[crossfire] Proposal to fix experience inflation due to random maps

[Andreas Kirschbaum]

Mark Wedel wrote:
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      My personal thought is changing code to adjust the exp reward for random maps
     
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      is certainly the wrong approach. Updating the style maps would be the right
     
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      thing (don't do something in the code if it can be done in the data files).
     
     
I see. Besides that, changing the server code would create another problem: in
the editor, you would not be able to check the real exp value without
remembering the modifying factor in the server code. (It would be just like the
item value that is multiplied by 4 in the current server code (for most items):
it always bites me when I calculate item prices from the "value" field.)


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      That said, if this really is considered a problem, another approach would be
     
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      to change the random map code to reduce the monster density. The problem
     
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      isn't that the individual monsters are worth too much, the problem is that
     
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      the random maps tend to have a very high monster density.
     
     
Sorry, I fail to see that reduced monster density will change that: the random
maps are very regular and do not contain much other than lots of similar
monsters. Especially, there are no quests inside that could slow down a player.
Therefore with a lower monster density players can clear the maps even faster.
But after that they just continue in the next level. The overall experience
gain per time will not change much.

And if you try to limit the experience by the number of available levels this
would create yet another maps that are not normally available because everybody
tries to clear them after a reset. (For example (not for experience but for
another reason), the dragonmountain maps are seldom available.) Such maps are
just not fun. Therefore I'm very reluctant to create more maps of that kind.


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      And arguably, at some point, higher density doesn't make it any tougher.
     
     
That is the real problem I tried to explain in my initial post: many monsters
of the same kind over and over. If you can kill a few, you probably can kill
them all.