Experience calculations 30 Zizuph Keeper 21 Sep
I have made a change to how much combat experience is given, specifically when
the player is larger than their foe.
At some point, a few decades ago, the wizards were unhappy with the growth of
players that were grinding in areas with small NPCs. Some players grew large
on mass-killing rats and other messengers, for example. In order to prevent
this from being a growth mechanic, the formulas for experience were changed to
heavily penalize these cases.
This meant that the bigger players were effectively forced into much more
limited areas as to where they could grind. For today's game, only about 2.5%
of all game content is myth-sized, leaving 97.5% of the game with this penalty.
The argument that killing rats to grow being bad is reasonable, but we have two
other systems in place that already penalize growth - the brute system, and the
large exponent that is applied when converting between experience and actual
stats. Too much of the game (such as the recently revamped war system) is not
visited due to the depth of this penalty.
Going forwards, this penalty has been dramatically reduced. Smaller NPCs still
earn less, but your size will play less of a role in modifying that. This will
take the effective penalty from roughly an aggregate 30%, down to an aggregate
of about 10%. This should make areas like the war plains of Krynn more
profitable for experience, leaving less of a gap relative to the half-dozen
myth-sized NPC areas in the game.
Hopefully this will make more of the game, more enjoyable for everyone.
Z