The leveling and XP curve. What's wrong and the only way to fix it.

[PsychoBlonde]

 

It's a single-player game.  Why does it need to be "balanced"?

 

My only comment on this "problem" is "I don't care, and it doesn't matter".

 

Yet another mindless "the game needs to forcibly prevent people from playing a certain way because I imagine that way as somehow being 'less fun' or 'suboptimal'" complaint.

 

For many things, I'd agree with your comment. But when you can hit the level cap by the middle to two thirds of the way through the game (without even going out of your way to do so) and thus be overpowered to the extent that the rest of the game becomes trivial, that's an issue.

 

 

 

I didn't hit the level cap until very close to the end of the game (had approximately half of Twin Elms left to do) and I actually "went out of my way" to DO all the side quests and extra content.  It's not an "issue".  You may not enjoy that the game didn't . . . somehow . . . magically read your mind and provide you with the magical perfect experience you imagined you wanted, but that doesn't make it an "issue" or a "design flaw" or a "balance problem".  It means that you played in a way that you didn't like all the results of.  I could equally complain that I didn't max out certain skills and thus, say, couldn't disarm every single trap in the game the instant I came across it.  That doesn't make this a "problem" or mean it requires a "fix".  It means if I want to be able to disarm all the traps I need to put more points in Mechanics.

 

"I want to play the way I want" and "I want to never accidentally out-level foes" are mutually exclusive goals.

 

Besides, it's so farkin' easy to tune the combat in this game to the difficulty you prefer to play at, it's not even funny.  Run with a smaller party.  Pull more mobs at a time.  Don't bother upgrading your gear.

 

Honestly, it's like the people in DDO who go out of their way to play the most broken, stupid, overpowered builds and then complain that the game is "too easy".  Well, of course it is.  You intentionally went straight for the easy button--and then when you hit it, you complained that it worked.  Silly.

[Ink Blot]

 

 

 

I didn't hit the level cap until very close to the end of the game (had approximately half of Twin Elms left to do) and I actually "went out of my way" to DO all the side quests and extra content.  It's not an "issue".  You may not enjoy that the game didn't . . . somehow . . . magically read your mind and provide you with the magical perfect experience you imagined you wanted, but that doesn't make it an "issue" or a "design flaw" or a "balance problem".  It means that you played in a way that you didn't like all the results of.  I could equally complain that I didn't max out certain skills and thus, say, couldn't disarm every single trap in the game the instant I came across it.  That doesn't make this a "problem" or mean it requires a "fix".  It means if I want to be able to disarm all the traps I need to put more points in Mechanics.

 

"I want to play the way I want" and "I want to never accidentally out-level foes" are mutually exclusive goals.

 

Besides, it's so farkin' easy to tune the combat in this game to the difficulty you prefer to play at, it's not even funny.  Run with a smaller party.  Pull more mobs at a time.  Don't bother upgrading your gear.

 

Honestly, it's like the people in DDO who go out of their way to play the most broken, stupid, overpowered builds and then complain that the game is "too easy".  Well, of course it is.  You intentionally went straight for the easy button--and then when you hit it, you complained that it worked.  Silly.

 

I'm going to assume a certain amount of facetiousness here, as you're making grand sweeping assumptions about the way I play.

 

I'm not sure you're grasping what's being said here: sure, maybe you weren't at the level cap until close to the end of the game, but that's not the experience of others. You can't just hand-wave that away by saying "Don't play that way". Don't play what way? The way the game is designed to be played? i.e. Explore the game world, do quests, and gain experience.

 

And your 'solution' to the problem? Come on: you can't be serious. Make it harder by playing a smaller party? You do realize that this only results in you leveling faster, don't you? So you'll be hitting the cap and overleveled even sooner? Don't upgrade your gear or pull more mobs? Don't you see that if you need to do that in order to make combat challenging that there's something wrong?

 

It's not a matter of "I want to play the way I want". Nor is it a matter of "I want to never accidentally out-level foes". It's a matter of "If I play the game and I'm overleveled a significant portion of the game before the end, there's something wrong with the experience point distribution". Outleveling some encounters is fine. Being overleveled for all of them after a certain point in the game isn't. If you don't get that or refuse to get it, well I guess there's nothing left to discuss. Feel free to go back to your magical, perfect copy of PoE and revel in the knowledge that there's nothing at all wrong with it.

