Postby Mirlantharn » Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:49 am
The present situation:
Tropy was introduced, way back when, as a bandaid over the problem of players mindlessly going over the same zones and sub-zones and leveling their way to lvl 50 in such fashion.
Justice was also introduced at nearly the same time, for the exact same problem as Trophy was to fix. Both together were considered the solution.
Well, surprise. Most people hate both trophy and justice. Oh hum.
Granted, we players still are doing the mindless exp runs, just not quite so much in the hometowns.
And the implementation of Trophy is horribly broken (WHY must I have 1.5+ pages of mobs on my trophy list, that _don't_ want to come off of it no matter where else I attempt to gain exp at??? If anything, it adds yet another entry to my list!)
Possible solutions:
1) Remove both Trophy and Justice, without replacements.
2) Reimplement Trophy and Justice.
3) Replace Trophy and Justice with something else.
Suggestion:
Personally, I actually like Justice, _somewhat_. It makes sense, most of the time. The times it doesn't make sense are when a mutual enemy starts to fight you that the guards attempt to protect the enemy, the unerring ability of the guards to find you, the deterrant to the spammy conditions of certain rooms from spammy mobs, and their inability to RP situations. ("Hey, I can't even vouche for this guy in my group, nor have a verbal argument with the guards at the door, instead this guy gets killed on sight by the guards...")
Trophy, if it was reimplemented _better_, would be alright by me. Its removal would require players to NOT constantly exp in the same areas, which sometimes the candy in front of the little kid syndrome would become rampant again. Rather, some areas would have to be redone, so as to flag more mobs as being able to be put onto trophy and bump other entries off of it, and/or change the calculation of the degree at which the exp is lessened and the degree that the entries stay on the list.
Quest exp should be increased, and RP Quest exp should be considered. Perhaps state prior to the RPQ event the amount of exp (perhaps standardized) for participating in at least 15% of the total time taken (it would avoid people just showing up for the first minute and leaving while saying they were participants).
Zone exp should be increased or even added.
To receive the zone exp, require that a certain percentage of npcs be defeated (not necessarily always killed), a certain random group of npcs (selecting npcs from all over the zone, themselves not all grouped together) be defeated, certain random items be gotten, and certain random rooms be visited.
This could possibly prevent "surgical precision" zoning, which is starting to become the norm and rule, rather than the rarity.
Change the way defeat exp is awarded:
[Caution, computer programming imminent] Specifically with combat death exp, create a queue of exp chunks, each with the amount of damage and other calculated bonus also with the true name of the character or npc that dealt the damage. Each time the enemy is healed, the front of the queue has the damage similarly reduced, and when the doled out damage reaches zero for that exp chunk, it is popped off the queue (in effect, the damage was repaired and negated). At the death of the enemy, award exp in the percentage the group or individual doled out damage to all characters and npcs having exp chunks.
This would allow a player to bring a tougher ("look, he bit off more than he could chew") npc to another npc for the player to survive, but also limit the exp achieved by that action, thus avoiding the process being used as exp farming. Perhaps if the killing blow was from the npc, calculate a larger penalty of exp besides, to accentuate the decreased exp towards the player.
I just think Justice needs to have a little better AI, and the npcs reporting such actions to Justice be reduced some. Fuzzy Logic, anyone?
Well, I hope that these suggestions are at least considered...
Currently tired and heading to sleep,
Mirlantharn
