Experience penalties aren't that big of a deal

[Verityn]

I see a lot of people worrying about the exp penalties when deciding on a class and I wanted to point out that only 5 out of the 14 classes won't have a class exp penalty on green. One of them is the Shaman and they still can't avoid the racial exp penalties. So what you're left with are druids, clerics, rogues and warriors who aren't a large race. Basically healers and classes that aren't going to be that amazing until Kunark comes out in a year.

[Deathrydar]

Some of the funnest classes and races have the harshest experience penalties. But I believe that is by design! This game is incredible!...Well, it was incredible!

[aaezil]

One of them is the Shaman and they still can't avoid the racial exp penalties.

Wait, what?

[Verityn]

Wait, what?

The barbarians, trolls and ogres have racial exp penalties.

[aaezil]

I mean barb -5% thats not really noticeable

[loramin]

I think there's two issues with the XP penalty: rational and social. You can argue all you want about the practical/rational/actual effects of having an XP penalty ... but I'll leave that discussion to others.

I just want to point out that there's the equally (more?) important social aspect. Certain class/race combos are going to be perceived as eating up a ton of group XP and not giving an equivalent value.

Regardless of the truth of that (eg. the fact that class A/race A actually has the same or similar penalty to widely reviled class B/race B), the very perception about certain classes/races by the player base is going to have a real impact on what it's like to play those classes/races.

[Sonark]

I think there's two issues with the XP penalty: rational and social. You can argue all you want about the practical/rational/actual effects of having an XP penalty ... but I'll leave that discussion to others.

I just want to point out that there's the equally (more?) important social aspect. Certain class/race combos are going to be perceived as eating up a ton of group XP and not giving an equivalent value.

Regardless of the truth of that (eg. the fact that class A/race A actually has the same or similar penalty to widely reviled class B/race B), the very perception about certain classes/races by the player base is going to have a real impact on what it's like to play those classes/races.Meta roleplay

Classic af

[Verityn]

I just want to point out that there's the equally (more?) important social aspect. Certain class/race combos are going to be perceived as eating up a ton of group XP and not giving an equivalent value.


That is not something I'm used to thinking about. In the past 10 years I've only played on TLP servers and soloed on P1999. Even on live during classic era I remember playing for a quite a while where no I knew was aware of the class penalties. All the way to level 50 right after Kunark came out I had no idea that my bard had a 40% exp penalty. People seemed to not hesitate to invite an Ogre SK.

I hope that people can try to let go of some of their min/maxing inclinations by remembering that we have about a year until Kunark comes out. Even with Kunark there are a lot of reasons to create another character so for a quite some time for many people it's going to be about the journey and much less about the end game.

[Bbeta]

A group with 2 rangers 2 pallies and 2 sks is actually negative exp. Similar to dieing without rez

Jk, but I do remember it's being noticeable and when I was trying to speed run my shaman to 60 I didn't appreciate when hybrids got invited to group. #100% class bias

[Deathrydar]

Players who think about the experience penalty when in a group with a hybrid have lost the true meaning of EverQuest!

[skorge]

Players who think about the experience penalty when in a group with a hybrid have lost the true meaning of EverQuest!

Lol man you must have didn't play in early 99 when everyone KS'd each other left and right and would create wizards/mages and run them to the location they wanted to camp and log them in to KS whoever was there, haha....people were more ruthless in classic than here on P99.

Heck yea people cared about hybrids being in group in classic. Heck a halfling warrior can level to 60 two times by the time a troll SK reaches level 59. Hybrid exp penalties just destroyed group exp and people knew it and never invited Paladins/SKs unless they were farming an item (like Ykeshas).

The few hybrids the servers had back then were carried by their non-hybrid friends who had to eat their exp penalties, lol.

[Deathrydar]

Lol man you must have didn't play in early 99 when everyone KS'd each other left and right and would create wizards/mages and run them to the location they wanted to camp and log them in to KS whoever was there, haha....people were more ruthless in classic than here on P99.

Heck yea people cared about hybrids being in group in classic. Heck a halfling warrior can level to 60 two times by the time a troll SK reaches level 59. Hybrid exp penalties just destroyed group exp and people knew it and never invited Paladins/SKs unless they were farming an item (like Ykeshas).

The few hybrids the servers had back then were carried by their non-hybrid friends who had to eat their exp penalties, lol.

