In most games, there is some sort of bonus to xp for killing things in a group. This idea has some nice effects:
- Increased incentive to actually be social, instead of just grinding away solo. For all its community, we are actually very light on the social aspects of gaming. If EUO is going to grow it probably will need a little more social appeal at some point.
- Party based class abilities become more useful, because partying is more useful.
- Slower classes will find it a bit easier to level, since they can join with faster classes in a party without bogging everyone's xp gains down too much.
It helps a couple downsides of the current setup:
- There is hardly any situation where it is to a mage's advantage to party with anyone other than another mage. :sad: Even partying with another mage is usually slower than solo. :very sad: Partying with a warrior or priest can be almost as slow as powerleveling a newbie. Don't get me wrong, the tanking ability of tougher classes allows you to fight with harder NPCs, but because you are now splitting that xp up 50/50 you end up getting less xp than you would by killing small, easy things more quickly. I think any party with similar level members should do at least a little better than those same members going solo.
- Really only 2-3 people can share most areas currently before the xp gains are meaninglessly slow. With a small party bonus that could be raised significantly, although lag could still make that difficult...
It also can have some downsides if you overdo it...
- Too much party xp bonus means solo grinding becomes pointlessly slow by comparison. Solo is fun and should stay that way.
- Too much bonus could also lead to a situation where party members who are not contributing to the combat are still making everyone faster, or people are invited just to speed up everyone else's xp.
- Too much could also encourage powerleveling, since there will be less xp loss for the higher level player involved. Powerleveling is lame.
My current idea for how to implement it would be something like this:
For each party member in the fight, add maybe 25% to the xp.
Code: Select all
PartyXP = NPCxp * (0.75 + (numberofplayers * 0.25))
While I am mentioning party xp, I think I should note that (at least on PD) the current anti-powerleveling restriction isn't helping much. Having lvl50s begging to be powerleveled to lvl75 by players several hundreds of levels over them lame. I propose that instead of using over lvl 50/under lvl 50, we try something like "only members at least 50% of the level of the highest participating member get xp."
Examples:
3 players, lvls 75, 100 and 200: The lvl 75 doesnt get xp (or contribute to party xp bonus).
4 players, lvls 45, 50, 80 and 110, but 110 is sitting at the bank: 0 xp for 110 of course, but the other three get xp (because 45 > 80*0.5) and contribute to a 3-member party bonus of %150.
5 players, lvls 35, 45, 55, 65 and 70: All get xp, 5 member party bonus! However 200% divided among 5 players is still only 40% xp per player per kill.
3 players, lvls 700, 450 and 51: Screw you lvl 51! 2 member party bonus..., 125% xp = 65.2% each.
Maybe I have the exact % bonus off, but what do you all think of the idea?