I was looking at going back to play EQ (while waiting for PRF) but I am too far behind in levels and can't get groups.
I could buy a insta-level character but that's not fair to the people who put in the time and effort.
That got me thinking:
This level disparity is one of the biggest challenges. People cant group because of the level limits.
IN EQ, the old rule of thumb was 2/3 of max level to get any XP.
But, what if it wasn't an absolute black-or-white on-off switch.
What if it was infinitely scaled and was a sliding scale.
And the XP gained was completely proportional to levels.
So if a level 80 and a level 20 grouped together, and there was 100 XP "points" awarded for a kill, the lvl 80 would get 80% of them and the low leveel gets 20% of the XP.
Obviously a linear formula isnt right - it would be a complicated formula but still - if anyone could group with anyone - we would eliminate a lot of the LFG shortages and people not coming back and leaving when they fall behind. Obviously the mechanics of HOW to actually do this would need to be fleshed out - but the SHY of doing it seems so obvious to me.
So WoW (Retail) does something along these lines. Or at least with the last 2 expansions they did. Where if a 110 wanted to group with a 115 they could both kill the same mob and get XP equivelent to their level. The mob would be lvl 110 for the 110 and would be 115 for the 115. It is nice in terms of wanting to group with friends or even doing harder quests together, but it did become a little trivial if a 120 completely decked out in gear was helping say a 111 as the mob would just drop.
So really the only issue I'd see with this in Pantheon is it could possibly take away the "toughness" of the game. I'm all for having help but you would need to be careful as it might hurt the game more than help. You don't want to trivialize the grind, quests and/or game just to be able to level with anyone regardless of the gap. Of course I'm sure someone could come on and make some sort of idea or solution that wouldn't and I'd be interested in seeing whats brainstormed. Otherwise leave the game hard and focus on making friends to level with. If you get out leveled make more friends of your level!
fazool said:So if a level 80 and a level 20 grouped together, and there was 100 XP "points" awarded for a kill, the lvl 80 would get 80% of them and the low leveel gets 20% of the XP.
The major issue isn't the distribution of XP but rather the NPCs the level 80 needs to kill are dozens upon dozens of levels higher than the level 20 could even consider fighting. So what you get is the level 80 doing the all the work and the 20 just along for the ride. In other words..powereleveled. And that is not something this game needs.
The purpose of the suggestion is a reasonable one. Making it easier to group ties in with Pantheon's core objectives. And I have noticed in multiple MMOs that if few people do low to middle level content, having to get to maximum level is a huge barrier to entry or reentry for the kind of person that has a group-centered game as their first choice.
I regret to say that the point Vandraad made is absolutely devastating to the suggestion, however. If characters get to keep their original levels while grouped the low levels are getting nothing more and nothing less than a power-level. They are contributing essentially nothing and getting a lot more experience per minute than they deserve for the contribution. Or I should say lack of contribution.
The way to have low levels able to group with high levels is mentoring in one of several variations. Either the low level is boosted, the high level is reduced, or both are moved to some level in the middle. Mentoring, often discussed on these forums, is only a valid approach if the low level doesn't get too much experience. The theory is that it is a way to expand the pool of people able to group, not a way to level faster than doing normal content at-level. Likewisae it is only valid if the higher level does not keep so many powers and abilities that content is trivialized.
I have never seen mentoring work well but maybe VR can pull that off if they try.
I have seen so-called level-agnostic groups where anyone can group with anyone else used as a horrendous form of power-leveling to the point where gaining 100 levels in one *day* or 30 levels in one *hour* was common. Vandraad is more than correct in saying Pantheon needs nothing like that.
Balancing content for appropriate level ranges is difficult enough. For greatly varying levels it's impossible.
Unless a game has mechanics where any level of character can contribute to an encounter, as has been said, there is no 'fair' XP to give a character that is too far below encounter level.
I made another thread on that, but the consensus generally is that metas like zerging (low-level characters 'swarming' high level encounters) are not desirable.
It is good to challenge and think on these things, but I think Mentoring is the answer (where the high level character is reduced in level/power) here. Anything else is likely to result in powerleveling.
I am also very against power leveling and hope it is not possible. That being said I am ok with players grouping together at different ranges.
I would set the “group con” to be the sum of level^2 of each group member. A mobs con is then 6 times level^2 if it’s a group mob or just level^2 if it’s a solo balanced mob. The mobs exp would be EXP*”Mob Con”/”group con” so if you are challenging up there is a multiplier. The mob will actually use all the players in all the groups on its agro table to calculate its vs “group con” so no outside the group assistance. The exp is then awarded to the individual players based on the ratios of level^2.
It is also assumed that the amount of exp required to level grows exponentially each level rather than linearly.
Mentoring can be done pretty easy if the mentor tool basically turns your character into a generic version of your class at the target level with average gear for the level. This will keep the challenge without lots of crazy floating math based on different sets of equipment. The above formula could still be used but a high level player mentored down will be considered its mentor level and not its actual level for purposes of group con and exp distribution.
EQ1 had a very simple equation to determine what levels ranges people could have and still group together. It started with a min/max of 5 level difference to 30 level difference. In between those two numbers it was (1.5 * lowest level)+1, rounded down. So a level one could group with a level 6. The lower level character, up through level 9 could easily group with someone 5 levels higher than themselves. Upon reaching level 10, the equation kicked in so a level 10 and level 16 could group, By level 20 that person could group with a level someone up to level 36. By 30 it was up to 48.
Seriously, what effing more do you need? You're look at an 18 level difference by level 30. No person at level 30 could hope to even scratch a level 46 mob yet EQ1 allowed that range. Frankly if something similar were introduced I'd make it a set range, not a ratio becuase the difference just gets ridiculous as you level up.
Vandraad said:Seriously, what effing more do you need? You're look at an 18 level difference by level 30. No person at level 30 could hope to even scratch a level 46 mob yet EQ1 allowed that range. Frankly if something similar were introduced I'd make it a set range, not a ratio becuase the difference just gets ridiculous as you level up.
It really all depends on the power growth by level scale and how relative level effects combat effectiveness. It could be that a level 30 has 75% of the magnitude of a level 50 but only half the hit rate. It could also be that a level 30 has 5% of the magnitude of a level 50 and only 1% hit rate (100 on a d100 is an auto hit).
Which one will greatly affect if a grouping limiter is required. I would argue that if the first is true then no grouping limiter is even required, just divide the exp by level of the characters in group. If the latter is more correct its not really appropriate for the level 30 to get any exp for a level 50 kill in a group with level 50s as they effectively contributed 0 and will never be able to do more.
The best way to help people group together at low level when the game is old is to create a game that is engaging at all levels. There's no need for specialty mechanics and magical downleveling if the game is good enough that people roll alts, there will always be people to group with.
EQ is a bad example because the game was ruined from Kunark and on from the perspective of inflation vs leveling.
Saying "just grind and level up" is not an answer. The point is you can't.
Anyway, I am not proposing power-leveling either.
If this is truly a player controlled world system, then the players should decide - just like there is no mechanism in place to prevent KS-ing and it's up to the players to decide how to tolerate it with other players.
There should be no mechanism that artificially restricts grouping together - let the players decide if someone is contributing or just draining beneift/experience from a group.
I don't advocate PL-ing, but I think there is a solution out there some where to make it work.