new area bonus

L

Lleoc

Dalayan Master
The fact that there is a penalty for exping in your favorite spots is archaic in itself but that's a dead horse and not really what im looking to discuss. However i bring it up because the current new area bonus and penalty reset is either broken or entirely too long. I suggest that new area resets after you have -10% in 5 different zones so that as long as you are not truly sitting in one zone you will not be punished for enjoying the zones that you enjoy to experience in.

Another suggestion would be to let new area experience penalties reset every 2 weeks or so. I've been playing for around 2 months now and after 14-15 tomes on my cleric I still have penalties everywhere i like to experience. The actual new area "bonus experience" lasts like 4 hours worth of experience in any zone that has ok experience and plenty of mobs for a very high tier group to kill. In contrast the old area penalty lasts for several codex of powers worth of experience.

The high tier people will, for the most part, continue to grind experience even if slower than need be. However new people without ringer info have a crazy uphill battle to climb to even wish to become relevant and be able to play with the people who do.
 
idea: give harder zones bigger bonuses/better drops to encourage people to use those areas.
 
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Exp penalties is one of the main reasons I got burnt out on this game. I was negative in FR, BQ, Kaesora among other places.

When there is good xp to be had and you're putting in the same amount of work as always and getting shafted because the staff wants you to "experience other zones" that are crap xp is annoying.

I don't even get the logic behind the XP penalty. If I want to xp forever on harthuks what do you guys care?
 
i haven't heard of anyones exp bonus resetting since the way it works was changed a year ago or whatever. in the old system, i remember logging in and seeing "your area bonuses have reset" fairly frequently.

i assume the current system is broken.
 
I think my enchanter's area bonuses haven't reset after doing over 16 tomes including all codex of power and 6 class tomes. If it's not completely broken, where it's set now is completely excessive. It used to reset every maybe 300-400 AAs worth of exp, which was usually over 3 codex of power worth of exp.
 
I agree with this, being negative exp in 4 or 5 zones gets really frustrating and makes me not want to log in.
 
totw said:
I will state that the concept of area's giving penalties is wrong, IMHO. You are punishing players who do not choose to play the game a certain way instead of encouraging them with positive rewards. One will have better results than the other. I see this every day with my kids.
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i think this is the main point here. trying to promote player exploration by giving the more popular areas penalties is the incorrect approach.

starting new area bonus at 100, even though its over almost immediately, did entice me to explore other zones. however after you get down to the 25 percent most of these places go back to being less efficient than the more popular zones, even with a negative area bonus. this ends up with the negative area bonus doing nothing in the way of trying to push players toward new zones, and just ends up being a penalty for playing the game.
 
I believe staff has already said that they will get rid of the "penalty" by decreasing the base experience and increasing the bonuses so that the final numbers still look the same but are just arrived at in a different manner that doesn't include the world penalty, if that would make people stop complaining.

The real issue is the non-resetting of the bonuses. As a few others have stated, it takes a ridiculous amount of exp to get the resets. I was under 10 tomes and it took me until my 30th before I saw a reset.

I'd be curious to know if people who are just leveling and doing AA's and not tomes have to wait as long as well. Maybe it's just an issue of how experience into tomes is read?
 
taosanterior said:
I believe staff has already said that they will get rid of the "penalty" by decreasing the base experience and increasing the bonuses so that the final numbers still look the same but are just arrived at in a different manner that doesn't include the world penalty, if that would make people stop complaining.

The real issue is the non-resetting of the bonuses. As a few others have stated, it takes a ridiculous amount of exp to get the resets. I was under 10 tomes and it took me until my 30th before I saw a reset.

I'd be curious to know if people who are just leveling and doing AA's and not tomes have to wait as long as well. Maybe it's just an issue of how experience into tomes is read?
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There are automatic resets at certain levels that still work in the new system last I knew. My beastlord was at ~360aa when I quit and hadn't gotten a reset since dinging 65, but supposedly in the new system you need ~400aa worth of exp per reset (which is extremely awful and is an exp nerf; the exact opposite of what the updated area bonus change was supposed to be).
 
