New Area Bonus Proposal

You went from 30 to 39 in the same zone. That's 9 levels, or like halfway to the next adjustment reset. I think it's totally natural to expect you to try to move around to a second zone at some point.
 
So how does the exp bonus currently get reset (post 65)? I was under the impression that it was after a certain number of AA's but now I think that is wrong. Thank you
 
It was after a certain large amount of exp which was pretty large (around 300 AAs worth of exp I believe) but who knows if it's been changed. Probably shouldn't have been since the reset took a long time before.
 
Seems like it would make more sense for a reset to be gradual, as you lower your bonus in one zone, it starts to increase in other zones. Sort of a give and take, have to put more effort into exping into new areas to return some bonus back to old ones.
 
Any system of Higher experience for traveling to different zones is nice.
I would like to see people that want exp over plat have a bit of an escalator to travel on.

Could we add new area bonus to blessed zones? Start at 100% Bonus and lowers to 20% bonus around 3 hours in of exp.

1 Flat rate of 50% is good however I think it would even the field out for those who pull the zone and those who split and pull 1 at a time.

That way those that come in and pull the whole zone 2 will eat up their exp bonus in about 30 mins. And a fresh group of 65's can sit there slow pull and eat up the exp bonus over the course of 4 hours.

I hate to be taxing to the UBER geared folk out there but you guys even complain about not having a new pool of players to chose from when it comes to re-gearing players. That way a fresh 65 can get through aa's and tomes within a year and be ready for End game content. as far as Experience goes.
 
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I think you should do away with the penalty or cap it at negative 10. There are only a few zones my non-uber characters and time commitments allow. This is supposed to be fun right? Being penalized to play zones that I enjoy seems a bit harsh. I get the desire to encourage people to try new areas. Maybe more attainable no drop equipment would help so I would try to get it myself rather than purchase it.
 
People like seeing bonus ching ching numbers like slot machines. Retool exp zone or mob modifiers down so exp rates are identical but with massive positive area bonus modifiers and the ignorant masses will be thrilled.

I think they dont want to do this though to retain a bit of both carrot and stick reinforcement. The average guy though is way better off (from an exp/farming perspective) doing the one or two exp zones hes mastered even with a penalty than testing something new and occassionally wiping.
 
Balancing zone exp has always been a tough job. Exp has to be balanced against money, useful items, difficulty and a whole slew of things. To make things even worse - balancing a zones difficulty and exp has to take into consideration gear changes over time. Often, as players get more powerful difficulty goes down much faster than new exp ones difficulty goes up. This means that even a zone that was perfectly balanced with a group of people with IP gear may be too good to a group with Sanctum gear - if new abilities and general power makes time to kill and difficulty go down drastically exp may be best in older zones. Of course, changing the zone linearly may hurt the risk versus reward for everyone else.

This problem was partially supposed to be solved with the new area bonus wiz put in way back when. With a exp bonus that increasivngly goes down, you gain incentive to explore new zones slowly and more naturally as your bonus fades in each zone. It is my belief that this is not doing enough to incentivize such things.

*To preface: The numbers will be done in a way that will end up with a general increase (albeit moderate) in exp gain. This is not an exp nerf.*

The new proposal is to widen new area bonuses and prolong the time it takes to reset them after 65. The numbers we are currently kicking around are 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 0, -10%, -25%, -50% (right now we are 25%, 10%, 0, -10%, -25%).

75% would go fairly quickly - with the road from 50 to 0 being similiar to todays current 25 to -10%. The change from -10% to -50% would go similiarly to todays -10% to -25%.

Finally would be the change in resetting your bonuses. Resets from levels 0-65 would be the exact same. After 65 we would double the amount of Exp for a "natural" reset to occur. Alterntatively, we will allow you to pay platinum (the number in our head is 10k to 1k depending on how close to a "natural " reset you are) to reset your bonuses on demand

I think these changes will do three main things. One - there will be much greater incentive to explore new zones. This would also help prevent tons of people all going to the same zone. Second - this makes it realistic to "visit" old zones you loved but are past progression wise when your bonus has been recently cleared for fair reward. On the same token, this will prevent people from squatting in the same zone. Finally - this will increase general EXP for those who use the system to their advantage while providing enough flexibility to make those who want to squat to do wso (albeit with either an exp or platinum penalty).

Again - the numbers will be done in a way that this will result in an increase to total exp gained per unit of time. I do not want it to be a large increase, but this idea is not meant to be a nerf to exp and we will balance with that in mind.

Constructive thoughts are more than welcome.

What was the reasoning behind not adding the "pay platinum to reset bonuses a little early" when you implemented the tweaked percentages and made the reset time longer, if I might ask?
 
Slaar confirmed that the reset for new area bonuses was made longer. In my opinion this would be fine if the +100%/+50%/+25% bonuses actually lasted a substantial amount of time, but they don't and as a result it feels like this change was a net decrease in exp gain over time when the opposite was supposed to be the case.

So could we either have the "pay to reset bonuses" option like originally planned, or have the area bonus reset be brought back to where it was? Or maybe have the good bonuses last for a longer amount of time?

