Underleveled, can't catch up

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Chris wrote:

I think we can all agree that a level 1 character shouldn't be getting 100% exp from level 50 monsters ;)

If a level 1 character fairly kills a level 50 monster, he should get full exp.

This means:
- No higher level character contributing in any way to the kill
- No exploits
- Good monster design (anti-kiting skills etc)

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Chris wrote:

There will still be a penalty for killing monsters substantially higher than you, to stop abuse. I think we can all agree that a level 1 character shouldn't be getting 100% exp from level 50 monsters ;)

Yeah i totally agree, i prefer to kill level 1 booger balls instead of level 50 dragons at level 10

9 million more kills for my next level

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Chris wrote:

There will still be a penalty for killing monsters substantially higher than you, to stop abuse. I think we can all agree that a level 1 character shouldn't be getting 100% exp from level 50 monsters ;)

That makes perfect sense of course. I think that World of Warcraft did it pretty well, if a monster is "skull-marked" (insane threat level), you get no experience from it - the only way you could kill them was to abuse glitches or bugs.

I do believe that a level 1 character should be allowed to kill level 5 monsters and get full experience though.

And a level 30 character should definitely be allowed to kill level 33 monsters and gain full experience.

I completely agree with the OP on this one. I find myself killing monster in an area until I meet or exceed the level of that area, then i just run through it. It's especially bad in a2, where after killing kraityn (spelling?), I was lvl 19 and found myself just running straight to Alira and skipping half of the zones because the xp gain just was not worth it.

Just wondering though, what's wrong with getting rushed by friends ?

I never had a problem with it in Diablo 2 (patch 1.09) and I never really understood why Blizzard wanted to prevent it so much.

I mean, it doesn't stop anyone from playing the game normally. And if I've been playing for 3 years, my 10th character dies at level 60, maybe, just maybe, I don't really feel like playing the first 40 levels again.

I mean, getting rushed through a game like that, especially in hardcore, requires that you have a social network of friends you can trust and are already high level enough, and willing to powerlevel you. I never really understood what was wrong with it. Any newbie will have to (and want to) play through the game at least once.

It can also be a service you can sell, as a higher level player. i.e. you offer a rush in exchange for quest rewards. I fundamentally don't see what the big deal is here.

*Feeling an urge to express my love for chris*

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Molda wrote:

I know that everyone has own style of play, however, i can't understand why there is so big number of players, that want to play the game as quickest as possible, run straight from start zone to exit zone in areas. They are not exploring areas etc etc. I don't know how they can enjoy the game that way. I definitely wouldn't enjoy this great game if i would play that way. (But as i said, thats just my opinion)
But when they did want to play that way, i don't know why are they complaining then. That they are underleveled etc. Its their fault.
Guess i will never understand this massively favourite online style of play.

Maybe if the areas were actually worth exploring instead of just being giant boxes of monsters. The entire game is like Durance of Hate level 2.

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Chris wrote:

We'll definitely be changing it so that it's far more lenient towards what areas you can get full experience in. My comment about a level 1 player killing a level 50 monster (and how he should not get full experience) is due to three things:

a) He probably had help from party members and is being rushed. It's nice if the same experience system also applies to parties so that there's no disincentive to group up.

b) If alone, he probably used exploitative behaviour to kill the monster.

c) Even if he gets a huge experience penalty, it's probably still enough experience to level up anyway! High monsters give massive amounts relative to low levels.

Instead of xp continuing to scale up as it does, I feel that xp should be sigmoidal... peaking at 99% level max at about level+5 or so... killing creatures more than 5 levels above you should really not give you much more... perhaps 99.9% by level+10.

Going the other way, killing creatures below you should prolly sigmoidally decrease until level-10 or so (for lower levels you can just extend it past 0 and use 0 as a cut-off).. where it'd be like -50% or so, then level-20 perhaps -75%. etc...

In either case I think that the max xp gained per kill sigmoidal cap is the way to go to fix this.