Yeah,Totw has it right,*negative* incentives are bad,even more so in a *game* where you
should have fun and not being punished.
Just go away with it and adjust zones accordingly to their difficulty as suggested before in
older threads I'm too tired to search atm. :)
 
From my time in SoD what I've seen is that players naturally will gravitate to what ever zone produces the best plat or exp.

Then the staff for what ever reason doesn't like that players spend in their opinion to much time in said zone will nerf drops and of course lets not forget the exp penalties that get racked up.

Then players move on to what ever zone is next until you end up with T12+ players mass farming The Rust,Elds,dragon necropolis, and remnants because everything else was nerfed to hell and back, then of course their gear and skills are "too OP' so staff nerfs those (spirit harvest/riposte nerf ring a bell).

TLtR staff should find ways that make the game enjoyable and not punish the players.
 
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I think the fact that devs opted to make the lowest xp level a xp penalty instead of, you know, just no xp bonus speaks volumes about this server.

Do not get me wrong, in many ways SoD is the best fan made private server that I am aware of, but most of those are technical achievements, lore, and other things not necessarily related to abstract concepts like "fun" or "happiness".
 
The following quotes are from the new area bonus thread started over a year ago: http://forum.shardsofdalaya.com/showthread.php?t=26231&highlight=area+bonus&page=4 It seems the same issues are still relevant.

Tarutao said:
I've avoided posting in this thread, but the last few points leave me needing to ask this.

Is the opinion stated here that you want the way the numbers are displayed to be adjusted so that the initial bonus appears as 250% and then works its way to a 0% bonus? I mean, this can be achieved with a few "small" changes wherein experience pre-new-old-modifier is adjusted downward and all of the new-old-modifiers are adjusted upward so that none of them appear as negative numbers and all of them are displayed as "new area bonus".

This was asked for before. Admin-Wiz (*ceremonial bow*) even said he'd be willing to do it. However, when it was genuinely posited to the playerbase as an option, people said they'd rather not have that change.
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Daffie said:
I think it is the amount of xp that they are complaining about, (once you get to negative bonus,) not the actual number.

(Honestly, negative numbers look bad. Think of it from the perspective of a new player. Would you rather see a -50% bonus, or 0 bonus. -50 appears like you are getting penalized, even though the reality is you are just not getting lagniappe.)
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Dinadass said:
I'm saying that if it's going to take 400 AA to reset the new area bonus, there needs to be more than a small handful of zones worth going to, or that the new area bonuses need to last long enough so that this new system is actually a buff to exp as it was supposed to be.
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Summary of issues for this cool xp system that is currently not functioning in a cool way:
1. When the bonus goes negative, xp is sad face.
2. Negative xp bonus lasts many zillions of times longer than positive bonus.
3. Seeing negative bonus numbers is stupid, demoralizing, and frustrating.
4. It takes WAY to long for the bonus to reset.
5. There aren't enough decent zones to xp in for 65+ characters given how long it takes bonus to reset.


Accurate gripe list?
 
Daffie said:
Summary of issues for this cool xp system that is currently not functioning in a cool way:
1. When the bonus goes negative, xp is sad face.
2. Negative xp bonus lasts many zillions of times longer than positive bonus.
3. Seeing negative bonus numbers is stupid, demoralizing, and frustrating.
4. It takes WAY to long for the bonus to reset.
5. There aren't enough decent zones to xp in for 65+ characters given how long it takes bonus to reset.


Accurate gripe list?
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Fix #4 and all the others go away
 
Putting an exp penalty on old-hat zones that happen to be the only worthwhile zones in the game pushes people to do the new content but the new content is .
 
The suggestion that an acceptable fix is to "mask" the penalty so it just doesn't show up in text is really insulting to the player base - we're not that ignorant where we won't see our xp bar slow down.

I'd be all for taking out the bonus and the penalty all together and just let zone xp be zone xp. If you want people to go to your new content, then stop nerfing it as soon as you guys realize it gives xp and cash that is actually "on tier" with the high tier players doing it. (See Overgrowth, Citadel)

I don't understand why it is that you guys want to make this game that is now played by dozens of people so disheartening to play. It can be a *fun* game, help it stay that way.
 
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