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I like the suggestion that holds do 1 pt of damage. Or 0.01 pt. I don't care. As a scrapper and tank enthusiast, I like my targets still. The hold that stopped them is as valuable as my hit.
Make debuffs do 0.01 pt of damage per tick of time. See above.
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And every single sleep power in the game gets instantly nerfed. Right now, a Rad/Psi Defender can hit a target with Will Domination, put them to sleep, drop Radiation Infection and Enervating Field on them, and then they can take the time to fire off Psionic Lance. Make debuffs do damage, and the moment you set one on a sleeping target, they wake up.
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Or, you could set sleep powers to ignore attacks that have less than 1 HP of damage in them.
Or, you could make damage like knockback in that you have to slot 1 damage enhancer for the attack to produce any damage, otherwise it produces no damage, leaving the choice up to the player.
Or, you could change the metric to gaining aggro from the MOB instead of damaging him, since all debuffs and controls produce aggro.
Or, you could change the metric to "affecting" the MOB instead of damaging him.
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Okay, let me give a developer-type reason for stopping Powerleveling.
If it takes you two weeks to get to 50, and then you get bored of the game, there goes your subscription.
As long as it takes you a good three months to get bored of the game, you'll have to go through all the content, enjoying every step of the way, while paying the whole time.
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As opposed to the people who create a hero, see that it isn't über now and isn't going to be über for hundreds of hours of play, and quit because the game doesn't let them advance as fast as they want, thereby not providing any income to NCSoft?
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
I agree that this is a much better proposal than what was originally planned, however, I'm inclined to confess that one of the surprising perks that I found in this game, upon joining my first team, was the ability to earn XP from arrests made by teammates who were on the other side of the zone while I was running to rendezvous with them.
It's unfortunate that that aspect of the game may very well be going away. I'll miss it. Nevertheless, thanks for listening.
Big twofer here. Non-rant, non-whine. Just what I think is a good idea, and a better option than what's been proposed by Statesman as is.
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At this point, any changes to experience gain go on Test. I hope it -stays- on Test. And never hits Live.
Right now, it's about as effective a PL-stopper as wet toilet paper. It is complex, kludgy, and encourages workarounders to act like a pixie-stick-seeking ferret on a sugar binge. You want to stop PLing? Keep it simple.
Exp absorption over time. Simple as that. If you can't data-mine the average rate of exp gain per level and generate a rate from that, I'd be surprised. Set the bar at the high end. Good players shouldn't be punished. Debt, regardless of how much of the exp can actually be used -is still paid off-. I may have stuffed my skull and can only benefit from 100exp, but if I earn 1000 exp, I still pay back 500xp in debt if I had any.
Want to make a PLer ganking +5/+6 bosses solo every 20 seconds slow down? Oops, your PLed friend's exp bar is at "fried". Grats. PL Boy will have a gain rate that's spikes followed by trickles.
People won't feel that smacking purples/mega-herding is the only way to go-a build that can consume large numbers of lower mobs (Fire Tankage, AE Blaster builds) will be as good an option as big-game killers (Ice Blasters, Scrappers) or even safer paced AT's like Controllers or Defenders, or builds that focus on *gasp* taking on plenty of whites to yellows! Risky builds can still be risky and get the big exp arrests, and afterwards still work off the debt from faceplanting during X-Treme Controller Melee Mash.
To me, the problem is that PLing = player gains exp at a rate that far exceeds their ability to produce exp in a team or solo. Remove the ability to benefit from that excess experience, and you kick PLing squarely in the junk. It will go down for GOOD. Unlimited exp gain is the cheese diet of PLing. Remove it, and PLers stop bloating up to obese levels. Let them eat pie. It'll help them lose some of that nasty cheese-whiz weight gain.
Want to make Controllers/Defenders desired in group play 1-50 with this? Give them abilities that improve exp absorption rate- just build them into the current powers. O2 Boost means I absorb exp better? Get me that Storm guy please! Empathy would no longer feel less needed at higher levels, too...especially if absorption buffs stacked by powerset.