I was there back in 1999 and I can tell you, that the people I rolled with, never even mentioned experience penalties. I was also here when Blue launched back in 2009, and again, not one mention of an experience penalty.

[Hoppkins_Wytchfinder]

Thats a good point. If a group had an SK and a Paladin are the XP penalties cummulative?

Or is it just applied once?

[Deathrydar]

Thats a good point. If a group had an SK and a Paladin are the XP penalties cummulative?

Or is it just applied once?

Is the SK and the Paladin fun to group with?

That's my criteria for inviting someone to a group.

[Hoppkins_Wytchfinder]

Yeah i wasn't debating politics of grouping etc. It was purely a statistical question.

[YendorLootmonkey]

Thats a good point. If a group had an SK and a Paladin are the XP penalties cummulative?

Or is it just applied once?

XP is split based on a ratio of your xp point total to the entire group total. If all 3 of you just dinged level X and you group together, and you have 10000 xp, the 2 hybrids have 14000 xp to get to the same level. Your share of xp gain from the kill is Y * (10000/38000) and each of theirs is Y * (14000/38000). That's not accounting for racial penalties, ZEM, group bonuses, and a bit simplified, but that's the gist of it.

[YendorLootmonkey]

Heck yea people cared about hybrids being in group in classic. Heck a halfling warrior can level to 60 two times by the time a troll SK reaches level 59. Hybrid exp penalties just destroyed group exp and people knew it and never invited Paladins/SKs unless they were farming an item (like Ykeshas).

The few hybrids the servers had back then were carried by their non-hybrid friends who had to eat their exp penalties, lol.

Not many people knew xp penalties were shared with the group for the first year or so... it wasn't until Verant explained how it worked that hybrids got shunned, if I recall correctly.

Unless they were running packet sniffers with a friend and comparing XP numbers gained, it woukd have been difficult to measure. All we had was an xp bar moving pixel by pixel to measure anything, no XP percents built into UIs or anything like that... I don't even remember if the blue XP bar that measure progress within an orange bubble of XP is classic.

[Dolalin]

IIRC the blue bar was added during Kunark because people complained they couldn't see any movement in the 50s hell levels.

[Hoppkins_Wytchfinder]

Those were good times, while grinding out spiders in velks for 12 hours it gave you something new to look at :D

[Daud]

Not many people knew xp penalties were shared with the group for the first year or so... it wasn't until Verant explained how it worked that hybrids got shunned, if I recall correctly.

Unless they were running packet sniffers with a friend and comparing XP numbers gained, it woukd have been difficult to measure. All we had was an xp bar moving pixel by pixel to measure anything, no XP percents built into UIs or anything like that... I don't even remember if the blue XP bar that measure progress within an orange bubble of XP is classic.

All you need to do is group 2 fresh warriors and count the number of giant rats you kill to get level 2 and then group a fresh warrior and hybrid and count the number of rats to get level 2. The warrior and hybrid simply needed more rats each than the two warriors. By level 5 or 6 you could see the disparity fairly easily. That kind of testing could be done in a single evening.

While the actual exp numbers were not well known, simple testing could show something was up with the way exp was reduced to non-hybrid group members easily and is was somewhat common knowledge fairly early on, I remember it well leveling in Lower guk a bit before Kunark or my move to Lanys in Dec 99. I definitely encountered more and more hybrid bias and groups wanting to skip pal/rng/shd as much as possible as time went on (bards seemed to get a bit more of a pass, manasong is a helluva drug). Sure, not everyone knew exactly how it worked, but the idea wasn't some obscure thing, people knew something was up even if they couldn't explain it in a full technical sense.

[Lojik]

IIRC the blue bar was added during Kunark because people complained they couldn't see any movement in the 50s hell levels.

Remove blue bar, not classic!

[Jibartik]

We cant even see how much Mana we have the blue bar is an abomination!

Imagine getting something like that patched into green99 and everyone will be like "Woo Hoo!" just like back in the old days.

I'm suddenly realizing all the patches we experience on p99 revolve around removing features that make the game easier, it will be interesting experiencing a timeline here where it's the opposite.

Edit: Although that is a bit of a generalization, we have experienced amazing patches like hybrid exp and monks new triple attack of course. But speaking to quality of life, its generally like dealing with comcast around here lol and I mean that as a complement in this situation.