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

[swordofthesith]

Since this is the more serious discussion on the topic, I'm going to repost it here:

 

Nerfing XP across the board isn't enough, imo. What's needed is to drop the murderhobo experience and the lockpicking/trap experience, and then increase the necessary experience for levels exponentially, so that higher-level requirements gets bigger than the lower-level requirements.

 

My proposal was +3% per experience level.

 

Currently it looks like this:

Level 	1 	2 	3 	4 	5 	6 	7 	8 	9 	10 	11 	12
XP 	0 	1,000 	3,000 	6,000 	10,000 	15,000 	21,000 	28,000 	36,000 	45,000 	55,000 	66,000

My suggestion would result in:

Level 	1 	2 	3 	4 	5 	6 	7 	8 	9 	10 	11 	12
XP 	0 	1,030 	3,180 	6,540	11,200 	17,250 	24,780 	33,880 	44,640 	57,150 	71,500 	87,780

And:

• No bestiary experience.
• No experience for lockpicking instead of using keys.
• No experience from disarming traps instead of evading/tripping.
• No crazy 10-50% bonus for small parties.
• Reduce the experience awarded for bounties by ~40%.

The result would be that instead of just shy of level 11 by the end of Act 2, you should be firmly in level 9, maybe just below, assuming you did ~7 levels of Endless Paths of Odd Nua. You would likely not reach level 12 until the very end of the game at best, which is as it should be.

 

For reference, currently, assuming that you do ~7 levels of Endless Paths, you end up with almost exactly 50 000 experience by the end of Act 2. Or, in other terms, halfway between level 10 and 11. My suggested changes should bump this down to approx. ~40 000 instead - so in the vicinity of "firmly level 8/just about level 9".

 

Which should actually result in a much better pacing overall.

 

 

+ 1 for this proposal too. 

[Hassat Hunter]

Putting a blanket 25% ontop of it doesn't help if the problem is bounties. If they provide 50% of your XP (they do), then just ramming up XP is going to force these upon you, still being the sore over XP-giving thumb.

 

I say rather than raising XP required to scale with too-OP bounties, nerf the bounty XP (and nuke trap/lockpick XP ofcourse). Then we can see if an increase is needed, probably it wont be. Fix the bug, not balance the game around the bug.

 

Also, I don't disagree with exploration XP. Exploring is a good goal. I also don't mind keeping bestiary now, if only to appease the rabid kill-XP crowd (I kid ) at this point. Exploring, fighting, questions... it all should be there in a goal-oriented experience. However arbitrary adding XP to one of several skills (the best one too *facepalm*) is beyond stupid. The goal should matter, however you get there. If the however becomes the rewarded part though, then you're doing goal-oriented XP wrong...

[Luckmann]

Putting a blanket 25% ontop of it doesn't help if the problem is bounties. If they provide 50% of your XP (they do), then just ramming up XP is going to force these upon you, still being the sore over XP-giving thumb.

 

I say rather than raising XP required to scale with too-OP bounties, nerf the bounty XP (and nuke trap/lockpick XP ofcourse). Then we can see if an increase is needed, probably it wont be. Fix the bug, not balance the game around the bug.

 

Also, I don't disagree with exploration XP. Exploring is a good goal. I also don't mind keeping bestiary now, if only to appease the rabid kill-XP crowd (I kid ) at this point. Exploring, fighting, questions... it all should be there in a goal-oriented experience. However arbitrary adding XP to one of several skills (the best one too *facepalm*) is beyond stupid. The goal should matter, however you get there. If the however becomes the rewarded part though, then you're doing goal-oriented XP wrong...

 

If you award experience for killing, you are really contradicting yourself. You say that the goal should matter, however you got there. Then why should murderhobos be rewarded more? It is already enough of an issue that, with the infinite stash and the bodypart-based enchanting system, you have considerable incentive to just murder your way through everything. Screw appeasing the rabid murderhobos, there's no reason quest and encounter design, nor the XP curve, should be held hostage by that mechanic.