Demonic_Gerbil

So we have a conundrum. Story-gamers don't like it that XP farmers are clogging up PI chat with spam for farm teams, that Trial farmers are clogging up RWZ with spam for trial teams, (And I don't think ANYONE likes the fact that anyone can get a decent Council farm from the police radio/newspaper) but any attempt to gut rewards would have a negative impact on the RP-teams (Sorry, but I'm not playing Ubelmann the Unknown if its not gonna give me rewards for my time). I think I have an idea that, while not hurting rewards for running a story-arc or two, would make Unai Keman missions unsuitable for farming or exploits.


Introducing: CappedXP!

When you first enter a mission, you are given X* bubbles worth of CappedXP (See below), shaded in a sickly yellow color, much like PatrolXP or XPDebt. As you play through, these bubbles are diminished, much like XPDebt/PatrolXP. So long as they persist, you gain the normal amount of experience, inf, prestige, and/or salvage/recipe drops. However, once you run out of CappedXP, you're barred from gaining any more rewards or drops of any type (except inspirations) within missions until you attain more CappedXP. CappedXP is shared across missions, so you could go into one arc, use up half your CappedXP, then play another arc and use up the rest. CappedXP would not refill upon entering a new mission arc. How do you get more? See below...


Earning CappedXP

CappedXP would regenerate every 12 hours, OR, it could be bought with rare recipe drops (1 rare recipe per bubble, luck of the gambler +Recharge for two bubbles, and purple recipes for a whole level). You may only buy 20 bubbles/2 level's worth every 12 hours. (Note that these numbers are meant to offset the number of drops gained even in farms, so buying them is seriously not worth it, but that's the point. If someone just wants influence and XP and doesn't care about recipes, then that's their prerogative)

If you log out of the game or join a Task Force (where you gain XP normally at all times), all your CappedXP is wiped out and you won't be able to get it back until you either buy more, or 12 hours has passed from the time you first got it.

The amount of CappedXP you are granted every 12 hours is determined by your level:

1-15: 3 levels worth (or 30 bubbles)
16-20: 25 bubbles
21-25: 20 bubbles
26-30: 15 bubbles
31+: 10 bubbles

(These numbers were chosen instead of 1 flat rate because a level 49 has to defeat a LOT more enemies to fill up a level bar than a level 1. Restricting low level characters to only 1 level would dampen their playing time and make playing longer arcs not worth it, but allowing high level characters to defeat thousands of foes with no penalty would be counter intuitive to this proposal)

Also, granted CappedXP does not stack with itself. So if you're level 40, run a mission, use half your CappedXP and wait 12 hours, you're only given back 5 bubbles. You can buy up to 20 more bubbles/2 levels with tickets, but that's the only way to increase your maximum allowance.

Other Thoughts

This doesn't stop people from forming and farming Incarnate trials to a ridiculous degree, so I'd expect the developers to implement a similar system there limiting the amount of incarnate XP earnable in a single day to force players to spend at least a week to unlock each new incarnate power slot.

This should, however, help people form Story Teams and give everyone time to stop and read all of the mission text for every mission: briefing, clues, NPC chat text, and so on. There's literally nothing that can go wrong with this system.

Thoughts?

It's so hard to just hit "LFG" and join the queue? A friend and I did a bunch of the Dr. Kane trials with the two of us on a team joining the queue, and within about 30 seconds we had the pop-up to join it. At that point we really didn't pay attention to the other two people and just plowed on through the mission. It ain't that hard.

Man, just because of this thread I made a Mace/EA brute... and I've just plowed right through everything so far (I just got Energy Drain which should make the plowing EVEN EASIER).

The NPC Wormy in one of Lorenz Ansaldo's missions has a particularly wonky AI that behaves like you're describing. I hope it's not infecting other NPCs

I've got a Fire/Stone brute that I never play because I can't get over the fact that if there's a tiny bump in the map I have to teleport past it because I can't jump a few inches to get over it.