Game Mechanics: Group Experience bug

[yaeger]

I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but what I've researched says that group exp should scale from a 2% to 20% bonus depending on the amount of people in the group. As of now, it seems like full group exp is set at +10% for 6 players instead of the +20% that I would expect.

I included the patch notes and have bolded the important area.

Originally Posted by Patch notes

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May 27, 2003
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** Experience System Change - Grouping **

We've made some improvements to the way experience is rewarded in all
of EverQuest. At its core, the idea is to positively reinforce
grouping. There should never be any penalty to adding "that sixth
person over there," whatever class they may be, into your group. That
is exactly the type of behavior that should be rewarded.

In a massively multi-player game, any mechanic that penalizes those who
group is one that we need to take a serious look at. While there are
definite benefits to forming "well balanced" groups in terms of damage,
tanking, healing, and support, there shouldn't be an active penalty to
those who cannot find groups of "optimal" balance.

As it stands in EverQuest, groups gain a 2% to 20% experience bonus,
which we refer to as the "group bonus", for having two to six members.
In practice, however, this has never been much of a bonus, even in the
case of a full group, given that the experience was already being
divided six ways.

In the past, we had also attempted to reward people for adventuring in
the more challenging Planes of Power zones by making those zones give a
better rate of experience.

As of this update, groups now gain 20% to 80% "group bonus" experience
for having two to five members.

Full, six-person, groups now see an additional bonus. Their experience
is only divided five ways, yet they still gain the 80% "group bonus."
For those who think in terms of pie charts, it amounts to a larger
piece of a larger pie.

Accordingly, the bonus inherent to Planes of Power zones will be
decreased slightly. However, as long as person is grouped with at least
one other, they will see an improvement in experience gain over the old
system. The one down side to the new system is that there will be a
slight decrease in experience for those who do not group, and only for
those who do so in Planes of Power zones.

We realize that we are, essentially, "manufacturing" a new type of
experience after a kill. As players, we also understand it is the
people who spend time in full groups who have to deal with the most
interruptions and setup time caused by organizing the extra people. It
simply makes sense to reward that extra time, especially if it means
bringing more people together. After all, that's the whole point.

And this was done some months ago that proves that full group exp is set at 10% exp bonus. Quote taken from a post dated 7/13/10.

Originally Posted by Bumamgar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not true, I've checked it with debugging repeatedly. In fact what happens is:

Example mob worth 1000 xp.

One person killing one mob gets 1000xp.

Six people killing six mobs get 6600xp (which equates to 1100xp per player before normalization).

If all six players are the same level and are class/race combinations without any XP modifier then all six players will get 1100xp each.

However, if the group is again the same level, but has some penalties etc, it works out like this:

Race        Class    Per Mob  For Six 
---------   -------  -------  ------- 
Human       Cleric     162       974 
Ogre        Warrior    174      1042 
Halfling    Rogue      142       851 
Erudite     Wizard     180      1083 
Barbarian   Shaman     171      1026 
Half-elf    Ranger     271      1624 
---------   -------  -------  -------
Total                 1100      6600

So except for the Human Cleric and the Halfing Rogue, all members of the group earn more XP for killing 6 mobs while grouped than they did killing one mob solo.

The benefits of solo'ing vs. grouping depend on a lot of factors, but from a raw XP perspective, if the group can consistently kill 6 mobs in the amount of time the solo'er kills one mob, the group will earn faster XP over time.