Partially Used: XP system

In the Great Aenea blackout, I went cruising some other servers. I came across one which had a XP system I thought was pretty cool. It wasn't the standard XP system of NWN. Rather, you get X amount of XP per kill. When you group up with people, your XP per kill increased, from say 15 for a solo kill to 18 for a two person group, and 20 for another person, 22 for 4 people.

I think Aenea would rock with something like that. The biggest problem about group hunting is sure the enemies go down easier and/or you get bigger and better spawns, but the overall XP goes down when grouped. Get 24 for a mummylord while hunting alone. Group up with someone, that XP goes down to say, 12 per or 8 per even.

Now, I wouldn't want to see it made more frustrating to solo hunt. Even I a lot of the time like to go out and blow up stuff at my own pace and whim, and some people have schedules that just prevent them from being around when lots of other people are around, much less other people of roughly the same level.

So... perhaps Aenea could have a modified XP system that makes it so XP per kill doesn't go down when in a group. In the long run that would be more XP (more people killing the monsters will mean more monsters dead in the same amount of time as a solo effort). It would also mean 'grinding for level' wouldn't have to be a solo affair, that it could be accomplished in a group as well as solo, depending on how each individual player wants to play.

That would be very nice. I really like this idea. Sometimes it would be nice to group and hunt, but if your looking for that next level, ya gotta solo it.

i completely agree with something like this.

or perhaps if the XP would be a hassle to change, there could be something in place to increase the respawn rate in an area with more than 1 person? Just throwing out other ideas...

These are all great ideas!

Actually, Derik and I have noticed that an awful lot of things only give 2 xp, even if they normally give him 18 or 24 per, sometimes even more. I was one or two levels higher at the time, that might have made a difference.

I think we could simply add a different set of changes that would possibly satisfy players. I remember reading somewhere on the NWVault that you can edit a certain 2da file and make it so that familiars and animal companions dont incur a experience penalty. Likewise this 2da will also allow you to set the experience gain for encounters, the experience penalty of henchmen and summons, as well as overall global experience gain.

Currently in my override I like using it so I get decreased penalty for a familiar or animal companion, as such things are not a seperate entity but a part of your character. Likewise I increased the penalty for summons and henchmen. Summons are only a crutch and nothing more, and henchmen are merely used when you cant accomplish things by yourself in spite of any choices you may make. I think amethyst might want to tone down the familiar and companion penalty, tone up summon and henchmen penalty, and in regards to extra players(party members), possibly neutralize the penalty half of the way, but make sure only characters on the same level as the encounter get proper exp.

Because if amethyst edits this 2da, all he has to do is put it in his override on the computer the server uses. It will effect Aenea and all its players (as all non-graphical overrides normally do for servers). If Amethyst's server uses the same he plays on it will actually change the way he progresses through single player campaigns, so its entirely up to him if he thinks it is beneficial for both him and players or if it only serves either his side or our side.

Finally, I think if a creature has over 5 levels less than the player, the player should get only maximum of 1 exp, while the player can get bonus exp for stronger monsters, but the bonus should cease completely at monsters 5 levels higher than the player, as anything stronger would obviously only be defeated if someone is assisting in a inapproapiate way.

Also, the bonus exp for having a party is called the teamwork bonus on some servers I've seen. Personally if a party of characters are all within 1-3 levels of eachother and the size of the group does not exceed a normal traveling band (6 for old school D&D, 3 for new school D&D), there should be a 5% bonus to exp for the battle. That would be reasonable. However if the group size is too big or too small or the players are not close to eachothers level, the teamwork bonus should not be given, as then it would not make any logic and noobers as I like to be called would merely leech off of stronger players. Likewise such a system would actually harm such leeching efforts, and thus make our game world more fair for all.

I think such tight restrictions on group size and level range would make the change pointless. While there's far more people online in aenea on average then when I first came here, it's still a relatively low number compared to other servers, so what would work for more populated ones would not necesarily work here. Given our smaller player base, such a tight level and size restriction would work out to being the same as if we got half XP for grouping. Of the 40th level characters, there's 3 still around between 2 players. In the 30's range, there's 8 characters I think on semi reguarly, and 3 of them are again owned by 1 player, 2 of them by another, and not all are on at the same time. Plus consideration has to be made that on Aenea, it's quite possible for a 30th level character to hunt quite effectively alongside a 40th level character. Even a mid to upper 20th level character could compete compentantly with a upper 30th level character.

And the overall goal of this suggestion is to make grouping a beneficial thing, where as with the default NWN xp system, it's a penalty.

Making the lower group size cap would also be somewhat detrimental. Sometimes there's only 2 or 3 people on the server, and not all three are guarenteed to be within the same capabilities. And although it's rare to get a group of more than 6 people going, it would be nice if it didn't penalize XP there either.

The system I encountered that I liked still would cap out a single character's XP gain on a given creature, even if the group on average was still in range. For example, a group ranging froma 10th level to a 15th level hunting certain types of orcs: the lesser grunt orcs would stop giving XP to the 15th level soloing, although the shamans would still give XP. In group, that 15th leveler would still nto receive XP for the grunt orcs.

It also used a group average level. It would bar any XP gain for anyone if the level ranges were too great (and they were pretty generous). I think an average group level would do nicely on Aenea, minus the limit on level ranges even. Although it might produce situations where leeching is possible, as mentioned above, the smaller player base is spread over the full 40 level range, but it's still possible for a much lower level character to travel with higher level characters and compete equally even in the hunting (especially if the player knows what they're doing).

Not to mention the coolness factor of getting to travel with the bigwigs... A low level character being able to tag along with a higher level group can be real fun for the lower level character (who's getting to see the more challenging hunts and see new things) as well as the upper level people (who generally get a lot of enjoyment out of giving the ol' tour of Aenea).

