Experience point rewards for encounters

[ovarf]

My question is can spawn rate self adjust based on the number of players in an area?

If so it seems that this would be a good solution to the grouping issue the more players the faster the spawn so it keeps in line.

[DM kelsfar]

Ok maybe you somehow missed what I was saying. I said there is NOTHING wrong with the spawn rates. I was hinting on the idea of areas/dungeons here and there, Not ALL areas, that would have fast spawn rates for big party's like the example of a battlefield area that has swarms of orcs appearing in waves at all times. lol its not a grind area as but to a means of an area that challenges big party's versus a big party hitting the Orc cave for example would have very little challenge and clear the levels in 10 min flat with everyone stopping at the end of it and looking at eachother like "what do we do now" was an idea lol thats all.

[ovarf]

actually i was responding to an earlier comment, sorry if there was confusion, about how with large groups you kill much faster then sit and wait for the spawns.

[DM Sir Carnifex]

Feb 6, 2009 18:02:04 GMT -5 DM kelsfar said:

Ok maybe you somehow missed what I was saying. I said there is NOTHING wrong with the spawn rates. I was hinting on the idea of areas/dungeons here and there, Not ALL areas, that would have fast spawn rates for big party's like the example of a battlefield area that has swarms of orcs appearing in waves at all times. lol its not a grind area as but to a means of an area that challenges big party's versus a big party hitting the Orc cave for example would have very little challenge and clear the levels in 10 min flat with everyone stopping at the end of it and looking at eachother like "what do we do now" was an idea lol thats all.

Alright, so if there's an area like this in-game would players be happy? I know when a DM spawns a horde of goblins or something to be like this on occasion, they have gotten complaints about overkill. ;D

But my opinion is that such an area just caters to the big-time high-level grinders.

[broham2]

Feb 6, 2009 19:07:49 GMT -5 DM Sir Carnifex said:

Feb 6, 2009 18:02:04 GMT -5 DM kelsfar said:

Ok maybe you somehow missed what I was saying. I said there is NOTHING wrong with the spawn rates. I was hinting on the idea of areas/dungeons here and there, Not ALL areas, that would have fast spawn rates for big party's like the example of a battlefield area that has swarms of orcs appearing in waves at all times. lol its not a grind area as but to a means of an area that challenges big party's versus a big party hitting the Orc cave for example would have very little challenge and clear the levels in 10 min flat with everyone stopping at the end of it and looking at eachother like "what do we do now" was an idea lol thats all.

Alright, so if there's an area like this in-game would players be happy? I know when a DM spawns a horde of goblins or something to be like this on occasion, they have gotten complaints about overkill. ;D

But my opinion is that such an area just caters to the big-time high-level grinders.

Mine too. We had a high spawn area at one point, the kobolds, and they were a grinders wet dream... they were easy enough to kill that you had no worries of death, and regardless of the low xp there were enough of them in groups that you could just soak up xp. I saw more than one person afk there just eating the xp (against the rules, btw).

Mages would go in there with area of effect spells, fighters would kill swaths with great cleave..

I dont know about high spawn rate areas.

[ovarf]

but its fun even if your not getting any exp to watch a wave of enemy's fall to your sword.

as far as girding goes whats the big deal? Some people like to advance their PCs faster then others dose this really hurt the PW? Not all play styles are the same some like to RP low some high, some people play 5 PCs some only ever play one. Dose it somehow hurt your RP if someone else can advance faster?

[shorn]

First, to counter a point about the kobolds, as I have had some experience there. They did not spawn in great numbers in one single place, so being afk would have been no great benefit. Furthermore, the only reason that was so badly abused was that they were capped at a 5 xp minimum, making them ideal targets for epic characters at levels past 24. Also, on a side note, contrary to its description, cleave only hits 2 additional targets.

A comment that I would like to add is that yes, a group can kill a monster twice as fast, but that is only applicable if the other player is exactly as good as you. I have found that by and far, rp characters like a good grind, but don't hold up on their end of the damage. The same is true of wizards, as caster wizards run out of spells very quickly. This is also much the same with rogures versus undead. That aside, I still feel that party earns xp a good deal slower than solo.

The argument against this is that you can, as a party, go and fight a higher level mob. This I have also found to be untrue, as the higher level mob will just based of rolling a 20 and critting a player, and bad luck, slowly kill any of the non powerbuilds off. A good example of this are the frost giants, who can kill a player just because they are unlucky, and not a spellcaster.

