Recently I decided to make a spreadsheet which outlined how much experience it would require to hero characters with different experience penalties, and honestly when I sat down with a calculator and punched in some numbers- I was dumbfounded.

My formula for this is the TNL formula stated in help EXPERIENCE.

For all examples I will be dealing with a character which has no experience penalty, so a human warrior, thief, transmuter, shapeshifter, conjurer, necromancer, shaman or healer.

In order to obtain level 51, our example character (Ron from here out) would require 459 000 Experience Points(XP). Now, lets make several assumptions:
1) Ron earns 400XP from each Mobile (Mob) he kills.
2) Ron kills each of these Mobs in 2 minutes flat.
3) There are 15 of these Mobs in the area Ron is ranking in.
4) It requires precisely 4 minutes for the area to repopulate with our magical 1-51 ranking Mobs.

Lets figure this out shall we? It will take Ron 30 minutes to clear our this area, earning a total of 6000XP. Ron must now take his 4 minutes downtime for the area to repopulate!

Running time: 34 minutes to earn 6000XP.

In order to get to level 51 Ron must kill a total of 1147.5 Mobs. At the rate of which he is killing the Mobs and clearing them from our magic area, it will take him 43.35 Hours to reach level 51.

Now I know you're all saying "Holy crap! You can hero a human warrior in less than 45 hours! THATS AMAZING!". Just hold your little horses a minute and think about what I just calculated. That is 43.35 hours spent mechically cleaning out an area without travel time, unforseen PK circumstances, Mob deaths, group problems, etc., etc., etc..

Now, seeing as I have no hard numbers for these circumstances I can't exactly give a hour value to them and still feel credible whatsoever. However, we all know how much time some of these things can take, and many of them are things that are far from enjoyable. Furthermore, in the above example Ron is earning a constant 400XP on every kill, and we all know that certainly does not happen. Sometimes you get more, sometimes you get less- a lot less.

Conclusion: Something needs to be changed about experience and the way it is doled out. As far as I figure it you are obligated to spend atleast 55 Hours on ranking, and more often than not ranking feels like a huge chore. I've seen Imms and players both make comments that the game does not start at level 51, and I heartily agree on that. However, something else I have seen the Imms say repeatedly is that those who do not Hero their characters are not playing the same game as those who do. There are huge advantages for those who fit the Addict archetype without even considering ranking, and those who are more casual players suffer greatly as they do not have to time to invest just to Hero a character, let alone have that character lead an interesting an enjoyable life.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post, and thanks to the Imms for the great work they do on CF.

I belong to the small minority of players who actually like ranking. The game of making unsuitable groups work, or having the perfect group and scoring high exp in itself if rewarding for me. Power ranking is fun, not because it will get my high level quick, but just for the sheer entertainment value of seeing high exp scroll by fast. I have ruined several charachters over hitting hero with poor skills, usually having made very few allies, and usually uncaballed and having hard time applying at hero.
A lot of people scream for easier ranking. I disagree. However I don't think hard = time consuming necessarily. There can be a lot of tough nuts to crack, that will still take only a short while when done successfully.
I think there should be a higher reward for ranking in risky places that require some thought, tactics, and staying alert. A good example is Calandryel. It's a very risky area to rank in (at least pre 45 when you can just rip the skeletals apart fast) with mobs that entwine, impale and flurry, move around, and agro inconsistently. I love the area for ranking, but since the exp/kill was reduced (multipliers being cut or whatever *shrug*) very often I can get better exp for mindless monotony in simple areas while afk writing posts such as this. I'd say around 3-4 years ago some sort of tweaking was made to the exp/kill in hard areas. This is imho a huge bummer since it doesn't make ranking harder, but instead more boring by decreasing the reward for risk taking. I have also noticed (and heard someone else noticed it aswell) a more recent change in the high range exp (killing mobs that are much higher). Sadly I lost all my ranking logs when formatting the hard drive a few months ago, so I'm not sure if my imagination is playing tricks on me.

