Hard Question

[Mimir[IS]]

I asked this in chat the other day but I don’t think I got an answer to my question.

I put it in the following way,

Is it considered Ok to lead and solicit players on tours to advance the explore level for all the participants?

Is it also Ok for a lower level to tag along with a higher level player to loot multiple kills (this advances the Trade level of the lower level player)?

Now comes the real question:

Why then is it so looked down on, even to the extent that there has been code written into the server to prevent the gaining or “power leveling” the combat aspect of a lower player?

[seekeronos]

I'd say it is more a matter of degree here.

Waaaaay back in the early days of Live™, there was code written to limit the amount of combat xp lower level toons could gain by being powerleveled - in fact, it was so bad that my JE was very unbalanced (though thru the well-intentioned efforts of some guildies at that time) by gaining 25 CL's in a few hours.

Needless to say, having something like a CL28 / TL5 / EL 8 toon was virtually crippling when it came

time to fit a reactor and a shield to the task.

There were also balancing issues in play, as well as the common sense notion that nobody should gain dozens of levels in a night of gaming... or im what was my case at that time, someone else's gaming and my just spectating.

That said, I see nothing wrong with tours or having lowbies in group gleaning the kills (especially after the main DPS/healers in the party have the pick of what they wanted).

I'm sure that there will be some purists who believe that leveling should either be solo, or with a group where the levels differ by no more than 3-4 levels, and anything more than that is of the Devil.

[Tyran]

The tour trick where someone can become lvl 150 within a few days really needs to gtfo before launch if its not already. These crazy amounts of XP are/were probably given because there was no other way to gain explore XP at the time.

As for the trade thing, that's not too imbalanced. The high level is going to be sacrificing a lot of time doing that as trade levels are not quick to level.

So the answer to your question lies with the explore trick, which has (perhaps) not been balanced yet.

[Kherana]

The tour trick where someone can become lvl 150 within a few days really needs to gtfo before launch if its not already. These crazy amounts of XP are/were probably given because there was no other way to gain explore XP at the time.

As for the trade thing, that's not too imbalanced. The high level is going to be sacrificing a lot of time doing that as trade levels are not quick to level.

So the answer to your question lies with the explore trick, which has (perhaps) not been balanced yet.

Tours existed in live as did "leeching" anytime a group of people come together there is more than the game involved it's the company also, the interraction between people no matter that their levels are; "oops didn't see that one one shot you" or the "ack couldn't get the heal off" or the "do /camp, it helps *player snickering in background" while waiting for a spawn...

There are as many different play styles as there are people playing, I would ask that people please ask themselves "is it really hurting my game play?" and not ruin it for some by dictating how it can/will be played.

There are changes already that are different from live; I'm waiting to see what it will become.

P.S. this is still beta and there are multiple posts from the devs about xp adjustments moving forward.

edit: added a ps

Edited July 13, 2010 by Lieaya

[Tyran]

Tours existed in live as did "leeching" anytime a group of people come together there is more than the game involved it's the company also, the interraction between people no matter that their levels are; "oops didn't see that one one shot you" or the "ack couldn't get the heal off" or the "do /camp, it helps *player snickering in background" while waiting for a spawn...

My Engrish is too poor to understand...

[Kherana]

My Engrish is too poor to understand...

People gave tours in live for explore xp because, they didn't like to constantly run jobs. And for the lower levels it allowed them to get places that would normally be very hard because of the mobs in the sectors they had to go to.

People of lower levels were in higher level combat groups to "gain combat xp" and hang out with their friends

it isn't always just about leveling but having other people to chat with, do things with, and just have fun in the game.

[seekeronos]

The tour trick where someone can become lvl 150 within a few days really needs to gtfo before launch if its not already. These crazy amounts of XP are/were probably given because there was no other way to gain explore XP at the time.

Could you elaborate on this further?

If this is a genuine exploit (getting to OL150 in a few days only thru touring seems to be a bit of a stretch), then it most certainly needs to be patched.

I don't do tours, as I found it a ridiculously tedious way of gaining explore xp (several hours zipping about the same navs with people who invariably get CTD's or CTM's or worse, insist on wearing that 8k sig motor in the nastier parts of Niff Cloud when stopping for a re-route to a distant nav...

...but from what I remember of it, the xp for new navs is shared amongst all group members, with a split determined by some math that compares the relative differences in EL between the highest and lowest level members of the group vs. the raw xp given by the nav.

And as for tri-boxing throw-away toons for tours (just taking a guess, as I remember you had some animus against multi-boxers from another thread) I'll agree that borders on being a bit silly, and certainly more tedious than simply mining or jobbing the EL's up.

[Mimir[IS]]

Please keep on point.

Explore XP Power leveling = Ok

Trade XP Power leveling = Ok

Combat XP Power leveling = Not Ok and is not only frowned on, but the slightest request on chat to be combat power leveled is met with a general "boo hiss" from the users at large.

