I16 Mission Architect XP Changes

Issue 16 Open Beta has arrived! The NDA has been lifted!

Developer Horatio says:

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There’s been a lot of discussion on the changes to experience in Mission Architect missions, and I wanted to take this opportunity to present the exact changes we’ve made and explain a bit of our reasoning for them.

As you all have noticed, we've reduced the rewards for custom villain groups that do not contain all three ranks of enemies: minions, lieutenants, and bosses. Here are the exact numbers for that.
* Each mob in a group that that is missing one of the ranks is worth 50% of the normal experience.
* Each mob in a group that that is missing two of the ranks is worth 25% of the normal experience.
* Groups that contain all three ranks award 100% of the normal experience.
Just to clarify, this only effects mobs that are auto-spawned by the mission. You can still place unique bosses inside of a unique group under "Fight a Boss" and have them reward full experience - if I create "Hero 1" as the only enemy in the group "Developers" in a "Fight a Boss", he will give full experience, but if the group that spawns with him doesn't have each rank filled, they will have an experience penalty.

Secondly, we’ve made some modifications to the amount of XP awarded for defeating custom critters. There has been some confusion with this so hopefully this will clear it up. Just as a quick note, the following values were not what we originally had on test. We made some adjustments based on your feedback on what is currently implemented and decreased the experience penalty across the board on standard/hard/extreme mobs.
* The amount of XP is based on the difficulty setting of the critters.
* * A critter with a Standard power set is worth 75% of the standard experience reward.
* * A critter with a Hard or Extreme power set is worth 100% of the standard experience reward.
* * These reductions are per power set for the critter.
* * * One standard power set is worth 37.5%, one hard or extreme power set is worth 50% of experience.
* * * A critter with a hard primary power set and a standard secondary power set would award 87.5% of normal experience.
* * * A critter with a standard primary power set and a standard secondary power set would award 75% of normal experience.
We've put in a different experience system for hand-picking a custom critter’s powers. Now you aren't limited by any "required" powers when choosing the custom critter’s powers. For example, you can create Dual Pistol enemies without requiring them to have any thug mastermind pets.

The following is a table for how we're calculating the experience for custom picked powers. For example, an enemy created with 10 powers would be worth 31% of their normal experience. This only applies if you select "Custom" on the power creation menu for enemies.

0 Powers 0% experience
1 Power 0.031% experience
2 Powers 0.124% experience
3 Powers 0.279% experience
4 Powers 0.496% experience
5 Powers 0.775% experience
6 Powers 1.1% experience
7 Powers 15% experience
8 Powers 19% experience
9 Powers 25% experience
10 Powers 31% experience
11 Powers 37% experience
12 Powers 45% experience
13 Powers 52% experience
14 Powers 61% experience
15 Powers 70% experience
16 Powers 80% experience
17 Powers 90% experience
18 Powers 100% experience


Those are the current changes. Let me talk a bit about why we’re doing this.

We wanted to address the amount of pure experience farming that’s going on in Mission Architect. We know that a fair amount of the player base is concerned about Architect being used as a farming tool and we want to encourage players to focus more on writing story-based arcs. We put in the changes to the villain group system to deal with the issue of some players setting up easy farming missions built around groups that only contain simple lieutenants (or infamous "boss farms") and other aberrant game play behavior. The game wasn’t designed to have players deal with only a single type of mob at a given power level; the enemy groups are designed to work as a whole, with the different mobs complementing each other to make for a more robust playing experience.

The changes to the way custom critters work was done to address another side of the farming issue, where players were creating enemies that were very easy to kill with very little risk. Players can now fully customize each of their enemies without having to stick to a preset collection of required powers. However, because of this, we needed to implement a new system of calculating experience for these critters, as it would be extremely easy to set up a scenario where custom critters had no real offensive powers, but still gave full experience. I want to stress that we will be monitoring the scaling of experience with this system - these numbers are not set in stone.

These changes were made to balance putting as much control as possible into the players’ hands while trying to minimize the possibilities for gaining experience with little to no risk. With this system, players can fully customize their NPCs as they need for their storytelling purposes without having to deal with any required powers, as long as they are willing to accept lesser experience rewards for those critters.

Architect is a feature that we knew even before we launched was going to be tweaked well after it was in the hands of the players. It’s such a big, daunting system, there’s just no way around that. I bring this up to say that the adjustments we’re making to the rewards in Architect are on going. You can expect to see more refinement in both our methods and our numbers in the coming months. Right now, we wanted to address some of our as well as your major concerns with the system as soon as possible. Architect is a feature we have big plans for and we’re committed to seeing it grow into its rightful place within both the game and the community of City of Heroes.

We know that these changes are a little daunting and we’re listening to your feedback. We'll be keeping a close eye on how you all feel about these current changes and seeing what we can do to really strike that balance between giving you, the creators, full customization and the players you're writing for incentive to play your arcs.

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Disscussion?

Personally, many of my arcs are going to get their XP crushed, so I'll probably archive the lot of them and start from scratch.

I think it means a lot of people won't play an Arc with custom mobs ever again.

