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

[Alex Schultz]

Andreas Kirschbaum wrote:

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     That is, you suggest (for heaven) 75 levels with 75% of the monsters in it?
     
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     That would still result in more than 200 million exp you can gain there.
     
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     Compare that to the non-random warrior proofing tower that only gives you 70
     
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     million exp. And I'd say the warrior tower is much harder to solve (which is
     
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     why I suggest you should get much more exp from the warrior tower than from any
     
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     random map).
     
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     Point taken, however one should note that heaven takes much more time 
than the warrior tower to complete fully and decreased monster density 
would further cause the exp/time ratio to go down further.

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     It seems to me that nobody else than me thinks that the random maps give (far)
     
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     too much experience. Nobody even bothered to comment on the experience tables
     
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     in my initial mail. The responses merely said something like "please don't
     
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     reduce the experience" without disproving my arguments. Therefore I'll try to
     
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     illustrate my point of view a little more:
     
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     I certainly agree that random maps need to be toned down (the few 
dungeons that use 5 or less random levels are fine as they are though). 
It's just that I think that there's another problem. I find that the 
maps made for those lvl 85 to 100 seem to give no more exp than those 
made for a lvl 50, which tends to drive people to go to the TCs and/or 
other random maps once they get to about level 50. I feel that this 
problem could be partially fixed by toning the random maps down 
significantly, however I feel that maps made for lvl 85-100 need to have 
a reasonable amount more exp than maps that a lvl 50 can complete. 
Though one may say that traps and puzzles are much more fun at those 
levels, which is quite true, a solution to that would be making the 
"bosses" (i.e. evil masters) and possibly some puzzles themselves give 
notably more exp.

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     To demonstrate my point how easy it is to become a high level character by
     
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     using the currently existing random maps, I created two new characters on my
     
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     local server. I used different races and used skills to level them. With both
     
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     characters I reached about level 90 in less than one hour playtime.
     
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     Really? This is certainly a problem then, though I can't see how one 
would achieve that without using banish rods or disabling item power. 
This sounds like there were exploits used other than the random maps 
alone (banish rod type ones)

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     Said that, my point in draining the experience from the random maps was
     
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     a) to prevent players to gain huge amounts of exp (and high-levels) simply by
     
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        doing random maps over and over.
     
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     Which leads to another interesting point about repetition of maps,

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     b) to encourage players to clear non-random maps simply by making the exp
     
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        reward for (comparably simple random) maps not rewarding.
     
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     I think that something along these lines needs to be done, however I 
feel that the exp also needs to be tuned up on non-random maps that have 
some traps/puzzles and a small number of "bosses" to make those maps 
more attractive.

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     PS: one last note about the training center: on metalforge I've seen quite a
     
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         few players that got killed somewhere, then switched to the TC because it
     
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         is safe and effortless to level there. (It's their own choice to do so, but
     
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         I don't think the training center (or any other random map) should make it
     
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         possible to level faster than by clearing "regular" (non-random) maps.)
     
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     Yes, this often happens with quests like the pupland ones, where it has 
very nice puzzles and such, but it's hard not to die so much that you 
lose more exp than you gain there, and though exp shouldn't be too easy 
to get, players don't find non-random maps attractive if all the ones 
that are interesting (as in, haven't beaten 10 times before) have areas 
that they will almost constantly lose more exp than they gain.

To summarize my points, I feel this is almost as much of a problem with 
the non-random maps as it is a problem of the random maps.

Alex Schultz