I also think that the CRPG nature of this game has to be taken into account before we immediately jump into the assumtion that we have to do things the way pnp did (xp halved per new party member). PnP relies on many things we dont have, such as DM completel oversight over the entire party, and setting mobs both handleable, and worth the xp per time put into it, for the entire party. There are no special bosses here on a regular basis worth great xp, who pose a unque challenge, to break the monotony of grinding

So, solo xp should not be made to suffer for those that dont wish to group up. But party should definately get benefits. It is MUCH easier to go solo with your own uber powerbuild than to find a group, buff your fighters, and heal your compatriots. I see no reason why we benefit from reducing party xp save, and forgive me for saying this if there is some other reason I dont know, stubbornly holding onto our pnp preconceptions transferred over to a CRPG.

[eldur(retired)]

Feb 6, 2009 19:38:00 GMT -5 ovarf said:

but its fun even if your not getting any exp to watch a wave of enemy's fall to your sword.

as far as girding goes whats the big deal? Some people like to advance their PCs faster then others dose this really hurt the PW? Not all play styles are the same some like to RP low some high, some people play 5 PCs some only ever play one. Dose it somehow hurt your RP if someone else can advance faster?

I don't want to derail this into a play style thread, r/p vs grinding. It's not really the purpose of the thread.

There is a valid point here in that we don't want people to kill 100's at a time with no risk and still receive experience points.
I remember DM campaigns where high level characters wanted to kill an army of level 1's and soak up tons of xps.

Most DM's don't allow it, and I don't forsee us allowing it either.


Thanks

[luna]

Feb 6, 2009 17:30:03 GMT -5 ovarf said:

My question is can spawn rate self adjust based on the number of players in an area?

If so it seems that this would be a good solution to the grouping issue the more players the faster the spawn so it keeps in line.

Hmm.. thats not such a terrible idea actually.

One thing we have discussed a bit as well is grouping spawns together so you face more at once.

[mrdeadman]

I think the XP system is just fine. Better than that actually, it is very generous. I used a PnP example once and someone pointed out that you would be getting much more XP in PnP for a single kill. But, there creatures wouldn't endlessly respawn either. So this system is very good and I commend the staff on their work in this department.

[eldur(retired)]

Feb 6, 2009 19:40:34 GMT -5 shorn said:

A comment that I would like to add is that yes, a group can kill a monster twice as fast, but that is only applicable if the other player is exactly as good as you. I have found that by and far, rp characters like a good grind, but don't hold up on their end of the damage. The same is true of wizards, as caster wizards run out of spells very quickly. This is also much the same with rogures versus undead. That aside, I still feel that party earns xp a good deal slower than solo.

The argument against this is that you can, as a party, go and fight a higher level mob. This I have also found to be untrue, as the higher level mob will just based of rolling a 20 and critting a player, and bad luck, slowly kill any of the non powerbuilds off. A good example of this are the frost giants, who can kill a player just because they are unlucky, and not a spellcaster.

I also think that the CRPG nature of this game has to be taken into account before we immediately jump into the assumtion that we have to do things the way pnp did (xp halved per new party member). PnP relies on many things we dont have, such as DM completel oversight over the entire party, and setting mobs both handleable, and worth the xp per time put into it, for the entire party. There are no special bosses here on a regular basis worth great xp, who pose a unque challenge, to break the monotony of grinding

So, solo xp should not be made to suffer for those that dont wish to group up. But party should definately get benefits. It is MUCH easier to go solo with your own uber powerbuild than to find a group, buff your fighters, and heal your compatriots. I see no reason why we benefit from reducing party xp save, and forgive me for saying this if there is some other reason I dont know, stubbornly holding onto our pnp preconceptions transferred over to a CRPG.

A couple of things to point out:

1) At high levels, wizards have a lot of spells that can either enhance the group, or destroy monsters quickly. At low levels a crossbow helps a lot. The enemies will die quicker, regardless of powerbuild type which means the challenge is lessened based on the way we are tuning the monsters.

2) Pen and paper is not really relevant here as we are not "following" a book in this case. The monsters are tuned for solo encounters. The reward is tuned for solo encounters. Party xps are tuned for quite a bonus considering the lessening of difficulty compared to a solo encounter.

3) XP's are not lower for parties. There is a significant increase to xps when you measure it against the challenge rating. The xps in parties will be split as long as they are tuned for solo encounters. The other option, as mentioned above is to tune the monsters for parties, but that will alienate those that solo or force everyone into powerbuilds which would cause a death spiral into making mobs nearly impossible for the casual player.

We will have epic encounters, but those are meant to be special group encounters, not the norm.


And last, which I will only bring up once, we will not tune against powerbuilds. Yes people will have them, and yes they will have an edge, but we should not consider them in this discussion for parties, especially in terms of efficiency. D&D is not designed to be a balanced game, so we do our best to balance the monsters across all classes.