[Atheosis]

They aren't going to completely redo the xp and leveling system in the game so I don't know why we're even discussing it.  The game has been released.  It's not going to change in drastic ways.  They just need to trim off the excess xp that makes it so easy to hit the cap and they need to buff roughly half the enemies in the game so they pose a threat equal to their level.  Many enemies need their accuracy significantly buffed for instance.  Seriously though, talking about drastic redesigns of game systems is just totally unrealistic.

[PrimeJunta]

Ehhh maybe. I'm not a huge fan of exponential XP either; it makes for ridiculously inflated late-game XP and makes XP gain trivial once you've leveled past an area. It's kind of a brute-force solution IMO.

 

And despite MATHEMATICS! it's by no means the only solution. It's all about balancing the XP rewards with the level requirements. P:E's leveling curve is very similar to D&D3's, and that worked fine for e.g. Storm of Zehir which had a quite a lot of side content. 

[Hiro Protagonist II]

No need to change anything. Levelling is fine. It's the (exploitable) encounters that are the problem. When I reached Od Nua for the first time, I immediately started the endless paths to see how far I could get. I reached level 8 in no time. That's half the mega dungeon completed.

 

I then found the progress was going to be challenging because of not the encounters but my lock picking/disable traps skill monkey didn't have enough mechanics although I did have enough lock picks to continue. So I decided to save my lock picks and start Act 2. Otherwise I would have continued to go deeper. And we were told by the dev's that we would find it hard to get past the first couple of levels of the mega-dungeon and have to continue on the main quest and come back later. Nope, not at all.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Bersercker]

 

 

It's a single-player game.  Why does it need to be "balanced"?

 

My only comment on this "problem" is "I don't care, and it doesn't matter".

 

Yet another mindless "the game needs to forcibly prevent people from playing a certain way because I imagine that way as somehow being 'less fun' or 'suboptimal'" complaint.

 

For many things, I'd agree with your comment. But when you can hit the level cap by the middle to two thirds of the way through the game (without even going out of your way to do so) and thus be overpowered to the extent that the rest of the game becomes trivial, that's an issue.

 

 

 

I didn't hit the level cap until very close to the end of the game (had approximately half of Twin Elms left to do) and I actually "went out of my way" to DO all the side quests and extra content.  It's not an "issue".  You may not enjoy that the game didn't . . . somehow . . . magically read your mind and provide you with the magical perfect experience you imagined you wanted, but that doesn't make it an "issue" or a "design flaw" or a "balance problem".  It means that you played in a way that you didn't like all the results of.  I could equally complain that I didn't max out certain skills and thus, say, couldn't disarm every single trap in the game the instant I came across it.  That doesn't make this a "problem" or mean it requires a "fix".  It means if I want to be able to disarm all the traps I need to put more points in Mechanics.

 

"I want to play the way I want" and "I want to never accidentally out-level foes" are mutually exclusive goals.

 

Besides, it's so farkin' easy to tune the combat in this game to the difficulty you prefer to play at, it's not even funny.  Run with a smaller party.  Pull more mobs at a time.  Don't bother upgrading your gear.

 

Honestly, it's like the people in DDO who go out of their way to play the most broken, stupid, overpowered builds and then complain that the game is "too easy".  Well, of course it is.  You intentionally went straight for the easy button--and then when you hit it, you complained that it worked.  Silly.

 

But it should be the other way around don't you think? Player should be searching for ways to make combat easier not harder. Like, enchanting weapons against specific enemy type, buffing himself with food and rest, using scrolls, potions and summoning thigies, thinking about optimal party composition for especially difficult fight, etc. At least at maximum difficulty. Otherwise why even put all of these into the game?

Edited April 9, 2015 by Bersercker

[Zwiebelchen]

I think the difficulty and XP issues shouldn't be fixed with just flat out increasing the amount of XP needed for higher levels.

 

Extreme changes usually tend to break other things, like forward compatibility with addons and DLC extending the level cap, etc.

 

 

The best possible fix is not overtuning one mechanic. It is rebalancing on all fronts with only slight adjustments working together in the grand scheme of things:

 

--> adjust the XP curve beyond level 7 slightly upwards towards exponential progression (I'd say change the 66.000 XP total to reach max level to 85.000 XP total).