Leashes are for pets, not Superman. Exp absorption doesn't slow down anybody who's not being powerleveled, and stopping that is the idea. Not making the game less fun, which is what this idea of "ranged exp" has become.
Thank you Statesman for putting forward the idea. As part of the playerbase, I'd ask to please put it back on the shelf. There are better alternatives.
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And a good way to give L50 players a way past the initial grind? Give them a single slot that starts at L14 (travel powers) or L20....with -debt-. Their choice which level. LOTS of debt. Capped debt. They get their levels, they get powers early...but the balance is reduced exp gain until that debt gets paid off. Two level 50 characters? Two of the remaining slots can start at the higher level. Three? Four? Three or four slots worth. After all, is it really needed to force someone who's gotten multiple 50th level characters to grind out the newbie levels when they've done them...if they don't want to? Combined with exp absorption, you've got yourself a winner.
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I like the suggestion that holds do 1 pt of damage. Or 0.01 pt. I don't care. As a scrapper and tank enthusiast, I like my targets still. The hold that stopped them is as valuable as my hit.
Make debuffs do 0.01 pt of damage per tick of time. See above.
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And every single sleep power in the game gets instantly nerfed. Right now, a Rad/Psi Defender can hit a target with Will Domination, put them to sleep, drop Radiation Infection and Enervating Field on them, and then they can take the time to fire off Psionic Lance. Make debuffs do damage, and the moment you set one on a sleeping target, they wake up.
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You'd have to build a "flag for exp like damage, but not" flag into every power instead. Same idea, just doesn't do the Sleep-breaking.
Ill give props to you Statesman for recanting some of this inane proposal, but Im not going to support any tweaks, or compromises to this concept. It needs to be thrown out completely. Ive sat silently by, and lived with every other change thats been made to try and curtail powerlevelling, but not this one. Im getting tired of the changes that basically do nothing except impact my game play, while the ability to PL remains quite viable, and still easy to do.
Enough is enough, and I just hope a majority of the player-base is as tired as I am of these band-aid fixes that are worse than the cut theyre supposed to cover up. Weve already had one instance of risk = no reward, when portal spawns were made to be worth no XP, but still earned you debt if you were defeated by them. We dont need a similar approach here.
Ive read other posts claiming that the Devs are going to do it anyway, so we might as well just get used to the fact, or take whatever compromise theyll give us. I dont believe this to be the case though. I know how this whole dance works, the Devs make a change that is really bad, and then when any compromise is made that lessens it, people are so relieved they are getting something back theyll take whatever scraps are thrown their way and be thankful for it. We shouldnt put up with it this time. This whole concept needs to be scrapped, thrown out, and forgotten about. Those out there that feel the same way about this should just say NO. Don't accept any compromises this time.
Thanks for the input newscrapper. Comments below.
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Pilcrow,
I like your suggestions, but I have some concerns.
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1) Please consider adding a trivial amount of damage to all debuffs and controls.
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Wouldn't this cause a problem with aggro? Even if a player were to throw a smoke grenade and do 1 damage to each villain, he/she has still basically just aggroed the whole mob.
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Most of those powers already produce aggro. For those that don't produce aggro currently, you have a good point. But for debuffs/controls that produce aggro, I see this as a no-brainer.
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2) A better solution than the 1 minute death timer would be apprciated. I reiterate my suggestion that after a death you receive debt-relief XP only and that the XP be capped at 1/2 the "cost" of the death.
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Obviously, I agree with the "death exemp" proposal, though I don't really see a need for an XP cap. However, this is probably a major change to the code, so extending the death-timer to 5-minutes may be a good short-term solution, though it doesn't solve everything (see below). Maybe with Issue 5 we can see the "death exemp" option put into the game.
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With the XP cap you need no timer at all. It's there to keep people from using death to rack in risk free XP (even if it is only debt relief, people could PL out of a whole level's worth of debt without some limit). The XP cap is nicer than a timer because almost no single battle is every going to erase half a death of XP (unless you are herding or under level 10), but plenty of battles last more than 1 or 5 minutes.
