XP is broken / Remove Producer XP / Delay Final Wipe

Summary :

1. XP is broken.

2. Producer XP will harm the game and particularly the economy

3. Final wipe should be delayed until less scenes are copy pasted.





1. XP is Broken

As you gain increasing amounts of XP in your Adventurer Pool the amount applied to learning skills increases. You can store Adventure XP using established skills and then use that XP to learn new skills at an accelerated rate to an extent that it trivialises the process.


Suggestion : Cap the XP increase that can be applied particularly at low skill levels.




2. Producer XP will harm the game and particularly the economy


So you know where I'm coming from I want to say if I had a horse in this race it would be to keep Producer XP. My play style is to do it all myself, be self sufficient and harvest all my own materials, rarely selling either crafted goods or the raw materials.

I believe Producer XP will be harmful to the game. If it stays in place there will be two effects to consider :


1. All crafters will have to collect at least as many (and in my experience significantly more) materials than they use to level crafting.

2. There will be a hit on the market for raw materials. Mining is particularly hit - it is the most consistent flow of producer XP and what people will gravitate towards. Watch out BMC.



SUGGESTION : One of two things needs to happen - either remove Producer XP from the game or considerably increase the amount of Producer XP generated by Gathering skills.



3. Final wipe should be delayed until less scenes are copy pasted.


Since release 27 has hit I have spent a couple of hours in every single zone/scene in the game taking notes on the level, mobs there and scenery. Presently, outside of dungeons and a couple of control points, the only areas that are in any way in a state to expect people to be happy playing in and help player retention are the South East of Novia and the Hidden Vale. Players placing lots anywhere else on the map will become quickly disillusioned.

When release 27 hit I moved my home from Owls Head to Spite so I could test the newly implemented zones. This is what I found :

Spoiler

EAST VAUBUN FOOTHILLS - 4 Skulls

This zone is a copy of North Varisalla (as is Northwest Blackblade Mountains, though that has the wishing well at the start you climb down to get to Blackblade Pass). You know this for sure as when you click on the cell deep in the cave system it says you need the North Varisalla Cage Key to open it

Ruffians, Kobold Archer, Kobold Skirmisher, Satyrs (slightly tougher and more XP), Humanoid melee, archer and Wizard. Zone is one big circle - go straight ahead and you end up at the entrance to the cave system which opens out immediately left of the zone entrance you come in.


WEST VAUBUN FOOTHILLS - 4 Skulls

Large Timber Wolf, Elder Wolf, Zombies, Skeleton Mage, Skeleton Archer, Hardened Skeleton Mage, Stag, Large Brown Spider, Ebon Cultist Wizard and Archer.


THE SIREN FOOTHILLS - 4 Skulls

Ebon Cultist Fighter, Ebon Cultist Archer, Ebon Cultist Wizard, Timber Wolves, Elder Wolves, Large Brown Spiders, Large Skeletons, Hardened Skeletons. Right from zone in at some ruins the mob density is far too high so give that a miss (and I like a challenge when exploring) .



NORTH HOLENHUT - 4 Skulls

Large Timber Wolvces, Large Grizzly Bear, Large Skeletons around the top of centre hill.



SOUTH HOLENHUT - 4 Skulls

Rafnand (humanoid Archer), Rafnylar (humanoid Wizard), Rafmunar (humanoid melee - one hand axe), Timber Wolves, Grizzly Bear, Brown Spider, Large Brown Spider



NORTH DRACHVALD - 3 Skulls

Wizard, Archer, Stag, Timber Wolf, Grizzly Beat. I noted 'Boring'.


SOUTH DRACHVALD SPUR - 2 Skulls

Low level humanoids, Large Grey Wolf, Young STag




Though East Vaubun Foothills is marked 4 skulls it seemed lower, though Satyrs are 3-4 skull difficulty. I'd suggest in one or two zones the skull markers may not have been changed from the original zone that was copied. Agree with agra that mob hit points is a very good indicator of difficulty. As it stands the 7 zones copied to here comprise 5 x 4 skull areas, 1 x 3 skull and 1 x 2 skull.

5 x 4 skull areas, 1 x 3 skull and 1 x 2 skull.

Generally mob density is too high and mob aggro ranges are too large.

Significantly there is no starter area (1 skull). There is also nowhere to gather Wood (Forestry). Some of the zones have a small number of harvestable trees but they are few in number with large numbers of mobs about.


SUGGESTIONS :

i) short term, copy Kingsroad from Hidden Vale and place it just north of Eastmarch/ south of East Vaubun Foothills (only reason I suggest here is that there is the same graphic on the overworld map of chopped down trees.) Issue to consider is that lower level players who would use this area might be drawn into the Dragon scene. This gives a 1 skull area complete with Forestry and Foraging nodes.

ii) seriously consider delaying Final Wipe until more of the game world is fleshed out.






