[crossfire] xp gaining

[Mark Wedel]

Juha Jäykkä wrote:
> Hm.. I still have a lengthy message from Sunday not replied to, but I'll
> chime in on this one first...
> 
>>> The problem here is feature (or monster toughness) creep.  It is easy
>>> enough to say 'max level for any monster should be 100'.  The problem
>> The level 100 should be practically / nearly impossible to reach.  So
>> having level 150 characters is unlikely.
> 
> I think this is a problem any way you put it. With hard cap, players get
> bored when they hit the cap and the character can no longer improve. With
> impossible-to-reach maximum level, there is a gap *below* the hard cap:
> if level 100 is "impossible" to reach, it simply means level 99 is the
> cap! And players still get bored when their characters no longer advance.
> So even without a hard cap, just impossibly difficult-to-reach levels,
> people will get bored exactly like they would with a hard cap.

  That's exactly my thought - to me, having no cap but impossible to reach exp 
totals is basically the same thing as a hard cap.  So why not do a hard cap then?

  If the exp table is such that characters can get above level 99, or 100, then 
you don't have a cap.

  Now I'm certainly open to the idea that there is no cap on exp, just a cap on 
level.  So once you reach max level (100), you'll be max level, but you can keep 
accumulate exp all you want - it just doesn't get you much (save for some 
padding if you get drained).

> 
> I am not quite sure just adding new regions and monsters will help here
> since the character advancement has ceased. If there is no gain from
> doing quests, why do them? Even if you get some new fancy thingy as a
> reward, it probably is not enough to motivate players when that is the
> only thing to gain.
> 
> Increasing levels, perhaps even by adding new areas to the map or
> whatever, is probably the only way around this problem. Another would be
> if the capped characters would be able to advance in some other way: in
> pen-and-paper RPG's people often start building their own kingdoms etc.
> Although I have no idea how THAT would work in cf. But it definitely is
> fun.

  IMO, adding new regions when characters reach the cap is completely 
unrealistic, so I dismiss it as an option.  Sure, it sounds great, and could 
happen, but past experience shows it won't happen.  Making a complete new region 
for super high level characters isn't something that is going to happen in a few 
days - that is a lot of work.  And I think getting people to do that work is not 
going to be easy.

> 
>> A high level dragon with clawing level 100 decides to level up sorcery
>> will block a low level map for a very long time until the sorcery skill
>> is on a desired level.
> 
> Immediately after reading this, I got a great idea (at least I think it
> is great): make the skills more like D&D 3rd ed. skills (or what do they
> call them nowadays? They used to be called proficiencies back in AD&D).
> They've spent a lot of time thinking about those and they definitely have
> got it done pretty well. This is how the skills *could* work:
> 
> Every player race *and class* gets some starting skills, like they do
> now. After gaining enough experience to get to level N, they get to
> improve *those* skills that they most used (say, M skills, no more)
> between reaching levels N-1 and N, but only those skills. This way there
> would not be an issue of 50th level dragon leveling his first levels of
> sorcery in a newbie map, because the dragon would *never* get enough xp
> for sorcery in that manner to make sorcery one of the skills he improves
> when reaching 51st level. (Note that if M above is too big, this is
> untrue; for M=1 and possibly some other low numbers as well, this
> statement holds.)

  Balancing this is probably more difficult.  First, it certainly couples skill 
levels to overall level - this means characters may avoid using some skills 
because they want to make sure the skills they care about go up (don't use find 
traps - it might mean my pyromancy won't go up).

  the other problem with this, and the other idea of limiting exp gain based on 
overall level, is that it really means you need balance your skill usage as you 
advance your character.

  Suppose for example you start as the 'mage' character, which gets you 
pyromancy & evocations.  For some random reason, you don't use that evocation 
skill, and you're now level 20 with a level 1 evocation skill.

  Under both methods, you're evocation is basically a lost cause - its unlikely 
you'll be able to kill level 15 monsters with your evocation skill, even if you 
weaken them with other skills.

  It may be that is the correct thing, but even AD&Dv3 doesn't really do that - 
each level you get skill points, and can put them in whatever skills you want - 
there is a max of how good a skill can be relative to level, but in AD&Dv3, a 
high level character could pick up a new skill and get very good at it very 
quickly.  That isn't quite the model you are describing.

  I personally dislike games that force some style of playing.  I'd dislike 
crossfire if I say 'I must improve my evocation skill right now, because if I 
don't, I won't ever be able to get very good at it'.

  I do agree that high level characters leveling up certain skills in easy 
dungeons is not a good method.

  But how is this for another method:
Whenever a character gains exp through any method, some portion (<10%) goes into 
a reserved pool - these exp don't go into any specific skill, but do count for 
overall level.

  The player is then able to move exp from this reserved pool into skills to 
increase their level.

  So if you're level 50, and find your evocation skill is really bad, you can 
shuffle exp from that general pool into evocation.  And almost certainly, if 
you're level 50, killing level 50 creatures with your good skills will get you 
exp faster in evocation that trying to kill level 1 creatures with evocation.

  At some point, this balance changes - at level 15 evocation, it may be faster 
to kill level 15 creatures with evocation than do that exp transfer.  OTOH, if 
you're level 50 overall and level 15 evocation, you're evocation is probably 
good enough now to finish off some level 50 creatures now and again.



