On Thu, 2 Oct 1997, Rich Chiavaroli wrote:
[snip!]
> Sooooo.. How does having somewhat of a curve where the the optimum level
> for mob to be that you kill is 4 levels above you. After that, you start
> to lose a percentage of the exp that the mob has to offer? So you will
> not get what a higher level player will get for killing hte same mob
> but it doesn't put a "cap" on the max exp you can get per kill per level.
> How does that sound?
I don't know. Often low level players with skill can off much higher
level monsters than you'd give them credit for. It would be a shame to
penalize such low levels because you don't think they'd be able to kill
high level monsters without high level help.
There's no real good answer to this, and that's one of the things that's
tough about running a mud. Among the "solutions" I've seen are :
1.) Arbitrarily limiting grouping to within like ten levels or so. This
seems to be a very arbitrary thing, and it doesn't stop high level
players from just getting a mob to awful or incapacitated and letting the
low leveler get all the xp. It does stop groups in which the low level
goes and gets a tasty beverage while the high level gains them a few
levels, though.
2.) Penalizing xp for killing monsters way above your level. As I said
above, this penalizes intelligent play by low level players if they
mistakenly cross the magic point of diminishing returns. Some examples
of "intelligent play" are clerics using poison to wear a monster down,
thieves backstabbing and fleeing, tossing charmed mobs against a big
monster while a friend casts spells into it, etc. Nothing too innovative
necessarily, but all ways that most big monsters can be killed by a group
of persistent low level adventurers. Since this is the kind of mudding I
like to do, I'm somewhat biased against this solution. ;) (as if you
couldn't tell)
3.) Making xp per point of damage done as opposed to a value for killing
the mob. While this sounds like a good idea, this system severly
penalizes clerics whose main role is healing the rest of the party while
they hang back and let the tanks inflict the damage. Also this could
lead to unbalanced amounts of xp being given out for hit and run tactics
against very powerful monsters, depending upon whether the xp you'd get
for casting 'magic missile' at the lord of Midgaard and then running like
a scared child would outweigh the xp you'd get for killing 20 or 30 fidos.
4. Putting a limit on the amount of xp a character can get from a single
kill. This is somewhat effective, although it has the problems of no. 2
above and it also allows an intelligent high level player to either get
enough newbies in his group so that they're all getting their max per
kill or kill monsters that get the newbies just about their max. It's
just a numbers game at that point. Although it would slow that sort of
advancement in either case. This is probably the best solution so far as
long as you set the 'cap' at slightly more than you'd think it would be
possible for a character to achieve on his own. Putting the cap too low
would just make for pissed players, and putting the cap too high would
make it somewhat ineffective. Ideally the only characters that would
run into the 'cap' would be those who are being aided by a high
leveller. Also dropping the cap entirely after a number of levels seems
to be the way to go. mid to high level players should be allowed to get
whatever xp they can earn.
There are other solutions, but already this message is getting
obnoxiously long.
--Ray
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