--> drastically reduce bounty rewards ... those are just way overtuned.

--> reduce trap disarm XP by at least 30%. This is heavily overtuned anyway. You get almost 1000 XP from traps in Raedrics Hold alone. The quest XP reward is only twice that!

--> increase accuracy values of all hard mode enemies in act 2 by 5 and act 3 by 10. This will also affect PotD, so that's a pretty elegant solution in combination with...

--> ...a rebalancing of all defensive talents granting deflection. Tune down the deflection bonuses awarded by those talents by at least 30%. Because of the way deflection works, the bonuses are way too large (You can get a flat +30 deflection bonus through talents alone! ... this means all crits get converted to hits and all hits get converted to graces... this is just way too much impact). This will also help to reduce the enormous deflection gap between tanks and non-tanks.

--> nerf shields and shield enchants. Seriously, they just got way too much deflection on them, especially when enchanted. Again, a difference of 30 deflection means that all attacks against this target get reduced by one damage tier. Deflection is just way too easy to stack with the current OP shields in the game. 16 base deflection on large shields?

--> change Constitution to reduce the recovery penalty of armors. This will also help a lot to reduce the gap between tanks and non-tanks, by allowing casters to wear light and medium armor without too much penalty in DPS.

--> nerf constant recovery. Seriously, this ability is just way too strong. Fighters should be at least comparable to monks and paladins in terms of tanking capability. Due to the way endurance works, constant recovery is just overpowered.

 

 

All this together will most likely already fix the entire game balancing, making "hard" actually hard without affecting those players that play this game for the story and don't want the challenge. All these changes will most likely not hurt non-completionists or non-min/maxers.

Note that almost all of these changes are simple number changes. So all this can probably be done in a simple patch, maybe except for the constitution change.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[Matt516]

Ehhh maybe. I'm not a huge fan of exponential XP either; it makes for ridiculously inflated late-game XP and makes XP gain trivial once you've leveled past an area. It's kind of a brute-force solution IMO.

 

And despite MATHEMATICS! it's by no means the only solution. It's all about balancing the XP rewards with the level requirements. P:E's leveling curve is very similar to D&D3's, and that worked fine for e.g. Storm of Zehir which had a quite a lot of side content. 

 

Fair enough. The "MATHEMATICS!" is correct, though only within a very specific scope (that I've tried to outline) and only for what I'm trying to say (which is that those two goals I outlined cannot be achieved with the current curve but can be with the exponential curve).

 

But if Obsidian is careful, they can probably kinda sorta make it work. Like I said - enforcing a set starting level for each installment of the series via autoleveling on import (instead of letting imported characters come in with different amounts of XP and at different levels) will aid them greatly in being able to balance the XP gains in any given title. It'll just be more difficult for them than if they had used an exponential curve.

[Matt516]

@Zwei, I agree with a lot of your suggestions, but did have a few comments:

 

1) Trap/Lock XP shouldn't be reduced, it should be removed entirely. Shouldn't have been in the game in the first place. That reminds me, I need to go back to the tutorial dungeon and disarm all those traps!

 

2) The breakpoint for Deflection completely removing certain attack resolutions isn't every 30, it's every 50 (with the exception of misses which is the first 15). Resolution is 1-15 miss, 16-50 graze, 51-100 hit, 100+ crit (or something like that). Not quite sure where you got 30 from.

 

3) Interesting idea for Con change. Honestly, you could put that on top of the extra Endurance/HP and it still wouldn't be overpowered. Con is pretty weak right now. Maybe 1.5% to 2% flat reduction per Con, or something like that?

 

4) Monks aren't tanks - at all. They're dps, tanky-dps at the most. But not designed to tank in the slightest - they're actually worse tanks than barbarians, even. (I have one of each in my party ).

[Matt516]

They aren't going to completely redo the xp and leveling system in the game so I don't know why we're even discussing it.  The game has been released.  It's not going to change in drastic ways.  They just need to trim off the excess xp that makes it so easy to hit the cap and they need to buff roughly half the enemies in the game so they pose a threat equal to their level.  Many enemies need their accuracy significantly buffed for instance.  Seriously though, talking about drastic redesigns of game systems is just totally unrealistic.

