should be 10% but still consistent.

Soo I am guessing you are just seeing that there is some kind of difference for the same creature that spawned in here.

But you data does seem to be consistent, there does seem to be diff exp for creature that appear to be =


Ok after typing all that and doing math I jumped back in a killed a few more and yes the exp is either 1920 or 3840 so two types in the island at the bottom of the hil.

Once again you are correct there is a difference in exp for what appears to be the same 305 hP zombie in the Island area of Sequanna Colossas,

Now go bug report it and see what developers say.

Peace out.

 

You spotted one of the issues. There is definitely a weird thing happening with like 2 or 3 different amounts of XP that you gain while actively fighting the mobs. Yes. I agree this is an issue, but it is not the core problem I have been discussing, really (although it may be related to a new mechanic that I think I discovered here).

You seem to miss the most important things. See post 43, please.

As I stated there, this seems to be tied to if you allow your character to be idle for a while. I'll watch some show, or work on some crap on my laptop sitting right here in front of the monitor that Shroud is on, and keep my eye on my character so I know he's not being killed or something... Go and do this for maybe 30 or 40 minutes, and THEN look at the loot and the XP gained. That seems to be the trigger. It's a little ridiculous.

If they didn't talk much about this, (they might have mentioned it. I didn't read every word in the last 5 releases' notes) then I can understand why. They probably wanted to sneak this in because they don't like that type of very casual, passive combat. I.E. I am sitting there watching YouTube on the monitor next to my Shroud of the Avatar, and my character is killing things while I watch. This apparently gets under their skin, and they worked out a way to stop people from doing this. I'm sure it is pretty common, because the game is such a massive grind.

The real problem is that the "penalty" stays with you for a long time. You can even log out and return 5 minutes later, AND go to a totally different scene, and this penalty is still with you. I know what they're doing now, and I think it's going a little too far, personally.

Moral of the story is this:

Don't be idle too long, even if you're watching what's going on in your screen. It ruins the next hour or so of your play.

I guess I can conclude this thread. I expect they'll not talk about this, because they don't want to.

 

I don't buy this. I have not tested this in your specific scenario, but I have small kids, that force me to idle mode often, I have never experienced anything like this. I would notice if I miss all xp, because I too know, roughly, how much xp I should get at given time. Loot sucks always, I don't keep an eye on that so much.

 

So, I think this might be very new. This could be something they developed just recently. After all, I did just come back like 3 or 4 days back.

Go do this. You'll see it for sure.

Fight in an area that has only zombies, or boars, or something similar that will consistently spawn, and not be a huge threat. Watch some TV show for 30 to 40 minutes on a monitor right next to your Shroud of the Avatar game so you can see what's going on every now and then. Don't loot anything. don't press any keys so you're truly idle for a half hour or so. Then go back over to your Shroud window and see what's going on with the XP per kill. It is DEFINITELY a thing, and I am almost 100% certain it is related to "too much time idle." No idea when they put this in, but it is a thing now. See, the thing is, being idle is not against terms and conditions. They hate it when people min/max, and they needed a way to finally kill off the rest of the fan base that is super casual and has small kids. And now they have.


*edit*
Oh my lord. I actually just did one final test, and I am seeing some kills give ZERO XP after being idle for a significant period of time (a half hour or so). This is awesome /s. I think I am actually going to cancel my subscription at this point. I was a big fan, but this is just going a step too far for me. I wonder if this mechanic will cause any controversy.

 

I think there may be some idle protection or a bug as well as I was solo farming in the rise last night, and went and had dinner. I stoofd AFK in a safe spot and when I came back like 20 mins later I was expecting to have been logged out for being idle, but instead was still ingame just flagged AFK. So I went and killed the room full of elf's and couldn't loot a single one of the dozen or so corpses.

Different to your experience but something similar in that it was a change in game behaviour deviating from the norm after an AFK period.

 

Interesting. You couldn't loot them, or they simply HAD no loot?

 

@Nikko I feel for you, but I think it would be a good idea to hear what the Devs have to say before throwing in the towel on the game. From your description it sounds like your character wasn’t fighting while you were AFK, so idlness shouldn’t play any role in XP gathering. If, on the other hand, your character was dealing with spawning mobs all by himself without your intervention, that amounts to AFK combat and some punishment to discourage players from trying to gather XP while AFK is to be expected.

Are you sure your character wasn’t AFK fighting without you noticing it? How do you avoid this? Whenever I have to go AFK in a scene for even a few minutes I log off because Kara would die easily in even a tier 3 zone if left alone.

