Zone Experience Modifiers

Obscenitor

Obscenitor

Dalayan Elder
I know that there is a growing tumor in Chillville regarding this already but this is meant to be a serious thread sans-whining (not guaranteed).

In last night's patch all ZEMs were modified. However, looking at the typically traversed zones for higher tier players (7+).. there are seemingly no increases to any of the ZEMs and this includes a plethora of old world zones such as Fire Grotto, Everchill, and First Ruins which were the hot spots before Ikisith (these zones actually got ZEM nerfs as well). Ikisith zones got hit the hardest with Citadel receiving a 25% drop, Bloody Quary receiving a 40% drop, and I am not sure about the % drop in Remnants but I know it got nerfed hard.

I can't speak for the under 65 zones but it doesn't seem like the ZEMs were changed to encourage people frequent other zones, this was just a flat out drop to all ZEMs. I guess my question is this: what are we trying to accomplish?

Edit: this post is not meant as a critique to the staff involved in this change. I am sure that they put in a considerable amount of hours researching where ZEMs should be at across the board. However, with this change impacting the entire server and slowing down EXP gain across the board it would be nice to see some concrete staff input.
 
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I have not talked to any of the developers about this, but it seems that they just want to slow down the experience progression a bit. Tomes were always meant as an experience sink and encourage players to do things outside of raids again. With the short amount of experience required to finish certain tomes and the absurd amount of experience obtained in certain Ikisith zones, these experience sinks were drying up very quickly.

Ikisith zones also drop decent cash and tomes. This makes them far and away the best experience zones in the game, and it was (is) not even close. I agree with Bango that the old world "nerfs" seem confusing, and those "nerfs" will make it so this change only accomplishes an overall experience nerf. It will not force players to try out other zones while grinding out tomes.

I think they just wanted to slow down experience across the board, and this is an easy way to do it.
 
Maybe I am Reading Into Things a bit much, but it feels like this was at least partly in response to people with t10+ gear and 10+ tomes grinding out a tome or two a day in some of these places. I guess I can sort of understand this because you can also make a ton of money in a place like Citadel, but nerfing zones across the board is hurting The Little Guy too. Are people really blasting their way through their first five codex that fast?
 
Even in places like BQ and Citadel, I was most certainly not "blasting through" my codex that fast. Nerfing old world zones to go with is just salt in the wound, imo.
 
Nasbin said:
Maybe I am Reading Into Things a bit much, but it feels like this was at least partly in response to people with t10+ gear and 10+ tomes grinding out a tome or two a day in some of these places. I guess I can sort of understand this because you can also make a ton of money in a place like Citadel, but nerfing zones across the board is hurting The Little Guy too. Are people really blasting their way through their first five codex that fast?
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People blasting through tomes is not a new thing, the game was like this before Ikisith. The only difference is that now there are 40+ tomes for each class to do as opposed to only Codices of Power.
 
Yeah i mean these things are easy to change and if we didn't show the ZEM probably no one would have noticed the small change in FR for instance. i'll let it roll for a bit and see what happens but it's not as big a deal as people think.

also for those of you not in the know (all of oyu) we can set expmods BY MOB and many mobs in citadel have increased expmods personally ok. many mobs everywhere have this and it is not displayed in message.

I understand people are mad or whatever but this was not done with any malice.. I'm not out to screw anyone.. just that the game is in a different place than it was a year and a half ago and a change was needed. did it go too far? maybe! but these things are easily adjusted.
 
Slaariel said:
just that the game is in a different place than it was a year and a half ago and a change was needed. did it go too far? maybe! but these things are easily adjusted.
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Of course it was. An entire expansion of stuff was added. The availability of t5 or so droppables went from really rare to super common. The amount of exp required to be useful at the highest tier of content more than doubled. And citadel was only like 15-25% higher exp an hour than old fr. The difference is ikisith finally enabled multiple groups to get that much experience, instead of just one FWF/GSG/TU/Steel group to get it while hogging bloodfires to themselves.

Experience is the biggest barrier to entry for high end raiding. It's a long grind to get to a point where you can be useful to a high end guild (12+ months if you play like 8 hours a day every day and have people to carry you through things. Much longer if you don't have hand holding, and you know, actually have a life).
I don't know anyone who says "OMG EXPING IS SO FUN!!!" it's not. It's tedium for the most part. The exciting parts of exping are hanging out with your friends/progressing your character; not mindlessly grinding mobs. Exp in ikisith wasn't -that- much easier to get than it was in FR/Rust factory. It was just in zones that were less annoying and more enjoyable to do.

I can't see how this has done anything good for the server. It makes it harder for new players to get to the top, it makes it harder for guilds to progress, and makes playing the game generally less fun.

I understand the desire to curb mudflation, but adding more to a top heavy game will always create mudflation, it's the nature of gaming. And ikisith already had a pretty good built in mudflation prevention (all ikisith tomes being worth drastically less per exp point than old world stuff, in most cases half as much if not less). I don't understand the desire to curb ikisith when it was the first good change for the server in a long time.
 
