Too fast leveling ?

[Buzda]

An update regarding ideal experience for completionist.

 

Mychal thanks for your post. I was wondering can you tell me in which order did you do things, what did you upscale and how challenging did you find act 3 and 4? I started with 35% and find it quite satisfying. I'm only lvl 6 atm tho

[mychal26]

 

An update regarding ideal experience for completionist.

 

Mychal thanks for your post. I was wondering can you tell me in which order did you do things, what did you upscale and how challenging did you find act 3 and 4? I started with 35% and find it quite satisfying. I'm only lvl 6 atm tho

 

 

I progressed as follows (includes grabbing and completing all quests in each area):

 

(Act I)

- Gilded Vale and all surrounding areas up to Caed Nua

- Raedric's Hold

- Caed Nua

- Endless Paths 1 - 4

- Woodend Plains and Aedelwan Bridge

 

(Act II)

- Copperlane

- Endless Paths 5 - 6

- Brackenbury

- Endless Paths 7 - 8

- Ondra's Gift

- Endless Paths 9 - 10

- Heritage Hill

- First Fires

- WM I (around level 7 or 8, no scaling) (I actually went a little later, near the end of Act II, and scaled WM I, but I would recommend going at level 7ish with no scaling to split Act II up and since there is supposed to be a few months between WM I and WM II) (do the bounties after you complete Act II)

- Searing Falls

- Pearlwood Bluffs

- Endless Paths 11 - 12

- Stormwall Gorge -> Cliaban Rilag

- Endless Paths 13 - 15 (may have to save the final boss until after WM II)

- First Fires (finish Act II)

 

(Act III)

- WM II (around level 11, no scaling)

- Cragholdt

- Elmshore (enable scaling for Act III)

- Hearthsong

- Oldsong

- Northweald

- Temple of Hylea

- Mowrghek Ien (get near west entrance of Stalwart)

- Elm's Reach

- Burial Island

 

(Act IV)

- (Area) (enable scaling for Act IV)

 

Overall, I found the game to be challenging, but not too much where it wasn't fun. Act III, while not as challenging as the content before it, was still enjoyable and posed a few challenging battles. However, by this point your group will be very powerful, so it's kind of fun to unleash your full fury on those poor peons. Also, the Twin Elms area is fairly short, but by adding WM II, Cragholdt, and Mowrghek Ien into the mix you'll have longer, and more challenging content. Act IV is very short in comparison to the rest of the game, but I found the final battle to be moderate difficulty (didn't die, but there were a few surprises). I found the hardest battles to be the last battle of (I believe) level 8 in Endless Paths (nothing to resist charm, etc), the final boss in Endless Paths, and the massive amount of enemies in the final dungeon of WM I. By the time I got to the later dragon fights I had the immunity spells, which made them manageable.

[Rooksx]

At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, could some kind individual please clarify how the XP percentage multipler -> hexidecimal value works? I've experimented with Hex converters but can't understand how the conversion works either way round. 

[kvaak]

At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, could some kind individual please clarify how the XP percentage multipler -> hexidecimal value works? I've experimented with Hex converters but can't understand how the conversion works either way round. 

 

Using this, input F401. A number of boxes should display 500 (like UINT32 - Little Endian (DCBA)). (It's... complicated). Tweak the four numbers (base 16 uses symbols from 0 to F, ie 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F) until the output is multiplied by whatever amount you desire, e.g. if you want to increase the required exp by 50% tweak the number until it outputs 750 (500*1.5).

 

(this is probably a terrible explanation but IT WORKS)

Edited March 1, 2016 by kvaak

[Rooksx]

Great, thanks very much for that. 

[Gromnir]

am not a fan o' straight-up reduction in xp %.  early in the game we rare feel op.  is only late in the game that we encounter an issue.  simple reduction in % xp rewards can cause new problems.

 

some folks advocate exponential schemes, but bg and bg2 had those and they were as bad or worse than poe insofar as overleveling is concerned.  

 

matt516 had excellent observations 'bout the seeming broken leveling curve o' poe, am just not certain why what were so obvious to him and others were missed by obsidian.

 

...