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3) Pure buffers are still a bit shafted here.
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Only because of the death timer, correct? The "death exemp" solution would ultimately solve this problem, I think.
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No there's also some shafting for support toons street sweeping. They can get the shaft for focusing on buffs instead of damage and getting too far from the spot where the MOBs are falling. Gonna make them say "stay close to the team or die" to people who get lost. Not that I've ever gotten lost in Perez. 
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4) Strongly consider making all Rez's/awakens full (or half) rez's to help battle the death timer.
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Not sure how I feel about this. I think the disorientation effect would also have to be removed for this proposal to be implemented effectively. At that point you're pretty much drastically changing the function of the awaken insps -- might be necessary, but I would resist the urge to change awakens in favor of implementing the "death exemp" solution in Issue 5.
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Agree on the disorient. Maybe a delay on END recovery would make more sense (so you could run to a safe spot but still not attack).
If you have a timer on death and a range leash on XP then you've made the ability to rez in combat MUCH more valuable than it was previously. That means non-full rez powers got hurt bad in this change. If you wanted to use this as an opportunity to buff defenders, you might choose to leave the awakens and the shared pool rez alone, and only make defender Rez's full (all of them). If you want to stay as close to the status quo as possible, you need to fix all rezzes though.
Just my opinion here. But no single effect in this game is more devalued by this change than a non-full rez.
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Consider also making more rez powers PBAE (like dark's) so healers don't have to choose which teammate gets XP as often.
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You bring up a good point in that teammate rez selection becomes more difficult for rezzers with the addition of the death timer. Again, the "death exemp" solution would be an answer to this.
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I agree with you here. If you have a timer long enough to allow 2-3 rez's, then there will be little "noise" on this score. Still think it's a good idea though.
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Who pressed the nerf button on that one? Was it the Powerlevelers? No?
Well that's good to hear since it makes absolutely no sense to me why they'd shoot themselves in the foot like that. I do believe it was the Devs that pressed the nerf button.
It's been said by others, I'll repeat it here: Powerlevelers have NO apreciable effect on our gaming experience- however what DOES have a definite quantifiable effect on our gaming experience is ham-handed, futile, vindictive crusades by the developers to stamp out what really is a minor annoyance, if it can be called that at all.
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Just what I was thinking. It's really the insanely loud group that gets riled up by seeing a low-level toon standing in a train station that "effects the game". We all have to suffer because of attempts to solve the "problem" that is a made-up problem.
And of course, every bad experience they have they instantly attribute to "those darn, stupid powerlevelers". A player doesn't know how to play well? He must be a pwlvler! Someone is rude to them? A pwlvler! (The pwlvlers I've met seem to know there stuff pretty well....and most of them are eager to help me and answer my questions too.)
Now...because they let trivial stuff like that bother them, we all have to put up with watching how far away from the action we are instead of having fun. Thanks guys...
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Ill give props to you Statesman for recanting some of this inane proposal, but Im not going to support any tweaks, or compromises to this concept. It needs to be thrown out completely. Ive sat silently by, and lived with every other change thats been made to try and curtail powerlevelling, but not this one. Im getting tired of the changes that basically do nothing except impact my game play, while the ability to PL remains quite viable, and still easy to do.
Enough is enough, and I just hope a majority of the player-base is as tired as I am of these band-aid fixes that are worse than the cut theyre supposed to cover up. Weve already had one instance of risk = no reward, when portal spawns were made to be worth no XP, but still earned you debt if you were defeated by them. We dont need a similar approach here.
Ive read other posts claiming that the Devs are going to do it anyway, so we might as well just get used to the fact, or take whatever compromise theyll give us. I dont believe this to be the case though. I know how this whole dance works, the Devs make a change that is really bad, and then when any compromise is made that lessens it, people are so relieved they are getting something back theyll take whatever scraps are thrown their way and be thankful for it. We shouldnt put up with it this time. This whole concept needs to be scrapped, thrown out, and forgotten about. Those out there that feel the same way about this should just say NO. Don't accept any compromises this time.
