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How would you stop XP trains?
akabear
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
In a few MMO:s I have seen group play to accelerate XP or loot gain in a manner I am certain the game was never designed.
Elders Scrolls Online
- mass groups (30-50 players) doing circuit rotation of the portals
New World
- 30-60 players rushing the high-end areas and hopping all the chests
Lineage 2
- massive pulls of full dungeon mobs to AoE, even without AoE classes. 3-4x XP rate
Players will always find a way to optimize activities. Should this be managed?
Elders Scrolls Online
- mass groups (30-50 players) doing circuit rotation of the portals
New World
- 30-60 players rushing the high-end areas and hopping all the chests
Lineage 2
- massive pulls of full dungeon mobs to AoE, even without AoE classes. 3-4x XP rate
Players will always find a way to optimize activities. Should this be managed?
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And mob aggro could track how many people there are within a certain range from them and if there's too many people the aggro range would increase, which would lead to the stuff I mentioned in the first point. This would also make dungeon runthroughs of raid groups a bit harder, because a ton of mobs will be aggroing onto them and those mobs would be stronger and have hazards spawning all around the raid.
Well, at least I'd personally prefer that kind of approach.
If the developers make the experience flow small, then I see no reason to enforce players to not use such ways of dealing with the problem.
It is a rewarding activity IMO.
The alternative is to give that experience fast and in a controlled way. But no matter how much Steven or his followers say that AoC will be different and immersion will be awesome, unlike in other MMOs, I do not believe it. Because they keep asking us on forum, in the pinned threads, how to make the game.
Better AI for mobs: attacking from distance when possible and staying out of AoE. Have their casters use AoE vs the players and healers keeping their tanks up. Mobs retreating early to more defensible positions. Etc.
Extreme solution.
Make AoE true AoE. Affecting all in the area, whether friends or foes. It makes these spells more situational and difficult to use, with the current flagging system even more so (party or raid members could be ignored for corruption if killed by the AoE as a softening measure).
But I also come from games with:
Once we know which of these things players/Intrepid disagree with (for example, we know that as of current design, we definitely won't have level difference based scaling) we could start to guess at what they intend.
Or we can just abuse anything we find in Alpha-2 and complain about it online.
But to answer the question, I GUESS I'd... do everything from the games I already like? (Shocking, truly)
Except maybe the Mob Tagging mechanics, since Ashes wants to be very specific about that. I'd probably do the usual and give the 'multiplier for party' and then not give it for non-party players.
"Two players who are not in the same party hit the same mob, kill it, get 100 exp total split between them based on 'contribution' with no bonuses."
vs
"Two players in a party hit the same mob, kill it, get 100 x1.2 (as example) exp split between them evenly without contribution factored."
and of course
"Two players in one party and two players in a DIFFERENT party hit the same mob, both groups get (let's say half damage from each) 50 x 1.2 but if they grouped up all as one they'd get 50 x 1.4."
This way if you do WAY more damage than the other party, you can just keep going until they leave due to poor exp without really harming yourself. If you do equal, you should probably group up, maybe fight something harder.
Since this is what I'm used to, this is what I tested in Alpha-1. The mob respawn rate and values were tuned to 'what I expect from games' (it's like 80% of the reason why I'm still here).
The thing that stops high level players from farming low level mobs in FFXI is that they kill them too fast and then have to sit around and wait for them to respawn for worse exp. In a game where Mob Tagging is different and PvE 'griefing' is possible, I'm not sure this would be enough, but for the specific problem mentioned, it should be.
That's what I though.
Path of least resistance or Principle of least effort, never forget this, we as evolutionary beings are rigged for getting more for less, it's just what we are.
But, in regards of game design, it's the company's fault not balancing the game correctly.
Who also grinded Tristram runs on Diablo 2?
Getting to level 50 was nothing
I believe that XP payouts should be split participants (being in a party or not, being mixed crowd or not) and then having the maximum payout (solo player) and the minimal payout (if there's just too many people hitting the same mob).
Example: mob is worth 2000 xp, max payout is 2000 xp and min payout is 20 xp
The proportions about how splitting the payout could be different, this is just the idea about how to split it.
If possible healers, buffers, CC characters should participate in the xp payout pool too.
Mob herding has many solutions: leashing, slow spawns, mobs that are annoying to AE down, etc. I don't really think that this needs a solution, just some balance so that specific areas are not *way* more xp/hour than intended.
This, but with one alteration.
You dont have a minimum amount of experience for the mob, you have a cap on the number of players that can receive experience for it. That cap would be 40 players- as 40 players is the largest combat unit we are aware of in Ashes - a raid.
If more than a full raid of people are working on a mob (which would be rare for experience gain), then the raid that deals the most damage gets credit/rewards.
Make it a simple case of the experience the mob awards is divided by the number of people in the combat unit (character, group or raid) that earns the rewards. Everyone in the unit gets an equal share of experience (this covered healers, buffers and such)
Thus, if a mob awards 2000 experience,a raid of 40 players killing it will each get 50 experience.
Also, considering L2's and AA's group exp division and non-group damage contribution exp division, full 40man-raid isn't going to be very reasonable expwise in most areas.
Aren't we all sinners?
In my opinion I prefer :
- Unique mob's loots (no individual loots popping in your bag)
- Unique chest's loot (if someone opened a chest, then the chest is empty till respawn)
- Same amount of xp per mobs whatever the level
- No scrolls of XP or scroll of luck
AOC promises an Open World without instances. Individual loots are instance.
L2 had pvp to regulate such things.
But why does it have to be stopped with a way other that the actual players getting into arguments?
Don`t like the fact AoC is (or is considering) tethering mobs
ESO portal rotations, were almost like bot trains! Whilst not against efficient xp or gathering, dont want to see en mass sheep hearding!
People wont co-opperate. They will be greedy as well as selfish. There wont be "dolmen runs".