Interesting idea.
I could go along with something like this if it were extremely well thought out. If you got rid of as many loopholes as you possibly could it would be a reasonably fair system for determining AE rewards. Of course you'll never get rid of ALL the loopholes, because people will just find new ones, but it would help a little bit.
The only downside to this idea that I can think of immediately is that not every mob is the same level of threat to every character.
For example: A custom boss that uses nothing but fire attacks is a much greater threat to a defender than a fire tank with capped fire resistance. That boss mob would 2 or 3 shot a defender and not even be able to scratch the tank. You'd have to come up with a system that takes variables like this into account.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Heh, I agree, good idea.
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"You'd have to come up with a system that takes variables like this into account."
You would still have people gaming the system by shopping through the highest "threat level" combinations, finding the one that poses the least actual challenge for their character, and filling maps with that combination. This, of course, is inevitable no matter how threat/reward levels are set, but in my opinion anything designed to increase rewards beyond current levels should be avoided in a system where the player can choose in advance to neuter all threats and still receive rewards as though they had faced an increased challenge.
I've seen a lot of complaints about the constant tweaking of powersets for MA mobs and have thought of a possible alternative. Adjusting xp and ticket drops based on a "threat level". I'd allow MA mission builders to choose ANY combination of powers from two powersets up to a maximum number of powers for the minion (4 max), lt (6 max), boss (8 max), elite boss (10 max), and AV (12 max). These numbers are just examples - I'd leave it up to the devs to determine the actual correct number. Normal, Hard, Extreme ratings would now be irrelevant.
Given that you can pretty much make what you want to, you need a formula to determine the threat level for the mob. POTENTIALLY, we could drop the specification of minion, Lieut., etc during mob creation and let the threat level determine what the mob is.
More powers increases the threat level. Higher level powers increase it even more. Certain powerset combinations would increase it yet more. For example, I would think an attack power set (scrapper,brute) combined with regen would score highly. Again, the devs would need to identify "high threat" combinations and score them appropriately.
Ok, the devs now have "a formula", it will need to be tweaked over time of course. You now calculate the xp given and ticket rate depending on the threat level of each individual mob. Not on arbitrary minion, Lt., elite boss designations that currently can vary wildly in the level of difficulty.
Someone gets cute, and creates a mob with zero attack powers? That's fine, but you get zero xp and zero tickets for that kill. It also doesnt count toward any badges. A more reasonably balanced mob would give a fair amount of xp and chance at a ticket drop.
With this system, you could create anything you want, and devs can ensure that exploitation doesn't occur. The formula (hopefully table driven) can be adjusted over time as people discover exploitable combinations.
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