 

this is one o' the few poe flaws that surprised us... kinda.  during the beta, Gromnir and others observed that regardless o' whether you used more rational quest/objective xp or idiotic per kill schemes or whatever, if you had a large % o' the game be optional to the critical path, then you were gonna need to severe dilute xp awards beyond the crit path elsewise you were gonna see xp bloat.  got the same issue for gear and gold and other aspects. more optional content results in more relative power for the completionist.  if the game is gonna be beatable by players who do only the critical path, then offering awards beyond the crit path is gonna tend to result in bloat making game get progressive easier for the completionist.

 

duh.

 

the thing is, the developers were so freaking confident that they had a scheme for dealing with the optional content issue.  is not that the problem were unknown.  this were discussed. developers mentioned that with the tools they had available they were able to look at total xp awards possible for various portions o' the game. add or remove quest that provides 3000 more xp in chapter 2 or some local portion o' chap 2 would not be problematic for the developers even if it were a late-game change. the developers were even dismissive o' any difficulties that might arise from adding the admitted token bestiary/exploration/trap xp awards 'cause they were so certain o' the range o' possible xp awards and they could make adjustments almost on the fly.  the developers were comple unconcerned with xp bloat. 

 

*shrug*

 

in any event, the ideal and future solution does not appear to have changed from Gromnir's pov: drastically reduce xp awards for optional content.  players is already gonna benefit from a power-up due to increased gold and gear awards from optional quests. provide significant xp awards for optional content makes prohibitive difficult to balance a game for critical path players and completionists alike. alternatively, the developers gotta make some serious improvements to the current scaling scheme.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[mychal26]

am not a fan o' straight-up reduction in xp %.  early in the game we rare feel op.  is only late in the game that we encounter an issue.

You could always turn on the increased xp multiplier at level 8 or whatever. This would require a lot of experience to reach the next level, but you would effectively stall your character growth when they started to feel too op. Or you could not, and just complain about it.

[Gromnir]

 

am not a fan o' straight-up reduction in xp %.  early in the game we rare feel op.  is only late in the game that we encounter an issue.

You could always turn on the increased xp multiplier at level 8 or whatever. This would require a lot of experience to reach the next level, but you would effectively stall your character growth when they started to feel too op. Or you could not, and just complain about it.

 

actually, we choose the most obvious and simple solution: we voluntarily stall leveling on our own.  particularly now that we has played the game multiple times,  a clumsy mechanic for decreasing all xp awards is far less surgical, far less responsive, than is simple choosing when to actual level-up and how far to level. 'course, w/o foreknowledge, a manual correction as the one we apply is of questionable value... which is why for future games, obsidian should consider reducing optional quest/task xp awards, or they need work on improving their scaling scheme.  am typical in favor o' simplicity, but that doesn't always seem popular.

 

nevertheless, the question remains as to why the obsidians were so complete caught off-guard by the actual rate o' completionist leveling. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Baron Pampa]

 

some folks advocate exponential schemes, but bg and bg2 had those and they were as bad or worse than poe insofar as overleveling is concerned.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Would you care to elaborate? It seems that if the level difference between a completionist and a critical-path player at any given moment is smaller than currently, and that's what an exponential level table would achieve, the problem is at least partially solved. 

[Gromnir]

 

 

some folks advocate exponential schemes, but bg and bg2 had those and they were as bad or worse than poe insofar as overleveling is concerned.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Would you care to elaborate? It seems that if the level difference between a completionist and a critical-path player at any given moment is smaller than currently, and that's what an exponential level table would achieve, the problem is at least partially solved. 

 

not much to elaborate.  d&d 2e had an exponential scheme, but in bg2 you could quite easily over-level.  is a real world example wherein the exponential curve didn't solve the problem. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps last week we were looking at a bgee save in mild anticipation o' siege o' dragonspear.  apparently we had hit the totsc xp cap right around our completion o' the cloakwood mines.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Gromnir

[Baron Pampa]

That one game failed to achieve desired effect with that solution doesn't necessarily means that the solution's bad. It's just a matter of setting the numbers right. Result would be similar to decreasing experience rewards for non critical content. Probably it's a matter of what's easier from the developer's perspective. BTW. I've just finished pre-Caed Nua content by killing Raedric with level 3 party and level 4 protagonist. 33% experience decrease seems very good up to this point.

