XP in multi-leveled party

[Magonushi]

Alright I need this explained because it seems like either a bug or standards not caring about how their decisions affect the normal player.

Was in a party with two other people. I and another were level 2s our companion was level 3.

For our kills raiding a gnoll stronghold my level 2 companion and I received 2 to 4 XP a head depending on difficulty. Kinda low but that's not the issue. The issue is meanwhile our level 3 friend was making 4 to 19 xp per kill.

How is 2 to 5 times the reward justified by simply being one level ahead of your companions? I can understand a little bit higher of an award. But if our characters were to level from 2 to 3 off of this XP alone our companion would meanwhile have made the jump from level 3 to 5.
[This means while we are earning the 2000xp for the level 2-3 jump our companion will make an average of 7000xp for the level 3-5 jump.]

This is not an exaggeration this is me writing down 4 numbers from the game and mashing a few buttons on a calculator, and wondering why oh why ALFA standards wants to increase the gap between new PCs and old PCs.

[danielmn]

Hmm, interesting if this factiod is true....

Should not the inverse be true..lower levels get MORE exp. than higher levels for a kill? I mean, level 5 fighter killing an orc should recieve less experience than a level 2 killing an orc in party simply because hey, a level 5 fighter has killed scores of orcs by then and there is not much in the way of actual learning going on about how to combat them. Granted, they should get exp for the kill, but very little. The inverse is true for the lowbie, he/she may have only killed seven orcs in their whole life, so each encounter is still a big learning experience.

Just a thought.
Not sure if the above is fact or fiction.

DAniel

[psycho_leo]

I'm not sure on the numbers, but I'm pretty sure when combat XP gets divided among party members the highest lvl gets the bigger slice of the pie. The same thing that happens in NWN. My PC always gets less XP than her higher lvl buddy.

[AcadiusLost]

Standards is better equipped to explain the "why", but the "how" for the division works like this:

CR of the kill is compared to highest level PC in the party to determine challenge level, which modifies base XP for the kill. Adjusted XP is then divided among party members by levels, so a 70 xp kill in a group consisting of a level 1, a level 2, and a level 4 would assign the following:
Level 1: 10 xp
Level 2: 20 xp
Level 4: 40 xp
total: 70 xp.

This preserves the XP by challenge formula, and avoids some of the oddities that can come from mixed-level parties when challenge level is rooted in average or median level instead of maximum level. There is, in my opinion, no perfect way to handle XP division across mixedlevel parties, but this was preferable over the many alternative possibilities considered. This neither overrewards lowlevel PCs for following higher level PCs fighting higher CR monsters, nor does it allow highlevel PCs to gain inflated XP amounts from a given encounter on the basis of bringing along some lowerlevel "fodder" (both were observed problems with previous party combat XP formulations).

I realize this does not necessarily serve to help a mixed-level party even out over time, but I think we'd have a hard time making a scripted combat XP system accomplish such an end. All told, in the larger balance, combat XP should represent only a small minority of a PC's advancement, so it doesn't seem like it should be a major point of contention. The DM-limited high-density play of the first month and a half of Live may not be very representative of the intent of the XP balance, admittedly.

The division is just by relative level- there should be no single kill in which a PC gets more than 4x as much XP as another party member, unless PC A actually has 4x as many levels. 60 xp between a 2nd and 3rd level PC is 24xp/36xp etc.

[Arkan Bladesinger]

Confirmed without taking a stance.

Haven´t checked in NWN2, but this is, indeed, how it worked in NWN1, although I don´t think the gap was that high between them.

[Magile]

This is what we in MMOs call "leech prevention". Most multiplayer games incorporate it, for one reason or another, to prevent high level characters from barreling through enemies with a low level character in tow, power leveling the lowbies in that manner.

[AcadiusLost]

I should also say here, I'm very much supportive of ideas that might help reward partying up, mentoring others, and teamwork- these are what make playing in a multiplayer world "fun". I would say the largest drawback of the system as it stands, is that it rewards/encourages soloing, which tends to be detrimental to the multiplayer experience.

Ideas can be thought through and pitched for vetting by Standards, but there will be at least a few things that make it difficult. For one- a creature of a given CR is always going to be less challenging with a group than solo. And a higher level PC (especially a much higher level one) is unquestionably much more capable in combat than a lowlevel one, so the presumption that the highlevel PC is doing more of the heavy lifting is going to tend to be an accurate one. We lack the ability to determine XP by "encounter" because the system has to work without DM management, and it's difficult for scripts to decide when an "encounter" starts and stops, especially in a multiplayer environment. So, situational issues like how many of what CR how close together can't really come into play.

All we have to go on for combat XP determination is what can be determined at the moment of the creatures' death. Who landed the killing blow, who was in that PC's party and nearby, levels of all nearby party members, CR of the killed creature. Within that framework, plenty can be done, so I'd encourage creative suggestions on how a formula for division could be managed that both encourages good PW play, and remains faithful to the concept of risk vs. reward.

[Magonushi]

I understand the need for preventing leeching, but partying up with someone a single level above you really isn't leeching. At least not enough to justify such a huge difference in xp division.

And yes the numbers can be easily confirmed. They are not hyperbole.

[Dorn]

As a passing comment. THis seems back to front.

