How do you handle the XP penalty on Custom Critters?

Sorry if this is a repeat of an earlier post, but I have only recently returned to CoH (on-again, off-again player) and even more recently starting using MA, so I am curious about how authors are handling the experience penalty for custom critters.

1) Do you simply ignore it and use all custom critters anyway, focusing only on the story?

2) Do you use standard critters (possibly recoloring them, renaming them, putting them in custom groups) and change the story to fit, keeping in mind that almost all players are looking for good experience?

3) Or a balance of the story and experience, using what you can to keep experience as high as possible (or should I say as close to “normal” as you can)?

So far I have only one “serious” arc published (that I am still working on/looking for feedback) and I used standard critters as minions, with higher critters hard/hard to keep experience up. I want to do more arcs, but I would really like to use all custom critters for the story. I don’t want to use all hard/hard (I like to solo myself, and not many willing to group for MA anyway). The problem is, I am not sure anyone would even play arcs with the experience penalties in place.

By selecting the powers of your customs you can get them up to 100% exp. I would go with story first, but work to get the exp as high as you can.

The customs in all of my arcs give 90% or better exp to that of standard foes. If someone won't play an arc because they are getting 5-10% of exp less than a non-AE arc then what can you do?

WN

The XP Penalty is only really serious on Bosses and some Lieutenants, and even then only in the higher levels of the game. Minions get a LOT more slack across the entire level range.

Make sure that you move the slider under the "X% XP at level Y" message to the highest level that you are trying to balance for, assuming that you are using a sensible spread of 10 levels or so. That will help you figure out the minimum number of powers needed to reach 100% XP.

Like I said earlier, minions have a lot more leeway but it also depends on which powers and powersets you pick. That is where the alpha value listed in the info for each power comes in, the higher the value the more it adds to the XP total. Minions have a lower maximum than Lieutenants, which in turn have a lower total than Bosses. The total for Bosses is not much lower than AVs though and the about same as EBs.

Annoyingly it is impossible to reach 100% XP for most bosses unless you add "screw you squishy" powers like Build Up, Aim, Rage, Status Protection, Tier-9 god mode powers, and super-heavy-hitters like Energy Transfer (which can nearly one-shot Scrappers even).

Personally I try to aim for 100% XP on all ranks, but that is hard as you go past level 25. Therefore in the upper half of the level range I aim to have minions at 100%, Lieutenants at >90%, and Bosses at >85%.

Also toss out the presets and use Custom/Custom for everything (which will happen anyway if you use a preset and then start adding or removing powers.) The presets at not very well designed and won't save you much room per critter anyway, plus they throw extra warnings on the arc description (like WARNING: Hard Enemies, Extreme Enemies) even if your customs are friendlies. Plus not all Hard critters are made equal either, as it all comes down to the powersets, so don't deluge the players with unnecessary warnings that may only scare them away.

Thank you all for responding. I noticed that the replies were quick, I am impressed

I have started going through my custom critters and giving them custom powers, trying to give xp closer to 100% (this will lead to a new round of testing the critters, of course). One thing I noticed is that I had to give the higher ups MORE powers to get them closer to 100%, in some cases several times more powers than a standard critter would depending on level... So, to keep the xp up, the Custom critter is tougher, with more attacks, so the same xp compared to a standard critter...

Or am I seeing this wrong?

Adding onto the mezz resistance problem, mezz shields don't even seem to add that much exp to an enemy. Well, melee shields as a whole don't seem to boost xp rate at the same ratio as increasing enemy survivability.

Because if they let Willpower go over 100% then within minutes you would see nothing but farms with Willpower baddies in the AE. Let's see... bring an Ill/Rad controller or three... The bonuses won't last long and while they do the bad guys will punch Phantom Armies that can't be damaged anyway, or Phantasms that are easily replaced. Whee, ~200% xp for free and they rez too so we get it twice for every enemy!

You're trying to say "Willpower is awesome, it should give more XP" based on player Willpower. The fact is, Willpower is far less awesome when used by critters than when used by a player with half an iota of playing ability. They can't herd us for RotC for one thing. They can't get IOs to buff their defenses to where they can jump into a x8 mob and go make a sandwich.

Futhermore, player WP is only awesome because you get resistance AND defense AND regen. As Lazarus pointed out, when you shut one of those down it's less awesome. With a critter you can pick and choose what powers to give it to make it easiest for you. Giving a critter ALL the Willpower powers would make for a pretty tough critter, sure, but since the XP calculations for custom critters don't really take into account how the powers interact with each other, let alone with other critters from the same group, they can't be worth more XP.

My Invul Brute is pretty tough. So that means Invul should give more XP right? Because it's not like I can make a custom group out of critters with all the Invul powers except Dull Pain, then grab a Psi/Mental Blaster and just tear through them as if they had no secondary.