Monster Evolution Difficulty Proposal
Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:39 am
Seeing that the server has been empty or nearly empty all month, I think this may be a good opportunity to do some drastic changes regarding the experience distribution. I also like to make the server more forgiving to new players. To tone down the difficulty, I propose the following changes:
Experience Distribution: Experience is no longer received at a per individual basis. Instead, if one player receives an experience point, everyone in the team receives an experience point. This will also eliminate the need for threat levels. Since weaker offensive classes no longer need to compete against the berserker's superior offense, we can eliminate the threat system altogether, and everyone will have max threat.
I plan to leave experience triggers and resurrection events alone where dead players may receive different exp rewards than survivors, and players' level may influence the experience gain. We can change that system later, but right now, I just want to concentrate the experience gained from monsters.
I also plan to change the scoreboard to show player's health and level instead of experience. Edit: After consideration, I was thinking leaving the scoreboard as is for the time being.
You'll still gain monster tokens from each team exp received. This will open up the more powerful player monsters early on.
Regarding weapon masteries, I can see two directions with this system. We can either have the masteries shared where if one player damages a monster with a rocket launcher, all players will have increased explosive mastery. This should also increase the experience requirement for each mastery level. The other approach is at a per individual basis, but the mastery requirement is significantly less.
Inflate the experience value: Bigger numbers appears to be more rewarding. Each monster should give more experience, but also the level requirement is increased.
Decrease the level requirement for later levels: It should require fewer map iterations to reach the next level. Instead of playing the same map 5 times for a level up, you should be able to level up once per hour (post rank II).
Increase the max level to 250: Due to lighter population, this makes some maps such as Divine Fortress and Robot Factory impossible to beat. Increasing the max level will bring a stronger arsenal to the battlefield, and increase incentive to keep playing after level 200 (especially since it'll be significantly easier to reach level 200).
Unlimited Friendly Monster Tokens: Keep dead players active, and provide unlimited supply of friendly monsters.
Reduce the cooldown for friendly monster spawning: Keep dead players active, and allow them to respawn often as friendly monsters (this will also apply to hostile monsters if the hostile monsters remain). I also propose the individual monster cooldowns, too. I don't propose reducing the monsters' score requirement since the experience values are likely to be inflated, and many monster score requirements are also configured at a per map basis.
Remove hostile player monsters: To make it easier for new players to adapt to the server, I propose we remove hostile player monsters. This also applies to dedicated monsters.
Server Reset: I'm still uncertain about this one. On one hand, people (including myself) will not be happy about starting over. On the other hand, a full reset will provide a great opportunity to try out the new experience values, and rebuild characters accordingly to the new setup (ie: remove monster abilities, increased level cap, threat oriented abilities, etc...). This will also give the server a clean slate. Resetting all map records are also considered.
Feedback is greatly appreciated. These are not final, and are open for discussion. I'd like to get to a conclusion by the time the Mechanic class comes out.
Edit: Added more details regarding experience distribution.
Experience Distribution: Experience is no longer received at a per individual basis. Instead, if one player receives an experience point, everyone in the team receives an experience point. This will also eliminate the need for threat levels. Since weaker offensive classes no longer need to compete against the berserker's superior offense, we can eliminate the threat system altogether, and everyone will have max threat.
I plan to leave experience triggers and resurrection events alone where dead players may receive different exp rewards than survivors, and players' level may influence the experience gain. We can change that system later, but right now, I just want to concentrate the experience gained from monsters.
I also plan to change the scoreboard to show player's health and level instead of experience. Edit: After consideration, I was thinking leaving the scoreboard as is for the time being.
You'll still gain monster tokens from each team exp received. This will open up the more powerful player monsters early on.
Regarding weapon masteries, I can see two directions with this system. We can either have the masteries shared where if one player damages a monster with a rocket launcher, all players will have increased explosive mastery. This should also increase the experience requirement for each mastery level. The other approach is at a per individual basis, but the mastery requirement is significantly less.
Inflate the experience value: Bigger numbers appears to be more rewarding. Each monster should give more experience, but also the level requirement is increased.
Decrease the level requirement for later levels: It should require fewer map iterations to reach the next level. Instead of playing the same map 5 times for a level up, you should be able to level up once per hour (post rank II).
Increase the max level to 250: Due to lighter population, this makes some maps such as Divine Fortress and Robot Factory impossible to beat. Increasing the max level will bring a stronger arsenal to the battlefield, and increase incentive to keep playing after level 200 (especially since it'll be significantly easier to reach level 200).
Unlimited Friendly Monster Tokens: Keep dead players active, and provide unlimited supply of friendly monsters.
Reduce the cooldown for friendly monster spawning: Keep dead players active, and allow them to respawn often as friendly monsters (this will also apply to hostile monsters if the hostile monsters remain). I also propose the individual monster cooldowns, too. I don't propose reducing the monsters' score requirement since the experience values are likely to be inflated, and many monster score requirements are also configured at a per map basis.
Remove hostile player monsters: To make it easier for new players to adapt to the server, I propose we remove hostile player monsters. This also applies to dedicated monsters.
Server Reset: I'm still uncertain about this one. On one hand, people (including myself) will not be happy about starting over. On the other hand, a full reset will provide a great opportunity to try out the new experience values, and rebuild characters accordingly to the new setup (ie: remove monster abilities, increased level cap, threat oriented abilities, etc...). This will also give the server a clean slate. Resetting all map records are also considered.
Feedback is greatly appreciated. These are not final, and are open for discussion. I'd like to get to a conclusion by the time the Mechanic class comes out.
Edit: Added more details regarding experience distribution.