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I have to agree with you; this is a kick in the groin to the regular players and not the true targeted audience
Pinnacle
Langar Thurs-Katana/SR 50; Hejtmane-DM/DA 50
Rogue Spear-Spines/DA 50; Hypnosis-Ill/Rad 50
Sir Thomas Theroux-DM/SR 50; Melted Copper-Fire/Shield 50
Byzantine Warrior-DB/ELA 50;Blade Tempo-50 DB/EA
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Who pressed the nerf button on that one? Was it the Powerlevelers? No?
Well that's good to hear since it makes absolutely no sense to me why they'd shoot themselves in the foot like that. I do believe it was the Devs that pressed the nerf button.
It's been said by others, I'll repeat it here: Powerlevelers have NO apreciable effect on our gaming experience- however what DOES have a definite quantifiable effect on our gaming experience is ham-handed, futile, vindictive crusades by the developers to stamp out what really is a minor annoyance, if it can be called that at all.
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Just what I was thinking. It's really the insanely loud group that gets riled up by seeing a low-level toon standing in a train station that "effects the game". We all have to suffer because of attempts to solve the "problem" that is a made-up problem.
And of course, every bad experience they have they instantly attribute to "those darn, stupid powerlevelers". A player doesn't know how to play well? He must be a pwlvler! Someone is rude to them? A pwlvler! (The pwlvlers I've met seem to know there stuff pretty well....and most of them are eager to help me and answer my questions too.)
Now...because they let trivial stuff like that bother them, we all have to put up with watching how far away from the action we are instead of having fun. Thanks guys...
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This is not necessarily true. This also causes lag issues at the trams. The Devs didnt' "just" decide to do this, they had data we don't that prompted them to do so.
Still here, even after all this time!
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Who pressed the nerf button on that one? Was it the Powerlevelers? No?
Well that's good to hear since it makes absolutely no sense to me why they'd shoot themselves in the foot like that. I do believe it was the Devs that pressed the nerf button.
It's been said by others, I'll repeat it here: Powerlevelers have NO apreciable effect on our gaming experience- however what DOES have a definite quantifiable effect on our gaming experience is ham-handed, futile, vindictive crusades by the developers to stamp out what really is a minor annoyance, if it can be called that at all.
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Just what I was thinking. It's really the insanely loud group that gets riled up by seeing a low-level toon standing in a train station that "effects the game". We all have to suffer because of attempts to solve the "problem" that is a made-up problem.
And of course, every bad experience they have they instantly attribute to "those darn, stupid powerlevelers". A player doesn't know how to play well? He must be a pwlvler! Someone is rude to them? A pwlvler! (The pwlvlers I've met seem to know there stuff pretty well....and most of them are eager to help me and answer my questions too.)
Now...because they let trivial stuff like that bother them, we all have to put up with watching how far away from the action we are instead of having fun. Thanks guys...
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This is not necessarily true. This also causes lag issues at the trams. The Devs didnt' "just" decide to do this, they had data we don't that prompted them to do so.
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If all they were worried about was people standing at the tram causing lag then the simply could have made it "No Exp" zone.. where you get no exp if you are standing within so many feet of the tram. Would be a lot less intrusive on the rest of the game.
w00t Radio
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If all they were worried about was people standing at the tram causing lag then the simply could have made it "No Exp" zone.. where you get no exp if you are standing within so many feet of the tram.
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Great idea, but it would only serve to shift the lag further away from the tram.
To Statesman: How about putting a hard XP cap, instead of calculating a percentage, on anyone SK'ed to a higher level hero who's +4 levels above their true level. You'd be able to nix powerleveling altogether without impacting the rest of the playerbase.
