Why can't we just play the game?

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Zen
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Why can't we just play the game?

Postby Zen » Wed Jul 09, 2003 1:14 pm

The real game for sojourn is zoning, and granted you have to get up in levels and/or knowledge to zone, at least if you want to do anything worth doing for more than sheer amusement.

Now I haven't heard that from the forgers, but that seems to be the feeling among the players. Zoning is where it's at, and that's the real game on sojourn. If that's the case, why do most players have to spend hours and hours xp'ng just to keep their level in case they die? Why can't we just play the game.

This problem seems especially hard on caster classes, who even on a good zone run are likely to come out with less xp than they started with. In a lot of zones, casters seem to get no noticable xp gains even on a flawless run.

Now it is granted that nothing should be without risk, and loosing experience is part of the risk of zoning if things go bad. I am not saying you should be able to survive a Moritheil zone run without loosing a big chunk of xp, but I am wondering why even on a flawless zone run there never seems to be enough xp to keep the mages moving forward without doing mindless xp forever. Even those who do mindless xp never seem to do more than hold thier places, never getting enough of a buffer to stay level 50. Again, this seems to be much more of an issue for mages than hitter types, but some of the new zones seem to give even hitters no xp.

I think the point where enchanters are afraid of zoning cause of the mindless xp they have to just to maintain their levels, that is the point where xp has hit critical mass and needs to be looked at. The game shouldn't be easy, but you should be able to get ahead in the game by playing the game. The mindless repetition of xp killing is fine when you're learning how to play, but is it really necessary at level 50?

Having said that, I would propose some possible solutions. The first would be to significantly up the experience gained from EQ zones, wich would seem to be a lot of work. The second is something a friend suggested, wich is to give an xp bonus based on playing time and level. Perhaps an xp bonus to players who's playing time was more than 1 day per level they attained would be a good measure. So those mages who have been around and active for 60 days and would get a bonus to their xp, making it easier to level and harder to loose those levels.

Really, why can't we just play the game?

-Llandrien
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Postby belleshel » Wed Jul 09, 2003 2:25 pm

I'm not sure where you get this from...
Zones are incredibly easy nowdays, deaths are rare, and in the case of a death, a ress is basically assured, and gives you back all but a notch or 2 of exps. For most classes, in most zones, its exp+ now, there are exceptions.

Most people agree the EQ zones should be worth more exps, the xp-zones worth considerably less. But giving a bonus based on player age is silly. Anything that promotes more afking, is not a good thing. You already get an xp bonus based on level (split exps anyway).

I have a problem with the system currently for leveling up, but once your there, imho things are just fine, if anything they are too easy on folks (i.e. death doesn't mean enough, the worst part of it is the wait).
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Postby Kribble » Wed Jul 09, 2003 5:24 pm

Do people really see Zones as the end all be all of playing here? Sometimes I feel like there's only a dozen or so people around who really get off on exploring/questing/puzzle solving.

I'm interested to know- do people really play solely for the challenge of zones?

As far as EXP goes... getting to 40 or 45 these days is easy as hell if you're an experienced player. If your not, it ain't easy, but you're going to suck hard in a zone if you never learned your way through the PLAY YOUR CLASS 101 undegratduate course of levels 1-35.

Making exp harder or easier for zone-level players can be discussed, but if people aren't zoning because they're afraid to die, screw em. That's the point of the zone, you might die, you might not win anything, you might spank and stay up till 3 o'clock (THE NEXT F'ING AFTERNOON- Muahhahah).

I would be interested in seeing exp in zones go up slightly and exp loss from death go up as well, especially in the tough zones. That way if you die a couple times, you don't lose more exp than you are losing now, but if you manage to live through the chaos, exp in itself is a nice reward.
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Ashiwi
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Postby Ashiwi » Wed Jul 09, 2003 6:05 pm

I played for the quest/friends. The zoning was just a bonus.
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Postby Zen » Wed Jul 09, 2003 6:44 pm

Regardless of what you enjoy or why you play, I think there's a issue when the majority of players have to do xp at levels 46+ to advance, instead of doing what they enjoy, be it questing, rp'ng, exploring or zoning. With as much as there is to do on sojourn, I have to wonder why this should be the case. Show me someone who enjoys sojourn style xp and I'll show you a masochist.

