Discussion: Positron Q&A on the XP Smoothing
By
2Negative,
Posted on: 2008-02-07 10:53 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
awesome. maybe now the 30s won't take several years to get through.
most recent 50 - psy/mm blaster
2nd post after a red name!
This will be awesome, I have several toons at the brick wall. Now I can finally get a 2nd 50!
NCSoft will be getting no more of my money and my GW2 purchase was halted the day of the announcement. I'm a loyal and very profitable customer. I hope to return to giving them all of my money, should CoH survive.
Very pleased with the attentiveness to players needs. well done guys.
Heh, not that this is new information, just confirmation that strides are now being taken to infuse more fun into the grind. I expect my lowbies will have a bonfire party in the base.
Overall, yes there were a few "brick walls", but I still find this game to be a blast. I am looking forward to seeing more of these positive changes to the game.
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...meh! I'll rant later about complaints I see here on a daily basis.
/Rant
Let's stay all gooey and puffy as we beat our chest in anticipation...chanting XP XP XP XP!!
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Good news, hopefully this will help some of my characters move out of the 30's, where they seem to have been stuck for a while.
Almost every one of my characters is stuck in the 36-40 range, I'm really glad to see something like this get put in the game. I think it's an excellent change.
I wish he'd answered the concern some of us have about the impact on prestige earning, with people reaching the influence penalty earlier.
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I look forward to this, I have a lot of friends who got stuck in the 30s and early 40s and just gave up and started a new character, got stuck again, rise repeat until they got so frustrated they quit.
Even now this game is not a grind. If you think it's a grind, go play a hardcore Korean MMO and then come back and tell me this is a grind. 
Barry White was asked about the XP curve in CoX. His response? "Smooth it baby, oh yeah!" 
He plays an Ice Tanker. What else? 
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It will still take over 34 Million XP to make level 50.
Being the geek I am, I graphed out the current XP curve (lvl 1 to 50) and on a logarithmic scale it is a pretty flat curve.
It is the point where the minions/lieutenants/bosses XP value did not rise to the level of the character that it became a "grind".
I see this as a good thing, and with Posi's reasoning behind it (via datamining) it makes a good change.
The one thing I question tho, he said they datamined how long characters were at certain levels. Could this info have been skewed by alt-itis? I know when I hit 22-27 range, I usually start another alt and run them for a while. Or even partake in a FOTM build.
Sometimes, I impress my boss. Sometimes, I impress myself. The rest of the time, I scare people. I can live with that.
And Positron looked at the XP curve and said
I want it Smooth as the top of my head!
and all was good.
Seriously, if you dont have a "Gratz!" bind on your keys, now is the time to make one.
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Very pleased with the attentiveness to players needs. well done guys.
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Agreed. Thank you Positron (and all the Devs) for making this happen.
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The one thing I question tho, he said they datamined how long characters were at certain levels. Could this info have been skewed by alt-itis? I know when I hit 22-27 range, I usually start another alt and run them for a while. Or even partake in a FOTM build.
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I imagine they took this into account by tracking it based on hours a toon is logged in rather than calendar time.
I would have to agree, if not Outbreak would get you to level 10 now, considering I have Heroes I made almost 4 years ago still sitting in there.
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I wish he'd answered the concern some of us have about the impact on prestige earning, with people reaching the influence penalty earlier.
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In Issue 12 (no release date yet, sorry), we are going to have you never dropping below 50% Inf. earn rate when in Supergroup mode. We will look at the impact of that change and base future alterations on that.
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Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is it live yet?? I'm ready!!! 
....and....can't believe I'm actually doing this, but....FIRST POST AFTER A REDNAME! Hi Posi.
..now back to work.
Main servers: Victory and Justice. Main account: @Justice29 Secondary account: @Clever One
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The one thing I question tho, he said they datamined how long characters were at certain levels. Could this info have been skewed by alt-itis? I know when I hit 22-27 range, I usually start another alt and run them for a while. Or even partake in a FOTM build.
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We have a "life at level" stat in seconds. This is how long a character spent at a particular level, logged in. While not a perfect indicator of levelling speed, it's an excellent starting point.
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Main servers: Victory and Justice. Main account: @Justice29 Secondary account: @Clever One
Personally, I find I often have too many missions/contacts available, and if I don't go out and commit suicide frequently so I can advance at half speed, I outlevel some contacts. This happens mostly in CoH, though I did have some trouble outleveling contacts at lower levels in CoV, too.
This is the case even though I solo 99.9% of the time, and haven't done a TF since the first couple months after CoH went live. If I soloed my contacts AND did all the TFs, I'd probably outlevel some contacts even if I play with debt 100% of the time.