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Conceptually nothing. These changes have no effect on your personal xp gain. A lagger left behind would drain your experience exactly as much as it does currently on live. Sure, the total team xp is lower, but who cares if the guy who decided shopping was more important doesn't get any xp? You're still getting the same xp as you do on Live. A person sitting in a team not doing anything is ALWAYS a drain on team xp, regardless of whether or not they themselves get any xp by it.
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So, you've got a group of four friends and you're all hungry. You decide to buy a large pizza for everyone, and everybody can have two slices.
But oops, one of your friends is late and hasn't arrived yet. Instead of letting anyone have an extra slice, though, the pizza delivery guy just throws out the extra two slices before he lets you have the pizza.
The next night, you're the one who's late, and you pick up the pizza on your way there. You pay for a large, but this time they only give you two slices and throw the rest in the dumpster.
And each time, when you find out about this policy and ask if you could buy a smaller pizza so nothing's wasted, they tell you that's against the rules unless you swear nobody else is going to show up. If you're going home to eat alone, they'll sell you a small, but if you've got three people there it's a large or nothing.
You're getting two slices each time, but is this pizza place giving you a fair deal?
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Are you completely daft? This is EXACTLY how it currently works on Live. Instead of throwing away the extra experience, they do give it to the person lagging behind, but it's not like YOU get it, even on Live. A person lagging behind is ALWAYS a drain on team experience. They are not helping AT ALL with the battle, but are still stealing a chunk of your experience.
THESE CHANGES DO NOT TOUCH THAT FACT AT ALL!!!
There IS an option if you want a smaller pie. GET A SMALLER TEAM! But this is not discouraging teaming as so many have said because THE EXACT SAME THING happens on Live. People who are in your team will always diminish your experience. Guess what? That's exactly what's happening even now. The difference? These changes basically say to the lagger, if you're going to be a drain on team xp, you don't get any xp for doing it. The current situation on Live gives YOU the same xp, but also REWARDS the laggers with free xp for being slow.
Meaning? THIS DOES NOT AFFECT YOU ONE LITTLE BIT IF YOU ARE HUNTING LIKE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE!
Ok.. after reading this and States other responses I'm LESS bothered by this. It seems this could be workable with much less playstyle disruption than the first version.
But it still seems like a knee jerk reaction to the way some people want to play the game.
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Why would you even bother with this? If you are going to be in two sperate groups on two seperate sides of PP then you ARE in effect two seperate teams. Seriously why not just hunt in the same group or near each other.
This is an extremely minor hit to gameplay well worth teh price of admission.
[/ QUOTE ]Because spliting up or 'scooby doo'ing as some of us call it is faster xp. We do it all the time mainly in brickstown. It makes no sence for a team of 8 to be beating down the small street mob size. However 2 teams of 4 or 2 teams of 3, hunting on diffrent spots in brickstown can effectively double the amount of xp you get. I have done this sort of thing since week one of game with several teams, PP and in Brickstown are big for this at least with some of the people I team with. heck in PI I was on a team of 4, 2 tanks, me a scrapper and a PB we split up and each hunted in a diffrent part of the map, it makes for fast xp that adds up over time.
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All you're doing is powerleveling. You're saying right out that you split up to gain experience faster by taking advantage of the team bonus while killing lots of mobs. If you want to street hunt, bring only a team of four, not eight. But what you're saying is that you powerlevel a bit each and every day. This is the kind of thing that the devs are trying to stop. It's nice to gain lots of experience fast, but that IS powerleveling. Guess what? These changes were directed AT powerleveling.
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If all they were worried about was people standing at the tram causing lag then the simply could have made it "No Exp" zone.. where you get no exp if you are standing within so many feet of the tram.
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Great idea, but it would only serve to shift the lag further away from the tram.
To Statesman: How about putting a hard XP cap, instead of calculating a percentage, on anyone SK'ed to a higher level hero who's +4 levels above their true level. You'd be able to nix powerleveling altogether without impacting the rest of the playerbase.
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Well you'll never get rid of the lag, either their going to find a place to stand on top of a building or they're going to stand near the team they're hunting with. Its not like they'll ever disappear.
w00t Radio
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Why would you even bother with this? If you are going to be in two sperate groups on two seperate sides of PP then you ARE in effect two seperate teams. Seriously why not just hunt in the same group or near each other.