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Thade said:
Of course it was. An entire expansion of stuff was added. The availability of t5 or so droppables went from really rare to super common. The amount of exp required to be useful at the highest tier of content more than doubled. And citadel was only like 15-25% higher exp an hour than old fr. The difference is ikisith finally enabled multiple groups to get that much experience, instead of just one FWF/GSG/TU/Steel group to get it while hogging bloodfires to themselves.

Experience is the biggest barrier to entry for high end raiding. It's a long grind to get to a point where you can be useful to a high end guild (12+ months if you play like 8 hours a day every day and have people to carry you through things. Much longer if you don't have hand holding, and you know, actually have a life).
I don't know anyone who says "OMG EXPING IS SO FUN!!!" it's not. It's tedium for the most part. The exciting parts of exping are hanging out with your friends/progressing your character; not mindlessly grinding mobs. Exp in ikisith wasn't -that- much easier to get than it was in FR/Rust factory. It was just in zones that were less annoying and more enjoyable to do.

I can't see how this has done anything good for the server. It makes it harder for new players to get to the top, it makes it harder for guilds to progress, and makes playing the game generally less fun.

I understand the desire to curb mudflation, but adding more to a top heavy game will always create mudflation, it's the nature of gaming. And ikisith already had a pretty good built in mudflation prevention (all ikisith tomes being worth drastically less per exp point than old world stuff, in most cases half as much if not less). I don't understand the desire to curb ikisith when it was the first good change for the server in a long time.
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Quoting this for how spot on it really is.
 
Thade said:
Of course it was. An entire expansion of stuff was added. The availability of t5 or so droppables went from really rare to super common. The amount of exp required to be useful at the highest tier of content more than doubled. And citadel was only like 15-25% higher exp an hour than old fr. The difference is ikisith finally enabled multiple groups to get that much experience, instead of just one FWF/GSG/TU/Steel group to get it while hogging bloodfires to themselves.

Experience is the biggest barrier to entry for high end raiding. It's a long grind to get to a point where you can be useful to a high end guild (12+ months if you play like 8 hours a day every day and have people to carry you through things. Much longer if you don't have hand holding, and you know, actually have a life).
I don't know anyone who says "OMG EXPING IS SO FUN!!!" it's not. It's tedium for the most part. The exciting parts of exping are hanging out with your friends/progressing your character; not mindlessly grinding mobs. Exp in ikisith wasn't -that- much easier to get than it was in FR/Rust factory. It was just in zones that were less annoying and more enjoyable to do.

I can't see how this has done anything good for the server. It makes it harder for new players to get to the top, it makes it harder for guilds to progress, and makes playing the game generally less fun.

I understand the desire to curb mudflation, but adding more to a top heavy game will always create mudflation, it's the nature of gaming. And ikisith already had a pretty good built in mudflation prevention (all ikisith tomes being worth drastically less per exp point than old world stuff, in most cases half as much if not less). I don't understand the desire to curb ikisith when it was the first good change for the server in a long time.
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Best post in the thread. Why make the hardest part of the game even harder for new players?
 
Pretty sure Thade said everything I was thinking.A lot of people are rather upset atm this did not need to happen.
 
I could be mistaken but I am rather sure outside of BQ (which received faster spawn rates), Citadel and Remnants. All zones are slated to have their ZEMs returned close to where they were previously or higher.
 
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Marza said:
I could be mistaken but I am rather sure outside of BQ (which received faster spawn rates), Citadel and Remnants. All zones are slated to have their ZEMs returned close to where they were previously or higher.
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Cool, but I still have two concerns.

In regards to bq, faster Spawn rates doesn't help 99% of the server; with a 40% exp zem loss I don't think that's really fair. I'd rather see it get a smaller nerf and the respawn stay the same, yeah it'd fuck me and my guildmates but it'd be better for everyone else.


My other concern is "xp progression" so to speak. I feel almost like with the nerfs to citadel and bq, bloodfires and Rust factory will be better exp or very close to better xp than either, and I don't think that's warranted, because both are easier.
 
Who cares about blood quarry, citadel and first ruins. Can we fix the ridiculous spawn timer of eldenals yet. One Hour is too high even the lowest of groups can beat the zone before a repop and still have to wait 10 minutes.
 
Thade said:
In regards to bq, faster Spawn rates doesn't help 99% of the server; with a 40% exp zem loss I don't think that's really fair. I'd rather see it get a smaller nerf and the respawn stay the same, yeah it'd fuck me and my guildmates but it'd be better for everyone else.
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This. The overwhelming majority of groups in BQ do not kill the entire elite wing before repops start happening. The repops in BQ are fast enough as it is for an average group and shortening them even more will just result in people getting repopped on while trying to split some slave skinners or whatever.

Shortening the repop timer because a very small but vocal group of people have to wait a couple minutes for a repop shouldn't be a reason to lower the repop timer for the zone. As it is, a normal BQ group has way more mobs than they could ever possibly kill before the first mob repops.
 
Given 4000AAs worth of good tomes for all classes and 6k+ to max all. Its not like the boost really hurt mudflation. But yeah, glad to here its changing back.

**These numbers do not count leveling or normal AAs.**
 
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