Reading Seki's suggestion regarding removing XP for killing companions, I came up with the idea for XP control. It's something like what Blizzard implemented in WoW, the rested bonus. (When you left your character in an inn before logging out (practically using a hearthstone teleport spell, so it costed you 1 min with the loading screen), you started to accumulate rested bonus, which until some amount doubled your XP gain from killing monsters.)
The idea would be, that if you do the same task repetitively, it should have diminishing result in XP gain.
Version 1:
For simplicity, let's consider a few game variables for players, which keep track of XP gained from different sources. These variables would limit the actual XP gained from the current source/type of source, if they reach a threshold, diminishing returns would be applied, and would be more sever with the increase of this variable.
Edit: This variable would reset each day to 0.
To compensate the XP loss, there would be a bonus for the few extra activity of that type.
F.e:
Killing 1 centaur is 900 xp currently (or is it mean centaur? for our example doesn't matter).
The bonus is 10% on new activity and lasts 10k XP and at each 10k XP a new threshold level is reached.
This would affect gaining XP from killing centaurs like this:
- Kill 11 centaurs (with the 10% bonus) for 10.890 XP and the bonus is used up, so killing centaurs would yield only 900 XP, the normal value.
- Then kill 11 centaurs for 9.900 XP (10.890 + 9.900 = 20.790) to reach next threshold and reduce the XP gain for killing centaurs by 10%, killing centaurs would yield 810 XP only.
- Then kill 12 centaurs to get to the next level, thus killing 30 centaurs would result in about the same amount of XP as before, but killing more would be less and less, as centaurs would yield only 720 XP after the 30k threshold.
- To reach the next threshold (next 10k of XP) would require 13 centaurs now, the next even more and so on, until the diminishing returns are at a minimal value, like 10% or even 0%.
(The effect could be split up to killing anything, or killing types of mobs)
There could be many variations,
- The simplest: XP from kill, craft, repeatable quest, killing specials NPC's like companions (to solve the abuse)
- More complex: XP from killing different type of critters (super mutants, ghouls, animals/mutated animals, monsters (centaurs, floaters, deathclaws), humans), crafting different level of stuff depending on the skill required to craft them, repeatable quests.
Note:
- Kill, craft and repeatable quests could have a different value set for thresholds (killing companions is not that often, unless abused, so their threshold value for diminishing results would be much less)
- Special threshold for XP gained on killing players, thus allowing even killing players to reward XP (and loose XP from victim)
(Before you freak out, it could be like the XP gained/lost depends on the level and current XP of the target killed, so the higher level, the more XP gained/lost but that could not be more
than the current XP of the victim, so negative current XP or level down or other abusable stuff don't happen. This needs to be refined ofc, but it could happen with this system. The diminishing returns would depend on both the victim and the killer.)
- Not only giving Xp for PK would help PK'ers, but also that with this people can't exploit/macro farm anything effectively, this killing companions in tents would be useless, or well, would be useful only a few times.
Version 2:
The threshold is not related to accumulated XP per day, but number of tasks done per day, like number of centaurs killed, or number of things crafted, etc, this version would reward killing high XP targets and crafting high XP stuff more, it would reflect on the XP gain of newbies as well if they do the same task to level up as for a newbie to get to first threshold from mutated rats would be a lot anyways.
Version 3:
The threshold is related to accumulated XP as in version 1, but dynamically changes with the level of the player, having a maximum somewhere around 30. (treating level 100 players like level 30)
Special note (for those kind of people who like the "hum ya hum" dialogues and want that 0.0X chance of advantage in the long run..):
- This idea does not consider the fact(?) that some build require someone to be much higher level than others, even inhumanly high level, and that they need to work (or exploit?) their asses off to achieve that. That is not the problem of XP control regarding the casualness or giving XP for PvP oriented players, it is a problem of builds, and should be fixed in a different way.
Ofc, I'm willing to look into the tech details, if this is desired.
Edit: I think version 2 would group experienced players together, bc that would want to have the advantage of killing high XP reward mobs.
Topic: XP control - for less fun for PVE freaks and more fun for casuals/PK-ers. (Read 1357 times)