[heartbrand]

Experience Penalties - Description

I think that it would be appropriate to say that most players are aware that there are different experience requirements for advancement based upon the race and class you choose to play. Ogres, for instance, require more experience to level than Halflings, and Shadowknights require more experience to level than Warriors. As such, an Ogre Shadowknight requires FAR more experience to level than a Halfling Warrior does. What some people have discovered is that when in a group, everyone shares in this penalty. Before getting into our plan, I think that its important to talk about what our goals were regarding experience penalties and the group sharing in that penalty.

When EverQuest player characters were being designed, it was immediately apparent that some races and classes would be more powerful than others given versatility and other factors. Later, it came to light that the concept of being "more powerful" began to break down at the upper levels, given that everyone capped at the same level. We could not let any one race or class be immensely more powerful than another at that final point, as it would essentially put parts of the game off limits to those who chose the less powerful classes. While we did a good job of making races vary in power, but not so much as to be unbalancing, the same could not be said for classes. Still, though classes would be roughly equivalent in regard to the compelling reason to play them through versatility, the experience penalties were kept.

In regards to the sharing of the experience penalty, it was apparent in beta, before the penalty was shared, that those playing characters without an experience penalty leveled faster than those that did. It was obvious that this would occur, but it was to the extreme that a group of friends, all playing together, would become separated to the point that they could no longer group efficiently in the mid to upper-mid levels. So we chose to distribute experience in the group on the basis of the total experience of each member rather than the level, in order to keep groups together.

As such, a level 20 Troll SK, having more experience total than a Human Wizard of the same level, would get more experience from each kill, while the total experience for the kill was unchanged. Essentially, the SK would take part of the Wizard's share were everything distributed equally to begin with.

Experience Penalties - Resolutions

Over the past week the EverQuest team has been considering experience penalties in all their forms. We had many meetings where the issue was hotly debated from both sides. We had to consider not only the effect on the individualplayer, but also the effect of any changes on the game as a whole. Eventually, we nearly unanimously decided the following:


1. Race-based penalties are appropriate. An ogre, for instance, does indeed make a better warrior than a halfling. It is not so little that the faction and size problems make up for it, and not so much that it is really unbalancing at upper levels, but enough that the penalty should apply. Secondly, the penalty is not so severe (compared with class-based penalties) that it would cause groups to break up on the journey from one to sixty due to level differences.

2. Class-based penalties are not appropriate. Classes are roughly equivalent in power throughout the level ranges, and the versatility does not make up for that penalty. In fact, the majority of changes made to classes in the name of balance in the last year were based on the assumption that, at the high end, each class should still be roughly as needed and balanced as any other.

3. Penalties, in any form, should not be shared with the group. Players know that no one class is immensely more powerful/valuable than another, and as such it is not fair to ask them to share a burden. If classes with penalties were really more powerful or valuable than the other classes, then it might be right, but that isn't the case here. Furthermore, sharing of penalties causes people to reject potential group members on the basis of them "sucking" too much experience.

4. We're going to fix it.

5. Class-based experience bonuses (which warriors and rogues get) are also not appropriate, as they cannot be so if penalties are not. However, we've decided to leave this as-is, since the bonus is not so severe as to be unbalancing. Bottom line: we don't feel the bonus is enough to warrant a fix that could be interpreted as a 'nerf'.




So, how can you tell me that even though ultimately they realized EXP Class Penalties were dumb and therefore needed to be fixed, that nonetheless it was a great feature originally and should be in place here? (BTW it took months and months of people pointing this out to the stubborn Verant crew as they kept responding The Vision, The Vision, before they finally realized they fucked up) This is what irks me the most about things here. Many items were nerfed or what not retroactively because they were over powered, they shouldn't have exited in their original form, but yet we allow them to exist here for X amount of time supposedly roughly equivalent to the duration of live but almost always far longer due to infrequent patches. But, if the original item as it was implemented was over powered, it should NEVER be in, it was a mistake. Does it matter it took X amount of months for Verant to realize this? We don't do this for things like Alchemy and not put it into the game, we don't keep in all the broken quests that were broken until their fix date or what not, so why do we do it there? There just seems to be no rhyme or reason here to things like this. A perfect example is an item like the T-Staff. Eventually they realized, wow, we really fucked up with this item it's incredibly OP and needs to be changed, but because they didn't finally have this revelation until Luclin it will never happen here? I dunno man, that doesn't make too much sense to me. If the reasoning is, hey bro it's classic, then it's time to intentionally leave bugged encounters and quests in their original bugged form as well for X months of duration so that literally every aspect of this server mirrors the way it was on live for the exact same duration of time.