More balance ideas! Specifically regarding hp, classes, and xp, ready your salt shakers

Acemvi

I return after being suggested to... make a Suggestions post, fitting.

tl;dr, now in bullet point format:

Sorcerers and wizards getting 3 hp per level while bards and rogues get 4 hp per level is very strange. All other hit dices sans sorcerers and wizards should probably get an extra 1 hp per level.
Certain classes badly need pure class stores. The fighter pure class store rejuvenated the class, others like druids, monks, and rogues could use a similar makeover. To reduce NPC glut and overall clutter, the pure class stores could be bundled together (monks and rogues together, for instance).
It feels awful to slaughter 40 mobs in a quest and get no XP for them and it's sorely tempting to just run past them, so having them give at least 1 or 2 XP would be great even at higher levels.

Discuss please, and thank you.

Zool

Dunno about the XP for monster kills, probably ok? might make some DM events give a lot more than expected in some situations.

It might be good to simple, create more of (more interesting of) and increase the chance of drops of, monster loot

Acemvi

The XP thing is mostly about how... weird it feels to kill a whole bunch of monsters in a quest and get nothing out of it. Monsters don't drop loot, they don't drop consumables, and they don't drop prestige. They're just... there as obstacles.

So you can kill 200 ants and walk away with 160 quest XP at the end of it (higher w/o ECL).

It just feels bad. Functionally, there's no reason to kill any of the mobs other than the end boss.

foley

As a rogue it is very tempting to stealth to the boss, kill it and leave, there is 0 reason to fight spawns, so any change to give us a reason to actually take the risk and fight would be a welcomed one.

O-louth

Also Zool. You can go from 4-8 in 8 hours of playtime. No dm exp, pure quest. And we are not talking an Old CB Train, it was very easy and with a bare minimum of help from others. So do not be afraid of something breaking with this suggestion, already is.

@O-louth

Wouldn’t have been able to do this with my fighter, but maybe with a cleric/Druid/ranger/paladin who has self buffs or if you have a dedicated buffer to send you off. Could def see it then. Took me about two weeks to get 8, over a month to get 9.

O-louth

You could and you can Latok. Especially with a fighter. Knowing how quests scale is the key. The starter quests can take anyone from 4-6 in one sitting if no ECL. With a reset along the way you can get to mid 6-7 easily. And with a few quests with allies you can go to 8. Took three quests to go from 7-8.

gDarDog

Would recommend focus on buffing weaker classes rather than nerfing stronger ones.

HellzYeah

I am of two minds about a lot of this.

I generally am actually okay with how the XP works at the moment. It doesn't take long to get to a decent level where you have a wide access to quests, but beyond that it takes a lot longer to gain power. It took me a little more than a month to hit level 10 (Though I only died once,) and while I think it should be faster I don't think it should be by very much at all.

I do like that, with very little investment, you can get to a level where you can compete. The difference between 8 and 10 is... fairly minimal for most PCs with some notable exceptions so not having to dedicate a whole lot of time to get there is a good thing.

But I've also been playing basically non-stop for the last month, and have put in more hours than I care to admit into the game as a result. CoA is so hard to play casually and I think this sort of thing makes it very hard for players who aren't on every single day to see the progression as anything other than tedious. I think players put a lot of emphasis on those last few levels, and while I don't agree with that necessarily I also understand why it can feel like you're not really moving if you're trying to play the game more casually.

I don't really know what the solution is here. There's not really enough content at the high end to support just removing the XP filter and letting everyone level normally (thus embracing the level cap we have, one of the better design choices made early on,) but the current system just feels really bad. This feels like the easy solution isn't actually the best one until more of the server feels complete. When there's more content for max level PCs, I think I would be more behind upping the XP gains a bit. As it stands, this is a secondary change.

Lord_Acererak

@foley

That's an option afforded to rogues. Not all quests are run and gun simulators. I would list this as operating as intended.

Lord_Acererak

9 and 10 should feel like, "oh man. I'm old. How can I shape myself into more of a leader and less of a follower, as I've achieved this."

Not that you -must- be a leader, or -must- be doing this, but understand this is the max level of our server, you're stronk and this should be reflected.

