About Powerlevelling

[vencedor]

Hello everyone,

I've returned after a long ish absence and I was wondering if powerlevelling is still a problem? If so, I have what I hope to be the solution. However, this might require significant changes to the code, so I'm not sure if it's doable. Anyway, here's what I thought of:

Instead of gaining experience for each monster you kill, you gain experience as you deal damage to the monster (for each X damage dealt, you gain 1 experience). This, of course, should be scaled up or down depending on the monster's rating, your own level and rating and whether you're fighting multiple monsters or not. Also, if you overkill a monster, you won't gain experience for the extra damage dealt.

In a group situation, you will also gain experience for healing your group. This should also scale: with number and ratings of group members (including you, of course) and number and ratings of the monsters. Overhealing should not award any experience.

I haven't thoroughly tested this for loopholes, but I hope you can help me do that

[Machaeon]

On Order at least, it's not too much of a problem. I know of one or two who will powerlevel new players occasionally (something I'm absolutely against) otherwise powerleveling is mainly done for one's own characters when it is actually done.

I'm not entirely sure how this would affect groups of high rating bipeds who go down to Doom and drag large groups of mylocs to fight so they can get experience in the classes they have left to level but I doubt it would be a good change for them. The experience from each kill they help make along with the ones they didn't touch but others in the group killed is what really gives them experience at that point, and with a high enough rating you NEED every last bit of group and multiple enemy experience to get even a fraction of a level. I've got a 140-ish rating biped and it's already getting painful to level him... I can imagine how much worse it gets with a 200+ rating.

Also the experience-for-damage system may discourage grouping in early gameplay since sometimes you just need an extra hand or paw near your rating to help kill something for a quest or to grind with. If the experience is based on damage over rating then the experience gain will be heavily weighted towards high-damage output characters like melee dragons and berserkers if any are in the group and anyone doing heavy debuffing (shamans) or using a spellcaster class or build would get less experience in that group. Most spellcaster characters are more of a damage over time than a burst of heavy damage so the heavy hitters in the group would kill the enemies quicker than the casters would and the experience gain would reflect that.

The experience for healing might pose a problem in and of itself too. It sounds like a good way to be fair to healers in a group since they'd do piddly damage if they did actually fight. But that can also be exploited- plop a character with decent heals somewhere were the mobs won't aggro, keep a character fighting mobs and let the healer character just heal the fighter. No risk to the healer and experience for doing nothing but healing.

All in all, I'm not sure the current system needs a change. Sure it can be exploited, but so can pretty much every system of doing things.

[Spyrioyo]

Hmm interesting but not sure its a good idea. The current system is hard enough as it is for certain races. You need to think how it effects each race. It depends on a lot of factors. Normal mobs go to around rating 120. Boss ones go to 160. Plus there is a revamp planned this year for I think for Tier 3.

[Azath]

...Also the experience-for-damage system may discourage grouping in early gameplay...

Grouping is NOT something you want to discourage, early game can be very hard and and its rare to see newbs who don't band together, even later people still love to fight in groups...make them sacrifice their xp and it will drive the community apart in a community based game.

[Spyrioyo]

Grouping is NOT something you want to discourage, early game can be very hard and and its rare to see newbs who don't band together, even later people still love to fight in groups...make them sacrifice their xp and it will drive the community apart in a community based game.

That's why I think its kind of bad idea you need to think of the community.

[meepsa]

Powerleveling hasn't really been an issue ever since the 30 day limit was added to RoP really, because let's be honest, the only ones going around begging people to powerlevel them were trial acces dragons. sure there was the odd subscription player that would do so every now and then, but 90% was trial accounts.

[ArchDemon]

The leveling systems fine i dont want new players logging in from other games just to raid yes raidings fun but whats not fun is players getting to level 100 in a single day which is very hard to do with current setup but if you add 1 plus exp per damage its going to double in groups and mobs included in emgadement and having that player drive us vets away because he or she is better at raiding then us,

I say the systems fine as it is