Please don't derail this into a powerbuild debate thread and how powerbuilds won't group unless they get max xps from every encounter just because they are better than everyone.

[ovarf]

Feb 6, 2009 19:42:20 GMT -5 eldur(retired) said:

Feb 6, 2009 19:38:00 GMT -5 ovarf said:

but its fun even if your not getting any exp to watch a wave of enemy's fall to your sword.

as far as girding goes whats the big deal? Some people like to advance their PCs faster then others dose this really hurt the PW? Not all play styles are the same some like to RP low some high, some people play 5 PCs some only ever play one. Dose it somehow hurt your RP if someone else can advance faster?

I don't want to derail this into a play style thread, r/p vs grinding. It's not really the purpose of the thread.

There is a valid point here in that we don't want people to kill 100's at a time with no risk and still receive experience points.
I remember DM campaigns where high level characters wanted to kill an army of level 1's and soak up tons of xps.

Most DM's don't allow it, and I don't forsee us allowing it either.


Thanks

then cap the Level at with you still get exp rewards for it and anyone above that point gets 0 doesn't change my original point its still fun regardless of exp.

[eldur(retired)]

Feb 6, 2009 19:57:06 GMT -5 ovarf said:

then cap the Level at with you still get exp rewards for it and anyone above that point gets 0 doesn't change my original point its still fun regardless of exp.

That's pretty much the idea

[meldor]

Feb 6, 2009 19:56:20 GMT -5 eldur(retired) said:

Feb 6, 2009 19:40:34 GMT -5 shorn said:

A comment that I would like to add is that yes, a group can kill a monster twice as fast, but that is only applicable if the other player is exactly as good as you. I have found that by and far, rp characters like a good grind, but don't hold up on their end of the damage. The same is true of wizards, as caster wizards run out of spells very quickly. This is also much the same with rogures versus undead. That aside, I still feel that party earns xp a good deal slower than solo.

The argument against this is that you can, as a party, go and fight a higher level mob. This I have also found to be untrue, as the higher level mob will just based of rolling a 20 and critting a player, and bad luck, slowly kill any of the non powerbuilds off. A good example of this are the frost giants, who can kill a player just because they are unlucky, and not a spellcaster.

I also think that the CRPG nature of this game has to be taken into account before we immediately jump into the assumtion that we have to do things the way pnp did (xp halved per new party member). PnP relies on many things we dont have, such as DM completel oversight over the entire party, and setting mobs both handleable, and worth the xp per time put into it, for the entire party. There are no special bosses here on a regular basis worth great xp, who pose a unque challenge, to break the monotony of grinding

So, solo xp should not be made to suffer for those that dont wish to group up. But party should definately get benefits. It is MUCH easier to go solo with your own uber powerbuild than to find a group, buff your fighters, and heal your compatriots. I see no reason why we benefit from reducing party xp save, and forgive me for saying this if there is some other reason I dont know, stubbornly holding onto our pnp preconceptions transferred over to a CRPG.

A couple of things to point out:

1) At high levels, wizards have a lot of spells that can either enhance the group, or destroy monsters quickly. At low levels a crossbow helps a lot. The enemies will die quicker, regardless of powerbuild type which means the challenge is lessened based on the way we are tuning the monsters.

2) Pen and paper is not really relevant here as we are not "following" a book in this case. The monsters are tuned for solo encounters. The reward is tuned for solo encounters. Party xps are tuned for quite a bonus considering the lessening of difficulty compared to a solo encounter.

3) XP's are not lower for parties. There is a significant increase to xps when you measure it against the challenge rating. The xps in parties will be split as long as they are tuned for solo encounters. The other option, as mentioned above is to tune the monsters for parties, but that will alienate those that solo or force everyone into powerbuilds which would cause a death spiral into making mobs nearly impossible for the casual player.

We will have epic encounters, but those are meant to be special group encounters, not the norm.


And last, which I will only bring up once, we will not tune against powerbuilds. Yes people will have them, and yes they will have an edge, but we should not consider them in this discussion for parties, especially in terms of efficiency. D&D is not designed to be a balanced game, so we do our best to balance the monsters across all classes.

Please don't derail this into a powerbuild debate thread and how powerbuilds won't group unless they get max xps from every encounter just because they are better than everyone.

I agree with all this.. my only point is around my previous post, some areas should be designed for group and not for soloer.

100% of the ecnounters are doable in solo right now with some builds.

So group can find some challenges other then make it easier to kill solo monsters.

[ovarf]

I think what he is saying is; he wants some areas that require a well balance group to run thou so we can have some of that old time PnP feel of clearing out a dungeon with your thief, fighter, cleric ,and mage party.