Acemvi

This is a case of game design rearing its ugly head and clashing with the ideals of the DM team. It will never feel good to slaughter mobs and get nothing from it. Even a single tick of XP might be enough to sell the illusion of progress.

If the concern is that so many mobs giving XP would speed up progression too much, I would suggest lowering the number of mobs but making them tougher.

O-louth

@Lord_Acererak said in More balance ideas! Specifically regarding hp, classes, and xp, ready your salt shakers:

9 and 10 should feel like, "oh man. I'm old. How can I shape myself into more of a leader and less of a follower, as I've achieved this."

Not that you -must- be a leader, or -must- be doing this, but understand this is the max level of our server, you're stronk and this should be reflected.

In that case, progression is way too fast from 4-8. 8-10 works. 4-8 way too fast

@O-louth

The only problem is when we had 4-8 much slower, there was such a huge gap between the 8-10’s and the 4-8’s that lowbies couldn’t interact with established characters. It’s a difficult balance

Lord_Acererak

I think a good question, for me at least, is what does the level range of 7-9, and 8-10 represent to you guys?

The way I see it, 7-9 is meant as our average range. 9 begins to have some pretty wicked power compared to 7, but 7 and 8 and still survive pretty easily given the various aspects of our server. 10 the standard spawns on the server become less an obstacle more of a gold sink. where 4-6 you're recommended to stay within Arabel/Bospir areas.

To me, a character shouldn't have issue getting to 7 within the first few hours of game play, and typically those RP connections should really start to take form after 6, your character in theory will begin to branch out to those connections and blossom into.. Whatever. Slowing down 4-6 will make people feel like we're senselessly gatekeeping that character growth while throttling where they can go, what they can do, and of course who they can do it with because of a stupid thing like Levels.

I think the 4-8 range is operating fine, and the reason exp stops coming in as readily around 9 is for the obvious reason, that 9-10 are meant to represent the pinnacle of our server and the endform of a characters mechanical development. (note, a character can still grow and change, even at 10. But one hopes by level 10 they have achieved some level of personal story growth already, and they will be more rigid in their ways).

disclaimer - its a RPG, what I said above isn't fact, its just my general feel of how to server works right now. I've had characters sit around at lvl 10, fully flushed out. Not like you hit 10 and we're watching for your whitelight moment.

Acemvi

I think 8 is a perfectly good average. My complaint is, again, completely irrelevant to the speed at which you gain XP after level 8 and has to do with the fact that you just don't get anything when killing mobs. It just feels... dull, to kill a bunch of monsters and get nothing.

This has nothing to do with reaching level 10 so much as the feeling of doing so. Hence why I'm fine with monsters giving as little as 1 XP on quests. I understand this is a subjective matter, it's one of those "it wouldn't matter if it wasn't a video game" things.

It's also possible my thoughts aren't coming across as well as I'd hoped.

The more important thing here is 1 hp per level to non-d4 classes and more class gear, anyway.

Lord_Acererak

Nah, I can agree with that. Killing stuff for no net gain, not even 1 exp per could definitely get dull when out and about. Baring the crafting reagent animals and such, I'll pick my brain. Maybe we can come up with some ways to make that more fun.

edit-

Spitballing here, and @Zool feel free to ban me, but I wonder if we could add some kind of system to track kills per monster. Like Orcs, Gobinoids, Kobolds, and undead, and at the end of each month the player with the most is rewarded a small Prestige Package. . . . . . .

Hrm....

At least this would make it feel like each kill was represented in some way.

and personally, I wanna know how many orcs we kill a week.

gDarDog

If the mobs dropped items as well it would probably solve that same issue.

V-Rage

There used to be minor bounty items in V4.

Like orc heads, kobold teeth and things that were worth a small amount of gold with various factions.

Maybe put em in again but make them worth a small amount of prestige?

HellzYeah

It's more about the instant gratification feeling of seeing that xp gain tick up over time. Putting xp on stuff you can turn in doesn't really solve that problem.

But really the problem here in my eyes is the disparity between these two sections of the level range. It goes decently fast for a good chunk of the range before coming to an almost complete stop once you hit a certain point.

This is sort of moot, again, because the server really doesn't have enough content for the highest level players in my opinion and while I think the progression one you hit a certain point does feel patently unrewarding for the amount of time needed I think it's secondary to giving players at the level cap more things to do.