-Llan
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Postby Kribble » Wed Jul 09, 2003 7:27 pm

Of course, there are two populations who avoid that problem.

The first, functions well at whatever level they are at, disregarding 50th. Arishae and Corth come to mind, dunno if either are 50 yet, but they do/did just FINE at 46th, 47th levels.

The second, disregards exp appreciating the fact that if you zone often, and you don't suck, you WILL get exp and eventually level. I've had many a response to my exp requests from 45+ers, "Sorry, I get exp from zones".

I have to say that I don't mind the system the way it is. Changing it would only lead to more 50th levelers, and way over half the 'who' list is there anyway.
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Postby Guest » Sat Jul 12, 2003 7:28 am

Zen wrote:Show me someone who enjoys sojourn style xp and I'll show you a masochist.

-Llan


masochist right here!

I prefer xp over zones.
xp is where you meet new people.
xp is relaxing.
zones is where you follow a leader running 90 mph thru some zone and you never learn a thing unless you do it 50 times.
zones is where you get stuck in some place that if you have to get up and go eat dinner, you probably end up dead for dropping link.

the mud is big and diverse enough to have room for both types of players here.
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Postby Todrael » Sun Jul 13, 2003 3:25 pm

Just imagine how much exp I would be able to get with my 250+ playing days...
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Postby Corth » Sun Jul 13, 2003 11:52 pm

as long as wizchat is working correctly then all is well... :)
Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth

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Postby Shevarash » Mon Jul 14, 2003 12:30 am

Corth, are you still mad that I downgraded your pipi?
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Postby Deshana » Mon Jul 14, 2003 1:24 am

i donno, heh, something needs to be done about res failures :P

i don't die enough that 33 failed since level 49 should have happened.
thats something over 33% and more then half of those fails are done with 100 con.
Yes i have a low con, natural 73, but like i said.. more then half, 21 in fact have been done with 100 con.

something to think about.

Desh
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Postby belleshel » Mon Jul 14, 2003 1:39 pm

Wierd, I was going to say failure should be upped. I've only failed to ress once, and I've died a ton. My druid has only failed resses on double resses (i.e. I ress with a con of 23).
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Postby Ashiwi » Mon Jul 14, 2003 1:59 pm

As Ashiwi I probably had maybe two or three ress failures in a year and a half of solid playing. If you know how many times she died, you'd know her failure rate was pretty darned low.
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Postby Lazus » Mon Jul 14, 2003 3:10 pm

As a resser, my failure rate sits at about 5%. 73 failures. I was gonna post my ress stats a couple weeks ago, but I decided to hold out until I get 1500 resses.

When I do my stats, I'm planning on doing a thorough job. Including separating by Race and Class. Possibly even splitting it up into race specific classes. ie Failure Rate of Grey Elf Druids.

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Postby Corth » Tue Jul 15, 2003 1:43 am

Shevarash wrote:Corth, are you still mad that I downgraded your pipi?


I really need to stop talking about my pipi in the third-person... :)
Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth



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Postby Jorus » Sat Aug 09, 2003 9:42 pm

Zones are great XP.

You just gotta do the right ones.

Meilech and Jot come to mind as XP zones.

I've died 3x in meilech once and come out even for XP after resses.

Where I get most of my XP is from zones I lead and from killing little random eq stuff with friends. Most of my xp loss is from trying to do stupid things and from failed resses (had back to back fails once, was great).