At the moment ranking favors killing mobs for ~500-600 exp per kill, no matter how good of a group you have together. If you want to get 1k for kill, it will take too much time to put them down. What I would like to see: The normal 7-10 ranks above the group giving the same exp as it gives at the moment ~500, but the real tough bastards with spec moves and 15 levels above the group giving not the 1k it does now, but instead 1.5k which would make ranking on the bad mofo, risking mob deaths, having to go through norecall/noscan mazes, having to take a rest after each kill, or spending a lot of time to take the bastard down actually worthwile. I want to see a ranking trip change from 3 hours of semi-afk boredom into a great adventure of mighty foes, epic battles and great reward. Adventures that make into the bed time stories of the future adventurers!

I know some will disagree, and some (likely a select few ;)) will agree, but I'd like to hear some thoughts from both mortals and immortals.

Something like a huge Boa Constrictor that entwines the victim but does only moderate damage all the time but after the 5th entwine (i think i have seen something similar in a shifter log) or so he dies. (or if this is too tough, something like: -10 dex -10 str for 10 hours or whatever) Kill it fast and it is great, be too slow and suffer the consequences.

Well, maybe not the best example but I hope its understandable what I mean. :)

Anything to fight the semi-afk boredom. It's just painful waiting for people to pay attention... but I have to empathize, since I'm doing the same damn thing.

that was brought up before.

The game starts at level 1. Sure 51 allows you to do a lot more, but working your way up through the ranks, making allies/mortal enemies, pking, exploring.

On a side note. I usually hero around 250/300 hours that typically gives me another 300 hours at hero.

I wish it was less of a chore. However I do not think it is overly bad. If I could offer any suggestions it would be:

1) Lower the experience penalty for a mob death
2) Increase/double experience given from mobs ranked 40+
3) Have an imm help me find more ranking areas for my evils to get me to hero than: the mount, sea of despair and Thar'Acia =)

And I guess it turns out that I may be the player least liked in a ranking group. When I am ranking I put the game on "pause". All I want to do is kill whatever we are killing as fast as possible. We can talk afterwards =)

Many many games are phenomenally more boring and tedious and time consuming. If you do things the 'legit' way in World of Warcraft, as in, you don't have OOC friends help you rank, there's a good chance of it taking several months. I know for me, gaining one level could take like 3-4 sessions. So, that's not holding people back from playing here. There are many games where it can take up to a week of solid, 2 hours a night or more gameplay to get a single level and they're popular.

No, without a doubt, the reason why CF is a hard game for newbies to get into and what drives away people (aside from the standard aging, etc), is CF's main attraction. The highs on CF are very high, when you get recognized or given a quest or your cabal PK's 5 people, the rewards are great. Great gear, unique and limited gear, sense of accomplishment, etc. On the reverse side of the scale, the lows are very low. Getting a poor title, booted from a cabal, PK'd and full looted.

The reward/penalty system of CF is what makes it fun and addictive but at the same time, many of us have been upset and pissed off the first time we lost a sick set to a gang/full loot. Rage deleting isn't uncommon, even though now there are ways around it, there's no denying there's ample things in the game to piss you off. As a newbie its especially frustrating because skilled players just steamroll over you without so much as batting an eyelash.

I think the imms have weighed out the system and unfortunately it takes alot of effort to make things like quest based ranking systems that aren't monotonous and obvious. It takes a lot of manpower to set them up, tremendous amount, and the yield versus cost isn't very useful anyway because once the solutions get posted somewhere or become common knowledge it not only screws over newbies but makes it just as monotonous and boring.

For the record, I get 442,500xp for a 0-penalty character to reach 51.

My figure for a character's Hero experience was 305*base experience. This gives 457,500 xp for 0-penalty character(base xp=1500). I did my math twice and got the same result for hero xp.

Your error was forgetting the level adjustment term needed to reach the hero level (meaning 50*0.2*1500). Vargals calculation assumed that you reach 51 levels, forgetting that the game starts from level 1 and ends at 51(Imms don't count), thus you reach only 50 levels. Thus, it has one extra 1500 xp from base xp term.

Feel free to log on your hero, check his xp and put his base xp to the formula I've calculated (Hero xp = 305*base xp) to check my result. You should reach the same result with that.

Isildur's is closer to right. A 0-penalty hero has roughly 444,000 total xp. I've played way too many of them to ever get the brain cells this information occupies back.

Note that a 1st level character starts with some XP. Add the 1,500 starting XP to Isildur's figure and I think it's right.

