View source for Post:IMPORTANT: The EXP system, Elanthia, and you. - 5/13/2009 - 23:02:07

{{Post
|a=DR-ZEYURN
|t=IMPORTANT: The EXP system, Elanthia, and you.
|d=5/13/2009 11:02:07 PM
|n=4695
|f=Abilities, Skills and Magic \ The Experience System
|c=m,d
|p=We've been working on a behind-the-scenes revamp of the {{PRel|Experience}} system for the past while now, and this one is going to be a pretty big shift. Because of this, we're taking the time to basically inform everyone well ahead of time how things are going to be changing so we can have time to answer the inevitable questions of what all this is going to mean and attempt to not make things be a total bombshell when it goes live.

Additionally, some time after this announcement and before the drop into live instances, we will be making the [[Test instance|Test server]] open to the public as a sort of public beta of the new Experience system, so people can sort of get a feel for how it works and we can hopefully catch any last serious bugs before it ever impacts a 'real' character.

So, without further ado, we'll get into the goals of this new system, and the kind of changes we made to meet these goals.

GOALS:

1) Reduce the need to grind skills continuously to keep up or stay ahead.

2) Eliminate the need for skills to be at Mind Lock to learn the best. Also, in general make Mind Lock a rarer occurrence.

3) Reduce, to an extent, the disparity between primary and tertiary learning rates.

4) Reduce, to an extent, the impact of the {{PRel|Experience drain|wall cycle}} on drainage.

5) Not significantly impact learning rate, simply how learning occurs.

6) With that said, make casual training more fun and rewarding without impacting more hardcore training styles.

7) More fun, less tedium with training. This is sort of the same as #1 but it bears repeating. ;)

Okay, I know a lot of you are already panicking at this point in the post. However, I'd like to ask that you just take a deep breath and focus on #5 and #6 in particular. We ARE NOT trying to seriously change the learning rate or slow down people who take their training seriously. You people will end up about the same or even a little better when the dust settles.

Now, we're going to get into specific changes:

- Pool size of all skills has been dramatically increased.

- Drainage rate is based upon MAXIMUM pool size, not CURRENT pool size. This means that every pulse in a particular rank should be completely identical, assuming you have enough exp in your pool to get the full pulse.

- Drainage rate slowed down to end up roughly equivalent with the increase in pool size. What this means is that you will drain LESS percent of a GREATER pool, which will grant basically EQUAL experience in total per pulse.

- The {{PRel|Intelligence (stat)|Intelligence}} stat has a much greater effect on Pool Size than it currently does. Intelligence will probably be the most important stat for Exp purposes.

- The {{PRel|Wisdom (stat)|Wisdom}} stat has a somewhat greater impact at high stat ranks on Drainage Rate than it currently does. Its impact on Drainage Rate will be identical to Intelligence's impact on Pool Size. However, since increasing Pool Size in this new system is slightly better than increasing Drainage Rate, those looking to maximize learning would be better off keeping Int slightly higher than Wis.

- {{PRel|RPA}}s are even better than they are before. Only the best trainers will probably even hope to keep up with an active RPA4.

- For the moment, Mind Murk is completely gone. IT WILL RETURN, but we're not sure how yet. But, it will definitely not be the way it is now, where you have to watch which skills are mindlocked or what have you. If a skill becomes mindlocked, you will no longer have to get creative with sleep or fear the frozen mind!

- The impact of the Wall Cycle is greatly diminished. Primaries will ALWAYS pulse higher percentages than Secondaries which will ALWAYS pulse percentages than Tertiaries.

- To go along with the above point, although average learning speed should be the same or better overall over the standard 8 rank cycle with all the changes, the maximum pulse of primary skills has gone down slightly, since there's no 'anti-wall' rank just like there's no 'wall' rank. The maximum pulse of secondary and tert skills have gone up slightly.

- It should take anywhere from 40-60 minutes for a primary skill to pulse from mind lock to clear. Assuming you can get them to mind lock in the first place. Anywhere from 50-80 for secondary skills, and anywhere from 70-100ish for a tert. And during this whole time, you will NOT NEED to put any extra exp in to learn. The goal is to give people time to go just have fun or socialize after a training session without falling behind. If you want to replace the exp, great. If you don't, you don't need to until you're out!

- There are a lot of new 'learning phrases' to replace muddled, concentrated, and all that. Since the pools are 3 times as big, there's about 3 times as many, with each being the same size except clear and mind lock. We won't list them now but we will list them before we release.

Okay, with that all said, I'd like to repeat again the point. We want training to be more effective for casual players, and for the playerbase to be able to 'lock and forget' and still learn just as efficiently while they go socialize / train other skills / do whatever.

We will probably find with this transition that several skills are in dire need of better learning potential. This will be an extremely high priority for us. HOWEVER, making sure every skill can be mindlocked easily is NOT a high priority, since mindlock is meant to be much harder to reach. Again: MINDLOCK IS NOT THE BEST STATE FOR TRAINING. This is probably the sentence I'd like you to take away from this the most for the new exp system, if you only take away one.

Right now the Test server has these changes in, but those of you who are there are still under a gag order on giving out details for the moment. We'll lift that in a little bit but since I'm going to be making changes based on the feedback I've already gotten, I don't want too many details floating around that may change.

To expound on the above.. while staff and particularly myself are very confident that once the shock and panic of the big changes goes away, that most people are going to find that they really like these changes, we're also aware that they are really freaking big changes and may need tweaks and changes. There's a lot that can be subject to change based on impressions in by our current Testers and the open beta we'll be doing shortly.

You're welcome to start commenting immediately here in the Experience System folder but remember this is an unreleased system, let's try to keep world ending posts to a minimum and comments constructive. :)

-[[Zeyurn|Z]]
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