This is an extremely minor hit to gameplay well worth teh price of admission.
[/ QUOTE ]Because spliting up or 'scooby doo'ing as some of us call it is faster xp. We do it all the time mainly in brickstown. It makes no sence for a team of 8 to be beating down the small street mob size. However 2 teams of 4 or 2 teams of 3, hunting on diffrent spots in brickstown can effectively double the amount of xp you get. I have done this sort of thing since week one of game with several teams, PP and in Brickstown are big for this at least with some of the people I team with. heck in PI I was on a team of 4, 2 tanks, me a scrapper and a PB we split up and each hunted in a diffrent part of the map, it makes for fast xp that adds up over time.
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All you're doing is powerleveling. You're saying right out that you split up to gain experience faster by taking advantage of the team bonus while killing lots of mobs. If you want to street hunt, bring only a team of four, not eight. But what you're saying is that you powerlevel a bit each and every day. This is the kind of thing that the devs are trying to stop. It's nice to gain lots of experience fast, but that IS powerleveling. Guess what? These changes were directed AT powerleveling.
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Wrong, powerlevelling is gaining exp at no risk to yourself. Having someone else do all the work while your character benefits, thats powerlevelling.
The Scooby Doo tactic is simply maximizing your teams exp gain / time. Its hardly a huge increase in levelling time, it simply gives everyone a good fight instead of 8 people going after one group and everyone maybe getting a shot in while the defenders and controllers who perfer debuffing and buffing or healing have nothing to do b/c no one is getting hurt.
w00t Radio
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This is not necessarily true. This also causes lag issues at the trams. The Devs didnt' "just" decide to do this, they had data we don't that prompted them to do so.
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Lag? That's why we are going to have to put up with this crap? Because of "lag at the trams"? Oh good grief...
And I would love to see some data that explained to me how pwlvlers effect my gameplay. I got my Blaster to lvl 29 before I even heard the term "powerlvling". Guess where I heard it? That's right...on this board. From someone complaining about it. I didn't understand then and I don't understand now why it is important to anyone how fast someone else progresses through the game. The "fun police" seem to be intent on forcing everyone to have fun the "right way".
Thank god I have a Tanker to play... Good lord what a pain to be a support class with this "solution" to the fake problem.
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Why would you even bother with this? If you are going to be in two sperate groups on two seperate sides of PP then you ARE in effect two seperate teams. Seriously why not just hunt in the same group or near each other.
This is an extremely minor hit to gameplay well worth teh price of admission.
[/ QUOTE ]Because spliting up or 'scooby doo'ing as some of us call it is faster xp. We do it all the time mainly in brickstown. It makes no sence for a team of 8 to be beating down the small street mob size. However 2 teams of 4 or 2 teams of 3, hunting on diffrent spots in brickstown can effectively double the amount of xp you get. I have done this sort of thing since week one of game with several teams, PP and in Brickstown are big for this at least with some of the people I team with. heck in PI I was on a team of 4, 2 tanks, me a scrapper and a PB we split up and each hunted in a diffrent part of the map, it makes for fast xp that adds up over time.
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All you're doing is powerleveling. You're saying right out that you split up to gain experience faster by taking advantage of the team bonus while killing lots of mobs. If you want to street hunt, bring only a team of four, not eight. But what you're saying is that you powerlevel a bit each and every day. This is the kind of thing that the devs are trying to stop. It's nice to gain lots of experience fast, but that IS powerleveling. Guess what? These changes were directed AT powerleveling.
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Wrong, powerlevelling is gaining exp at no risk to yourself. Having someone else do all the work while your character benefits, thats powerlevelling.
The Scooby Doo tactic is simply maximizing your teams exp gain / time. Its hardly a huge increase in levelling time, it simply gives everyone a good fight instead of 8 people going after one group and everyone maybe getting a shot in while the defenders and controllers who perfer debuffing and buffing or healing have nothing to do b/c no one is getting hurt.