Not everyone, of course, but it does seem that AE will continue to see less and less use.

All just my opinion, naturally.

Is this for real? If so, I'm a very very happy customer.

The best choice, which would be more difficult to implement is to weight certain powers to count as extra powers. Like melee or ranged low damage attacks count as 2-3 power choices, high damage and AoE attacks count as 3-4 power choices. That way you can have critters with a few attacks, which is in line with standard mobs, and still get full or close to full xp.

Two problems:

1: As Mirai pointed out, critters with custom power selections are worth less xp than a critter set to "hard" or "extreme," despite possibly having more powers. From my experience, the "extreme" setting is generally only used by lazy arc creators who are more interested in creating "uber super-awesome" player-killers than well-balanced, or even challenging critters. Critters set to "extreme" are usually significantly more difficult than standard dev-created critters, even at 50. Authors who wish to create challenging but balanced critters select custom powers.

Personally, I would rather keep the current restrictions on custom power selections (Standard + whatever extras I choose) and have them award decent XP than be penalized for trying to create an interesting, thematically appropriate and suitably challenging critter by hand-picking its powers.

2: Even set to standard, custom critters are more difficult than standard critters below level 30 or so. So not only are the authors of lowbie-friendly content being penalized by being limited in what powersets they can select for their customs without making them overpowered for their level, now nobody will want to play arcs that contain customs because they give an XP penalty.

3: Being forced to have all three ranks in a custom group will penalize authors who are limited to a single rank due to file size or story limitations. I would suggest that the reward penalties should only apply to groups that contain NO MINIONS, so as to curb all-boss and all-LT farming while allowing all-minion or no-boss groups that some authors use.

On top of any custom critters, all my custom factions will take a hit in XP because... they don't have bosses. I design my arcs for myself, and I play solo, so I don't get bosses in standard spawns. I add in unique bosses from separate boss groups as desired. It's not too difficult to toss in some random boss to my custom factions, but it's something I'll have to pay attention to in the future.

This poses some difficulty for me.

My most recent arc is full of custom power selected characters, built for themes. I made sure my Furiæ had Confuse, and that my Medusæ had all of the earth control powers that encase their victims in stone. But since these are Standard Plus enemies, which typically pick only three powers per set to start with, they're going to be worth under 20% experience even if I wanted them to be harder rather than easier than the default.

It also breaks the standard powersets. Currently, a standard lieutenant with an Empathy secondary gets the single power, Heal Other. If I add a single power to that set, I cut the XP that character is worth by more than 500%.

The math here is simply wrong, and this change is too radical. I bought a full set of slots, and had plans for two more designs working --- another Latin language design, this one villainous and comic, involving Gauls and Druids; and something on a Wagnerian theme. These would require a lot of custom critters. Now that I am informed of this, they are on hold. If this goes live I doubt I will bother making these or any more.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

If these changes are what to expect to hit live, then I am done with the Mission Architect. No, not because of the nerfs to farming, but because this will totally destroy my story arc which I have spent far too much time on..

*sigh*

..At least I'll have Power Customization to keep me entertained...

These xp numbers simply don't match up with the amount of powers "normal" enemies have in "normal" missions.

I am not in support of this at all.

"The One"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades The way you play changes your IO slotting..

So you're happy that a custom critter has to have at least 5 times as many powers as your average stock critter to give the same amount of XP?

Yes.

Moral: use standard mobs whenever possible.

I personally believe that the developers have taken far too long to do this but I fully support it. I know a fair few people are going to complain bitterly about this but I can tell you developers now that virtually everyone in my friends list is going to be very heartened by this move.

And I'll tell you guys at NCSoft something else for nothing. After issues 14 and 15 I was starting to feel very negative about you. That you no longer had any pride in either the game or your long term userbase. We'll I'll happily admit now that I was wrong. This move and all the great items coming in i16 show that you do. And while i do still think you need a kick up the butt where it comes to you communicating your intentions to us all in all I'm feeling all warm and glowey towards you .. and I look forward to spreading the good news.

Meaning that all the work the devs did for AE and them moving it from issue 13 to 14 BECAUSE OF CUSTOM MOB DEVELOPMENT was a waste of time.

No, it means custom mobs are put into their proper context -- something to be used to enhance a standard faction, not replace one.

According to who? You have a dev post to back that up?

How about the loading screen tip that says "use custom mobs sparingly"?

Or is this just more of your, if an arc is not canon it fails, nonsense?

Where did I say that?

So, no more custom critters. Why choose a "custom critter" if they will be penalized unless they have 18 powers? That is NOT a custom critter, that is a grossly overpowered critter that will ONLY provide 100% experience.

I understand and appreciate what they are trying to accomplish but I don't see this working. It kills "custom" critters as it makes the only way to get 100% experience for said critters would be to give them 18 powers. Not very "custom" in my opinion.

I will just archive my custom critters until they come up with a better system. WTG Devs!

....just sayin

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

How many times can you recycle the same boring enemy groups before it gets old?

Custom mobs are "the same boring enemy groups", just wearing funny hats. They don't do anything you haven't seen before.