 

I've said a few times that I am watching it all in front of me pretty much 100% of the time. I'm just not very active. Sure, there are definitely times I don't look at the monitor that has Shroud on it for a few minutes, but I can hear when the mobs start to hit me, so then I look. I see the combat happening, and I am right here at my keys, so it's not technically AFK either. It's something in-between perhaps, and turns out to be one of the only ways I can really enjoy some improvement on my character because of having two very young kids. To the game I am AFK, I guess, simply because I am not pressing keys. Sometimes I'll loot, but often times I don't even care about the loot, and I just sit here and do this for the tiny character improvement I get over an hour or two. On some days, if I am not busy with the kids, because they're gone for the day, I might do that for a fair amount of the day, but even that is with interruptions from other sources as well, normally. I should add that you can easily become strong enough (even at level 65 or so) to kill some things without even paying much attention to it. With the right buffs, and watching a bit here and there, it's very possible. I can see why they want to discourage it, but the thing is, I'm hardly gaining like 50k in an hour doing this. Is it really worth it to get all up in arms over that play style? I guess so.

I know this thing that is happening is intentional, and their control freak sh_t has just gone too far for me this time. I used to be a huge fan, but I just don't think this is the right game for someone like me that has kids and very little time to actually play a huge amount and be really engaged in it. Even if I can play for an hour, I am typically interrupted like 2 or 3 times during that hour. A person in my situation just can't get too heavily invested in any big thing in the game unless it is weekend, and even then it's an hour or so here and there if I am lucky.

This change pretty much did me in. I know they're trying to make a great game, but some things they do they don't even think through. They're so afraid of people taking advantage of the game, that they hamper the actual playstyle for some of us. This was the way I enjoyed the game, because I could at least see 1/10th the gains of the people that have no kids and somehow no job. It's wonderful that those people can pour 14 hours into games each day. I certainly can't.

Perhaps I'll check back in every now and then and see if we can finally sail in ships or fight sea serpents.

 

So, you are afk fighting mobs and wonder wh5 you don't get xp? After your last post, I can surely understand the mechanics now. It is somekind of anti-afk-macro system. I bet your account has been flagged and is waiting for moderation. ( the system has detected, that you just sit there mostly, not looting, just killing and thus, restricts your xp/loot also marking your account)

 

I can understand not wanting people to AFK fight... I really do. But it seems a little ridiculous (if they have actually done so) to code a whole system to detect when someone is afk fighting, and then intentionally lower xp and/or loot gain? Why the hell not simply have it autoflag the account and kick it? Each autoflag adds a point, too many points and you're temp/perma banned.

I am sitting here HOPING this isn't the case... but I am on crappy hotel internet most of the time, so I had to wait five hours for my client to update... at which point I was already fast asleep, lol, so I couldn't try it out myself to see if I could duplicate the results.

 

Like I said... I understand the why. I'm not AFK, though, so... whatever. I'm not doing anything against any terms of agreement here. I'm not using a bot. I'm simply not doing ANYthing. Really doesn't matter at this point.

I guess I can liken this to the following:

No one wants to drive a car to work every day, if a requirement for driving that car is that you wear a Nomex suit, helmet, and strap into a 5-point harness. This just seems like they're trying a bit TOO hard to have control over simple little things. Botting is bad. I get that. Go find botting, and get rid of that. This though? I mean... come on. There is taking steps to keep your game safe, and then there is overstepping.

I remember feeling like this when I heard about Chris literally sitting there and watching Mac a long time ago. It's just effing creepy, and unnecessary. He actually admitted to it to Mac, and Mac just laughed it off because he obviously had nothing to worry about... it's just sad. A little bit too much "big brother watching over us" for me, and it really turns me off.

 

nope read my post I said I waited a while while I wrote up and gathered data , then went back and same exact exp for same area. There is no trigger, the exp is not the same for what appears to be same mob. CONFRIMED

Asa I said you may be traveling further out than just the one area around that small island.

lastly bug report it as stated by a few players, properly. and you can link to this post where I confirmed the data for Sequanna.

I will not longer reply here.

 

How i missed that

 

I went there last night and killed zombies for more than an hour. I can see no rhyme or reason that the experience fluctuates.

 

So basically, if you even remotely idle in an adventure area, immediately run out and start over again?

This is probably why I have only found 3 COTO’s since release..... stupid real life interrupting my game play.....