Something wrong in the AE missions:

Hi all,

I don't know if this has been reported at all,

A mission I created some weeks ago, that was high on destructible explosive objects, I never bothered destroying them on my play testing, as they were meant to be a 'trap' to lure an almost invincible archvillain (Storm/gravity I think) but I was actually able to take it on without the trap.

However, last night I got into a team, or perhaps it was the night before last, this work week has been hell... anyway, I got into an AE team, and realized, even though I was doing good Area Effect damage, and single target damage, sometimes I or one of my teammates would blow up one of the explodables near, or in the middle of a spawn of enemies, and it would finish off the pack of enemies for us.

Nothing wrong with this really, kind of fun and all, but: We weren't getting reduced experience for the damage done by the explosion, we were getting credit as if we did 100% to the mobs we were arresting.

This isn't a huge deal, as often we'd leave the explosives alone and pull the enemies away, and the explosives had more health themselves than the enemies, so it would take plenty of damage to crack one (or crits or scourges, which were going off left and right), but I kept watching my experience window, expecting variance, and the numbers kept being the same. I thought (perhaps I'm wrong) that any environmental damage, or, damage done by confused foes, or falling damage, was supposed to shave off experience equal to the % of damage dealt by non-PC sources?

Or is it normal? I think I remember confusing embalmed vahzilok a long time ago, so that their explosions wouldn't hurt me, but I don't recall if I got exp for the explosions they did or not.... actually, perhaps I did? Can anyone confirm that confused embalmed cadavers provide experience outside of mission architect, either themselves, or by blowing up other Vahz?

If so, then I guess it wasn't a bug.

Regarding Embalmed Cadavers: You would only get experience if you damaged them, even just one point. If all you did was Confuse them and they blew themselves up, then you don't get any experience. I don't think you get any experience for anything they kill by exploding either, unless you did damage to whatever was killed by the Embalmed Cadaver.

Regarding Other Explodable Items: You don't get experience for blowing those items up. I don't recall if anything killed by exploding items gives you experience.

Aye, the destructible objects themselves weren't providing experience, I just thought there was an environmental damage code, that reduced experience on things damaged some % by however much damage was dealt environmentally.

Hmm, so I guess it's working as intended? Just, someone could leverage the anomaly to provide a statistical long term advantage, by providing an area in which they're capable of doing enough overall harm that a box explosion finishes an attack chain or something. That might be exploitation, and if so, will probably end up being removed.

Frankly, I'd rather have there be an experience drawback, and keep the explodeys available, because it's kinda fun to make a big crowd of trolls go boom when they're carrying bombs and stuff, especially when playing a character with few to no area effect attacks, like an early dark/invuln scrapper.