I checked Agantas's hero xp from logs and it was

Exp : 438900 To Level : 21600

including a xp hole from mob death. I have thought again the math and found that Isildur was correct and the term missing from his calculations was a result of erroneous thought in my calculations. With your additional correction to the figure, the hero xp becomes= 296*base xp(assuming that the starting xp is same as base xp). Apparently, Vargal made the same error I did, but was the only one to take the starting xp into account(or he made the mistake I thought he did, since our common mistake was an indexing mistake of the same sort).

Nepenthe is right. I'd forgotten that you start with some XP. So, my figure was "amount of xp a character needs to *earn* to reach a particular rank".

In case you're curious, if X(R,P) = amount of xp required for a character with penalty P to reach rank R then

X(R,P) = 1500 + (150 + 0.1P) * (R^2 + 7R - 8)

At least, that's what I used to get the 442,500 figure. I'm not sure whether differently penaltied characters start with different amounts of base XP.

>At least, that's what I used to get the 442,500 figure. I'm
>not sure whether differently penaltied characters start with
>different amounts of base XP.

I want to say you start with 1500 + penalty, but don't quote me on that.

But it does work. I'm just too tired to follow your math.

>X(R,P) = 1500 + (150 + 0.1P) * (R^2 + 7R - 8)
>
>At least, that's what I used to get the 442,500 figure. I'm
>not sure whether differently penaltied characters start with
>different amounts of base XP.

Well.. That one gives Nepenthe's figure and assumes that all chars start with 1500 xp. My approach had a series for the level adjustment terms and wasn't as pretty as your form, but both ways of counting work and give the same result. I'm not entirely sure how you derived your formula, but it seems to work and I just don't bother to try and derive it from my formula with the series in it. My formula was

X(R) = (R-1)*base + 0.2*base*sum{N=1,R-2}(N)

This formula doesn't take into account the starting experience. R is level to be reached and base = 1500+P, using your formula's variables R and P. 1 and R-2 are the lower and upper limits of the sum and N is the variable in the sum(as the notation is unclear, but I trust you'll understand it). While your formula is better as it is easier to use, I posted this one just to show how I thought it and where I chose to stop calculating(which didn't take long).

1) If ranking becomes very easy, unskilled characters routinely hit hero, diluting the quality of the pool. Ranking is one test of skill in a game that has many. You might say "But I rarely die to NPCs!", but you also have to consider "How often do I die to PCs while fighting NPCs?" or "How often do I lose a less-skilled groupmate?"

2) If ranking becomes very easy, experienced players can also easily thrust 'disposable' quality characters into the higher level range. As investment goes down, cheating and/or abusive behavior will rise as potential consequences (loss of character) fall. As investment decreases, people will put less thought into roles, etc. as well.

3) As Karel already pointed out, you can keep a character for more than 500 hours. You have lots of time.

4) CF is unquestionably fast and skill-intensive within the genre, excepting games where you more or less walk in as a hero, which usually have very short shelf-lives, or turn into text-Quake. Games like Everquest as popular, but just ask people how many hours people those players spend levelling their character, and how monotonous the process is. They attract new players, so I doubt it's that people don't think there should be an investment-to-results curve.

5) If ranking is monotonous, take time to make it less monotonous. I'll drop groupmates in a hurry if they're boring, or can only speak in "aura/moves/rank" one-word sentences. (They might drop me for not being as mechanical and quick as I could be, but that's OK for me, since I don't want to be in those groups.) With the right people and approach, it's a fun process.

6) I don't think turbo-ranking newbies would even be good for them within CF. I think they'd hit higher ranks quickly, then get overwhelmed by the rapidly expanding mix of combat tactics and rising competence of their increasing PK range.

I have no plans to throw massive XP bonuses across the board. We've talked about cross-checking XP values against NPC strength some more, since presently some mobs are very difficult for their level, but offer more or less standard XP. We've also been active in developing other ways to hand out XP, and a lot of heroes end up with 50,000 XP from non-combat sources. This process will continue, but the idea is to reward many types of gameplay, not to just heap excessive rewards onto one style.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

People on the World of Warcraft forums state it took them 6-8 days of playing time to reach level 60 (i.e. approx. 140-190 hours). On top of that, since that was early on in the life cycle of the game those people are probably on the faster side of the mean time.

If you think graphical games are the biggest drain on the new-player pool, the problem just flat out ain't time to hero.

