1

Re: Experience Points

The reason I think the queue should be "last one in, first one out" is that a player could abuse it just like the "nipping" issue.  If the monster is down to 20%, a player knows he'll get at most 20% of the experience from that monster.  So, if he nips at him over and over again... go from 20% to 10%, heal back to 20% then to 10%, etc... eventually the player who initially got it that low loses out on all the work he did and that last player kills it to take the experience.  I also see the pros of the "first one in, first one out" approach though.  Whichever direction is chosen, I feel that this may be the 'best' way to handle experience for the new client.

2

Re: Experience Points

The problem though too is that warriors and mages may not be able to fight the same things at the same levels.  Whereas warriors might be able to level well on a magic-resist monster at level 100, the mages might need to wait till 150 or 200 to kill it because of the resists.  By the same token, a mage may be able to kill a very strong (as in melee attack) monster at 100 that a warrior, by nature of needing to be next to it, might need to be 150 or 200 to kill.  So, in these cases, it's hard to put a specific level on a monster... not to mention even knowing what level a monster should be for anyhow.  Plus, if I'm a high level and the high level spawns are currently being taken, I may wish to level at something slightly smaller so that I can still do something productive.

3

Re: Experience Points

Wow that was a lot of reading, I'm sure we can get a new bug free system.
In the current xp system when monsters heal the same xp is still given out. I think this is fine.
Heres a few of my ideas, A log should be kept of what damage a player does, then when the monster dies the xp is shared out. The most damage gets the most xp, and vis-versa or if in a group its shared 50% between the people then + what ever damage(so when people heal the monster the person with the most % damage gets the most xp). Also Xp could decay over time when the monster self heals.
The idea about high lvls not getting xp on lower monsters, well maybe if the xp numbers where like the last client people wont need to kill lower lvl monsters(non linear xp system). Or have a function where you head to a lvl (Say lvl200) xp needed to that lvl increases but you will never hit that lvl. It would be like adding a lvl cap but not since people would never get to that lvl (so high lvls can still lvl). This would also mean people wouldn't like to die because of all that xp.

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

4 (edited by Spectre 2007-02-12 21:01:12)

Re: Experience Points

If the monster has fully healed, then the queue has been emptied.  Thus, player B gets the full experience anyhow.

And, I still disagree with the "first in, first out" because the player that just "maintains" the damage level still hasn't added anything towards the end goal of killing the monster.  Plus, if the player is sitting there trying to kill it and it keeps healing, then quit f-ing around and just kill it.

5

Re: Experience Points

Hm well I'm not sure which system works best, a stack or a queue. But there still other ways too, like why not both? half removed from the front of the queue and half from the back. Or what about everyones damage in the queue is decreased when a monster is healed.

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

6

Re: Experience Points

Hmmm.

Some properties of either kind of queue.
The sum of damages in the queue is the monster's max HP minus its current HP.

Therefore you can visualize each player's damage as a color on the health bar beginning from full health down, and a stack with healing corresponds to the monster cancelling out the latest player's damage, whereas a queue corresponds to health pushing the health bar up and out when healing.

If one considers the steady state, FIFO would allow a player to cancel out all previous players' contributions by delaying the kill, whereas FILO would require the player's damage per unit time to exceed the healing per unit time. To get down to some health X from a max health Y another player would already have had to exceed said rate for some given amount of time, which could be called 'effort'. I'd consider that a pretty strong argument for FILO.

ON the other hand, this does somewhat screw over warriors who are tanking for people. But then again the player before the current one would have done exactly the same thing, except more effectively damaging the monster. Hm.

7

Re: Experience Points

In the FILO scheme, you can partition the damage, from full hit points on down, by which player took those points off the monster.

In FIFO, say a monster is at 1% health, and then I kill everyone that is killing the monster, and sit there for a while maintaining it at 1% health. Eventually I kill it.

Now, damage is linear, so taking down health is a superposition of the damage maintaining the monster's health and the damage lowering the monster's health. To get it down to some lessened health state, a player has to do all the effort of someone maintaining the monster's health, and more. It is true that otherwise the monster's health would have gone up and erased the original contribution, but to have made that original contribution the player would have had to have actually taken down the monster's health, and thus contributed to its eventual demise, something FIFO would not reward. But killing the monster is the eventual goal.

8

Re: Experience Points

These are all interesting ideas for experience distribution but I was curious about how you guys would deal with inevitable drop issues that will occur with attacking monsters as a team.

9

Re: Experience Points

Well, if you are in a party, I would assume you are friends with the other party members and thus you would distribute the wealth accordingly.  (for example, if you are an alchemist, you might ask for the dragon blood, but allow someone else the gold or something.)

We haven't talked much about drops, but one idea that was mentioned was having the drops be in a "container" from the dead monster.  Then, the killer (and his party?) could then have exclusive access to the drops for some length of time... a couple minutes perhaps.  Such an idea could prevent people stealing drops.  But ,that is slightly off-topic.  If any wish to discuss ideas for drops, it should probably get its own thread.

10

Re: Experience Points

Well, the problem with your suggestion Tim is that let's assume two players, A and B with a 100HP monster.  A does 40 dmg, B does 20 dmg, monster heals for 20 (now his max HP for experience purposes is 120) and then A hits for 60 to kill it.  Now, A would get 100/120 and B 20/120.  A did 100% of the damage necessary to kill the monster, yet gets only 83% of the experience.  That's not very fair.

11

Re: Experience Points

The difference here is that I'm thinking of the damage as continuous instead of discrete, hence the visualization I was suggesting. Granted it is discrete, but for any monster of consequence, there will be a sufficient number of hits that a continuous approximation is more or less valid, and anyone actually contributing to the kill (making progress toward reducing health to zero) will get their fair share of experience.

Say I'm guy A and am killing a monster. Then I die. Guy B keeps attacking it but gets nowhere and then dies. Guy A comes back and is right back where he was when he died. Sure Guy B held the monster off, but he never would have killed it, as his inability to lower its health demonstrates. Towards the actual goal of killing the monster, you have to take out the monster's hit points. If you don't, you're just stalling the inevitable. That's what I'm saying.

12

Re: Experience Points

If it's not clear what I mean by continuous... if two players are attacking at the same time, the healing will erase each of their contributions equally, because compared to the size of the heal the hits are just little dx's. smile

13

Re: Experience Points

But his efforts were in vain. Player A is genuinely able to kill the monster, Player B is not.

14

Re: Experience Points

The problem with your effective hp idea is that it punishes anyone who is able to kill the monster while rewarding those who cannot.  Let us consider a relatively weak player making constant attacks at the monster... perhaps he can only do 5% of the required damage and the monster keeps healing it back.  Eventually, he might acquire 200HPs damage and because of healing, the monster is now at 300 effective HPs (100 HP to start with approx 200HP healed).  Now, the monster is still slightly injured and another player (B) comes and kills the monster.  Under your system, B gets 100/300 = 1/3 experience and player A who really did nothing but f-around gets 2/3 of it?