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

[Andreas Kirschbaum]

5BAlex Schultz wrote:
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      Point taken, however one should note that heaven takes much more time
     
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      than the warrior tower to complete fully and decreased monster density
     
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      would further cause the exp/time ratio to go down further.
     
     
Probably. But clearing the warrior tower takes quite some time, too. And
a big difference is that the warrior tower gets harder and harder the
more you advance. If you are not good enough yet, you simply cannot
complete it. The result is that your exp is proportional (or maybe a
little more than linear) to your skill level.

On the other hand, you can clear Heaven completely if you can clear a
certain depth. Therefore Heaven is quite different: initially the exp is
proportional to your skill level, but as soon as you reach the maximum
difficulty you gain a huge amount of exp in one fell swoop.


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      I certainly agree that random maps need to be toned down (the few
     
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      dungeons that use 5 or less random levels are fine as they are
     
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      though).
     
     
That probably calls for the 'exp_multiplier' field Mark Wedel suggested
in a previous mail. In my initial mail I just intended to equally tone
down all random maps. But I did not think of the many low-level random
maps that are just fine.


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      It's just that I think that there's another problem. I find that the
     
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      maps made for those lvl 85 to 100 seem to give no more exp than those
     
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      made for a lvl 50, which tends to drive people to go to the TCs and/or
     
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      other random maps once they get to about level 50. I feel that this
     
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      problem could be partially fixed by toning the random maps down
     
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      significantly, however I feel that maps made for lvl 85-100 need to
     
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      have a reasonable amount more exp than maps that a lvl 50 can
     
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      complete. Though one may say that traps and puzzles are much more fun
     
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      at those levels, which is quite true, a solution to that would be
     
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      making the "bosses" (i.e. evil masters) and possibly some puzzles
     
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      themselves give notably more exp.
     
     
Which maps do you consider level 50 and which 85-100?


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      > To demonstrate my point how easy it is to become a high level
     
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      > character by using the currently existing random maps, I created two
     
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      > new characters on my local server. I used different races and used
     
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      > skills to level them. With both characters I reached about level 90
     
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      > in less than one hour playtime.
     
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      Really? This is certainly a problem then, though I can't see how one
     
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      would achieve that without using banish rods or disabling item power.
     
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      This sounds like there were exploits used other than the random maps
     
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      alone (banish rod type ones)
     
     
One character used a rod of banishment to clear Heaven. The other one
burned down Heaven with meteor swarm. But I did not disable item power.
If fact, item power did not matter much: banishment and meteor swarm
killed the monsters very fast. Therefore I died a few times only (one
time with banishment, four or five times with meteor swarm) until I had
enough exp to wear all my protective gear.


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      > a) to prevent players to gain huge amounts of exp (and high-levels)
     
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      >    simply by doing random maps over and over.
     
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      Which leads to another interesting point about repetition of maps,
     
     
I do not have any problems with players clearing some maps over and over
again. If they have fun doing so, let them do it... They just should not
be able to gain incredible amounts of exp by doing so.


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      > b) to encourage players to clear non-random maps simply by making
     
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      >    the exp 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
     
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      feel that the exp also needs to be tuned up on non-random maps that
     
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      have some traps/puzzles and a small number of "bosses" to make those
     
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      maps more attractive.
     
     
Yes, many non-random maps neither give you much exp nor any decent
item(s) at the end. Therefore a player normally does not bother to clear
such a map again. Besides that, I do not have any problem with tuning up
some maps if the ratio reward (exp+items) per work (necessary
time+danger) is reasonable.


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      To summarize my points, I feel this is almost as much of a problem
     
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      with the non-random maps as it is a problem of the random maps.
     
     
I agree. But fixing the random maps is much easier than fixing the
non-random ones. Therefore we should start with the random ones...