Hack XP

[Sensorghost]

There's got to be a major flaw with the hack XP. I hacked a base last night all by my lonesome. Sat there the whole time like they said I should for max XP and then the hack goes through and all I got was 68 points. I get more for popping a squishy.

[Malthus]

There is no flaw, you only get xp if there are enemies in the SOI for 10 minutes before the hack and the 15 minutes during. So if the base had no enemies in it, you get no xp. It is extremely difficult to get even a couple of hundred xp points for a base capture now, and that has a lot of people very unhappy.

[Sensorghost]

Yeah I read about that in the patch notes. But they also said that the squad doesn't get xp for the hack either. So does that mean if we are in a squad and I hack the base and you watch my back while it's getting hacked, and we're up to our eyeballs in badguys you'd get nothing?

If that's true that really sucks.

[Malthus]

Nope...the hack is irrelevent really, it just starts the timer. :) What it means is that we don't all get the same amount.

IE - You hack the console and the find a plce to hide in the basement, your there with enemies for the entire 25 minutes (10 before and 15 during). In the end, in a perfect world, you get 3000 xp (never happens under the new system).

I am in your squad and am fighting to support you but about halfway through the 25 minutes our nearby tower gets attacked. I goto support there. The tower is outside the base SOI, so when I leave the timer stops counting for xp. We beat off teh attack and I come back to the base SOI. My total time on the hacked SOI is 18 minutes. I get 2200 xp.

Now the xp numbers and percentages based on time are all fictional, but that should give you a better idea on how it works. All that matters is the amount of time with enemies present you spend in the SOI and that your Empire hacks the base.

[tuftedpuffin]

I really think that if they're changing the XP system this much (and it's a major change logically whether or not it is programmatically) that they don't need to be releasing it just yet. The gaming public has a long history of completely BLASTING a MMOG that is not ready but shoved out the door anyway.

I mean, tweaking some weapons or adding a vehicle or whatever is one thing, but completely reworking the XP system? Come on.

[SmackDab]

But the general public has NO IDEA how XP works or has worked or anything like that they'll see what it is when they open the box.

[Nosferatu]

So, ultimately, on average you get less XP than you did before that patch. They should either up the xp you get from doing other things or increase the number of things that generate xp to compensate.

[SirDiesalot]

if they can keep customers paying longer and the only reason half the players are playing is to level up the char.... that's what they'll do. 'course... then they'd only be shooting themselves in the foot by having only 20 levels.

[tuftedpuffin]

No, no, that's not my point. The customers won't know any of the way things were during beta (XP or otherwise), and that's normal.

What I'm saying is the fact that the developers haven't decided how to implement some of the most basic tenents of the game just screams "I'M NOT READY!" Any product that is "not ready" will inevitably fall on its face during launch, and many is the MMOG that has never recovered from such a launch.

The last couple of Blizzard launches have been this way, and got a lot of flak for it, but they weren't monthly subscription services and recovered quite nicely. For a better example, take a look at WWII Online. Know anyone that admits to playing that these days?

[Joe Shmoe]

Did it ever occur to you Gambit that this was the planned implementation for XP the entire time and that the old system was just an accelerated system designed to get people to higher BRs so they can try out more things and find more bugs?

Or perhaps XP will work like it did before the change in the full release, but they wanted to try something different to see how it worked? For MMOGs beta testing isn't just finding bugs it's also about trying to nail down the potential dynamics of the future game. Communities always create exploits and emmergent behavior takes advantage of poor planning(DaveG knows a lot about this and so do we HO's anyone?).

[SmackDab]

I thought WWII online's biggest flaw was the crash bugs and the fact that the game didn't work for shit out of the box. Hell even months after release they were still giving it away free cause it was such a pile.

Planetside has that one thing going for it, it's somewhat stable, it still crashes and has minor bugs but for the most part you can play a really really long time without any problems and that's cool.

No idea how some of the lower end systems work though, or people with GF4 MX cards and the like, might not work for them but hell, besides last night's 2 drops from the world I've been able to stay online for over 5 hours straight. I likes that!

[Sensorghost]

Actully I run a 1.4 athlon with a geoforce 3 vid card. Initially during Beta I was crashing like every 15 minutes, but it was more likely because of my Hard drive dieing that the game I think. Got a new hard drive and I haven't crashed yet. So with the people with low end systems shouldn't be to inconvienianced.

[tuftedpuffin]

For MMOGs beta testing isn't just finding bugs it's also about trying to nail down the potential dynamics of the future game.

Exactly. And here we are less than a week from the planned release date and they're still doing this. Adjusting the flying HO in tribes is a matter of tweaking one variable - friction (or was it max airspeed? Whatever...) Drastically changing the XP system that everyone uses to gain ranks/certs is not a "tweak" and the effects deserve to be examined for more than a week before expecting customers to pay for it.

As far as this being the planned implementation all along, I don't believe that for a minute. The way they'd do it, if that had been the plan, would be to add a multiplier to the XP gain but leave the system intact, or something equally simple. What they've done here is a major remodeling job, not a coat of paint.

You may gather from my rants that I'm not happy about the changes. Well, sure it's nice to advance quickly, but I'm not really very upset - it's just that I can't believe they're pushing this out the door this way. I've seen worse, so it shouldn't surprise me, but it will haunt them.

[Ravin]

I'm not particularly happy with it's current incarnation myself but I don't feel it's too aweful. They're just trying to find a way to slow things down a bit, they don't want folks feeling that's it's a completely insignificant accomplishment to reach max BR. And SOE has a track record for major exp overhauls even years after release of games. There have been numerous minor (modifier example) modifications to EQ's exp system and no less than 3 major rebuilds. Not to mention that EQ's system (even the pre-expansion versions) is vastly more complicated than PS's.

Bottom line is, change is going to be frequent for at least the first couple of months. Given that much time with (hopefully) 50 times as many players as we have now, this game will get much more polished in a hurry.