Duration of Shared Grp XP Penalties

[Toony]

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

The shared XP penalty in groups should go away. It hurts groups and hurts players who have penalties.

Define "hurts".

[Oogmog]

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

Define "hurts".

I'll take a stab at what he thinks "hurts" means. It "hurts" the group because the penalty that they have is inflicted on the group. They are not as efficient in the leveling department. It "hurts" the hybrid because they are not getting groups as often because of the penalty. You have just hit level 30. You have not experienced a Troll SK at level 45 in your group, so you haven't seen any real harsh "penalty" towards your group. (In which I've posted MANY times saying hell levels should not be distributed in the shared xp penalty and only got one response that directed me toward the developers link following the release of Velious and no mention of hell levels being included in shared penalty)

Since I've started playing my warrior again over the past few days, many people have said that they cannot tell a huge aggro difference between me and a SK/Pal which makes them less inclined to invite SK/Pals from there on out.. and every group I have been in has flat out said they will not invite hybrids, and the only one that would get a pass would be a bard if and only if no chanters were available for a group. Say what you will, but you were playing in a different level bracket when all this came down.. no hell levels and the need for a well balanced group composition wasn't exactly required. Hit 40+, when the leveling is slow for everyone to begin with, and see how much these penalties "hurt" both sides. The only players we're hearing from are in the teens-30's brackets.. I'd like to see how many hybrids are getting groups 40+ on a consistent basis, especially seeing 37+ you have Yak capable warriors.

[Toony]

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

I'll take a stab at what he thinks "hurts" means. It "hurts" the group because the penalty that they have is inflicted on the group. They are not as efficient in the leveling department. It "hurts" the hybrid because they are not getting groups as often because of the penalty. You have just hit level 30. You have not experienced a Troll SK at level 45 in your group, so you haven't seen any real harsh "penalty" towards your group. (In which I've posted MANY times saying hell levels should not be distributed in the shared xp penalty and only got one response that directed me toward the developers link following the release of Velious and no mention of hell levels being included in shared penalty)

Guess I'll get back to you in 20 levels. Although I have a feeling I'll have pretty much the same opinion as the first time I leveled to 50 in classic, pre-kunark, pre-velious.

[Bumamgar]

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

only got one response that directed me toward the developers link following the release of Velious and no mention of hell levels being included in shared penalty

Hell levels weren't mentioned in the producer's letter because at the time that letter was written, Varent/SOE were still denying the existence of hell levels. Hell levels weren't acknowledged till Sep 4th, 2002 (A few months before PoP went live).

[Oogmog]

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

Hell levels weren't mentioned in the producer's letter because at the time that letter was written, Varent/SOE were still denying the existence of hell levels. Hell levels weren't acknowledged till Sep 4th, 2002 (A few months before PoP went live).

Like I responded in another thread, did you not play classic? A level 45 would level MUCH slower than a level 43 in the same group. 99% of the people playing on this server can verify this as being truth. Here, a level 45 in groups levels at the same rate as that same level 43. That is not how it was on classic.

[Oogmog]

Also, to add more insight on the subject Bum, I would just like some clarification on your interpretation of the Verant's dev letter.

On classic, everyone dreaded the hell levels. Correct?
On classic, nobody knew about shared XP penalties. Correct?

So with that said, why would people dread hell levels since the penalty would then be shared with the group making the level rate the same for everyone in the group, but in fact, nobody knew that this was taking place? I really don't want to come off like a jerk, but everyone and their brother knew 30-35-40-45 sucked to go through... and if their penalty was shared, the only people that would ever truly recognize a hell level would be someone that only solo'ed and could notice the experience difference in those levels.

[Bumamgar]

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

I really don't want to come off like a jerk

Then you might want to avoid making comments like this:

Originally Posted by Oogmog

Like I responded in another thread, did you not play classic?

[Oogmog]

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

Then you might want to avoid making comments like this:

I've made the same post probably 5 times and haven't got a response. You were brought on to fix a problem with ogre experience then made an assumption based decision on hell level experience because there was no mention of hell levels in the developers thread in which you based your information from. I'm all for keeping this server classic, as much as I don't like the hybrid penalty, I'm living with it. I can live with shared hell level experience as well. However, it was not classic and the last time I said it was not classic you in fact linked me to the developers thread(in which I had previously posted as well so I knew of the link), and I responded, and was ignored. It was a valid question to ask if you've played classic and there is no "nice" way to ask the question. You're either going to take offense or you can respond "Yes, I did, and that is how I remembered it" or whatever. The fact you took offense to it might be an indication that you don't exactly remember how hell levels worked and coded it improperly because you assumed hell levels were in fact included in the penalty and that is all I'm advocating for the dev's to examine and consider fixing to make it "classic" like this server is attempting to accomplish.

[Bumamgar]

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

Like I responded in another thread, did you not play classic? A level 45 would level MUCH slower than a level 43 in the same group. 99% of the people playing on this server can verify this as being truth. Here, a level 45 in groups levels at the same rate as that same level 43. That is not how it was on classic.

I was simply explaining why hell levels weren't mentioned in the producer's letter.

[Striiker]

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

Define "hurts".

Funny you ask. I had started writing in how things hurt groups and hurts players but deleted it..

It hurts groups by virtue of slowing down their XP increases. Some (such as myself) don't care about this aspect as we are here to have fun hanging out with people, killing stuff and getting items / plat to improve our characters. The XP just happens. It is still a "hurt" to the group as XP gain is a very important aspect of the game. Some people put a lot of focus on their XP gain which we should not begrudge as it is an aspect of the game which makes them happy.

The hurt to players are the ones with the racial / class penalties. Some of this is not applicable to all players.
- Groups refuse to group with high XP penalty players. (hurt to all). Many would say that you are better off but it sucks if you spend over an hour LFG or trying to put together a group with no success.
- Groups, if given the choice, will pick other non/lower XP penalty classes to fill slots. This is the classic Warrior and SK both are LFG. The group will pick the warrior. Same applies to racial penalties and this is even higher when the racial and class penalties are present in one player.
- Some players feel badly about bringing their XP penalty to a group. Some players will prefer to shelf their character and start an alt. or try their hand at soloing instead. I really feel badly for these players and I am sure that they would be great to group with.