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Are you daft too? You just said that powerleveling is getting experience at no risk to yourself. How are you at risk from the mobs that the OTHER half of the team is killing? If you were in two separate teams getting two separate bonuses, you are at risk from every single villain you attack and get xp from. If you are in ONE team SPLITTING the effort, you are only at risk from HALF the villains. You are STILL getting a free ride from the other half of the team.
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If all they were worried about was people standing at the tram causing lag then the simply could have made it "No Exp" zone.. where you get no exp if you are standing within so many feet of the tram.
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Great idea, but it would only serve to shift the lag further away from the tram.
To Statesman: How about putting a hard XP cap, instead of calculating a percentage, on anyone SK'ed to a higher level hero who's +4 levels above their true level. You'd be able to nix powerleveling altogether without impacting the rest of the playerbase.
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That'd ruin it for me and my GF. My GF is starting an account and buying a laptop so that she can play CoH with me. She'd be starting out at lvl 1... my main is lvl 32 and my controller (who she'd probably want to team with) is something like lvl 12. I'm pretty sure that I'll be playing less than her, so at first, she'd get no xp for playing with me, and later on, I'd get no xp for playing with her.
Here's a better solution. If you are on a team with a player who's Combat level is more than +5 of your combat level, you get no xp. That'd make groups have to be a little tighter, but people were already complaining because for everyone to be effective (as of the purple patch) they have to be within 4 levels of the rest of the team. It's possible that 6 level gaps could work, but currently the level gap (in the higher level ranges) is 9. A 7 or 8 level gap in a team is optimal for PL'ing from what I understand.
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If all they were worried about was people standing at the tram causing lag then the simply could have made it "No Exp" zone.. where you get no exp if you are standing within so many feet of the tram.
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Great idea, but it would only serve to shift the lag further away from the tram.
To Statesman: How about putting a hard XP cap, instead of calculating a percentage, on anyone SK'ed to a higher level hero who's +4 levels above their true level. You'd be able to nix powerleveling altogether without impacting the rest of the playerbase.
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I think if you want to put some kind of reward "cap" to stop PLers without punishing the regular player base, you should have earning above the "cap" reward you by the exemplaring scheme. It will keep people from getting from level 1-30 in a heartbeat while still rewarding people who want to team many levels above them for fun.
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This is not necessarily true. This also causes lag issues at the trams. The Devs didnt' "just" decide to do this, they had data we don't that prompted them to do so.
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Lag? That's why we are going to have to put up with this crap? Because of "lag at the trams"? Oh good grief...
And I would love to see some data that explained to me how pwlvlers effect my gameplay. I got my Blaster to lvl 29 before I even heard the term "powerlvling". Guess where I heard it? That's right...on this board. From someone complaining about it. I didn't understand then and I don't understand now why it is important to anyone how fast someone else progresses through the game. The "fun police" seem to be intent on forcing everyone to have fun the "right way".
Thank god I have a Tanker to play... Good lord what a pain to be a support class with this "solution" to the fake problem.
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Actually as a tank it will affect your gameplay when you start getting lowbies asking you constantly to come herd wolves or to help them powerlevel. It will happen when you hit the 40's and start hanging about in Peregrine Island. Blasters, Tanks, Scrappers are all cursed with lowbies they don't know sending them random tells asking to be pl'd.
Beyond that I don't believe the Dev's are worried as much about Powerlevelling affecting your gameplay as those who are actually powerlevelling. The Dev's seem to feel that by power levelling they devalue their gameplay experience and then get bored with the game and leave.
The thing the Dev's don't realize is those folks who do the most power levelling are not going to be happy with a slow pace of exp gain and will always find new ways to power level or if it gets to slow they'll simply quit the game and stop paying for it.
