Seems like XP balance is out of whack

[Blovski]

Main issue is Defiance Bay being such a massive splatter of XP, really. Even if you do just a little of that city's content (which is almost all available as soon as you enter rather than gated by map progress) you'll be waaay above a level that's balanced for the Cliaban Rilag, the Sanitarium and the massive tower. By contrast in BG 2 you'd often end up overlevelled for the last couple of quests you fill out before you go to Suldenessellar but you didn't really peak that early.

I don't have a problem at all with the overall XP thing of the game but I think it gets out of whack with the main quest.

@The poster above: I think the issue is more that the level cap is currently rather low pre-expansion and there aren't that many difficult endgame fights to justify it being any higher, instead of the problem being that people should have to do all of the game's content mechanically to hit level 12.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Blovski

[GrinningReaper659]

And here I thought objective based XP was supposed to be easy to manage and balance...I guess only in combat XP games can you reach max level before the end of the game.......oh wait.

 

When did the devs ever state that the quest-XP system would keep characters from reaching max level before the end of the game?

[Tigranes]

Main issue is Defiance Bay being such a massive splatter of XP, really. Even if you do just a little of that city's content you'll be waaay above a level that's balanced for the Cliaban Rilag, the Sanitarium and the massive tower. By contrast in BG 2 you'd often end up overlevelled for the last couple of quests you fill out before you go to Suldenessellar but you didn't really peak that early.

 

I don't have a problem at all with the overall XP thing of the game but I think it gets out of whack with the main quest very early.

 

Actually, if you did all the Athkatla quests in Chapter 2 you'd end up severely overleveled, able to throw around 6th level spells, before doing Bohdi - never mind Spellhold and the Sahuagin City. 

 

It's impossible to achieve 'full balance' of the XP so that everyone reaches max level just at the end, unless you have a game with no optional content. That's an obvious, obvious truth. 

 

Right now players can rush the main path and skip what, half of the optional content and still hope to reach a reasonable quantity of XP. The problem is that Defiance Bay and Od Nua open up in Chapter 2, encouraging others to really overfeed on XP. Again, I think the solution here is a simple XP mod.

[Caerdon]

And here I thought objective based XP was supposed to be easy to manage and balance...I guess only in combat XP games can you reach max level before the end of the game.......oh wait.

 

It is easy to manage. It appears it's simply a design choice that you reach the cap so soon if you go for all the side quests.

 

If I were to create an XP-based RPG like this, I would simply automate the task of XP balancing. The game could easily keep track of all the XP that could potentially be awarded to the players (even accounting for any major mutually exclusive XP)  and scale it accordingly. Then I'd just have two variables to control it: one to indicate the level players would reach following the minimum path, one to indicate the level they'd reach if they did absolutely everything. The game would take care of the rest automatically.

[GreyFox]

 

And here I thought objective based XP was supposed to be easy to manage and balance...I guess only in combat XP games can you reach max level before the end of the game.......oh wait.

 

When did the devs ever state that the quest-XP system would keep characters from reaching max level before the end of the game?

 

 

The devs? never.

The forums? well you can go reread the thread(hint: had to do with over-leveling the content). The humor is that this thread would have existed day 1 if the game had combat XP.

Edited April 6, 2015 by GreyFox

[kat7ra]

Tbh as other ppl have stated, this is something that these old school rpgs have always had trouble with.

If you make a huge amount of side content and give no reward, ppl will complain that there is no reward, if you DO give them rewards, and someone DO complete everything they'll become way to strong.

The strength level can vary from game to game, but I do remember the difference in killing Sarevok the first time when I was level 4ish maybe some were 5 playing the game without even knowing enough English to understand it, and one of the later times when he was killed by 2 out of my 6 man party before he reached my group.

 

There is almost no way to balance XP in these kind of games so that everyone will be happy.

[Justinian]

Huge 20 page thread on difficulty being broken:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72554-hard-mode-is-too-easy/page-20

 

Too much XP is a major complaint.

[MReed]

I played the bulk of the side content, using only the supplied NPCs, added in the order that you are expected to add them, and I hit the cap just about the time that I hit the "point of no return" (around an hour before).  I /didn't/ do any of the bounties quests, though, nor did I do any of the Dozens quests (in Act II).