> 5) If ranking is monotonous, take time to make it less monotonous. I'll drop groupmates in a hurry if they're boring, or can only speak in "aura/moves/rank" one-word sentences. (They might drop me for not being as mechanical and quick as I could be, but that's OK for me, since I don't want to be in those groups.) With the right people and approach, it's a fun process.

I so hate it when I'm playing a support class and my team mates order me around all the time. Ranking is as much fun as you make it, sadly not everyone seems to agree on that.

Honestly, what I'd like to see is a modification to solo ranking versus group ranking. I believe that an incentive to take on character combinations whichs are not necessarily amazingly beneficial to a group at certain stages would be a very good way to improve the monotony of ranking certain classes.

For me the problem isn't exactly the total time spent ranking to play what can total out to be a 400+ hour character, but rather the time spent in certain level ranges where the fun stick is non-existant or it is impossible to get a group together for various reasons.

For example, the conjurer. Before level 20, and for non-high charisma races before level 22, conjurers have the least number of skills available to them period. Magic missile has its uses, but lets face it- casting magic missile hundreds of times over a few hour period is really mind numbing and a lot of potential groupmates simply don't want to take on low level conjurers because they don't contribute much.

What do I suggest to remedy this? Stick an added bonus for taking on groupmates with lesser to nil group value. Perhaps something similiar to the bonus orcs get for grouping with orcs, however not necessarily reciprocal for the 'burdensome' groupmate. I'd be more than happy to sit down and think out a table to figure out these values. And to keep people from trying to make the ultimate ranking group-perma you can keep the bonus values secret and when they are in affect (as in level ranges).

Perhaps modify the current XP bonus from being hard experience points to a percentile bonus to experience gained over either a percentage of time or until a certain amount of experience is gained.

I'm an idea machine in the summer. If you'd like I could drop you guys an e-mail with more ideas on this.

For example, the conjurer. Before level 20, and for non-high charisma races before level 22, conjurers have the least number of skills available to them period. Magic missile has its uses, but lets face it- casting magic missile hundreds of times over a few hour period is really mind numbing and a lot of potential groupmates simply don't want to take on low level conjurers because they don't contribute much.

I'd argue that the correct solution is to find ways to make conjurers more valued groupmates in that level range, rather than make global changes to the experience point system.

As an example of a change like this that (partially) worked, consider sub-20 shapeshifters. I won't pretend that they're the most coveted pre-20 groupmates around, but compared to the days when they got their first form later and didn't have any of the partial-shift spells, they're a lot less dead weight.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

" 1) If ranking becomes very easy, unskilled characters routinely hit hero, diluting the quality of the pool. Ranking is one test of skill in a game that has many. You might say "But I rarely die to NPCs!", but you also have to consider "How often do I die to PCs while fighting NPCs?" or "How often do I lose a less-skilled groupmate?" "


I'd personally be in favor of going back to the way it was in my youthful days of CF, with the stacking exp holes. It truly meant something if you could hit hero, you knew enough about the game to stand out at least somewhat, and it was a big sense of pride when I finally heroed. Sure I only had one hero and a bunch of 40+ somethings, it sure helped weed out the people who probably don't know enough about their class to survive well in the Hero range. Then again, you could just be incredibly unfortunate and just lose hope of ever recovering out of a 5+ mob death exp hole.

I was on a break during the switch-over from stacking exp holes to non-stacking, so I dont know exactly why it stopped. However, I'd be in favor of going back to the old way before making ranking even easier/faster to do.

I don't see any good points in stacking xp-holes. The only thing it encourages is delete delete. The normal xp holes are enough punishment as it is, without getting cruel and forcing people to delete their chars. Would being in a huge xp-hole yourself make your playing experience better and more fun? If not, why do you suggest this? I see no reason for being sadistic towards new players and driving them away for the MUD so that this classy, but smaller in numbers, Hero-range could be created. IMHO, returning to huge, punitive xp-holes would be a stupid idea.

Here's a suggestion:

Besides having "exploration" XP, confer a bonus to characters that do actively go out and explore and change their ranking area. Perhaps even have the XP taper off after a while once people get "too comfortable". Think of it as growing accustomed to the way the creatures fight. This time wouldn't have to be something small, but could be something significant, such as 2 hours in the same area will confer some sort of bonus, however, any time past that and the experience starts to slow down.