[Gromnir]

That one game failed to achieve desired effect with that solution doesn't necessarily means that the solution's bad. It's just a matter of setting the numbers right. Result would be similar to decreasing experience rewards for non critical content. Probably it's a matter of what's easier from the developer's perspective. BTW. I've just finished pre-Caed Nua content by killing Raedric with level 3 party and level 4 protagonist. 33% experience decrease seems very good up to this point.

is not just one game.  is, at the very least, all the ie games that have any significant optional side content.  iwds were very much linear, but in bg, bg2, and ps:t, you could have vast different level progression.

 

am also gonna observe that you do not seem to realize that your initial observation 'bout a single game being no dispositive can be applied equal well to poe's scheme... "is just a matter of setting the numbers right."  'least that were the developer's pitch.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[kvaak]

is not just one game.  is, at the very least, all the ie games that have any significant optional side content.  iwds were very much linear, but in bg, bg2, and ps:t, you could have vast different level progression.

 

 

am also gonna observe that you do not seem to realize that your initial observation 'bout a single game being no dispositive can be applied equal well to poe's scheme... "is just a matter of setting the numbers right."  'least that were the developer's pitch.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

BG2 still sort of kept you on your toes with spellcasters/wizards. Even if you were horribly overleveled/geared you still had beholders with ranged touch attacks (lolwut) that basically ignored your AC, characters without immunities were fairly easy to stun/charm/dominate, 500 layers of spell/damage shields, dispels that removed pretty much everything etc. Of course all of those were fairly easy to counter if you knew what you were doing but spellcasters were never really trivialized to a point where you could just let the AI do the fighting.

 

Crowd control is significantly more powerful for the player in PoE since it basically scales linearly with experience level. Slicken hits just as hard if not harder at XL16 as it does at XL1, magic immunity/resistance doesn't exist and no monster is immune or massively resistant to all forms of hard CC. Monsters on the other hand don't dispel your buffs, priests can cast party-wide immunity to pretty much everything on top of crazy buffs like Crowns for the Faithful (+25 resolve? seriously?), suppress affliction rings grow in trees in case your priests and paladins can't provide enough of it and so forth.

 

I'm currently doing a PotD run with 35% increased exp requirements and a gimped lineup although obviously it's not the solution I'd prefer.

Edited March 3, 2016 by kvaak

[Baron Pampa]

Have anyone tried to finish the game with 50% increase in level experience requirements? Is it possible to hit the cap with it? Poor Maerwald's gone, and I feel it would be a good moment to go up from 33%

[Buzda]

Have anyone tried to finish the game with 50% increase in level experience requirements? Is it possible to hit the cap with it? Poor Maerwald's gone, and I feel it would be a good moment to go up from 33%

 

 

You will probably reach cap as the game ends, difference is not that big (around 20k xp at lvl 16 I think). Problem is all your high lvl abilities will be delayed more. If that doesn't bother you then go for 50%.

[Rooksx]

I'm using 33% XP increase and have completed most of Act 3 (just got Council of Stars and Court of the Penitent to go) and have got to the Abbey in WM2. I've completed nearly all sidequests in the game so far except for Sagani or the Devil's quests.

 

After re-leveling my characters I am now level 13 with 109096 XP. A bit hard to see how I'm going to hit level 16 by the end. Also note that playing on Hard with high-level scaling, the Abbey is quite difficult. Those Ondra guys move like roided up homicidal maniacs towards Aloth and have very good defences relative to my party members' accuracy. Might drop to 30% or even lower to make things a bit more bearable. 

[Valsuelm]

The pertinent question is, just how much XP do we end the game with?

Can some completionists post their end game total XP?

If we get a number of end game XP values, we can determine an optimal XP nerf via hex editing.

(or, wishful thinking: Obsidian can better design the game so there isn't so much excess XP; not like to happen at this point I know)

 

 

Edit: This question is actually worthy of a new thread methinks. Made.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Valsuelm

[Rooksx]

Just realised - I hit level 14 before WM2 was released and did a bunch of quests. So now that i have implemented the 33% increase and re-levelled, I'm effectively missing a lot of XP.