>> And the high level experienced players just take the maps where to get
>> most xp and / or treasure.  And than this map is blocked by a few
>> players over and over again.
> 
> Can we make the map reset delay character specific? I.e. the map would
> reset in, say, two hours for other players, but for the same character,
> it does not reset until, say a week has passed. That would put an end to
> repeating lucrative maps all over again by the same character.

  Not possible - maps are global attributes, so very hard to make things on them 
per player.

  And you also get a case like this:  High level player goes in map, clears it 
out.  It shouldn't reset for a week.  But low level player goes, and it has been 
the 2 hours, so should reset for him.  What happens now if high level player 
shows up?

  Other problem is that you now need to track for every player and every map 
when they last went to it.

  One could perhaps add per player instance maps with different reset times. 
This clearly isn't good for multiplayer (as two players entering at the same 
time would no longer be together).  In this model, one could add logic that 
those per player instance maps reset after some amount of time.

> 
>> Just reduce the xp gained by a monster if you're higher.  Don't give out
>> more xp if you killed a monster on a lower level.  The monster xp is the
>> maximum you can get from it.
> 
> Well, this really is just a question of what does the xp-modification
> function look like. We can easily make the modification dependant upon
> Heaviside(monster_level-character_level), where Heaviside is the
> Heaviside unit step function. Or anything like that. If the problem is in
> altering xp gained from monster, altering the function does not solve it.
> I do not personally see from Mark's explanation, what the problem really
> is. It looks like it was simply implemented suboptimally.

  May have been suboptimal.  But the problem is you also start getting too many 
variables, so very hard know fair exp rewards.

  If the boss monster may give between 10K and 100K exp depending on level of 
character, very hard to know what is fair.

  But this also goes back to above - if you're level 50 and only get exp for 
killing level 40+ monsters, once again, skills you have neglected are basically 
useless - you're not going to kill level 40 creatures with level 1 evocation 
spells (or level 1 punching)

  This also I don't think completely fixes the problem - it just forces 
characters to figure out the minimum creature necessary to get exp.  So maybe 
instead of that level 50 person getting evocation exp on orcs, he has to do it 
on hill giants.  Some improvement I guess, but not for the level 10 characters 
who want to take on some hill giants.


> 
>>>   Also, the crossfire exp table is almost an exponential system, where
>>> as AD&Dv3 is more linear (the exp needed for level 20 is 10 times that
>>> of level 2).  So adding this extra adjustment really just amounts to
>>> extra penalty/bonus.
>> Making level 100 as hard to reach as level 115 is right now, won't make
>> level 101 characters more likely even if the xp table is more linear.
> 
> I do not think Mark was referring to level caps here. What he said is
> true: D&D 3rd ed has (almost? I'd need to get up, go to bookshelf and
> check...) linear xp tables, crossfire does not. Crossfire has
> ~exponential xp tables. Though I am at a loss at to how he reached the
> conclusion that is is a penalty/bonus. If all the current monsters are
> given the "correct" level and killing the monsters at "right" (i.e. when
> you are at the same level as the monster) level gives you the listed XP,
> there is absolutely NO difference from the current situation UNLESS you
> kill too easy monsters, which would get penalised (which was the whole
> point). Linearity vs. exponentiality has nothing to do with it. The only
> thing that has is the modification-function, which must give listed XP
> when killing monsters at proper level AND monster XP(level)-function must
> follow the same formula as player XP(level)-function. (Unless we want to
> make it so that reaching level N from N-1 needs more kills than N-1 from
> N-2 etc, but even that has nothing to do with penalising for killing too
> easy monsters.).

  Correct, to some extent.

  The exponential crossfire exp tables makes it pointless to kill low level 
creatures - the number of orcs a level 50 character would need to get to level 
51 is a huge total.  Yes, unlike AD&Dv3, he would eventually get to level 51. 
But that is what the exponential table does - makes killing lower level things 
virtually useless.

  But as several people have noted above, exp is skill based, so if you're level 
1 in evocation, kill level 1 creatures gets you something.

  But there are lots of problems if exp gain for skills is adjusted by overall 
level - you now really need to take a balanced approach to gaining levels, but 
then at the same time you really want to have 1 good exp that corresponds to 
overall level.

  For example, if you're level 50 and have 1 skill at level 50 and rest at level 
1, you're in pretty good shape so long as that single skill does what you need - 
you get true exp value for each level 50 creature you kill.

  But if you're level 50 and have 6 skills at level 30, you're in bad shape - 
you probably can't kill level 50 creatures, so maybe you kill level 40 creatures 
instead.  But now you're getting less exp for each creature you kill than you 
normally would, so that much harder to improve skills and overall level.

  Maybe that becomes self regulating at some point - I'm not sure about that.

  And maybe the game should be that way - really focus on just a couple skills 
per character.  But that really has to be clearly documented - I find it really 
frustrating to have played a game for quite a while only to find out I didn't do 
the correct thing, and thus the character is basically messed up and I should 
start a new one.  I much prefer games that are forgiving - maybe you didn't make 
ideal choices, but what you did before doesn't have a huge impact now.