Squad Leader Archive
Thread: The Latest XP Formula My Comments
Excuse me while I try to shake off the en masse frustration I am going through right now. First, they fubar the XP by making it next-to-nothing. They try to fix it, that doesn't work. They try to fix that, that still does not work. Meanwhile people complain this whole time the XP reward is far too little. Finally, I convince them to fix the XP to count for all the group members in a better way, and now people whine because it's too much XP. There will never ever be a consensus formula that everyone agrees on. I ran it by the Dev's already that this is too much XP based on others' quotes. You want my opinion? They could give us Master for free, for all I care, with the exception of the Holo-cronies that come in. Until the class is fixed and worthwhile, having it hard to level up a broken tree is pointless. It's like riding a scooter to the neighbor's house next door instead of a limo to Disney World. It simply is not worth it, at this time in my opinion, to make the XP hard to get when the class itself can't even function. When the class is fixed, when the flavor-of-the-month people catch on, and when we have new abilities, that's only the time I see fit for the tree to actually be as difficult to climb as any other elite profession.
The ironic part is that this is exactly what you wanted. "You" being the majority of the community (I'll be happy to bring up the dozens and dozens of posts about how terrible the"old"-new XP formula is). A lot of people are asking to revert back to the old formula. The only good that about that formula was it was a lot better paced than the current one we have but, guys, we all know that the "original original" XP forumla reflected nothing to do with what the SL did. In fact, it was in our original Top 5 list.
To sum up - In my opinion, the formula should remain the way it is until people actually have a reason to level through the class. Like I said, I've already told the Dev's what you all are saying (after the SWARM of posts about how the new XP formula is "a joke" and all) ... so it's at their discression where it goes from here. All I can do is forward them everything you guys say and then tack on my personal comments to the bottom.
PM me if you have a personal comment for me, otherwise please discuss here your thoughts.
Vemnox
yeah I had a feeling this would happen as soon as I saw the first "OMG! The XP is HUGE!" post.
here is what I see as the ideal situation: the rate of XP gain should be the same as we were seeing in the original formula but it should take into account the group's performance instead of your own damage. What I mean is, if I used to get 1000 sl xp in a situation with the old formula while spamming my biggest damage specs, I should STILL get 1000 sl xp in a new formula while I'm healing/rallying/steadyaiming/crowd-controlling based on the performance of the group.
You're right Capn, we asked for this... we wanted our xp based on the group performance... they got THAT part of it right, they just can't seem to wrap their brains around the rate of gain issue.
Cheer up my friend... as a long-time mmorpg player I can assure you the ride aint ovah. hehe
Flookmastah wrote:
here is what I see as the ideal situation: the rate of XP gain should be the same as we were seeing in the original formula but it should take into account the group's performance instead of your own damage.
I agree with you, I do, ultimately. But right now I see no point in taking their attention again away from the profession to the XP formula again. I do, simply, look ridiculous posting a new "No, this XP formula is terrible" thread in the correspondent forums every 3 days.
I like the new formula. It may be a little extreme, but in my experience it's just right. If I lead a group of 10 people to kill a red or yellow con, 1-2 people incap and the rest of us barely succeed, then I think 10-15k of experience is right.
I do think it's a little screwy that I can still get sl XP for laying dead on the ground next to my group, but I'm not gonna complain and have them screw something else up.
I'm not a damage powerhouse, so I spend most of a fight doing support, or spamming Bleeding shots, so I think the new formula is great.
Yup, still ultimately pointless.
I'd tend to disagree that we were taking dev attention away from the profession itself though. We got attention only because it was finally deemed an emergency to get xp back up to workable levels. Otherwise their attention would have been elsewhere entirely, or can you honestly say we might have gotten an ability fix if they hadn't been screwin around with xp?
Frankly, if they HAD given us an ability fix instead, thisprofession would have been better off.
Can you take it to the Devs that you can gain 900k Squad Leader Experience in 8 minutes and tell me their response ? =) So thats about 1 million experience eery 10 minutes. Thats 6 million experience an hour if you have someone stood by you training you.
If they think that is fine then so be it.
May I also add if you look back in the posts I made one regarding a guild hunt with the formula before this stupid new one. I got about 300k in a 3 hour period giving 100k an hour. In my opinion that was balanced at the high level but was too hard to gain at the low level.
Cant they just put two brains together and plot a experience curve and then choose one that seems right. They can do scenario analysis in an excell spreadsheet if they like. Im not flaming them and am glad they tried to sort out the experience for small groups but this is like chopping your head off to fit through a small gap. There was a problem and instead of thinking it through (Give the person some better tools to widen the gap so they can fit through) they just didnt think and lobbed off their head so the body could fit through. Result... a dead proffesion.
Ooo, I like that little metaphor.
I understand your frustration but understand it is a matter of extemes. We went from a mediocre system to a totally broken system to an overwhelming system. We went from 1/10 the reward to 10 times the reward.
Before the change xp was exclusive to the combat xp for the SL. This approach was flawed since the contribution to a party shouldn't be entirely based off the damage contribution of the SL with the group only providing a multiplier to this amount.
After the fix the SL xp was destroyed and we all very much appreciate that this was corrected. Having to fight and crawl for skills that lack relative worth (Relative to other skill options in other professions) was... frustrating.
Now that someone can Master Squad Leader with 8 hours of group hunting I feel the class that, while seriously underpowered, is way too easy to advance into. Anyone with a spare Mule Account could have it be a Master SL without breaking a sweat. Given that it's so darn easy why the heck not master it? Eventually it will be fixed.
I don't recall anyone saying, "Make it so Squad Leader can be mastered in a day". Before the first change I recall that the majority of people did indicate they feel that the SL xp shouldn't be based exclusively off the Squad Leaders Combat contribution.
The fix is really in sight. The formula as it stands works of a straight multiplier based on the number of parties. It shouldn't be linear. It should look like a bell curve with 20 party member being at the peak. Less than 1 * per person for the first couple party members then more than 1* per person between 5 and 15 then less than 1* per person for each person over 15 with a capped multiplier at 10.
Your right. The curve just gest exponential as you get more group members. I cant see the difficulty in tweaking it so you get appropriate SL experience in a large group. Just to correct you can master squad leader in about an hour with a full group of 20.
I dont like this because its scaled to poorly, getting XP like this leading a 20 person group should earn you a nice reward but an 8 person group can powerlevel to master squad leader in a few hours. Before this change although our profession very broken, wearing that Commissar or Field Commander title had a certain prestigue to it, we worked our butts off to get there and now any dimbulb can be a master squad leader in an afternoon.
We've just been tossed aside again, the devs have made the ultimate joke out of our provfesssion.
I for one have to agree.
The exp is easy to gain but the skills you gain are not that impressive currently. Leave it as it is now.