The reason why this happens so much in CoH, I think, is all the extra zone contacts, since the leveling was designed with just the normal city zone contacts in mind initially. Now, if you do the Hollows, Faultline, Striga, Croatoa, RWZ, etc., it's an effort to avoid outleveling contacts. One character I have couldn't get Talshak the Mystic in the Hollows to start his storyline. As such, if I want to do it, I'll have to wait until level 25, when I can access Ourobouros.
As it is now, I try to make sure I do contacts with badges ahead of those without, but I do like to hit all the storylines if I can. Ourobouros does address that, but if I do Ourobouros-given missions before L50, I'm just going to outlevel other contacts and have to go back for them, too.
Sometimes it's bad enough that I purposely take missions and then ignore them a couple levels just so I don't earn so much XP on them.
Again, this is primarily a problem in CoH. CoV, my first 50 got sort of stuck in the 40s, just shy of 45, without any available contacts. Part of the problem there was I missed some badge-triggered contacts on the way up through the ranks. Even so, I was able to do newspaper missions. Granted, they're boring, but at least there's no way to actually get stuck at a level without missions.
What worries me with this change is now I'm going to bascially have to play with debt 100% of the time just to avoid outleveling contacts. What that means is it might actually take me LONGER to level than before, because I'm forced to earn XP at half speed.
It might be nice to actually do all the TFs on one of my characters someday, too.
By the way, extra top-end content doesn't necessarily make things more interesting. I have a 50 hero I don't use anymore who's got some leftover Peregrine and Shadow Shard (whatever the zone is called) contacts/missions I'll probably never do. I'd rather spend the time on another toon than just grind out missions for badges after hitting the level cap.
I'd love to see a new system of advancement above 50 that doesn't use XP, but rather tracks advancement based on completion of certain tasks. As rewards, give out some special non-slot powers, costumes, badges, invention rewards, SG rewards, etc.
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I wish he'd answered the concern some of us have about the impact on prestige earning, with people reaching the influence penalty earlier.
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In Issue 12 (no release date yet, sorry), we are going to have you never dropping below 50% Inf. earn rate when in Supergroup mode. We will look at the impact of that change and base future alterations on that.
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Oh good sweet mama-jama, thank you Posi!!!!@!!!!@!@!@1112!2!!!
I was hoping you guys would get around to this.
The win just keeps on coming.
Oh, and the XP smoothie is great too... like orange-banana-pineapple.
Well written, Mack. I also see a bit of a need for some type of reward for completion of certain tasks such as non-slottable powers, etc. Maybe in the future? It would be nice to get something more than a stinkin' D.O. for completing a story arc! But I digress....
Posi had this to say regarding the issue that you raise:
[/ QUOTE ]Thats always a concern, but we are always looking to add things for max-level characters to do to improve themselves. In addition, the Ouroboros (flashback) system allows players to go back and play content they may have missed, so even if they have outleveled a story arc or a badge-given mission they can go back and get it.
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Main servers: Victory and Justice. Main account: @Justice29 Secondary account: @Clever One
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I'd love to see a new system of advancement above 50 that doesn't use XP, but rather tracks advancement based on completion of certain tasks. As rewards, give out some special non-slot powers, costumes, badges, invention rewards, SG rewards, etc.
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For instance, to get L51, you'd have to complete all of the storylines from all prior contacts, excluding TFs. For 52, you must complete all normal zone TFs. For 53, complete all the oddball TFs like Hollows, Croatoa, Strigga, RWZ, etc. CoV would need more content for this to work for them, as well, but then CoV needs more content compared to CoH anyway.
Oh, and one more thing...
At present, I can't find a way to go back and do the safeguard/mayhem missions solo. Yes, I can go back and exemplar with someone to do them, but again, I prefer solo play and none of those missions are so hard that you NEED to be on a team. Can we get those bank missions added to Ourobouros?
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For instance, to get L51, you'd have to complete all of the storylines from all prior contacts, excluding TFs. For 52, you must complete all normal zone TFs. For 53, complete all the oddball TFs like Hollows, Croatoa, Strigga, RWZ, etc. CoV would need more content for this to work for them, as well, but then CoV needs more content compared to CoH anyway.
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That would be the suck,
Main servers: Victory and Justice. Main account: @Justice29 Secondary account: @Clever One
Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement:
City of Heroes Team Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller answers questions about the coming changes to the experience rewards and the smoothing of the XP Curve.
Click here to read the full article.
To check out the patch notes of the version that contains this change, join us on the Training Room Test Server Forums.
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