Squad Leader Archive

Aye, it can be scaled however...

But the SL XP requirements are high for a reason...

Quick Story:

• In Beta, the Squad Leader skill boxes required 40k, 60k, 80k, and 100k SL XP to advance


• We were able to get an easy 6,000 Squad Leader XP per kill


• Thus,most people would max out their XP after a half hour


• Most people could max Squad Leader in a few days


• Thus, they greatly increased the XP requirements to 175k, 250k, 350k, 450k


• Then we got to Release


• Now group XP is bugged, not correctly calculating difficulty level right, and thus not awarding enough XP...


• So we're only getting 2,000 Squad Leader XP per kill (unless you're in a huge Tusken group or something .... )

Now I have no idea what the devs want but those are the facts, as far as I know. To my knowledge, Squad Leader has the highest raw-number XP requirements of any profession, and its for a reason: You can get TONS of XP per fight...

*anxious to see the Group XP bug fix*

A casual player has a double whammy on his XP gaining.

1. Doesn't play as much, thus slower XP gain


2. Has a hard time having "regular" hunting parties, thus must often do pick-up groups, which are far less efficient, and thus slower XP gain

So while I powergame pretty decently for someone who plays for fun, and works full-time, I'd imagine someone who plays half as much taking triple, or even quadruple as long to get the same XP....

I would suggest a much simpler formula:

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SL XP = Total Group Weapon XP / 4

Cap SL XP per kill to 1.5x weapon xp personally earned by the SL.
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If the group takes down a 10k xp mob, the squad leader should earn the same portion of that xp, as long as the SL did a certain minimal level of damage, regardless of the specific composition of the group. I see no reason why the squad leader should earn extra xp for doing more than that minimal amount of damage - if there's a gain of any sort, it's still incentive for the squad leader to personally do more damage. This formula also reduces the ability for a SL to join a high-powered group and get tons of SL xp, since it's capped to a multiple of the damage the SL does personally.

There's also no benefit for the SL to 'load up' on group members. If the group can take down a 10k xp mob on its own, adding a new member provides no benefit to the SL xp when killing that same 10k xp mob.

Having the SL group with many lower level players doesn't particularly help the SL. If the SL is basically soloing the mob, the SL is getting only 1/4th of the mob XP as SL xp. It would be possible to advance, but it would be much slower than a group contributing more damage.

Regarding the numbers:
The numbers 4 and 1.5 were chosen for several reasons. They are detailed below and could be tweaked as necessary.

1.5x was chosen as the cap to tie SL progression to elite weapon progression (it takes roughly 4/3x more SL xp to master SL compared to mastering Rifleman/Pistoleer/Carabineer due to the 4th line). This means a SL that -always- grouped optimally could get SL slightly faster than one of the elite weapon professions. However, realistically SLs won't be in optimal groups, and they won't always be grouped, so a slightly higher cap was chosen to make SL progression roughly similar to pistol/rifle/carbine. This means that as long as those profession's progressions are balanced, so is the SL's.

4 was chosen because 4x1.5 = 6. This is the 'optimal' number of grouped combatant players, assuming everyone does the same amount of damage (including the SL), i.e. you want the group to be doing 6 times the damage the SL is capable of putting out. Any group doing more than 6x the SL's damage output is capping the SL's xp, while any group doing less than 6x the SL's output is reducing the amount he's earning.

Cross posted from another thread...

I think the above comments are interesting and constructive, but leave out an analysis of how group size effects your xp. Forgive me if I missed something about this point above...I'm reading and posting from work.

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I had a little realization on SL xp recently while hunting jaxes both alone and in a group...

As far as I can tell, SL xp scales linearly with group size and my experience makes me believe the correct formula, at least for groups less than 10,is:

SL xp = 2 * Combat XP * group size

Now, that said, I have two comments:

1) The comment made by anyone who examines how SL xp works...it is silly that SL xp is based on how much damage the SL personally deals. There are lots of reasons this is silly and they have been discussed many times already.

2) A point that hasn't been said alot. Scaling the SL xp linearly with group size means that there is no real incentive to group unless you are grouping with people who don't deal as much damage as you or deal different kinds of damage as you.

For example...with just me and my pet in my group, I get something like 1200 SL xp per jax killed (OK, it's often more than that, but I'm just picking numbers to illustrate a point). Now, if I had someone in my group who uses the same weapon as I do and we do same amount of damage on average, I'll do half as much damage and get only 50% more SL xp from the groupsize bonus. So...in the end, I will get 900 SL xp per jax. Now, this would be OK if that meant I could kill twice as many jaxes per minute...if that were the case, I'd be getting 1800 SL xp in the time I solo would get 1200 SL xp. However, as we all know, good mobs to fight take some time to find. Often, your actual time in combat is less than the time it took you to run out to where the mobs are...so the time it takes to take down the target has to be added into this calculation.

So, let's say that you spend the same amount of time finding mobs as killing them (which is pretty good...I think most people and groupsspend more time looking than killing)and let's say that killing a jax takes 1 minute soloand it took you 1 minute to find it.

Solo + pet: 1200 SL xp in 2 minutes= 600 SL xp/minute

Solo + pet + one person:900 SL xp in 1.5 minutes = 600 SL xp/minute

Of course, in the case of jaxes, you'll usually bleed a whole herd of them at once and you can kill them all in the time it would have taken you to kill one...in that case, you just multiply the above numbers by the number of jaxes in your herd.

So obviously, the point is that there isn't any point to getting a group if all you are after is SL xp. You can continue the above arguement to any group size and you'll find the answer stays the same...in the above conditions, regardless of group size you'll get 600 SL xp/minute.

If you spend more time searching for mobs than killing mobs solo, you'll actually LOSE SL xp by having a larger group.

The only way you can benefit by having a larger group is if at least one of the following is true:

a) You deal more damage than the rest of the group or

b) You spend more time killing than looking for mobs

I think this seems unreasonable. Not only do you get penalized for using your SL special abilities (because the prevent you from dealing damage, you also will get penalized for having a larger group. How can this be solved? First, as has been argued elsewhere, SLs should get xp for executing specials. Secondly, group size must give a bonus that grows faster than linearly with group size. I think a reasonable scaling would be to have group size raised to the 1.5 power.

SL exp = combat XP * (group size)^1.5

In the above example wherelooking and fighting solotake the sameamount of timeyou would now get:

Solo + pet = 425 xp/min

Solo + pet + one person = 519 xp/min

Solo + pet + two people = 600 xp/min

Solo + pet + three people = 671 xp/min

Of course, one could add a simple factor to get the xp/min raised or lowered if the DEVs wanted to tune things so that solo+pet still gave 600 xp/min and things went up from there. With this forumula, you'd still benefit from having a larger group even if you spent more time looking for mobs than killing mobs.

And also, things might change considerably if they move away from an xp system where your xp is based on how much damage you do. But if they stay with this system, SLs have even less motivation to group. Some will argue that this means they should make it so you can't group with your pets...but then the above arguements just shift up one notch...then the best way to group would be with just one friend.

So, DEVs, if we have correctly identified how your XP system works, you need to change it because SLs have no motivation to group excpet RP reasons.

--Ze'ev

Volatris, your xp formulas make a lot more sense than the one in use currently, but are you *honestly* optimistic that a change will be made? I'm not a newbie, but I wasn't there for the first month of the game either. Does SOE actually make fixes to things like this?

Optimism is sometimes the only thing that can get me through the day

I can't control what they change, but I can propose the very best stuff possible and hope.

Where it goes from here is beyond my, or your, control.

/bump