Monster Evolution Difficulty Proposal

Anything and everything related to the Evolution server.
DW_Ant
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I was more in favor of making a significant difference with the level thresholds, which is why I've nearly halved the threshold (from 96 to 60).

~500 hours still seem much for 60xp per level to get to level 200, but if this is the number we want to try out, we can.
The difference between successful people from others is
not in the lack of strength,
not in the lack of knowledge,
but rather in the lack of will.

FFE466

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DW_WailofSuicide
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I like how 1000 xp / hr is considered the "new player" baseline.
DW_Wraith
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Does unreal tournament 2004 work in windows 10? How about windows 7?
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Silly_Warlock
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Off topic much, but: it works on win7, on win10 not by default- you can get it to work easily just google it- there are many ways of doing that.
I don't even know that I know nothing.
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christmas
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i've been off long so I wanna know of the following:
DW_Ant wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:39 am 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.
is that implemented ???

DW_Ant wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:39 am Inflate the experience value: Bigger numbers appears to be more rewarding. Each monster should give more experience, but also the level requirement is increased.
is that implemented ???
DW_Ant wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:39 am 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).
is that implemented ???
DW_Ant wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:39 am Remove hostile player monsters:
this isnt implemented. however i recall it was on another thread too!??!?!?!
DW_Ant wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:39 am Server Reset:
this is bad. B-A-D.
DW_Ant wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:39 am Increase the max level to 250:
i dont understant the logic behind increasing lvl cap to 250 from 200.
i will put it in proper order:
1. its against the rpg. didnt we debate enough on this in the past ?!?!?! were you not the one saying that never you will increase lvl or give more stats?
2. it doesnt create a new tier, yet it creates an abomination of a character. its like a heresy, blasphemy to ME-rpg.
instead of planning to create a new rank, with new abilities, with new caps/limits, with new weapon mastery cap, and making a kick-ass char to OP, or an OP to god-like, or a god-like to god, instead it creates a "broken" character which lacks the specialisation of the rpg value.
you could have a pala with spirits, or team-prot perks, or tanky as hell, now with 500 extra points, you can have it all. to me it feels like an abomination.

i dont recall exact values, although i did calculations back then.
for a pala you need out of 2100 stats 625 hp + 175 adr + 500 res =1300 aka 800 left to make a build.
with +500 you know what? get the all spirits too. oh wait, 200 extra stats, get 200 more hp. this is insane.
or else, get the last lvl of armor, 1 more lvl of double-jump, get more lvls of all your misc abilities. <- this breaks things to "another" level.

another thing, what happens to LevelLimiter of each map.
before i knew what % of map XP i would get at being at max level.
a new max level is created, were all LevelLimiters adjusted? if not this means reduced xp. more reduced. but to what extent?
if it was 150-250, before i would get 50%, now i will get none. did you calculate all these maps ....1 by 1 ?

got other things to mention here yet, i cant be bothered or else this will be a long ass 23 page text lol wot....

from what I see, you tried to give an incentive or motive to those lvl 200 to play those characters....
but its seen (by me, i dont know what or how the others see it or how they embrace it) like a grind, like the last level of grind, grind to your death.
if i want 500 more stats, i will go offline, buff all my stats and put my cheats on.
i dont fucking need 500 more stats to play xenohomo or robocop or outpost or divine. i love getting rekt and struggling there.

lastly, of all my characters, i havent seen any progress which tells me that xp/level got reduced. im still at lvl 200 at each char at 1,15mil xp.
maybe you level up faster now?!?!? i dont know.
DW_Ant
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The following proposed changes were rejected:
Distributed Experience, Inflated experience values, and Server Reset.

The following proposed changes were accepted:
Decreased level requirements, Increased maximum level, and player monster changes (debatable).
Change Logs wrote:
  • Max level is now 250 instead of 200.
    ....
  • Reduced experience needed to level up. Level up requirements now increases by 60 xp per level instead of 80 per level.
  • Reduced weapon mastery requirements by ~25%.
Note: that's suppose to be a tilde to signify about 25%.