Agreed with Manny 100%. I would like to see "partying up" become incentivised with better rewards. It makes interactions between players more encouraged, and that fosters better community relations.

Plus, while, I agree that being much higher level than what you defeat should definitely *reduce* your gain from it.... I can say with total honesty that some of my characters *legitimately* defeated opponents WELL over 10 levels beyond them though proper use of tactics and consumables. In these cases it was *EXTREMELY* frustrating to only recieve the 600 max XP.
Those fights were very long and *very* dangerous, and while the loot stayes mostly on the same in value no matter what level you are, the XP should scale up if you accomplish an amazing victory.

Parties of lower level characters who accomplish similar things should also see higher Xp returns.

I know that folks are concerned about "powerlevelling", and in response to this, I would suggest a weighting system. The average party level should, of course, determine what sort of total XP the encounter should yield, but the XP distribution should be weighted towards the higher level character taking a percentage of the XP based on how much % of the total party level they account for. For example: A level 40 parties with a level 10. Total party level 50. Average party level of 25. 100xp is gained in an encounter (based on the avg party level of 25), and that Xp would be distributed as follows:
the level 40 would get 80% of that xp because they are 80% of the total party level, and the level 10 would get 20xp for being 20% of the total party level. This would make it impossible to "powerlevel" lower level characters, but would make it viable to create a "party bonus" to add on for all party members (perhaps something like 5% increased XP for each character AFTER the Xp is split). This would incentivise people to party up, and prevent high level characters from dragging lower level characters through content (as the encounters needed to give the lower level character good XP would be too deadly in most cases).

That Dave is just awesome! I have turned down many a party invite for the reasons of the others being so many levels below Rayven. I would have loved the opportunity to take some of those folks to some really cool places.

I like that general idea, although I could see it being overly complicated. There would be need to figure out a progression table for average party level XP gained, then the math to split the XP.

And assuming a straight mathematical table for the average party level XP, there could still be problems that would make grouping not as enticing as soloing with average party levels bringing down XP for everyone involved, which brings us back to the original problem of soloing being far more enticing than grouping.

You could factor in a very complicated table for party average XP gained, taking into account each character's invidual CLV, the challenge rating of the enemy defeated, ect, but it would be rather complicated to find the right numbers to balance out everything to be fair to all characters concerned, and I've been scribbling numbes for the last half hour trying to find ones that work. No dice.

I've sketched out several other ideas using average party levels, how shared XP among the group coudl be handled... I haven't found anything that works out mathmatically fair to all concerned yet... My overall suggestion aims for a rather wide range of levels being able to hunt together without their XP gain going down the drain for the simple act of grouping up.

The largest obstacle in putting forth an equation for the suggestion is you really want a large allowance for upper level characters... but not so large for the lower level ones. There is a huge difference between a 15th level character hunting with a couple of 3rd level characters and a 20th level character hunting with a group that's mostly in the 35th level range... The 20th level can have a decent chance of competing with the 35th leveled characters while the 3rd level characters simply do not have the capacity to work alongside that 15th level character to the same degree.

I think overall, it would also have to be an equation that's simple and eloquent. I don't think we want an XP system that's going to be crunching any serious amount of numbers for each and every single kill made by a PC in or out of group.

I think, the most all-round fair solution would be to have an average party level range for XP gain. If you're a 5th level character, as cool as it would really be to go hunting with that group of 35th level characters... you really have no business hunting what they hunt, and should not get XP for it. If you're a 35th level character, you don't have much business down in the goblin caves with that horde of new characters either killing the goblins for them. So....

Instead of using average party level to figure XP division.... I would suggest this:

If you get 10 XP for killing that orc solo, you get 10 XP for killing that orc in group. You get 10 XP period. The "group bonus" comes in that you have companions to help you kill that orc, you have a far higher chance of survival when you have a partner who could heal you when you get stunned/paralyzed/disabled, distract the enemy, kill the enemy before that enemy could kill you.... For me, -that- would still satisfy the intent of the suggestion... Not being substantially penalized for grouping with people XP wise.

Now... this can still lead to problems of massive leeching possible. While that high level character gets 10 XP per kill, the lower level gets much more for little to no effort. You could kill XP shared by a group for a kill, but there's a WHOLE lot of reason why that would be horribly unfair and make grouping even far more worthless than soloing than the current system has it.

So... this is where you figure in average party level.

Let's say for example, goblins require an average party level range of 2 (brand new character soloing) to 12th (I think it's around 12th level soloing that the grunt goblins pay out only 4 XP or so). If your average party level is over the upper limit... nobody in the group gets XP. Period. No ifs, ands or butts. No bringing in higher level characters to obliterate the enemy and let the lower levels leech like crazy. Same would apply to upper level enemies, but also taking into consideration the lower end of the range. If your party's average level is above or below the level range of the enemy.... no XP for anyone.

Now, for the higher levels, as the capability vs actual level is far wider, higher level monsters should have a more generous level range, but still ones that would preclude post epic characters from bringing along a single digit level character along for a leech session.

The average level range for each monster would have to be figured out, and undoubtedly be tweaked over time, but I think THAT application would in the long run be far more equitable for all involved in a hunting session.

Partially used suggestions.

The new xp system grants xp for average party levels within 20 of the creature's Challenge Rating, with the value split evenly amongst the party. There's a 5% bonus per PC party member, and a 5% penalty per summon/familiar/hench (down from the 20% NWN default penalty). New minimum is 5 XP per group member. Cap is still at 600 per kill, but I plan on adjusting that in the near future. Gaining beyond the 5 XP is limited to those within 10 levels of the party average (so a level 40 and level 20 could group up, but not a level 3 and a level 30).