 

It seems about right to me -- I suspect that the bounties are the major source of people complaining about to much XP.  The solution is obvious -- the bounties shouldn't award XP....

 

Joking, just joking, gee...

[Odd Hermit]

If an XP change were to happen, solo players would, I think, still need to be able to reach level 4 by the time they head to Caed Nua (Act 1 is significantly harder than Act 2 so far as I've seen because there is so little available experience).

 

Game absolutely doesn't need to and shouldn't be balanced around solo players. At its core it's party based and it should be balanced that way, even if that eventually means solo is nigh impossible.

[Caerdon]

So, I guess it's time for me to repeat my question from the first page:

 

How, exactly, does XP get awared in this game? Isn't it just divided among party members like in BG? I haven't paid much attention to XP, but when my party gets awarded 600 XP, it looks like each individual party member receives around 100 XP.

 

I'm especially curious to know how XP works when you're soloing - I hear there's some sort of soloing XP bonus or something... but wouldn't a solo character already get all that XP meant for a six-character party?

[Odd Hermit]

So, I guess it's time for me to repeat my question from the first page:

 

How, exactly, does XP get awared in this game? Isn't it just divided among party members like in BG? I haven't paid much attention to XP, but when my party gets awarded 600 XP, it looks like each individual party member receives around 100 XP.

 

I'm especially curious to know how XP works when you're soloing - I hear there's some sort of soloing XP bonus or something... but wouldn't a solo character already get all that XP meant for a six-character party?

 

Essentially it's +10% for each character slot empty. 5 total = +50%.

 

You gain less total XP from all sources, but it's split between fewer characters, and the net result is +10 to +50% depending on party size.

[sparklecat]

Incidentally, I haven't done any of the bounties, or the Od Nua dungeon yet.  It's also starting to feel less like I'm overlevelled come Act 3 - we'll have to see if that continues once I'm out of the wilderness - so it's possible that the problem is the tuning of the encounters you typically do in Act 2 around Defiance Bay, combined with the xp available from bounties.

[Blovski]

 

Main issue is Defiance Bay being such a massive splatter of XP, really. Even if you do just a little of that city's content you'll be waaay above a level that's balanced for the Cliaban Rilag, the Sanitarium and the massive tower. By contrast in BG 2 you'd often end up overlevelled for the last couple of quests you fill out before you go to Suldenessellar but you didn't really peak that early.

 

I don't have a problem at all with the overall XP thing of the game but I think it gets out of whack with the main quest very early.

 

Actually, if you did all the Athkatla quests in Chapter 2 you'd end up severely overleveled, able to throw around 6th level spells, before doing Bohdi - never mind Spellhold and the Sahuagin City. 

 

It's impossible to achieve 'full balance' of the XP so that everyone reaches max level just at the end, unless you have a game with no optional content. That's an obvious, obvious truth. 

 

Right now players can rush the main path and skip what, half of the optional content and still hope to reach a reasonable quantity of XP. The problem is that Defiance Bay and Od Nua open up in Chapter 2, encouraging others to really overfeed on XP. Again, I think the solution here is a simple XP mod.

 

True enough but doing all the Athakatla quests involved some really endgamey content and tough fights (Firkraag, Kangaxx, Twisted Rune) in a way that Defiance Bay doesn't seem to.

[Caerdon]

 

So, I guess it's time for me to repeat my question from the first page:

 

How, exactly, does XP get awared in this game? Isn't it just divided among party members like in BG? I haven't paid much attention to XP, but when my party gets awarded 600 XP, it looks like each individual party member receives around 100 XP.

 

I'm especially curious to know how XP works when you're soloing - I hear there's some sort of soloing XP bonus or something... but wouldn't a solo character already get all that XP meant for a six-character party?

 

Essentially it's +10% for each character slot empty. 5 total = +50%.

 

You gain less total XP from all sources, but it's split between fewer characters, and the net result is +10 to +50% depending on party size.

 

Uh... so, if a quest gives me 600 XP with a six-character party, a solo character would get 100 XP + 50% = 150 XP? Or did I misunderstand something?