To address your concerns about the increased level limit...
This post (last July) was made in response in the slowly declining player base. At weeks at a time, I would find few to no players there. This was an opportunity to make significant changes to the server, and I took these proposed changes to the few players that still played the server at the time. Only the experience thresholds and the maximum level seemed to be strongly favored. The player monster changes had a lot of debates.

Your concerns with maps' level limiters is a valid concern. I have on my list to update the maps' level limiters to support characters over level 200. There are even new surprises here and there. For example, I heard that there are two Alien Queens in Xeno Colony Part II if the average level is beyond 200.
The difference between successful people from others is
not in the lack of strength,
not in the lack of knowledge,
but rather in the lack of will.

FFE466

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christmas
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DW_Ant wrote: Mon Feb 06, 2017 9:36 pm The following proposed changes were accepted:
1. Decreased level requirements, 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)
Reduced experience needed to level up. Level up requirements now increases by 60 xp per level instead of 80 per level.
Reduced weapon mastery requirements by ~25%.

2. Increased maximum level, Max level is now 250 instead of 200.

3. player monster changes (debatable).
about 3: i dont care at this point, although i have seen something weird, someone can spawn 1-2-3 idk how many times as fpm and stall the game, or help the game, especially cases of populated server, with much piercing, deadcan go fpm and assist big time. i didnt assess this at all.

about 1: what i understant here is that i need 25% less xp to get a level, (so in reverse its like a 33% xp buff or progress).
i assume this one affects new accounts and new levels.
so if before i needed 1,150,000 xp to get lvl 200, now in a newly created char, i will need 860,000 xp (or someting like that).

DW_Ant wrote: Mon Feb 06, 2017 9:36 pm To address your concerns about the increased level limit...
This post (last July) was made in response in the slowly declining player base. At weeks at a time, I would find few to no players there. This was an opportunity to make significant changes to the server, and I took these proposed changes to the few players that still played the server at the time. Only the experience thresholds and the maximum level seemed to be strongly favored. The player monster changes had a lot of debates.

Your concerns with maps' level limiters is a valid concern. I have on my list to update the maps' level limiters to support characters over level 200. There are even new surprises here and there. For example, I heard that there are two Alien Queens in Xeno Colony Part II if the average level is beyond 200.
my concern is altering the philosophy or the server and what is was, altering the rpg element of the builds, the characters, which personally was something unique, in both inception and implementation and how it worked with everything else. and char-builds (cRPG) are limited in the way they perform, as in they dont acquire the sum of all skills/abilities and to the max power. they have a specialization.
although i can understant that you had to make a decision (giving motive to the 1-2-3 lvl 200 players).
all the rest, maps, difficulty, masteries etc are just the side-effects... lets hope the degree of things breaking is small...
StormyFacade
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I'm still new, so I can't really speak for the difficulty as for if it needs or doesn't need to change, but I will give my PoV as a new player.

I've not gotten past Rank 2 on any of my alts yet. Sorta steadily leveling the two I have, and honestly... Most of the time I'm either failing every map, including those supposedly designed for new players, or the other time I'm playing high level recommended maps, and I'm more or less just there. Like I am contributing damage, but it more feels like just being there has no purpose.

Like at the moment I'm totally fine with how it now is, just there's no maps where new players can complete objectives and have a more easy time, other than the first 3/4 of the Tutorial Jumpship level (where after you gotta be a horde of new players to vaguely have a chance at it) and the collosseum level's entirety actually being somewhat possible to solo if not ridiculously tough, which is again totally fine.

It's just when playing with higher level players, 99% of all my exp comes not from damage, but objective exp. Wins feel empty to me most of the time personally because even if I tried my best, didn't die, and got a decent score, if the higher level players (talking people at rank 3 or even 4) were actually trying hard to win, I know that at the end of the day, there would've been a completely identical result at the end.

