Changing the XP/Gold system

[rustyspoon]

Ever since CRPG changed to the xp/gold per minute system, we’ve had some good changes and a lot of bad.
 
Good things

• Upkeep – Fantastic change in my opinion and something that was really needed. I still don’t think things have gone far enough, but that’s my opinion.
• Ease of advancement - Even new/unskilled players can advance and earn gold.

Bad things

• Personal contribution – personal contribution still matters, but the individual player has little effect on their overall reward. You can play the game of your life and lose with a x1, or play like shit and get x5’s.
• Leeching – as you don’t REALLY need to contribute, it’s caused a whole new problem. Devs have to constantly be aware of people who are hiding, or not contributing enough, etc.
• Attitude shift – the addition of multipliers has caused the overall attitude in CRPG to change. It used to be more about fun. Nowadays it’s all about the multi. The amount of anger, resentment, bad sportsmanship, etc have really increased since we moved to this new system.
• Reward discrepancy – with the multi system, losing is a HUGE punishment and winning is a HUGE reward. Especially combined with the balance system it’s usually 1 side that wins over and over again and can hold x5’s for hours. Sure, they may lose it the first round when the map switches, but they’ll get back up to x5 again in no time. Being on the other side of a clan-stack is no fun as you are relegated to getting x1’s the whole time.
• Builds – as winning is more important than anything else, (gotta keep that x5!) people will abuse anything they can in a desperate attempt to win. Instead of using more “fun” builds, people have moved towards more “gamey” builds.

I personally feel that the xp/gold per minute system has really ruined a lot of fun that was present in the old system. I suggest we return to a modified version of the old xp/gold system.

For those that weren’t around back then or forgot how it worked, it worked like this:

If you were near combat you got gold/xp for every enemy killed. Higher level players were worth more xp/gold. After you died, you still received gold and xp for a certain amount of time. If your team wins, you gain all the xp and gold you earned over the round. If your team lost you gain (if I remember correctly) 25% of it.

Now what if we combined the old system with upkeep? Your cumulative chance of upkeep would continue as long as you were alive. With our current system I think it’s a 4% cumulative chance per minute. So, if you’re alive for 4 minutes, you have a 16% chance of upkeep per item. If we based it on how long you live, if you only live 2 minutes, you have an 8% chance. If you lived 4 minutes, you’d have a 16% chance. That way, people who die early and lose out on xp/gold will still be able to keep pace with people upkeep-wise who live longer.

In the new system, being a peasant is pointless. It doesn’t matter what you do and it’s over in hours. In the old system, you had to play and you had to play hard as a peasant. You had to try to stay alive at all costs which was fun as hell. Nowadays, it doesn’t matter what you do. You could just tape down your w key and no one would notice. It’s just a time-waster.

In the old system, being a peasant was more of a learning system. Since staying alive was so important it forced you to play better. New system keeps players bad and rewards them anyway. Those are the people who grow up to write forum posts about how such and such is overpowered.

Obviously the gold/xp per kill will have to be increased from the original system, but I think this will help bring a lot of fun back to the mod. I feel that it would help promote teamwork, all the while making individual contributions important again. I just think the current system has gotten really stale and could use a change.

What say you?

[Brrrak]

:snip:
What say you?

I say I can't press +1 on this post enough.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

There are serious problems every where you look (FUCK ME AND MY GRAMMAR). I think the whole rewards system has gone to hell and I'm really not sure the old system would make the game 'fun' in the same way again. Also the game really isn't going in that direction, FFS we now have taxs... And they seem to be on par with real taxs. At least in the same way your money goes some where and you are completely baffled as to what it just paid for...

[Old_Sir_Agor]

and what about ranged, who are not close to fight?

[Kafein]

and what about ranged, who are not close to fight?

I don't think the xp tick system ( no radius ) is a bad thing. It's the multi that ruined the attitude.

[rustyspoon]

and what about ranged, who are not close to fight?

The radius was big enough to where you'd be close enough as long as you weren't all the way across the map.

The multi system has just gotten really stale and has brought with it a host of problems. We need to kick this system out the door.

[Ptolemy]

I remember the old system, I remember the map with two bridges over a river, I remember everyone "strategically" running onto the middle of it and hacking each other until everyone was dead for massive exp.

Keep it how it is.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

Yeah maybe we should only have 1x and 2x and just jack it up so 1x is 2.5k and 2x is 5k. That would turn the screaming down a little. It would be far less important and people may just go back to 'fun'. It's not like anyone really gives a crap about KDR, even PRO don't really care at all. Everyone knows the best bit of this game is the fight.

[Digglez]

The only thing that needs to change about current system is meaningful punishment for leechers, not the current slap on the wrist shit.
3 strikes leeching should be a month ban and/or losing a % of your gold across account.

Half of the enforcement could be easily coded into the game, like other games have in the past.  If you arent out of spawn in 10-15 secs, auto-kick.  This is not rocket science.  Devs have to put way more effort into griefer-proofing their mod.

You'd be surprised how often people follow the rules when there is meaningful enforcement of them.


And the changes made for Valor 2.0 work pretty well in my opinion.  What your suggesting is just rewarding the kill whores.

[Lord_Panos]

the thing is that the community will never be satisfied with how things are,you always want more and more and more.

The only thing that needs to be done is when a lower level player kills a higher level player, that should give a small reward.

[rustyspoon]

I remember the old system, I remember the map with two bridges over a river, I remember everyone "strategically" running onto the middle of it and hacking each other until everyone was dead for massive exp.

Keep it how it is.

I'm curious on how battles are different than this now. 

[Joker86]

In my eyes there are two things that are absolute no-gos concerning the reward system:

- rewarding personal kills
- punishing personal deaths

I shifts the focus from winning the round too much towards having a good K/D, which I don't like.

But that's a general problem with its roots in the battle mode itself, which is won by killing all enemies. I definitely prefer gamemodes where killing enemies is helping to win the round, instead of being the ultimative goal.

[Wiltzu]

chadz has said that the old gold/xp system will never ever be implemented in.

[Teeth]

That is exactly what I was thinking. I agree completely.

chadz has said that the old gold/xp system will never ever be implemented in.

Quote? Would be a damn shame, cause a combination of the current and old xp system could be quite the improvement. The current system is very far from perfect.

[Turboflex]

I think the current system is mostly fine. It encourages a team win as opposed to kill whoring. Imagine all the team wounding if kill scores mattered more? Right now at least when you TW you are hurting your own exp chances. You also see a decent amount of tactics in play, where teams are willing to change things up if they lose. If you made it about proximity killing you would just constantly have everyone rushing to middle and picking people off. Bye bye team tactics.

I think the "stack" concerns are overblown, the only stack right now is cav being OP creating a stack from majority of cav on one team (the stacker clans people complain about, PRO and GK, are all cav clans). The only other stack would be a heavy armour stack on Siege, where if a clan comes in with all heavy plate they tend to have a huge advantage. Unfortunately the game does not currently seem to balance on items spawned (like horses or bows) or armour value. Nerf Cavalry and at least the more blatent cav stack factor disappears (my nerf choice would be rider takes heavy fall damage when dehorsed).

Like Diggles said the biggest weakness in the current system is leeching. Heavier punishments could solve it.

There might be room for some personal performance bonus. It shouldn't be purely kill based tho, make it based on a formula of (damage*relative level-teamwound dmg). So a peasant gets nicely rewarded for damageing a lvl 30, while a lvl 30 does not get extra rewards for whacking peasants, although would get decent rewards for hurting other high levels. Since it's based on damage not kills (and punishes team wounding) it will not encourage people to aggressively head hunt, but to play smart.