 

If that's correct, it seems kind of strange that the game outputs the total amount of XP awarded instead of just the per-character XP, but maybe I just look at things differently than others...

[vril]

 

 

So, I guess it's time for me to repeat my question from the first page:

 

How, exactly, does XP get awared in this game? Isn't it just divided among party members like in BG? I haven't paid much attention to XP, but when my party gets awarded 600 XP, it looks like each individual party member receives around 100 XP.

 

I'm especially curious to know how XP works when you're soloing - I hear there's some sort of soloing XP bonus or something... but wouldn't a solo character already get all that XP meant for a six-character party?

 

Essentially it's +10% for each character slot empty. 5 total = +50%.

 

You gain less total XP from all sources, but it's split between fewer characters, and the net result is +10 to +50% depending on party size.

 

Uh... so, if a quest gives me 600 XP with a six-character party, a solo character would get 100 XP + 50% = 150 XP? Or did I misunderstand something?

 

If that's correct, it seems kind of strange that the game outputs the total amount of XP awarded instead of just the per-character XP, but maybe I just look at things differently than others...

 

 

I think it would be 600 XP + 50% = 900 XP for a solo character.  I haven't tried soloing in PoE yet but that is how it would have worked in Infinity.

[Bersercker]

Don't get the "just don't do the side quests, no one is forcing you" people. So you would only do them if you were forced to? Why play the game at all then? No one is forcing you. 

 

That nonsense aside, after a cursory examination of the game's files, it seems all of the quests are stored in xml in data\quests folder. But they only have an "experience level" and "experience weight" values, the former being (mostly?) single digit numbers. So i guess they should be multiplied by something in order to get total experience, while the latter obviously point to how much of the experience you get in each quests stage. So after some testing to determine the multipliers i guess its possible to determine total maximum quest experience by parsing all these files. 

The exp tables themselves seem to be somewhere in unity assets or dll's, so some unity thingie or visual studio would be needed to modify them. Hoped they would be in xml as well.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Bersercker

[Fuz]

Xp gain is fine.

Actually, it's one of the best I've ever seen (rewards your actions, don't force you to kill everything just to level up, etc).

[Caerdon]

I think it would be 600 XP + 50% = 900 XP for a solo character.  I haven't tried soloing in PoE yet but that is how it would have worked in Infinity.

Yeah, that's how it would've worked in IE games (aside from IWD2, or has my memory totally abandoned me?), but why in the name of Eothas would they give you a soloing XP bonus in that case?

[Grand_Commander13]

 

Yeah, too much XP is locked up in side quests; I just saw someone complain that they can't beat the boss at level seven. I wonder how they were able to get there that quickly, but obviously they could. It seems a bit mean for the game to let you get that far only to say "whoops, looks like you'll be needing to reload (we hope you didn't overwrite that save!) and get a few more levels."

 

What level should you be when you get to level 7? I'm on level 6 of Od Nua, with level 5 characters, over 20K of copper, nearly finished the stronghold (about 5 upgrades to go) and playing on Hard. Oh and I haven't finished Act 1 as yet.

 

 

No, I mean he was level seven when he fought the final boss of the game. Someone else was level nine. I had a hard enough time doing it at level twelve. 

 

I don't know how that could be solved though without either (1) making side content effectively mandatory because if you don't do it you'll be underleveled in the endgame, (2) making side content so unrewarding in XP it stops being much fun, or (3) level scaling. Pick your poison.

All of those are horrible and worse than the current situation.

 

Honestly I don't get it. They are side quests. You do not need to do them. A lot of them would have very good RP-reasons to not be even tackled. Story wise you have absolutely no reason to do any of them. A lot of quests only reward you with money or most of the time subpar items compared to what you have found till that point. Very few have actual good items.

 

You're missing the point: the side content is currently effectively mandatory because if you don't do it you'll be underleveled in the endgame. #1 is the current state, #2 and #3 are the un-fun alternatives (though there's always #4, and #5: weaken the final boss, or weaken the final boss but allow the player to fight the full-powered boss for a better ending).

[RedSocialKnight]

This shouldn't come as a surprise -- an entire new source of XP was added late in development. It's natural that they didn't have time to completely rebalance the game after bestiary XP was added.