Regards,
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Postby Valke » Sun Aug 10, 2003 12:35 am

I agree with zen.
Doin Exp sucks, being Evil, and an Enchanter is even worse. Havent played much here lately but starting to again. The soloing Exp is sooooo slow and I get really tired of it. Not only do (most) mages have to be at they keys 100%, they are also blessed with a high as Exp table. Doesnt make sense to me. Playin as a warrior, I could afk, watch a movie in the corner of my screen, play on a different mud, it was easier. As a rogue, hell no need to even mention that. Clerics! they dont seem to die as much, or at least I didnt.

I agree with zen on the aspect of increasing Exp in EQ zones.
I agree with uping the amount of Exp at level 50
and as for res, not sure wtf is wrong with me, but I failed 3-5 reses @49 just recently. I think that is just stupid. take away res fails and add more of an exp loss when resed, like 8% or something.

I like to keep my character as high level as possible. Do to the harder exp at the higher level, the amount of reses I have failed, and how many times I have died during "safe" zoning, I have now become very selective on who I follow into a zone. Id rather log off than spend 4 hours CRn, outa some zone. I guess I can screw off:) maybe thats where some of the other evils are, screwing off...

On a second note. With Grp! I go anywhere, Ill follow a noob in UM if he his curious of it, easy Exp = more time to play with that character.



Grp......... Oranges
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Postby omrec » Mon Aug 11, 2003 6:01 pm

Its funny how the main people complaining about needing to keep doing exp at 50th are the chanters..:)

I've been 50th for, well, for a long while. I'm at like 50% to 51. I hit 49 again recently, after dying twice without getting a ress, and had to go do exp for 10 hours to get a buffer again. I can't afford to die twice in a zone, if i do, i always have to ress once before continuing. If I die _once_ in a zone, its usually 0 exp for the zone, or maybe a single notch, if its a big exp zone. Two deaths means -exp. I also have a 50th anti pal, who is pegged at 98% to 51. A couple of deaths and still 98%. He can die like 3 times in a zone and still come out with +exp. If you're a hitter and think exp rewards from zones are 'just fine', well, they are..for hitters.

I think the stone/scale exp bonus needs to be upped. Maybe multiply it by 10. Add an exp bonus to displace, too. Anything to help out us poor mages..:) Oh, and add more super exp bonuses for killing the boss mobs at the end of zones. And give the leader of the group an extra bonus..:)

Then again, my problem might just be that the only zones I do are ones like seelie or spob, where death is much more likely than other places. If i went and did jot or tf more often i'd probably have less troubles..:)

-Om
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Postby Llaaldara » Mon Aug 11, 2003 7:39 pm

Zen-
I like sojourn exp for the reasons Azuth said.
But yeah, I'm a masochist too. Dunno if that helps. :wink:

Ashiwi-
Those are very nice reasons to play.
I still can't figure out why I play. I must be addicted? :?

Tod-
If only in all that playing time that female servant woulda given you some play? :wink:

Desh-
You're crazy! I have probably the worst CON in the game -58, and I know for a fact I have the lowest innate hps of any level 50 because of it (90). I almost never fail ress, and I do it buck naked everytime! :D (and yes I've seemd to die a lot more lately then before.)

Whoever-
What is it? approx 25% exp loss of current level from death? (give or take) This is wut bothers me. I could die 4 times and then I loose a level. That's skills loosing their notches. That's possible lost spells. That sucks. That sucks even more after you maxed everything out at 50th to 99 master skill level. I'd rather see this changed to 10% exp loss and only 5% return exp on ress. So if you died before and got ress you loose like 4%, and now you'd loose about 5%, but the amount of exp loss from each individual death wouldn't be as great. :twisted:

-Sesexe
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Postby Teyaha » Fri Aug 15, 2003 5:56 am

nods it's mainly a problem for chanters because it's rare to see a chanter cast an uber damaging, xp leaching spell...er...ever actually.

maybe drastically up dragonscales xp?
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get xp for doing hard things