The reason myself and so many are against this XP Range change is NOT that its going to limit powerlevellers. Its that this change will not limit powerlevellers but will affect non-powerlevellers. The casual gamer is being harmed in an attempt to whack the powerleveller, a course of action that should NEVER even be considered when trying to limit certian types of gameplay.
w00t Radio
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Why would you even bother with this? If you are going to be in two sperate groups on two seperate sides of PP then you ARE in effect two seperate teams. Seriously why not just hunt in the same group or near each other.
This is an extremely minor hit to gameplay well worth teh price of admission.
[/ QUOTE ]Because spliting up or 'scooby doo'ing as some of us call it is faster xp. We do it all the time mainly in brickstown. It makes no sence for a team of 8 to be beating down the small street mob size. However 2 teams of 4 or 2 teams of 3, hunting on diffrent spots in brickstown can effectively double the amount of xp you get. I have done this sort of thing since week one of game with several teams, PP and in Brickstown are big for this at least with some of the people I team with. heck in PI I was on a team of 4, 2 tanks, me a scrapper and a PB we split up and each hunted in a diffrent part of the map, it makes for fast xp that adds up over time.
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All you're doing is powerleveling. You're saying right out that you split up to gain experience faster by taking advantage of the team bonus while killing lots of mobs. If you want to street hunt, bring only a team of four, not eight. But what you're saying is that you powerlevel a bit each and every day. This is the kind of thing that the devs are trying to stop. It's nice to gain lots of experience fast, but that IS powerleveling. Guess what? These changes were directed AT powerleveling.
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In fairness, there is almost nowhere in the game, including hazard zones, where a well built team of 8 will find a serious challenge. If we want to say to people "don't split your team to street hunt" we should also have places in the game where a team of 8 can street hunt and find a challenge.
Thing is, Liberty, many of these people never even gave the game a chance. Newbies, fresh level 1s who JUST got the game, have sent tells to me for powerleveling. Not even wanting to try the game is just sad. The devs give you all this content and all they want to do is blow through most of it. While that's fine that they do, they are going to get bored because they missed the good parts of the game. They are going to suck because they lack experience in the game. They are also going to become level 50 whiners asking for more content.
*Yawn*
).
. This is all just an effort by the Devs to shave .25% off the total xp you earn to keep the casual player in the game longer. Multiplied by all the users out there, this has got to add up to a whole whack of cash. Any believers?
Well, whatever...I give up. Throw down the xp leash- just to make this game harder, but not like it will really effect PLing (other than side effects that Dwimble and Skunkwerks mentioned- and I like the panhandling example whoever that was
I really like this game and and I'll tolerate just about any garbage that gets thrown at me. To be perfectly honest, if I felt that the time/content vrs. reward scale is ever way off, I'll just take the easy way to get that reward for a bit.
On a lighter note! How about this for the conspiracy theory of the day
OMG!!! Further evidence!!
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In the defense of the Devs. Erring on the side of overcorrection is the PROPER datamining tactic, regardless of its "political" consequences (positive or negative).
Let's say that States decided "to curb this kind of PLing I am willing to take a 1% hit in average legit XP/H, in order to decrease PLing XP by at least 50%." So his hypothesis is that his implementaiton will take a big hurt out of the PLing XP without a big hurt on the non-PLing XP.
If he overcorrects and gets a 5% loss, then he knows he overcorrected. But the important part is that if he sees that at 5% loss in legit XP he gets only a 5% loss in PLing XP then he knows to trash the whole idea: he'll never even get close to his planned goal. he has disproved his hypothesis in a single test.
On the other hand, if he undercorrects and gets a .5% XP loss and a 5% PLing loss, he doesn't know that the idea is completely untenable. Perhaps the legit loss grows linearly and the PL loss grows exponentially.
By overcorrecting the first time he finds out the very first datamine if the problem he's trying to curb actually can be curbed using his technique. Then he can adjust it to see if the collateral damage can become low enough to make it worthwhile.
So it's not only for "negotiation" reasons that you begin such a plan erring on the side of overcorrection. Especially in a test environment.
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Just kidding, JuppaCo. But it was so conveinient!
edit: repeated words