[View619]

Don't get the "just don't do the side quests, no one is forcing you" people. So you would only do them if you were forced to? Why play the game at all then? No one is forcing you. 

 

That nonsense aside, after a cursory examination of the game's files, it seems all of the quests are stored in xml in data\quests folder. But they only have an "experience level" and "experience weight" values, the former being (mostly?) single digit numbers. So i guess they should be multiplied by something in order to get total experience, while the latter obviously point to how much of the experience you get in each quests stage. So after some testing to determine the multipliers i guess its possible to determine total maximum quest experience by parsing all these files. 

The exp tables themselves seem to be somewhere in unity assets or dll's, so some unity thingie or visual studio would be needed to modify them. Hoped they would be in xml as well.

 

Yeah, it looks like the quest files are referencing some id values to determine how much experience should be awarded. I'm trying to figure out exactly where the exp tables are; if it's something that can be modified in VS then that would make it a lot easier.

 

A good start would be linking the different quest files to their in-game counterparts. From there, you could start playing with the "ExperienceType" and "ExperienceLevel" values. Or, just create a script that ensures that no quest outside of the crit_path has an ExperienceLevel greater than some number.

Edited April 6, 2015 by View619

[Caerdon]

I don't understand this irrational fear of level scaling. It can be done sensibly.

 

Let's take BG1 as an example.

 

Sarevok keeps sending hired killers after you. He and his forces also have lots and lots of hired mercenaries as underlings and bodyguards. Now, shouldn't your notoriety, your achievements not affect how much resources Sarevok would allocate to deal with you? Of course it should. Anything else would be stupid on his part.

 

I totally agree with PrimeJunta here. A little bit of level scaling on the critical path would've made the whole XP balancing issue a whole lot simpler.

[vril]

 

 

 

So, I guess it's time for me to repeat my question from the first page:

 

How, exactly, does XP get awared in this game? Isn't it just divided among party members like in BG? I haven't paid much attention to XP, but when my party gets awarded 600 XP, it looks like each individual party member receives around 100 XP.

 

I'm especially curious to know how XP works when you're soloing - I hear there's some sort of soloing XP bonus or something... but wouldn't a solo character already get all that XP meant for a six-character party?

 

Essentially it's +10% for each character slot empty. 5 total = +50%.

 

You gain less total XP from all sources, but it's split between fewer characters, and the net result is +10 to +50% depending on party size.

 

Uh... so, if a quest gives me 600 XP with a six-character party, a solo character would get 100 XP + 50% = 150 XP? Or did I misunderstand something?

 

If that's correct, it seems kind of strange that the game outputs the total amount of XP awarded instead of just the per-character XP, but maybe I just look at things differently than others...

 

 

I think it would be 600 XP + 50% = 900 XP for a solo character.  I haven't tried soloing in PoE yet but that is how it would have worked in Infinity.

 

 

Maybe because certain classes aren't quite as OP in PoE as they were in BG or Icewind Dale

[sparklecat]

Did they end up dumping level scaling altogether?  Because I would've sworn they said they were going to do it like Baldur's Gate 2 did, at least for the main path quests - still get the same basic type of enemy, but which version spawns when you enter the map depends on your level at the time.

 

If they did get rid of this, I think that was a very bad choice.

[Lucinius]

The XP system, imo, is not very well done. Here's what I wrote in a different thread on the subject in the Character Builds forum;

 

 

Imo, the problem isn't that level 12 is too low of a level cap, but that the experience required per level is too low. Currently, the formula is very simple, every level adds 1000 experience to a growing number tacked on, starting at 2000 when you hit level 2 and is added to the experience required to hit the previous level as shown here;

 

Level 2: 1000

Level 3: 3000 (1000+2000)

Level 4: 6000 (3000+3000)

Level 5: 10000 (6000+4000)

Level 6: 15000

Level 7: 21000

Level 8: 28000

Level 9: 36000

Level 10: 45000

Level 11: 55000

Level 12: 66000

 

