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.
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.
Work on getting 3.0 out the door and a lot of this won't matter.
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 people are trying to earn some cash too then there's nowhere near enough incentive to leave the handful of popular zones.
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