-------------- The question was: Why two of the three seem to be acceptable while the third is not? ---------------

[seekeronos]

Please keep on point.

Explore XP Power leveling = Ok

Trade XP Power leveling = Ok

Combat XP Power leveling = Not Ok and is not only frowned on, but the slightest request on chat to be combat power leveled is met with a general "boo hiss" from the users at large.

-------------- The question was: Why two of the three seem to be acceptable while the third is not? ---------------

Now that'd you made your point clear, I reckon we can address that

And I agree that there is a bit of a long-standing player bias against combat powerleveling, stemming back from what I said earlier about how people used to take a set of L1 toons into Niff Cloud and swat Nagifars for a few hours resulting in a set of CL30 toons (that were epically unbalanced).

But that is of course, ancient history, where now you can powerlevel combat by taking a low level toon, parking it in a safe-ish place within the shared xp bubble... and banging away at something your level or higher where the higher level toon gets a reduced amount of xp along with the lowbie toon.

Another aspect of it is this: there's a happy medium somewhere between taking a year or two to grind a toon to OL150, and powerleveling a toon to 150 in a few days.

Some folks like to enjoy the ride to 150 too.

[Suricata79[IS]]

You can still PL combat, the reason the stigma is there is probably from the days in live where the XP spillover didn't take level difference into account, meaning you could PL someone to CL 50 in an insane ammoutn of time, more of a concern was that the players been CL power leveled would just be AFK as well, sometimes parked a safe distance away from the combat too. Eitherway, you could still Power Level combat in live (after the fix), I suppose the reason some also probably hate it is because with trade, all in the group benefit, with trade, the person doing combat doesn't have to worry about looting which saves them time, but with combat, the person power leveling actually gets nothing from the person tagging along except for less XP per kill.

[seekeronos]

I suppose the reason some also probably hate it is because with trade, all in the group benefit, with trade, the person doing combat doesn't have to worry about looting which saves them time, but with combat, the person power leveling actually gets nothing from the person tagging along except for less XP per kill.

True statement.

I use my PW to powerlevel my TT on drones (less frequently now) and other L50+ mobs for markedly less xp than I could if I solo'ed them:

A L60 voltoi nets me 3k combat xp on my PW alone; grouped with my L114 TT, both toons get 2100 combat xp.

I loot with my PW and trade to my TT for trade xp on the PW (who "leeches" the trade xp, since my TT can get trade xp with little more effort than it takes for her to breathe).

When it comes time to level combat for my JE, (very low priority, since she is only a building toon) I'll probably loot with her since her ability to get trade xp is not as epic as a trader class).

[r8rsfans75]

I always thought the whole concept of the group bonus thing was a little out of whack to begin with. I actually made this suggestion back in the days of live, and it was shortly after I made the suggestion that the announcement came out that they were shutting down EnB (I still like to believe one had nothing to do with the other )

If I'm in a group and we travel to a nav that I have not discovered, I should get the full regular xp that anyone would get for discovering that nav. The rest of the group that has discovered that nav should not get the regular xp, but a small group xp bonus (some percentage of the original xp, for arguments sake we will call it 30%). So I would get 1000 xp for a nav, every other member of the group who already had the nav would get 300 xp. Similar for combat. If I'm in a combat group, if I do the 51%+ damage, I get 1000 xp for the kill, the rest of the group each gets 300 xp. (Possibly throw in some bonus multiplier that raises for each additional group member to make it more attractive to do this in a group rather than solo)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but here is my understanding of the current group xp system. I am in a combat group with just one other person and we are the same CL and we go out and hunt some mob that is the same CL also. Normally doing a same-level mob will get 1000 combat xp. However in a group, you actually get less than half. So even if the group kills one each, you are still getting less xp than if you just fought the thing by yourself.

Now I know that the group xp bonus increases as you have more members of the group, but with the small server population we have it can be almost impossible to find 3, 4, or 5 other people of a similar CL, not doing anything else, that are up for doing a group combat. I spent two hours one night on spamming the chat channels looking for people around CL 20 to do a combat group and found just one other person who went along for about 20 minutes before they had to log.

Edit: If my understanding about the current group xp system is wrong, if someone who actually has the formula could share it would be appreciated.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Grendwal

[seekeronos]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but here is my understanding of the current group xp system. I am in a combat group with just one other person and we are the same CL and we go out and hunt some mob that is the same CL also. Normally doing a same-level mob will get 1000 combat xp. However in a group, you actually get less than half. So even if the group kills one each, you are still getting less xp than if you just fought the thing by yourself.

If this is the case, I think it would be balanced under the premise that while you both get less xp per mob, you can kill those mobs more than twice as fast as you would solo (more DPS and heals/less recovery time between kills).