Suggestion for Quest XP in light of Bugfix

[Twilight Semner]

Since everyone is up in arms about the bugfix on the atrociously high quest XP, I thought it would be helpful to suggest something of a happy medium between the two extremes. What I think might work well is something along the lines of the following:

Have all quests give (Character Level) x 100 x (Quest Rank) XP. That way the lower tiers of quests will still be giving around the same amount, while the higher level quests will still give a substantial amount which is significantly lower than currently, unintended amount. Let's take the example similar to Funky's of a level 30 character, and let's say he's doing something like the Crystalweave Spider from Zeke, which should be done somewhere between levels 30-35. Upon turning in the quest, he'll receive XP according to the formula above ((CL = 30) x 100 x (Quest Rank = 5)). This would grant 15,000 XP, which is a far cry from the 46,500 granted before, but much more beneficial than the 4,500 that would be granted after the bugfix. Note as well that the minimum experience that would be granted by a quest according to this formula would be 200 (assuming a non-caster who has visited the Rowan Guardian), and the maximum would be 48,000 (assuming a level 40 character doing the highest possible ranked quest). Now 48,000 does seem like a bit much so maybe something of a hard cap on quest XP along the lines of 20,000 might be in order. Just a thought.

Let me know what you think.

[desocupado]

Well, seems a good number, tough mob XP should be tuned up as well.

[chirality]

I'd be wary of a formula which recommends level as a multiplier without a cap as currently extant (otherwise even low-level quests could be delayed and receive a nice reward at far higher level than "intended", and generate higher reward than even now: picture a level 20 character completing 1st tier quest for 2000 xp rather than 600); already those who wish to maximize quest xp wait until "cap level" (mysterious as it may be) before completing a quest.

I think you're on the right track to look for a middle ground, but I think the current formula (as mysterious as it may be) is probably already pretty good. If people are thinking the post-fix % is still too low then perhaps that could be increased a bit? After all, Funky seemed to consider this anyway by boosting 10% (as initially intended?) to 15% to sate us and account for the long-familiar uber xp.

If 7 quests for a level isn't enough, then what is the proper amount? Surely everyone can agree that it's been far too much (and as we can see it evidently was never intended to be as high as we've gotten comfortable with enjoying). As always with these fixes, an instant nerf which dramatically reduces the reward is off-putting; but is it so insulting as to not bother doing them anymore? It must be all or nothing is the message I've seen in the other thread--super high xp to completely negate any need for "grinding" at all, or if it's nerfed by orders of magnitude then it's suddenly not even worth doing at all?

I think as touched on already, one possibility could be to take a look at increasing monster CRs in lowbie zones to generate appropriate xp; if mob xp is increased so it's not worthless (99% of mobs in lowbie zones at/near tag level), and quest xp is reduced so it's not ridiculous, maybe that could be a happy marriage.

[chainlink]

Its all very well for people who already have a load of high level builds to say that the quest xp reduction is good however they aren't the ones who are going to suffer when they show up as the only low level character on the servers with nobody to party with.
I for one do not look forwards to a return to multi-server camping in the best exp areas just for the purposes of levelling up and whatever happens it won't have a massive effect on me as I can pull up several characters to speed up the process so I'm not being selfish about this but I know it may hurt new players interest in playing.

[Twilight Semner]

Yeah I guess the formula I proposed could easily be abused, especially by newly-reinced level 40 character, who could get a total of 1,764,000 experience from doing all of the quests at level 40, putting them at something like level 48 before they're even immmortal. I wonder if it's at all possible to better incorporate the quests into current tag system to allow players to get an adequate amount of experience to keep up with the appropriate tag levels, without getting them halfway through Legendary Levels just from pre-Legendary quests.

[hfb]

Perhaps quest xp should not be earned after a toon has enough xp for 40th lvl.

I'd say that if one does all the tags and quests, then they should be all set for immortality. My recent new toons have wound up with two or three legendary levels after immo and I basically only play through the tags and quests with no grinding. One of those might be attributable directly to the immo run itself. This seems not too far from the mark. A 10-15% drop in quest xp rewards might be closer.

[Deleted]

Okay it is a fair point that too much XP is being given in the last few quests - I have an ~optimal path for tags/quests at the same time which I have used 5 times now and puts you at a bit over 3 million XP when you finish all quests and get immortality (Level 47) with no grinding.
I definitely think that route should at least get you to 40 with 0 grinding, but as I mentioned before HG is really focused on the endgame (that's where you'll find almost all the parties, apart from HC which is another story) and I don't see the purpose of forcing players to grind alone or do easier LL quests in small parties for extended periods of time to catch up to harder runs, while everyone else is running the Hells/Abyss (which is ultimately where you want most of the community to be up to).
I'm not saying every new toon should be Hells-ready in 5 hours, but it shouldn't take weeks of boring grinding either.

[chirality]

New(er) played weighed in, said it's not a big deal, we haven't heard single report of hordes of newbies driven off by being forced to accept post-nerf reasonable quest xp, until then can we drop the wearisome "this is bad because hypothetical new players don't like it and won't play/will quit playing"

Seriously though, great comment: It's admittedly pretty extreme rewards, but should remain at least pretty darn rewarding.

So let's move on to determine how much xp is ideal? Surely even I as the naysayer can't argue that 0-40 is legit; 1 mill sounds like a reasonable position to start? Decently optimized quest hand in could be around 1 mil, maybe bit less if you're super speedy tagger and super non-greedy xp whore, maybe bit more if you are?

