Things That Should Be Obvious

[teflor the ranger]

Experience: What people mean by grouping penalty.

Zone X loads some mobs of some type consistantly to a pop. Let's say Zone X provides 18,000 XP on average per hour.

Now say that Zone X requires about four players in a group to clear the pop before the next pop begins.

18,000 / 4 = 4,500 xp per hour

Each player can expect roughly 4,500 xp per pop with an optimal group clearing pop.

Now let's add a fifth player to the group.

18,000 / 5 = 3,600 xp per hour

For the sake of argument, let's say with the fifth member, they clear the zone in 48 minutes. It's fairly clear that no significant XP will be gained in the period of 12 minutes, as it may take that long just to get to another XP grid/zone.

To make things more complicated, let's say you have overpowered characters, more powerful than the four in our previous example. You can take on the mobs in Zone X without four members, although you cannot clear pop. Let's say you can two man the zone and clear 2/3s of the mobs per pop.

18,000 / 2 * (2/3) = 6,000 xp per hour!

Let's recap:
1 above average player = death
2 above average players = 6,000 xp per hour
4 above average players = 4,500 xp per hour
5 above average players = 3,600 xp per hour

1 average player = death
2 average players = death
4 average players = 4,500 xp per hour
5 average players = 3,600 xp per hour

Now the problem should be much more clear. The above average players have a much, much higher incentive to minimize their groups, as do the average players.


Teflor

[Dalar]

This will be already addressed in Toril 2.0.

[Yayaril]

8)

That is the obvious route if you're greedy and don't want to forge any bond between your fellow players. Since this is a grouping mud and requires interaction between said players to accomplish things, you will want allies.

[Disoputlip]

You forgot one aspect.

The: I scatch your back, you scratch my back.

Let us say we have a zone of 14.000 xp, and there are 48 rooms and 4 players can clear it in 4 minutes and 3 seconds.

Then someone levels up a troll warrior, and that person let other people group with him. Then someone else levels up another troll warrior, and he also lets people group with him. Then everybody xp's.

Based on gift economy that model works very well. You just have to trust that people sooner or later all share tank abilities.

[teflor the ranger]

You forgot one aspect.

The: I scatch your back, you scratch my back.

Let us say we have a zone of 14.000 xp, and there are 48 rooms and 4 players can clear it in 4 minutes and 3 seconds.

Then someone levels up a troll warrior, and that person let other people group with him. Then someone else levels up another troll warrior, and he also lets people group with him. Then everybody xp's.

Based on gift economy that model works very well. You just have to trust that people sooner or later all share tank abilities.

That aspect wasn't forgotten, it is irrelevant.

[Sarell]

You could upgrade trophy downgrade tables and people might try exping in a zone they don't 'clear per pop'. Or they might just 'zone for exp'.

[flib]

zoning for xp is so 1999