 

Changing the XP curve to an exponential curve isn't that drastic, though it is certainly at the outer limits of feasibility. Which is why I also suggested a course of action to help ameliorate the issues with the quadratic curve if they do keep it for the future games - enforcing a set starting level for each installment of the series via autoleveling imported characters to the cap of the previous game. 

 

I would agree that trimming some excess XP (mostly from bounties) and buffing some later encounters is a very good idea.

 

Again - I've come on a little strong in parts of this thread, but all I'm trying to argue is that if Obsidian wants to accomplish two design goals that I thought were goals they were targeting, the quadratic system can't work and the exponential system is the only one that will. Even with the autoleveling solution for future games, they're still going to need to reduce the relative importance of sidequest XP in the later installments if they don't want a massive level gap forming. That's just a consequence of the quadratic level curve, one way or the other.

[Zwiebelchen]

@Zwei, I agree with a lot of your suggestions, but did have a few comments:

 

1) Trap/Lock XP shouldn't be reduced, it should be removed entirely. Shouldn't have been in the game in the first place. That reminds me, I need to go back to the tutorial dungeon and disarm all those traps!

 

2) The breakpoint for Deflection completely removing certain attack resolutions isn't every 30, it's every 50 (with the exception of misses which is the first 15). Resolution is 1-15 miss, 16-50 graze, 51-100 hit, 100+ crit (or something like that). Not quite sure where you got 30 from.

 

3) Interesting idea for Con change. Honestly, you could put that on top of the extra Endurance/HP and it still wouldn't be overpowered. Con is pretty weak right now. Maybe 1.5% to 2% flat reduction per Con, or something like that?

 

4) Monks aren't tanks - at all. They're dps, tanky-dps at the most. But not designed to tank in the slightest - they're actually worse tanks than barbarians, even. (I have one of each in my party ).

 

1) I wouldn't mind trap XP being removed completely, but this would affect early-game XP rewards alot, and we don't want to cut those too much (especially with all those other balancing changes in my suggestion working in tandem)

 

2) The only two break points that really matter in the game are grace-to-miss and hit-to-grace, as the crit treshold is so high that it almost never happens for enemies, hence why it's 30 deflection for a tier change (okay, it's actually 35 because 50 for grace minus 15 for miss, but nvm).

 

3) I'd use 4% recovery penalty reduction for every point over 10. That means on 10 you don't have any changes, 14 equals -16% (which allows a heavy robe) and 17 equals -28%, which is medium armors. Consider temporary bonuses through food and resting and it's perfect. You don't want to start the recovery penalty reduction below a CON score of 10, so that wearing no armor is still a viable option.

 

4) Monks are intended as tanks; the wound mechanic actually supports the idea of tanking monks. With appropriate build, they are actually quite good tanks with some nice utility spells on top. It's just that constant recovery makes Fighters to OP in comparison.

[Nanakamado]

I really don't get this, leveling is one of the greatest things in RPG, and feeling overpowered in the end of the game is something that I really like. For me the only problem is the level cap. Just give as some skill points and more endurance on each level beyond 12 and it will be ok.

 

For people that need harder combat, there should be harder hard mode and that's all. I like to feel that side quest means something, not only for the world, but also for my party. Characters are getting stronger and that's the reward for it, You don't have to be concerned about combat, beacuse of Your power.

[Atheosis]

 

Changing the XP curve to an exponential curve isn't that drastic

 

 

Yeah it really is.  You are talking about making level 8 the new level 12 basically and level 12 becomes all but impossible to reach with current xp totals in the game.  It would take huge changes all over to make work.

[Hassat Hunter]

No, I heard you Matt, I just completely disagree with it.

 

Also, I'm slightly interested to hear what people exactly do differently than me. About to hit lvl 12 doing Twin Elms sidequests, but I've only done 3 bounties so far. Finished all Defiance Bay quests, all levels of Ord Nua, picked all locks (including 'theft' ones just for XP without looting content, I do agree with you this is hilariously bad).

So I've pretty much done all side-content, I murdered every beast I come across. And still don't  have the extreme overload of XP talk about.

 

So what exactly did people do differently? Also I did just killed a certain NPC and his entourage in Twin Elms and got 7866XP for it, which seems a bit excessive, though I guess since it's the endgame it doesn't matter so much at that point it's one of those few points where simply too much XP is given, and fixing that goes a long way without risking breaking's PoE2's XP progression with it.