The problem is fairly clear; the amount of experience required as you go up in levels simply doesn't increase enough. This leads to hitting the level cap comparatively early in the game. Now, this probably was done to give the player a constant feeling of progression/power increases.. except it actually hurts that very feeling when you cap out and the only way left to get more powerful is through items. My solution would be to keep the level cap at 12, but increase the amount of experience required to hit it. Something like this;

 

Level 2: 1000

Level 3: 3000 (1000+2000)

Level 4: 7000 (3000+4000)

Level 5: 13000 (7000+6000)

Level 6: 21000

Level 7: 31000

Level 8: 43000

Level 9: 57000

Level 10: 73000

Level 11: 91000

Level 12: 111000

 

Exact same formula, except instead of increasing the count by 1000, you do it by 2000. As such you almost, but not quite, double the experience required to go from level 11 to 12. Now, this may not work, as I don't know how much experience there is to actually acquire if you run a 6 person group from as soon as possible to the end of the game. But, I would wager it is actually higher than this amount if you were to explore most, if not every nook and cranny. As such hitting the level cap would come much later in the game and the player would retain the feeling of having something to work towards power-progression wise.

 

Honestly, in addition to this I would add a stat increase every 4 levels gained to further the idea of power progression to the player (so, by hitting the level cap you could add a total of 3 points to your attributes). It wouldn't increase the power level of the players enough to be un-balanced, but increases the feeling of having gotten more powerful/rewarded by a substantial amount, as well as giving the player the feeling they can redress some perceived short-falls in their character strengths. Still, this is secondary to the primary issue at hand.

 

Honestly, I must admit the idea of people simply rushing through the main story line and avoiding/neglecting most, or even notable chunks of side content didn't occur to me. It is a valid worry, especially given my proposed solution in the quoted text as players who rushed the main quest line could find themselves a level or two lower when trying to beat the game. I'm just used to the idea of everyone who plays these kinds of games hitting most (if not all) side-quests because of the rewards therein (usually in these games, the really good loot comes from the very challenging side-quests) to explore the world, bash more heads, get loot/levels and overcome the challenges of the main quest line.

 

Now, ideally you wouldn't have to re-balance anything even with my proposed changes because if you hit something you couldn't beat because you were too low level, you'd just go out, finish however many side-quests to level once or twice and then come back. The design would simply incorporate the slower levelling pace into the difficulty aspect of the game. Just thinking of trying to beat BG2 without doing the vast majority of side content makes me shake my head; just feels wrong, as it means you've lost out on most of the really, really good loot (and, quite honestly, some of the better gameplay/dialogue).

 

But gaming today is different than it was back then, so, like it or not.. it is an issue to deal with. So, if need be, I'd augment the quoted changes with modifying the quest reward curves; MainQuestExp would be increased by ~30% and SideQuestExp would be decreased by ~30%. That would keep those who primarily hug the main quest line afloat in terms of levels and what is minimally required to beat the game (level ~ and for those who do explore more of the side content would more properly pace their levelling experience so that they only cap out closer to the end of the game (you would still cap out, I believe) and the game increases in difficulty, slightly, due to hitting content at a lower level than currently. 

 

I'd even consider suggesting it be tied to difficulty level, i.e.; Easy and Normal keep current Exp curve, Hard and PotD use mine. 

 

Lastly, I believe another aspect of the problem is in how poorly Pillars gates content through difficulty. For example, in BG2 you had content you could access in Act 2 but short of cheating, exploiting or extreme cheesing, would unlikely be able to even survive (much less beat) until you returned post-Underdark unless you were extremely good at the game and hit it just prior to heading for Spellhold (and sometimes not even then). So far, I've only seen a couple of places that could be similar in Pillars, and most of those are nowhere to the same degree as in BG2. 

 

While I hope they change the way the Exp curve works somehow, I doubt it will happen; it really isn't the kind of change you make short of an expansion or sequel. It is too big of a mechanic to just *poof* different! on even your average knowledgeable gamer, much less the minority that browse and post on a game's forum. Personally, I'll just wait for a mod (which may never come, at least while I'm still playing the game; it just doesn't have the same long-lasting appeal as a BG2 or Torment, where I'll play it every year for more than a decade) and until then, use the CheatEngine table to remove 30% of all experience my party gains (still on pace to hit level cap before the end of the game).