[crossfire] stat loss and highly specialized players

[Raphaël Quinet]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006 12:03:54 -0500, "Kevin R. Bulgrien" <kevin.bulgrien at gdsatcom.com> wrote:
> I believe the player whose rant spawned this thread levels overall experience in one or two skills that are directly related to 
> killing monsters.  This means his character could conceivably revert to a new player in all but one or two skills after several 
> deaths.

See my other message.  One problem is that with the current exp_table and
the artificial limit introduced by death_penalty_levels, you may only lose
3% of your high-level skills when you die, while you lose a full 15% of
your low-level skills.

So you currently lose exp up to five times slower in the high-level skills,
which increases the difference over time and keeps the high-level skills
relatively high while the other ones converge towards 0.  This is
especially obvious after multiple deaths.

It took me a while to understand this phenomenon (although I just had to
look at the exp_table and it should have been obvious) but now that I saw
the problems caused by the current exp_table, I am trying hard to get it
changed.  It's a pity that death_penalty_levels hides the real problem
and causes people to report the wrong problems or to propose other
workarounds.

> This tends to be quite discouraging to a player, and can spawn a feeling that one is weaker at level "blah" than he was at level 
> "blah - 10".

Sad, but not surprising if you lose exp in the low levels 5 times faster.

> I also still believe there is an anomaly in the game with respect to overall experience at least.  I have seen overall experience 
> jump inexplicably from time to time where I cannot justify it by gameplay.  An anomally like that that does not also affect 
> individual skill experience would also tend to exaggerate the difference between one's overall level and the relative strength of 
> the character.

Well, some monsters are worth quite a lot of exp points.  If you kill
them with the right skill, you can level up rather quickly.

-Raphaël