[Zwiebelchen]

No, I heard you Matt, I just completely disagree with it.

 

Also, I'm slightly interested to hear what people exactly do differently than me. About to hit lvl 12 doing Twin Elms sidequests, but I've only done 3 bounties so far. Finished all Defiance Bay quests, all levels of Ord Nua, picked all locks (including 'theft' ones just for XP without looting content, I do agree with you this is hilariously bad).

So I've pretty much done all side-content, I murdered every beast I come across. And still don't  have the extreme overload of XP talk about.

 

So what exactly did people do differently? Also I did just killed a certain NPC and his entourage in Twin Elms and got 7866XP for it, which seems a bit excessive, though I guess since it's the endgame it doesn't matter so much at that point it's one of those few points where simply too much XP is given, and fixing that goes a long way without risking breaking's PoE2's XP progression with it.

 

What difficulty setting do you play? Especially on higher difficulty settings, the beastiary XP is heavily front-loaded, as higher difficulties tend to place some higher-level foes in early game encounters (that you would otherwise only encounter later in medium or lower difficulty).

This leads to the effect that in Hard and PotD you actually level even faster than in medium or easy.

 

Also, bounties. Bounties are probably responsible for the majority of the excess XP.

[SeekDWay]

I hope they don't change the exp curve at all. A non-completionist will almost never max out as it is.

 

I might sound a bit offensive here, but so be it.

 

This thread is about a bunch of people, who not only want the game to be harder but to be unrewarding as well. Level progression in PoE is one of the few really good things the game has going for it. Overleveling content isn't the problem, it's the core game mechanics that are broken (deflection, acc, stat trinity, retarded pathing, overabundance of per rest abilities).

[Zwiebelchen]

I hope they don't change the exp curve at all. A non-completionist will almost never max out as it is.

 

I might sound a bit offensive here, but so be it.

 

This thread is about a bunch of people, who not only want the game to be harder but to be unrewarding as well. Level progression in PoE is one of the few really good things the game has going for it. Overleveling content isn't the problem, it's the core game mechanics that are broken (deflection, acc, stat trinity, retarded pathing, overabundance of per rest abilities).

 

If you read the suggestions in this thread carefully, you will notice that 80% of the suggestions take the non-completionists into account and try to avoid changes affecting them. Everyone is aware that this is a legitimate playstyle.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[kat7ra]

I'd get behind this idea in some form, I did feel the amount of XP needed was a larger problem than the amount of XP gained when just looking at numbers.

[Zwiebelchen]

I'd get behind this idea in some form, I did feel the amount of XP needed was a larger problem than the amount of XP gained when just looking at numbers.

 

It's actually both. Some elements of the game simply grant too much xp (again, bounties and traps). Fixing the XP curve on both ends (xp gained and xp required) is a good idea.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[Atheosis]

The things that nearly everyone seems to agree on:

 

1) Bounty xp is way too high.

 

2) Trap xp is way too high.

 

 

I think that's where Obsidian should start, along with targeted enemy buffs (hello kith enemies and most non-caster melee monsters).

[Atheosis]

I hope they don't change the exp curve at all. A non-completionist will almost never max out as it is.

 

You don't have to be a completionist to max it out.  Not even close. 

[Ohioastro]

I was level 10 when I hit act 3; without bounties I'd have been level 9.  There actually aren't that many quests in Act III - far fewer in twin oaks than in defiance bay.  About half of the companion quests finish in act 3.  I checked my last save:

 

Main line quests: 3 Act 3; 5 Act 2; 5 Act 1 and Prologue.

Quests: 7 Act 3; 13 Act 2; 3 Act 1 (excluding companion quests and stronghold ones)

Tasks: 2 Act 3; 7 Act 2; 4 Act 1.

 

So, no, players shouldn't start Act 3 2/3 of the way through, because the vast majority of the quests are in Act 2.  And if you do a lot of side quests in Act 2 you'll be higher level than not - especially when you add in the 12 bounties, stronghold quests, and the 8 companion quests.

 

Again - numbers are actually useful for this discussion.  We have a lot of touchy-feely complaints about over-leveling without hard data and with a lot of unsupported assertions.