This feedback may sound harsh, but I believe it is valid. I'd like to balance this by saying I believe in the game, the Portalarium team and that we will have a great, successful game on our hands when it is finished. I had a lot of fun and was impressed with the combat system, the crafting system, harvesting, the zones around Soltown, the South East of Novia and Hidden Vale.

 

1 & 2: you are in full control of which skills are sucking experience from your pool.

3: the completeness of the game does not dictate when the final wipe occurs. I recommend that you read DarkStar's post on the final wipe.

 

Opinions

Manage your skills, nuff said.

I kinda agree that all this copy and paste scenes is , but I am more worried about a lot of ther things which they are working on, sooo....

 

To be clear there will only be a plethora of lower level zones around the three starting areas. Spite is no where near any of those three.

 

@Magosa

Thank you very much for every minute invested in this!

 

Since when did "manage your skills" become the go-to attempt to squash any suggestions to improving anything skill related? Read and comment if you will, but please stop this throw away disqualification.

 

xp rate balancing is not the end of the world.

/thumbs up

 

You can't generate a loss. You get exp from gathering and some from refining and producing.

Using a skill and having it raise by draining from your producer pool is not a loss. Its just a shift from your prod pool to the specific skill.

The only proper loss is from either decay or untraining a skill as you dont get all your exp back when untraining.

 

Key words "when it is finished", so please chicken little, stop predicting the sky will fall...

I don't understand why ppl are having Adv Exp problems, I have never come close to using up all my pool, it has remained at approx 50% no matter how many skills are raising like crazy... Am I doing something wrong?

 

How many innates are you skilling up beyond 80, concurrently?

 

Quick question on this comment in regards to larger lots. Very few large lots can be found in these starter towns. Will this cause a negative affect for new characters post wipe with the whole land rush? I am speaking mostly for the city and higher lot sizes. Especially when binding to your property.

 

Above 80, not many, but about 12 total inate... Do you know where the advanced trainers are at? I could use some more in Polearms & Heavy Armor & Earth & Fire...

 

Hi Smoker,

I'm sure this has been documented somewhere, but how can I see how much is in my pool?

Thanks,
Cornfellow

 

You hover over the two golden bar at the bottom of your screen. It gives you the exact values.

 

There is a thread called something advanced trainers (on my phone so use the search ^^) hover over the exp bars to see how much experience you have accumulated

 

Tusen hjærtlig takk!

 

As Spoon said the exp pools are the 2 bars at the bottom of your screen, the top bar is for Crafting (production exp) and the Bottom is for Adventuring Exp... As I understand, you gain exp when you accomplish something, complete a Quest or kill a Wolf or harvest a node or smelt an ingot or create a piece of furniture or weapon... When you gain a skill points, you use up exp points... When they hit zero points in your pools, your skills stop gaining as you have no exp point to use...

In lower level scenes (1 skull) the critters are worth fewer exp points when you kill them, but they're easier to kill (meaning more of your hits connect and do damage, so you kill then in fewer swings of your weapon)... At higher levels (5 skulls) more of your swings miss, but each swing still counts as 1 use of the weapon, so you still gaining skill even though you miss more, and take longer to kill the critter... But many times the exp you gain is less than the exp you used in gains for all the skills you have turned up... This is why Chris S suggested turning off skills and working on fewer skills at once, during 1 of the hangout long long time ago...

I'm a casual player and don't marathon play, like some do, and I follow the lower scenes until they're just too easy for me... For example, I just hit adventure level 50 and I have 97 in polearms, I also have 100% in my production pool and approx 50% in my adventure pool and have never run out of points for skill gains... But I just put Subterfuge on my chr and started practicing "distract" and I can do that without fighting anything, once it hit 10 point, I can now practice "camofloge", which is another skill I can practice without killing anything and gaining exp, I'm noticing that my exp is dropping now... So it's important to change your play up, and not to do the same things over and over...

SotA isn't like any game I've played before, using the same tactics of "UO" by macroing or marathon playing for hours, doesn't have the same results of making you "God" chr within no time flat...

 

Thanks Smoker, great information. This really helps me.

Cornfellow

 

I'm trying to figure out the reasoning behind this decision. How do you intend to compensate residents of the "harder" regions for the lack of relaxing resource gathering opportunities? In the Hangout yesterday it was mentioned that resources would be plentiful in certain regions and rare in others. That sounds fine, but what good is having resources available that a single player is unable to harvest because the mobs defending them are too plentiful and high level? Currently, only groups can be really effective in such scenes - some players fighting the mobs while the others harvest. At least you could reduce the timer for harvesting resources in high level areas so that you don't spend 5 minutes trying to harvest one stupid cotton only to have the mobs respawn right in the middle of a meticulous collection .