Why not just show the XP gained per mob.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Candystore, Apr 22, 2018.

  1. Raina Elder

    You have blues and yellows for EQ exp what more do you people want!! geez.
    Niskin likes this.
  2. Brumans Augur

    I find it very telling that when they "removed" the exp differences, they didn't actually remove anything, but instead tacked on more things.

    20 years of decisions like that is why we can't have nice things, lol.
    Beimeith and Prathun like this.
  3. Ryak Augur

    These type of decisions are understandable at the time. It would have been a major pain in the to write a script to update whatever insane flat file format they had at the time to change every character of the affected races' current experience amount.

    Not to mention figuring out when to run this script (e.g. would it have conflicts with people currently online? Do they extend a patch downtime just to run this script? etc.)
    Prathun likes this.
  4. Ghubuk Augur

    Lol, would even be worse. Iksar SK saying I am getting 1,234,443,444,448,334 for each spider...................................................
  5. Ryak Augur


    What? that's BS! i'm only getting 982,324,234,523,123 per spider! I'm filing a bug report!
  6. Risiko Augur

    There are ways to mitigate the processing time and impact.

    For one, I would be willing to bet there is a large number of characters that haven't been played in the past year or more. Therefore, you pull a copy of the characters (a snapshot) to a second file. You then run your data migration script against that second file.

    After that, you plan a phased implementation. For instance, one server migrates at a time. In the server code, there would have to be a flag that denotes if the server is using the new system or old system. If it is using the new system, it uses the new file (or database if they upgraded to the 2000s).

    When each server does it's migration, that server is offline until it is complete. At the time of data migration, you check the preprocessed file, and remove all of the characters from it that have logged in since the pre-migration script was ran. At this point, you load all of the remaining characters from the second file in to the new database.

    Then you take a new snapshot of the current character file. From that, you remove all characters that got processed in to the new database. That leaves you with just the characters that logged between the time when you did the pre-migration and now. This number of characters should be significantly smaller than the total number of characters on the server. Run this list of characters through the migration script and put them in to the new database.

    Run a validation script to check for a handful of random characters you seeded to look for errors in the migration. If all is good, flip the flag for that server to start using the new character database, and boot that server up.

    Move on to the next server, and rinse repeat.

    The pre-migration process should cut a lot of time off of the actual down time unless everybody who has ever played Everquest decides to login on every character they have between the time you ran the pre-migration script and the time you actually do the data migration.
  7. fransisco Augur

    If each time you kill a mob numbers like
    1,546,234,677 and 1,645,234,656 are flying by, its not gonna mean much to people.


    One thing that could be done is to use a different unit. What if you showed % of lvl. Like 0.1% of lvl.
    That way we have an estimate without getting into all the complications
    Beimeith likes this.
  8. snailish Augur

    Group kills mob x and it is worth 100 experience, split evenly in most mmo.

    EQ never had it that clear, and to make it "fair" later they did things like rangers generate XP out of the ether something like: mob x is worth 100 xp, but in a group of 6 rangers it is worth 100 + 27 extra xp each. Or something like that, its a messy thing best left to mystery.

    I'd rather just have an xp rate flag on the server select screen: classic-GoD-modern-Bonus probably covers the range of existing servers (FV was "bonus" Zek still is iirc).
  9. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    Going to the hundreths place in percent of EXP earned would be enough accuracy for everyone.

    Kill orc pawn, receive 0.25% EXP. Kill orc centurion, receive 1.60% EXP. Etc.

    If it displayed those numbers it would be very neat. Doesn't have to be the raw numbers, just more detailed values shown in logs so you don't have to stare at your EXP bar to see progress.
    Beimeith likes this.
  10. tankNspank Elder

    They adjust mob exp per race / class, not just have a larger exp pool per level for race / class??
  11. Onstill New Member

    Prathun since its difficult to show the raw numbers, would it be possible to give a more granular exp bar. Show the number to 2 decimal places (if it takes more then 100 kills to get 1% then its really not worth). That might be enough to solve the problem without too much effort or figuring out of numbers.
  12. strongbus Augur

    shoot i be happy if they just change the player window to show the xp/aa window info so I didn't need to open 2 windows to check/and or use a custom ui(only real reason I use them)
  13. Machentoo Augur


    That was the fix because, before that, rangers (and other hybrids) effectively nerfed the XP of everyone else in the group. XP for a kill was distributed according to how many xp points the different players in the group had. Hybrids required much more xp per level, so they had a lot more xp points than anyone else their level, especially at higher levels. So, they got a bigger share of the pie for each mob kill, and everyone else in the group got a smaller slice. If you swapped out a ranger for a rogue or monk, your xp rate could go up 20-30% for killing the same mobs at the same speed. Or, if you had a monk log off and replaced him with a ranger, your xp rate slowed to a crawl.

    Now that penalty is eliminated by creating magic bonus xp out of thin air.
    snailish likes this.
  14. Machentoo Augur


    The fact that they won't do this shows that there is more going on than what they have revealed in this and the other recent thread.

    They don't want you to know the numbers to two or three decimal places. It would let players calculate things like exact zems, or exactly how much that 25% pot is really actually giving you. These are things that they would rather leave some mystery surrounding.
  15. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    With the level of competition that has always been around you don't see any issue that players would have with some servers having it easier to get levels then others?
  16. HoodenShuklak Augur

    This would be like the aggro meter on live... it's game changing. Dumbs down the game significantly.

    Motion denied.
  17. Dythan Ban Lev in Plane of Fire guy

    /em puts on his tin foil hat and wizard robe.
  18. Machentoo Augur


    It's no tinfoil hat theory when they have explicity said in the past that they don't want you to know certain things.

    Just because Roxxly hasn't read some of the old forum posts, and Ngreth ignores them, doesn't mean they aren't there.
  19. Numzan Augur

    Plus it also is an easy way to hide true values, so that if a dev decided to nerf the values mid game, without you seeing them Poof... nobody to complain about it until they see Hey? why is it going so slowly.
  20. MoveFastRZ Bloodsaber

    Maybe as a compromise let people see the percentage expressed as a more fine-tuned decimal (as opposed to a minimum of 1 percent to move the needle?)