[SeekDWay]

I was level 10 when I hit act 3; without bounties I'd have been level 9.  There actually aren't that many quests in Act III - far fewer in twin oaks than in defiance bay.  About half of the companion quests finish in act 3.  I checked my last save:

 

Main line quests: 3 Act 3; 5 Act 2; 5 Act 1 and Prologue.

Quests: 7 Act 3; 13 Act 2; 3 Act 1 (excluding companion quests and stronghold ones)

Tasks: 2 Act 3; 7 Act 2; 4 Act 1.

 

So, no, players shouldn't start Act 3 2/3 of the way through, because the vast majority of the quests are in Act 2.  And if you do a lot of side quests in Act 2 you'll be higher level than not - especially when you add in the 12 bounties, stronghold quests, and the 8 companion quests.

 

Again - numbers are actually useful for this discussion.  We have a lot of touchy-feely complaints about over-leveling without hard data and with a lot of unsupported assertions.

Can confirm, no bounties and was level 9 as well.

 

@Zwiebelchen

 

I follow this thread, but I disagree with the notion that people are taking into account a more casual playstyle. The only good suggestions are reducing "invisible" exp dumps like traps, locks and bounties. The rest is just "The player shouldn't have that much exp at point X in the game", which is bullocks considering most exp is coming from side quests.

[Matt516]

I follow this thread, but I disagree with the notion that people are taking into account a more casual playstyle. The only good suggestions are reducing "invisible" exp dumps like traps, locks and bounties. The rest is just "The player shouldn't have that much exp at point X in the game", which is bullocks considering most exp is coming from side quests.

On the contrary, the suggestion I started this post with (and continue to defend) is one that would allow the player to have plenty of extra exp without overleveling. That's the whole point.

 

No, I heard you Matt, I just completely disagree with it.

 

Also, I'm slightly interested to hear what people exactly do differently than me. About to hit lvl 12 doing Twin Elms sidequests, but I've only done 3 bounties so far. Finished all Defiance Bay quests, all levels of Ord Nua, picked all locks (including 'theft' ones just for XP without looting content, I do agree with you this is hilariously bad).

So I've pretty much done all side-content, I murdered every beast I come across. And still don't  have the extreme overload of XP talk about.

 

So what exactly did people do differently? Also I did just killed a certain NPC and his entourage in Twin Elms and got 7866XP for it, which seems a bit excessive, though I guess since it's the endgame it doesn't matter so much at that point it's one of those few points where simply too much XP is given, and fixing that goes a long way without risking breaking's PoE2's XP progression with it.

You disagree with what? The math? Or one of the two design goals I outlined? Because if you disagree with the design goals, that's fine and is just a difference of opinion. If you agree with the design goals (as in, you agree that PoE's "perfect" XP system would allow for both a constant proportion of optional/story XP as the series progresses, and you agree that the level gap between a total completionist and a total critical path player shouldn't widen as the series progresses) and disagree with the math, you're arguing contrary to reality. As I said and apparently have to keep saying - the current leveling curve is incapable of accomplishing those two goals no matter how well its balanced. So I'd really appreciate it if you'd clarify where you disagree (i.e. with my framing of the problem or my solution).

 

 

 

Changing the XP curve to an exponential curve isn't that drastic

 

 

Yeah it really is.  You are talking about making level 8 the new level 12 basically and level 12 becomes all but impossible to reach with current xp totals in the game.  It would take huge changes all over to make work.

No. I'm not. At all. I'm talking about changing the functional form of the leveling curve, which is completely unrelated to the scaling of the leveling curve (i.e. which level in the new system would be equivalent to which level in the current system). The scaling can be adjusted however you want. You could easily have an exponential curve with the same lvl 12 requirement as in the current system.

 

Granted, going to an exponential curve would be a bit drastic in the sense that it'd require a rebalance of the quest rewards in this game, so yes you are right in that sense. Fine - it is drastic. But there's nothing in my suggestion that dictates the scaling of anything. I just want the functional form changed.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I feel that it's important to make a clarification... a lot of people seem to think that my proposed exponential curve is to fix the leveling rate in this game. It's not. Obsidian can make any number of specific balancing changes to fix the leveling rate in this game, and I expect they will. That's not what I'm on about, and some of the people arguing with me seem to think it is.

