It's not quite 5pm currently in the time zone of the game company. So it's "tomorrow" in several hours yet.
I suspect he is talking about the AA-per-kill change in the update notes. However, he has yet to explain why the 200% from a single source nerf was introduced. I had 3 x ftp characters heading for 115 where I would subscribe them to get the AAs / Prestige etc. Two of those characters went from around 103 to 108 from me doing Griklors on my mains and then adding them. The third one I didn't get around to doing and will now only go from 103 to 105 max off it. It would also slow down me getting from 108 to 115 now via the other tasks. I say 'would' as I have since lost the incentive to keep playing these characters following this nerf. I'd rather pocket the 3 x subscription I would have paid when they would have hit 115. I just don't see the logic of making the exp grind even worse than it already was, especially on content that is now a few years old.
If they move the exp back on to mobs in the wild I will possibly play the game again. There is a portion of their player base that have been alientated with the overseer idler that was added to suppliment the loss of exp in the wild. I do not play or like idlers, and the nerf to mobs in the wild drove me a long time player with multiple permanent accounts out of the game entirely. The game is being managed poorly and the company seem intent only on sucking out every last drop of cash they can get from their players with 0 quality of life developments in years. The exp nerf makes the game unrecognizable from the find a group and camp a rare game we used to have. If they reverse it due to nerfing quest exp then....maybe.
Unfortunately, it seems like that style of gameplay has gone (although I'm sure a few people here will maintain you can still do that, which you can if you happen to enjoy riding a bicycle naked with no seat on a tripwire that is on fire above a pool of acid!) Personally I was just looking to get another 3 FTP chars to help me with my boxes but these latest change of 200% from a single source has even blocked me getting lvls 100 - 110+ quite easy now. I quit my main three's subscription now and stopped bothering with the FTP chars as well. I have no idea why they are introducing exp blocks on years old content when the exp grind / group content is already the worst thing about this game. I can only suspect there is some kind of exploit happening with the power-levelling for cash people and this is their nuclear response to that.
Making Overseer the single greatest source of XP post 110 was probably not intended either, but here we are
Progression achievement XP in level increase expansions is the single greatest source of XP post-110. Overseers, on average, provides 7% XP per day. If you do nothing else but Overseer in-game you can level from 110 to 125 in about 214 days. Not exactly the barn-burner of regular experience you're attempting to pass it off as.
Would be nice if we had some indication as to the "concern" this caused that they felt it so necessary to take action on. Did they think people were leveling up to fast? Is it to pave way for some new feature that could be imbalanced without this change? Do they philosophically disagree with people being able to skip over the dead zone of progression xp 100-110? Seems like a very strange area to focus already limited resource time on. They have limited staff/resources...so I want to presume they focused in this area with intent beyond just "There, now it's harder to level for those players"; because I don't see how this impacts current expansion players? Maybe slows down ONE persona leveling if you haven't used those missions yet? Odd stuff...
A basic 12-hour task gives 1%. You can do 10 in a 24 hour periods, so i would use 10% XP from Overseer as your base. in reality you are probably going to average closer to 12-13% because of Rare and Uncommon tasks, as well at critical successes. And while I will agree this is not really that fast, but it is faster than the XP I'm getting playing the game post 110. The problem I'm running into with Personas is that i cannot get the one time completion bumps in current content that I could get on the main toon. And going back to catch up on progression i missed along the way is not the answer. For example, here is what i got for some RoF achievements at level 111. Note that first one is not 9.8%, it is 0.098, or less than 1%. I'm only working through this stuff to be able to request RoF raids, not for the XP. [Tue Mar 05 22:44:43 2024] You have successfully been granted your reward for: Savior of Kael Drakkel: The King's Madness [Tue Mar 05 22:44:47 2024] You gain experience! (0.098%) [Tue Mar 05 22:44:47 2024] You have gained 10 ability point(s)! You now have 130 ability point(s). [Tue Mar 05 22:44:47 2024] You have successfully been granted your reward for: Hero of Kael Drakkel: The King's Madness [Tue Mar 05 22:44:50 2024] You gain experience! (0.066%) [Tue Mar 05 22:44:50 2024] You have gained 3 ability point(s)! You now have 133 ability point(s). I'm supplementing XP on my Personas by running One Door Closes a couple times a day. These give 4.092% (with LoTD running) at 111, so adding these in i can get close to what i get from Overseer. But can you say that running a trivial Mission over and over is really playing the game?
Clearly it was intended originally. It didn't take much to figure out how big the exp boost would be.
A group of level 100s would never even complete the missions, let alone in 30 minutes. The missions were designed to for level 110s. It was, to me, an unintended consequence of the introduction of progression experience rewards. Because it benefits the player as a catch-up mechanism, we players could view it as intentional. But the reward is too great at level 100, so they capped it to two levels.
I think the larger problem here is leveling isn't fun anymore because hardly anyone else is willing/able to group at the lower levels. The game just doesn't have the population outside of the TLP servers. Many people like making new characters multiple times a year after the new expansion grind calms down. Making leveling harder feels like a punishment at this point. I'll admit I'm part of the problem because I've bought a number of heroic upgrades over the years, along with extra character slots, extra merc slots, and kronos to buy gear for these characters. I was just about to make a bunch of new personas and buy a bunch krono to gear them but I think this will be the year I skip that.
The fact is that for the last 4 years (since ToV), they simply didn't care. It wasn't an issue. I think, as you pointed out, that something is coming down the pike that necessitated the nerf and xp cap. Either that or some dev finally caught wind of it, got mad about it, and decided to nerf it...which isn't unheard of.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the new Teek TLP server coming in May. If it has faster exp it maybe that which needs to be caped and the TOV mission nerf is just a biproduct of changes needed on the new server.
TLP servers I thought were like islands for Lepers, you kept them isoloated and out of contact with other places. I hope their things aren't reason to change XP on live servers that has been just fine all these years.
The TLP servers need to exist in their own alternate universe like the Test and Beta servers. That way, people can play on their little personal modded servers to their heart's content, and none of that nonsense ever need infect Live servers again.
The amount of exp rewarded for the tasks was very much intended and has been that way since the expansion went live. That reward being capped is what has changed, that just happens to impact the levelling aspect. True, that with the additional expansions and better gear / higher characters it has become possible to get that exp at a lower level, but then that just becomes a catch-up mechanism doesn't it? Like being able to kill red mobs at lower levels because you have better buffs / gear than was in era for that expansion? I could cash in a bunch of collections and level them to 110 in a matter of minutes - is that still intended? It's just a by-product of mudflation; the very same thing that allows Griklor / Velks to be soloed nowadays, or raids that used to take 54 players being killed by a group (or even solo), or levelling from 1-75 in a matter of hours.