Say you are a level 1 and are with a level 4 and you fight and kill several orcs.

'Experience' by definition in this game is your learning from doing an activity.

The level 4 who has killed many orcs learns little from this encounter that he/she hasn't before. They need to go fight some ogres and trolls to learn quickly from NEW expereinces.

The level 1 who has maybe never fought anything biger than a kobald runt would learn far more from an encounter with the orcs he's never seen before let alone fought. Know he knows a littel bit about how they fight etc where he didn;t before.

Additionally, lets consider risk. The level 1 takes one-two hits and dies. Has low hit points. Cant afford good armour, cant afford healing potions. And his shield spell is all he can cast which means when it runs out...

The level 4 has full plate and an amulet of AC. Has healing potions left right and centre, has hit pionts to burn (or long lasting more powerful spell shields and offensive spells able to take things down while shields are up).

The risk is CLEARLY greater to a level one. Many spawns have ranged weapons as well making this even greater.

Then consider class. Esp at low levels. The low level fighter is at the front taking the hits, the mid level caster is at the back out of reach. Fair?

Now on the other hand...

If this is implemented to stop cheating as mentioned above then ok. Just seems other justifications are a bit odd when you think about what it's all about.

But then there is many things that are odd about dnd....

[psycho_leo]

Yeah.. MMOs do that to prevent leeching. But comparing ALFA to a MMO is not a very fair comparison I think.

The XP rewards from combat are pretty crummy in ALFA, especially if you consider the risk of death and the cost of healing. And as Acadius pointed out himself, most of a PC's XP should be coming from a DM anyway.

This is the single reason the system never bothered me in NWN where I was always lucky (and still am) to get a near constant flow of DM granted XP. Now, my XP sources have been mainly from statics and RP scripts, with DMXP coming up as a solid last.

When we get more servers and hopefully more DMs, the XP splitting system will cease to be a bother.

[Runestaff]

Ideas can be thought through and pitched for vetting by Standards, but there will be at least a few things that make it difficult.

Here are three alternatives:

Option A: As above, but divide the xp equally between party members. This will serve to even out multi-level parties in the long term, since higher level PCs require more xp to advance in levels. It also seems rather more democratic.

Option B: As above, but invert the weights such that the lower level PCs earn the higher xp totals, rather than the higher level PCs. Consider this to represent the lower level PCs "learning" more from the combat. Hence the level 2/level 3 party earning 60 xp would be split 36/24 now.

Option C: Change nothing in the previous system, but award a 15-20% xp premium to the group as a whole to promote partying rather than soloing. The challenge is still calculated from the highest level PC and the experience is split amongst all party members in the weighted manner AL describes, so this is not a tremendous advantage, but is still something. Using the same analogy, the group members learn more from their cooperative tactics than individual effort.

[Joebri]

Option B seems like it may discourage high level characters from taking the younger ones under their wings as often.

Option C seems like the cleanest way to simply encourage multiplayer groups. I like that.

[Brokenbone]

Option D, remove combat XP.

If you're fighting stuff, it's part of a DM plot, part of a static (NPC as DM?) plot, or "casual." Cutting xp from the "casual" fighting, I've seen it suggested more than once, though not to my recollection seriously debated in ALFA or among standards volunteers.

...

I think AL's explanation of how the breakdown works (add up all levels, divide the XP by that number, and award a number of shares back to the level holders) is helpful.

I never knew what the NWN1 formula was, wonder if this is similar. In NWN1, I have been accustomed to 0xp or 1xp combat rewards about 99% of the time, unless facing something completely overwhelming (a "boss" type of thing). XP from combat may have meant something to the fighter I had for a year, though only at the earliest levels (hit the "0 or 1" level probably by 4th or 5th), XP from combat is pretty meaningless to the non fighter I've had for longer than that, though when it does come now, it's 0xp or 1xp normally.

I have the impression NWN2 combat XP amounts are actually higher than in NWN1, I also had the impression dimrets wasn't part of the design this time around, or if part of the design, wasn't yet implemented. Anyone able to confirm that? I.e., that if you kill a kobold a half dozen times in the same location, your award for that ever go down after a point? (other than for party sharing related stuff as mentioned in the kickoff of this thread). Dimrets aside, it's also possible that no PCs are high enough level as of yet to have hit the "0's and 1's" level of XP awards (i.e., you're 6th and kill a 6 hp bandit, ho hum, 0xp).

[Vendrin]

Option D, remove combat XP.

If you're fighting stuff, it's part of a DM plot, part of a static (NPC as DM?) plot, or "casual." Cutting xp from the "casual" fighting, I've seen it suggested more than once, though not to my recollection seriously debated in ALFA or among standards volunteers.

No.

Even xp split among the party as long as they are in the battle.

[Twin Axes]

Option D, remove combat XP.

If you're fighting stuff, it's part of a DM plot, part of a static (NPC as DM?) plot, or "casual." Cutting xp from the "casual" fighting, I've seen it suggested more than once, though not to my recollection seriously debated in ALFA or among standards volunteers.

Interesting thought. Would probably remove the meaningless, OOC unrealistic slaughter that goes on in a PW and often as not reduces believability from the life of a PC. I like that idea.

On the other hand, would also probably at this time remove many players who don't get any attention from DMs and run out of cocktail talk subjects.