I don't know how much coding this would involve and if it's too much trouble, then forget it. I'm just curious because it could give players even more incentive to explore and move.

From help experience, this is supposedly one of the factors involved in how much a mob is worth - "how many of this monster have been killed lately". I've never noticed a difference.

I have no plans to throw massive XP bonuses across the board. We've talked about cross-checking XP values against NPC strength some more, since presently some mobs are very difficult for their level, but offer more or less standard XP.

Kastellyn recently provided me with a handily sorted list of some general cases where this is true. It's the kind of thing where our policy says "If you add this functionality, check with an IMP about raising the XP for this NPC.", but we never made older areas fully back-compatible with this policy. (Old areas tend to give you standard XP for every NPC, no matter how tough or weak it is for its level.) I was on a short vacation most of this weekend, but I should be able to get this fixed once I grab a few free hours.

We've also been active in developing other ways to hand out XP, and a lot of heroes end up with 50,000 XP from non-combat sources.

I finished a new angle on this fairly recently, and we should be able to get it added into areas (starting with the Academy, working up) over the next week or two.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I actually have heroed human classes in ~40 hours before, but that really is neither here nor there. What is the minimum game hours per character? I don't mean before deletion or con death, just age. Barring an assload of nasty withers, you can get at least 400 hours give or take a little. So roughly 10% of the life expectancy of your human warrior needs to be spent reaching the pinnacle of his career. Is this unreasonable? We are talking about the defining characteristic of your character, what he is and is not able to do. Even if you dropped total available hours to 200 I don't think it's unreasonable. I'm personally prone to deleting ~100 hours or so after I hero because I get bored so easily. Drop the time needed to get to hero I'd probably delete even sooner because hey, it'll only take me a few days to make another one.

f

This point has been brought up many times before. And I *believe* the Imm response has been that if it was too easy to be a hero, it wouldn't be as great a thing. But frankly, I couldn't agree less with this point (if that was/still is their point).

Unfortunately this outlook on Heroing is what is driving new players away from Carrion Fields. I know the Imms like the niche which CF has found for itself wherein it requires dedication, observation and preparation (effort) to succeed, and I like this as well. I still don't see any real reason to force players through the drudgery which is the current experience and ranking system.

As it stands, you gain 20% TNL per level. I argue that decreasing that one percentile can drastically improve the current situation for more casual players(of course it would also affect addict players, but without sticking in some hinderance for playing a lot there is no way to avoid that).

For example, lets take a look at Total Experience to Hero (TEH!).

A) With the 20% increase: 459 000

B) With a 15% increase: 363 375

See the difference? Lets plug in the Hour numbers from my original post.

363 375/400 = 908.4
908.4X2Min/60Min= 30.3 Hours to Hero at the machine gun rate.

That is a 13 hour difference! That is huge! Even just feeling like there is a difference would make ranking less of a chore, or better yet if Mob XP value were increased one might feel like they are making actual progress, instead of remaining dead in the proverbial water.

I don't think this is what is driving most new players away. Ranking in the 1-15 range is pretty damn easy if you know what you're doing. The fact that they don't and there is a steep learning curve for this game is what drives them away. And even if it was the case, using that as a reason to change is the same as saying we'll change just to have more people. Bad mojo.

"Unfortunately this outlook on Heroing is what is driving new players away from Carrion Fields" just curious what this statement is founded on, personal belief or firsthand knowledge. I only know one newbie that tried CF and didn't like it. His response was "people were too mean". I assumed he either got hammered for going OOC or PK'd. I could be wrong, but I have a hard time believing newbies are leaving in droves because it takes them too long to hero.

As a counterpoint, there are more than a few experienced players that claim to have never heroed. I don't see them posting saying they are going to leave because they can't hero or ranking is too hard.

I think you are taking your own wants/desires - to make ranking easier and using an imagined newbie exodus as a convenient arguing point. Personally, I believe solo-ranking is stupid. I'd bump up the group bonus and decrease solo exp after level 20 to dis-incent people from solo ranking such that nobody ever did it. But again, that's just me.

I think you are taking your own wants/desires - to make ranking easier and using an imagined newbie exodus as a convenient arguing point.

I agree completely. The RL political equivalent is yelling "Think of the children!"

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Tried to Leave, can't.