 

The reason I'm proposing exponential is because by necessity, if the current quadratic leveling curve continues to be used in future installments of this series, either the proportion of optional to story XP must decrease or the level gap between people who do everything and people who only do the story must increase. One of those two things must happen. Again, this is pure mathematics. The exponential curve isn't about fixing PoE, it's about future-proofing it for PoE 2 and 3.

 

Again: If the current quadratic leveling curve continues to be used in future installments of this series, either the proportion of optional to story XP must decrease or the level gap between people who do everything and people who only do the story must increase. One of those two things must happen. That is not an opinion, it is a result of mathematics. The only way to avoid this is to change the functional form of the leveling curve to exponential.

 

And I'm about through arguing with people who refuse to address that statement and throw out objections that have nothing to do with it instead.... it's getting stressful.

 

Please, for my sanity... if you're going to continue to argue against my suggestion, please address the bolded statement. Prove me wrong. That statement is the only thing I'm arguing for. I'm really not that concerned with the rate of level up in this game - that can be balanced any number of ways, and I don't particularly care which way Obsidian chooses. I'm concerned with the inherent limitations of the quadratic model as the levels get higher and higher.

 

So again... my argument is contained entirely within the bolded statement. The bolded statement is a statement of fact (unless my math is wrong, in which case I'd love to have someone prove it). The only room for disagreement is in whether or not you think those two things I mentioned (one of which must happen) should be avoided. I know I may be coming across arrogant here, and if so I apologize... but I'm not stating opinions here, I'm stating mathematical conclusions. I don't know what else to say to convey that... 

 

Please. Read the bolded statement and answer/argue with that. That's all I'm trying to put forth, and it's a very simple (and easily falsifiable if incorrect) statement.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Matt516

[Gromnir]

See what happens without kill XP, you get too much quest XP. (I kid) 

it is funny that you bring it up, even in jest, 'cause matt's example o' bg shows us just how disruptive the bg style scheme actual were. Gromnir typical hit the bg level cap shortly after arriving in bg city.  

 

am not sure that using bg as an example helps matt, and it sure don't help with what should be the obsolete fixation gifted had/has with kill xp.

 

 

 

But you'll note that the IE games did not have this problem (in general). And the reason is not because their XP rewards were perfectly tuned for where the player should be at any point in the game - that's nearly impossible to do. It's because their leveling curve is exponential.

 

 

your math is undeniable, but the above is simply wrong.

 

in ps:t, thanks to respawns and kill xp, you could reach ridiculous levels before leaving sigil... could effective have 25s in all abilities before plane hopping.

 

iwd and iwd 2 didn't have side quests, so those is not analogous to poe, yes?  the available xp from side-quests in iwd and iwd2 were negligible.  it were not the scheme that resulted in predictable xp growth in the iwd games.

 

so, bg and bg2...

 

*shrug*

 

bg had a level cap that had most characters reaching 6 or 7.  so, the fact that Gromnir reached level 7 soon after we first arrived in bg city (no doubt thanks to the abundance o' kill xp in the bg hinterlands) resulted in us being no more than ~three levels level'd above and beyond the critical path folks.  we hit the level cap extreme early in  bg, but the disparity in power were not as obvious simple 'cause total levels available were fixed and low.

 

bg2?  *chuckle*  chapter 2 could see us much over-level'd in that game as well.  hell, we could have end-game gear before going to spellhold and gear were more important than attributes in bg2.  ad&d also were rather quaint in that while we could continue to gain levels, our effective power increases after level x diminished to near negligible quantities. unlike poe wherein we have opportunities to improve our character every level, that weren't the case with bg2.  the effective difference 'tween a level 20 and level 30 character were not near a significant as the relative power increase from level 1 to 10. 

 

the ie games is not good examples for matt.  the math may work in your favor, but the ie games ain't fertile soil in which to build this argument.  two games is completely non-analogous (iwd & iwd2) and in three o' the ie games (bg, ps:t, bg2), we could either achieve extreme disparate levels depending on the amount o' side-questing we chose to undertake, or alternatively, we hit a level cap 1/2 to 2/3 o' the way through the game. actual, for all the "spiritual successor" mindless parrots out there, poe's experience issues should be a boon, no?  bg had us hit the level cap at roughly the same point in the game as we did in poe, perhaps a bit earlier in bg as a matter o' fact.

 

HA! Good Fun!