[CF List] Leveling at high level

[Mark Wedel]

Andreas Vogl wrote:
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      in reply to Peter M.:
     
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     Andy says that levelling for high level players
     
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     takes "a constant amount of experience" after level 50 or so.
     
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     Is this true?
     
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     I thought monsters were worth less the higher your level.
     
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     So, say, you murder a dragon at level 20:  100000 exp
     
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     at level 108:  3000 exp
     
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     So you've got to murder 10x as many dragons at high level (100)
     
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     to level than at say, level 50.
     
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     Is this true or not?
     
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      I just made a simple test. Feel free to reproduce it:
     
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      I created a map with a line of kobolds. Each kobold has level 50
     
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      and one million exp.
     
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      Then I start the server of today's CVS. I log in, create a new
     
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      character. Switching in DM mode I boost my character to level 50.
     
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      Next I start fighting the kobolds. Every second kobold gains me
     
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      a level.
     
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      I take a short break, switch in DM mode and boost my character
     
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      to level 100. Then I take on the kobolds again. This time, every
     
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      third kobold gains me a level - till I'm finally maxed out.
     
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      So, there might be a marginal increase after all. But the
     
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      increase is definitly less than a factor of two, which in
     
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      ANY case is insufficient.
     
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      For the record: The highest gap between levels is less than 3 million.
     
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      One Jessy alone (can be killed at ~lvl 30) offers 2 million exp. 
     
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      I hope we agree that there is something slightly out of whack.
     
     
  Few quick notes -

  With the simple experience on, the amount of experience awarded should be 
constant based on level.  However, as of now, that doesn't really work, as it 
does get adjusted based on skill level.

  However, that formula is sort of odd.  Note that level in the below examples 
is 'skill level' for the player, and just overall level for the monster.

player is lower level: multipler is different (mon_level - skill level) * skill 
level modifier.

player is same level = exp is skill level modifier.
player is higher level: multiplier is mon level / player level.

  What this means is that if the monster is level 30, and the player is level 
40, he gets 3/4 of the exp.

  The fact that the last case doesn't get adjusted by the skill level multiplier 
is probably broken - for most skills, that multipler is 1, but not for all 
skills.  For example, the default of disarm traps is .5.  This means that in 
theory, if the trap is higher lower level, you could get more exp (eg, if you 
are level 10, and it is level 9, you get .9.  However, if it was level 10, you 
would get .5, and if it was level 11, you would get .55.  That is probably broken.

  However, simple exp is supposed to give the same amount no matter what your 
level is.  I will not that if simple exp is not used, you get a double level 
adjustment when killing things - the attack code adjusts exp based on level, and 
then the skill stuff would do so again.

  But there are two points for needing more exp:

1) Getting less experience for killing the same thing at higher levels.
2) Needing more exp to gain levels later in life.

  The idea of simple exp was to get rid of point #1, and instead rely on point 
#2.  this was because point #1 always made figuring out exp for monsters 
confusing since the amount gained tended not to match the amount in the arch.

  Doing some quick math on the exp table, I see that at level 50, you need 1.3 
million exp to gain a level.  At level 105 of thereabouts, you only need 1.6 
million.  So point #2 isn't really happening.

Before we re-do the experience table again, is the issue only needed for 
balancing about level 20 or so?

  I decided to write a quick program to generate some new values - this is what 
it came up with:

20:  8500000 (1000000)
30: 21706742 (1628886)
40: 43219053 (2653275)
50: 78260242 (4321896)
60: 135338563 (7039905)
70: 228313024 (11467251)
80: 379758508 (18678931)
90: 626447066 (30425989)
100: 1028276476 (49560700)
110: 1682813889 (80729116)

  (only printed out every 10 levels to not clutter things as much).  First 
column is level, second is total exp needed for that level, and third is the 
delta exp (diff needed from the level below).  The first entry (1,000,000) was 
basically a starting value to get the formula going (and it matches pretty 
closely with the current table).

  Other than rounding off the values some, this certainly makes higher levels 
cost more.  The actual multiplier here is that the amount of exp needed to gain 
next level is 5% more than for this level.