Finally would be the change in resetting your bonuses. Resets from levels 0-65 would be the exact same. After 65 we would double the amount of Exp for a "natural" reset to occur. Alterntatively, we will allow you to pay platinum (the number in our head is 10k to 1k depending on how close to a "natural " reset you are) to reset your bonuses on demand

I think these changes will do three main things. One - there will be much greater incentive to explore new zones. This would also help prevent tons of people all going to the same zone. Second - this makes it realistic to "visit" old zones you loved but are past progression wise when your bonus has been recently cleared for fair reward. On the same token, this will prevent people from squatting in the same zone. Finally - this will increase general EXP for those who use the system to their advantage while providing enough flexibility to make those who want to squat to do wso (albeit with either an exp or platinum penalty).

Again - the numbers will be done in a way that this will result in an increase to total exp gained per unit of time. I do not want it to be a large increase, but this idea is not meant to be a nerf to exp and we will balance with that in mind.

Constructive thoughts are more than welcome.

This sounded great but ended up not working out that well, in my opinion.

Work on getting 3.0 out the door and a lot of this won't matter.

How do you figure? 3.0 is simply a new client, it does not introduce new zones or content or magically alter the rate of experience gained on the server.
 
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In other words, it works exactly as I stated, and this is how you choose to operate under the system as the system itself functions. The proposed adjustments to the new area bonus numbers are intended to greater incentivize spreading that exp-grinding time out to more zones by giving greater initial bonuses for even brief time spent in other zones and higher penalties in the case you spend most of your time in a single zone.

What I'm seeing in this thread are two types of comments: (1) no numbers can ever be decreased ever or I am mad (2) you should do something like the current system but different to make it work. Comments of type (1) aren't helpful to this discussion, and comments of type (2) suggest to me that the proposed changes are a step toward achieving the desired goal towards exp that will make most people that don't refuse to exp-grind in multiple zones happy by giving an overall increase in experience and decrease in monotony. Admittedly, the specifics of the numbers will probably need further tweaking, but the changes are in the right direction.

If you ignore all of the posts asking you to improve the quality of under-used zones (through loot or otherwise, mostly loot) then yeah, those are your two options.

However given how important plat is to character progression (buying tomes, buying charms, filling gear holes unless you have friends that can get you cmal gear or whatever), I feel like ignoring the uselessness of zones loot/money progression wise is really silly.
 
I saw HoM was blessed and thought it used to be pretty solid exp so I ran my dudes over there. For a few kills I was getting 22k per kill with the 30% zone mod, 50% blessed, 100% new area. Then 10 minutes later it dropped to 50% new area and I started getting ~16k a kill. At that point I was better off going back to OG/Kaesora/FR/etc. even with 0% or worse new area bonuses in those zones. And that is strictly concerned about exp, if people are trying to earn some cash too then there's nowhere near enough incentive to leave the handful of popular zones.
 
if people are trying to earn some cash too then there's nowhere near enough incentive to leave the handful of popular zones.

Inc loot drop nerfs for all popular zones. Thanks Susvain, gosh!

I am joking, I know e-humor/ e-sarcasm can be hard to tell at times.
 
So far I would say the exp incentive hasn't done much to change where players go, if anything I hear more people saying they are running out of places to put exp.


If you really want blessed zones and new zone bonus's to draw people instead of exp make it have increased plat, or a mix of both.
 
maybe you could do something like how it is on eqlive. blessed zones in that game have a rare chance of dropping a zone aug. i personally found myself going around to all the zones and trying to get the augs at least.
 
When I stopped playing I was -10% in Kaesora, -25% in BQ and 0% in First Ruins. I can't think of many other high end zones to go grind in, and the fact that I was zero or negative in 3 separate zones made me either 1.) Get bad xp in a zone I like or 2.) Get bad xp in a zone I don't like.

It was kind of frustrating!

IMO Blessing zones is a great idea and it had me going to places I would have never considered going. (Emerald Jungle, Field of Bone, Fire Grotto, etc) but giving penalties to people for going to a zone or zones of their choice is just discouraging.

This game needs a high end xp zone where a ringer tank can't mass pull room after room with a boxed healer and a few leeches. Citadel is the closest thing to this I've seen but I found XP to be better elsewhere using the mass pull technique.

If such a high end zone did exist it would need to reflect it's difficulty with amazing loot (this game hasn't had high end super amazing drool-all-over-it droppable loot in a while) and / or really good xp. A big chunk of the population is tier 10-11-12 and there aren't a lot of xp zones that are challenging to them.

In EQ live every time an expansion came out there was non-raid gear that the current top-tier raiding guilds went after out of xp zones because it was good gear for them. Sure, it trivialized old raid zones but that happens over time anyhow.
 
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yep ludo, its been said many times that players do not like the negative exp gimmick. It should be scraped.
 
I just plainly think it's silly to be penalized for liking a one zone or set of zones more then others.
If I want to exp in FR from now to the end of existence, I shouldn't get a -50% or -100% penalty. I shouldn't be forced to leave a place I like for some zone I loathe just because my exp went from reasonable to terrible.

If exp was worked in a way to just give an incentive to cycle through zones, and not punish those who don't want to, everything would be peaches. Go from +50% down to 0% bonus. No negative
 
I just plainly think it's silly to be penalized for liking a one zone or set of zones more then others.
If I want to exp in FR from now to the end of existence, I shouldn't get a -50% or -100% penalty. I shouldn't be forced to leave a place I like for some zone I loathe just because my exp went from reasonable to terrible.

If exp was worked in a way to just give an incentive to cycle through zones, and not punish those who don't want to, everything would be peaches. Go from +50% down to 0% bonus. No negative

do you think this is a mother fucking game ?
 
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