Postby irta » Fri Aug 15, 2003 3:54 pm

I could argue that elementalist xp is just as hard as chanter xp (sure seems that way), but I think Omrec was right when that it also depends on what zones you do (and what mobs you try to solo) and whether or not you do a lot of straight xping. Irta dies quite often (down 40% this week even with resses) and it's simply sad how long it takes me to level. I see a couple solutions:
1) Change ress failure so instead of giving a devestating blow to xp, it makes ress fx take threee times as long.
2) Make xp take into account the difficulty of the zone you're doing. If the formulas can figure out what kind of eq the zone should provide it should be able to also provide more xp when one does the harder zones. I mean what experience does one really get beating up helpless smoke mephit as compared to risking their life to kill the Ak'Neth the Devourer?)

Irta
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Re: Why can't we just play the game?

Postby moritheil » Sat Aug 16, 2003 1:13 am

Zen wrote:The real game for sojourn is zoning, and granted you have to get up in levels and/or knowledge to zone, at least if you want to do anything worth doing for more than sheer amusement.
...
I am not saying you should be able to survive a Moritheil zone run without loosing a big chunk of xp, but I am wondering why even on a flawless zone run there never seems to be enough xp to keep the mages moving forward without doing mindless xp forever.

...
Having said that, I would propose some possible solutions. The first would be to significantly up the experience gained from EQ zones, wich would seem to be a lot of work. The second is something a friend suggested, wich is to give an xp bonus based on playing time and level. Perhaps an xp bonus to players who's playing time was more than 1 day per level they attained would be a good measure. So those mages who have been around and active for 60 days and would get a bonus to their xp, making it easier to level and harder to loose those levels.

Really, why can't we just play the game?

-Llandrien


Ah, infamy.

Zen's idea is really intriguing. Those who have played for years have little need to spend extra time XPing. The real problem is deciding how many hours of ptime the bonus kicks in at. 20 days? 50 days? 100 days?

It would be interesting to see statistics on this.
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Re: Why can't we just play the game?

Postby Savras » Sat Aug 16, 2003 1:18 am

moritheil wrote:Ah, infamy.

Zen's idea is really intriguing. Those who have played for years have little need to spend extra time XPing. The real problem is deciding how many hours of ptime the bonus kicks in at. 20 days? 50 days? 100 days?

It would be interesting to see statistics on this.


*chuckle* you think the perm-afk problem at 1w and 3w is bad now? Just watch what happens if this goes in...
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Postby Valke » Sat Aug 16, 2003 8:47 am

Hi!

Switch Exp tables,
I dont understand why a rogue, or a warrior would have a lower Exp table than mage, to make that particular character harder to level? Unbalance it seems to me.

Why not change it around a bit? or make all the tables the same, Stone/Scale exp is a joke. yeah one can piss in the ocean and add something to it.
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Postby Ambar » Sat Aug 16, 2003 3:25 pm

I personally see nothing wrong with the xp tables ...

think of the power at the higher levels ... whata mage can do with cold/fireshield and scales .. a warrior cannot with no healing ...

the damage invokers do later in lfe far exceeds the warrior melee ... sure hitall all .. but after that u can only hit one mob at a time ... where area spells whack em a lot ...

I levelled a shaman to 50 which seemed easy .. a cleric to 50 which seemed easy, and an enchanter to 48'ish which also seemed easy ... i personally see nothing wrong with the tables ..

time sinks?? only the people rolling their 5th or 6th lvl 50 see xp as a time sink ... but then again they will get their char to 50 in 5 pdays or less ...

the average new player NEEDS that time to hone their skills ... and once again I'd rather see that mage or priest with great qc over the plevelled one ... same with warriors .. I'd rather see that warrior with 88 bash/rescue than the plevelled one with 50 ....
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Postby Dalar » Sat Aug 16, 2003 3:48 pm

PLEASE CHANGE EXP SO THAT AGGRESSIVE MULTIPLE MOB FIGHTS GIVE MUCH MORE EXP THAN THIS BORING DS CRAP.
It will be fixed in Toril 2.0.
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