Experience radius?

games usually deal with sharing of xp in a couple of ways. each of them has its benefits and downsides.

1) killing blow gets all xp:
on the plus side, you dont have to worry about much.
on the minus side, a whole lot of party members are pissed off.

2) sharing via radius.
plus: if you fight, you get xp
minus: leeching, party members doing nothing except walking behind, low level parking,...

3) sharing based on damage done
plus: you do damage, you get xp, you help, you get xp, the more you help, the more xp you get
minus: nukers get more xp, tankers get next to nothing, healers get 0. ( yes, no dedicated healers here but still. even people who take care of adds should be considered )

4) not sure if its dont anywhere but, sharing based on aggro.
plus: the more you do ( anything, heal, tank, damage ) the more xp you get
minus: people who take care of adds will get almost nothing from the boss. has to have a working aggro meter to begin with. on average mobs, nukers still get benefit.

imo, the 4th one would be the nicest, but it all depends on what kind of system is in place to figure out aggro and/or other means of prioritizing targets for monsters.

the regular mobs are a problem. nukers will get more benefits, but it kind of goes with the theme of the game ( self survival ).

for bosses i would say aggro based xp sharing.
for mobs, i have no idea.

Good post, Lazy. You did not earn that name.

I still think Radius Exp Share is the way to go. Maybe you could make randomly spawning mobs, to get the back of the party?

1- radius of the longest possible attack in game plus some wiggle room.

2-killer level based xp alteration :
-killer receives unaltered share of xp.
-level gaps trigger xp reduction.
-plus AND minus gaps trigger reduction.
2b-possible methods:
-5% per level gap reduction scripted calc.
-table based with +/- level ranges.

what about a combination of some of these? i definitely think that the xp radius is the way to go. so the question becomes how do you keep people from leeching? i've got a couple ideas for this:

1. what if it was set up so that once you were withing the xp radius, you only received xp if you did damage to the enemy? this would require the individual to be at least attempting to do something to contribute to the party in some fashion, even if it was just a single arrow that hit the enemy. also, i imagine there will be mobs a lot (if not nearly all) of the time. these swarms of enemies would keep the lowbie constantly moving around, trying not to get killed, but still requiring them to do damage to the enemy in order to get a portion of the xp from that kill.

you could even make it a special case for an act-ending boss. maybe in order to get xp not only does the player have to be within the radius and do at least one point of damage, but maybe they must do 1% of the total damage (or something like this)? it would make sure that if the char was too low, they couldn't pick up a huge amount of xp from a boss kill since they couldn't do enough damage

2. the other idea i had was what about scaling the xp down so it's proportional to the chars level (for chars that are waaaaaay outside of the level range of most playing that instance)? this way, even if a lowbie was just tagging along for xp, it would take them quite some time to pick up enough to level up. they would have better luck just going and running their own instance. i'm not talking about scaling everyone's xp back, just the chars getting ran for xp.

wasn't there a system in place in D2 that you only got the most xp from a kill if your character's lvl was within a certain range of the enemy's lvl? wouldn't that be helpful?

I like the idea of experience based off level compared to the enemy much like MMOs are doing now.

Another idea is an AFK feature that will put you in an AFK mode after a couple of minutes of inactivity, and then during that time, you gain no experience. That would help just camping at the front of a zone.

Being within the level of the enemy is a good idea. And since grinding is something they want to avoid then that means it might actually be worth it to kill things above your level!

It's probably a good idea to have a combo of peoples ideas on here. 1- Encompassing an exp radius plus 2- activity based ( meaning within X amount of time you have to be helping the team out, healers will get exp by healing the party, and attacking mobs within the radius will also count towards helping the group ( so leechers wont get anything if they don't help )) 3 - some type of exp scaling meaning a max lvl character can't go and power level a new character on max level mobs ( yes they would get exp from helping the group but it would be as if they were attacking mobs at the low level characters scaled level range )

"

Chris wrote:

People have commented that their friends complain if one player is getting more experience than the others - is this a major problem that turns players off or just a few people complaining but still enjoying themselves?

First of all, I liked the rest of the post, Chris. Good to see you avoiding the kill-shot method, and I hope to see more work on the radius. I expect good things from it. But I want to focus on the above segment when I say:

No. Haters gonna hate, Chris. Don't make this game to cater to all the casuals who get bummed when their gear/level/character is crappy because they're weekend warriors.

Put in the time to make your character great, kids. If you aren't leveling quickly because you aren't working as hard as your friends to get the exp, then don't complain to the developer.