[aeortar]

Is there a reason the quest XP is based on the player level in the first place, and not a fixed amount? In terms of behaviour, the effect on me when I first realised it was level based (with a cap) was to switch from doing the quests as I visited areas for the tags/was at the roughly level appropriate range (which I'm assuming was the aim) to waiting until later levels and then only doing them if I needed an XP boost, and saving almost all until I'd reached level 40+ to maximise the XP.

What if the formula was changed to just be a fixed amount of XP for each quest (proportionate to the level intended for the quest), with the total being such that if a character did all tags and quests they should be able to hit lev40 pre-immo run without needing to do much grinding for XP?

In terms of the total XP, 780k is needed I think, so I'd have thought you'd want maybe 350-400k of that from quests to not need much/any grinding for xp if you were to do all the tags (as a rough estimate). I'm not sure how close the revised rewards come to this as I didnt get around to working out all the caps, but guessing it's a bit lower (since with 90 quests assuming a roughly even distribution from 1 to 40 of the cap, with 38 levels to take, they could account for ~35-40% of the total XP, or about 275k assuming I've not miscalculated). As such the current level may be about right, or a bit on the low side, but I'd probably need to level up a couple of new characters under it to get a better feel.

[FunkySwerve]

Jan 29, 2014 23:13:12 GMT aeortar said:

Is there a reason the quest XP is based on the player level in the first place, and not a fixed amount? In terms of behaviour, the effect on me when I first realised it was level based (with a cap) was to switch from doing the quests as I visited areas for the tags/was at the roughly level appropriate range (which I'm assuming was the aim) to waiting until later levels and then only doing them if I needed an XP boost, and saving almost all until I'd reached level 40+ to maximise the XP.

They're capped at five level increments. You were holding your xp till 40 for no particular reason. Still, with the bug, the difference between 36 and 40 would be substantial, so hey. Not so much with the proper functionality.

What if the formula was changed to just be a fixed amount of XP for each quest (proportionate to the level intended for the quest), with the total being such that if a character did all tags and quests they should be able to hit lev40 pre-immo run without needing to do much grinding for XP?

That's basically what they are, as a result of the capping mechanism, just slightly scaled by level. It was the least time-intensive way to code it.

In terms of the total XP, 780k is needed I think, so I'd have thought you'd want maybe 350-400k of that from quests to not need much/any grinding for xp if you were to do all the tags (as a rough estimate).

I you read the update, you'd have though I wanted precisely 10% of the xp required. I'm handing out half again as much as that, as a sop for the fact that people were accustomed to the more absurd bugged handout schema. Again, it was not intended to replace the normal leveling process, only to add some additional flare and help to introduce newer players to various under-visited places on the server. About the best case that can be made for people clamoring for more, who are going to be disappointed regardless, is that it was a way to reduce the opportunity costs of less-grindy play.

As for helping to introduce new players to the server, we're working on additions to the task system that help with that - not ones that restore it to its bug 'easy button' status.

Funky

[gladi8or]

I just took a lvl 25 toon to Spawn of Uro. The entire way there, killing frost orcs and a few guardians of the master gave zero exp. Killing the dragon gave 1275 exp and handing in the crate quest gave 2550 exp. Less than 4k exp for the run.

After lvl 25 tags, the next tag is level 30. That's a significant jump.

Here's my suggestion. Would it be possible to get some exp for each kill up to the level of the tag? For example, perhaps even 25exp per frost orc would be better than nothing or as I had read someone suggest earlier, the dragon worth much more? Leveling now with the bug fix is going to be much slower. I like to get to the level of the tag before attempting it, especially if attempting them solo. Maybe some exp along the way to tags would help. My two cents. Thanks.

[Raj]

I think you don't have to read the tag cap as the appropriate level at which to complete the quest, but like a true cap after which doing it is pointless. Those orcs are good xp and doable in the 10-15 range by pretty much every party.

I'm not really a expert with lowbie stuff so the level range might not be appropriate, but the tag is really capped very high for such easy areas/dragon.

Just a idea, mark the lowbie stuff with a appropriate level suggestion, in addition to the cap, to help newbies figure out where it's appropriate to farm xp at their level as well (there was a very old ''recommended level for areas'' sheet around these boards once upon a time)

[aeortar]

That's basically what they are, as a result of the capping mechanism, just slightly scaled by level. It was the least time-intensive way to code it.

I'm assuming the level caps are already set as a variable, so could the formula be changed to just be say [level cap]*150 (which I think would roughly give rewards in line with the current amount)? Been a while since I've scripted in nwn so may be overlooking something though. In any event it was only a minor gripe I had with the incentives for the current system so even if it was an easy change there are no doubt higher priority issues at the moment.

I you read the update, you'd have though I wanted precisely 10% of the xp required. I'm handing out half again as much as that, as a sop for the fact that people were accustomed to the more absurd bugged handout schema

I did read it, and in my post I said the current level may well be the right amount - I agree that the previous rewards were excessive.

[FunkySwerve]

Sorry, that came off snarkier than I intended. I was typing in a real hurry. What I meant to convey, and utterly failed to, is this:

The xp is pretty much 50% higher than I originally wanted it to be.

To elaborate, 8 quest givers, with roughly 8 quests apiece (one each for 5 level range from 1-40 (1-5, 6-10, 11-15, etc)), would yeild 64 quests * 10% of level required, evenly spread over 40 levels, which in turn would probably yield about 64/40*.10 = 16% of the total xp required to get to 40. You could game it a bit higher than that. At present, though, with the increase to 15%, it's 64/40*.15 = 24% of the total xp required, give or take, before gaming to max out handouts (which includes slight malus as well for increased difficulty while holding levels).

Funky