And though it makes sense, it still kinda just sucks. To the point where I legitimately feel like if I could be a permanent Player Monster class, I'd have more of a chance at contributing, since monsters will have better stats than I do, because anything outside of Colosseum and the last quarter of Jumpship, or mostly any other map if not every other map, will completely destroy me with very little chance of survival.

Like... the monsters in the final part of Jumpship are way too tough. I feel it should be that high levels can only help via Player Monstering until the map is done, if that's possible.

I personally would just like maybe a couple of nice, long maps that aren't filled with tons of space with nothing in it, but designed for low level players.

I'd basically like a Monster Hunt from UT99 map in the server, for basically players of all kinds. With balanced stats, but who scale based off the lowest living player level. A map where it's not at all easy, but it's doable if you can dodge decently well, with probably more pickups that replenish.

Like that may sound a lot like other servers, but I dunno... Though I love the massive difficulty curve that's too great for new players to really enjoy themselves beyond looking at new maps and "Earning" relics, you can't really do anything under rank 1 that makes you actually feel "Hey, I actually helped turn the tide of the game!" as a legit thing you believe and feel.

TL;DR - Being a new player completely sucks. There's not enough maps that are possible to solo for new players. Maps like Colosseum should scale based on player number, and maybe even player level, where even the last wave is doable for a minion-less character with no skills, but it'd just be really hard and tough.

By Scale, I more or less mean monster count. The strength of monsters isn't so much a problem for a new player, though it sorta is, it's really just the number of monsters in some places that just makes it not possible.

Or, players below level 50 get infinite lives on all maps, or they get a lot more than 1.

That's of course just my extremely biased and uninformed decision, that's not sarcasm, just stressing I'm new, so I'm unsure totally of how balance is, and sharing my opinion relative to my experience of playing at low levels.

But I can see the high difficulty mixed with the lack of things to do to help the group win more than if they just quit, possibly driving new players from the servers in some if not alot of cases.
Ingame name is IIIStrife, MechaStrife and SupStrife
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I agree that Jumpship could use update, aaand yes being new player suck, since when there are high levels, they do all the job for ya, when you are solo, you get bored from some maps after while, when I discovered this server 5 years ago, I was like: Wow this is so cool and unique! At that time highest lvl players had rank 3 I think, ppl did not have maps explored like now, it was different and more difficult in some ways. Today plenty of players that are still active know maps by heart, I myself sit in spec most of time, I just dont have mood to further level my lvl 200+ Paladin and Support, I have made Mechanic, which is r2 now, but I also lost interest in leveling it after while, from other players I kinda know what stuff to buy and what will my character feel like on r4. I also do not like design of Mechanic much, since its solo potential is almost like Support which has plenty of Adren and Ammo, Mech is also not so dependant on other classes. Paladin which cannot produce any ammo is just meh on maps like Iguazu, Nocturne etc. Yes you can solo those maps, but it takes waaaay longer than it would as Support/Mech.
DW_Ant
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Thank you for the feedback, Stormy. Difficulty curve is an ongoing challenge the server has encountered. It just takes one high level in a low level map to sweep it up.

Scaling players based on their level was discouraged in the past. Giving low levels perks would be interpreted as punishment when they level up. High levels didn't like to be weakened when playing low level maps.

In general the best solution we've found so far is to have the maps adapt based on team strength. If low levels play the map, weaker monsters appear. However, the issue with this is that it's difficult to build, test, and balance maps with varying difficulty. Due to this scope, not many maps have strong variations in difficulty.

I wouldn't be apposed to the wide open long low level map. I'm not sure how others feel about long maps though. I typically hear complaints about the 1-2 hour maps more than the 10-30 min maps.

Here's a list of maps rank I's are able to solo:
Choco Wars (although difficult, I was able to see rank I's solo this).
Colosseum
Cubes 4 All (difficult at the end for Rank I's)
Dragon Tower (I didn't see a rank I solo this, but multiple rank Is are able to beat this map. This also depends on the weapon and monster spawn. If a bunch of beam wail lords and titans spawn, then I don't think it's possible for rank I's to beat it).
Frigate (very good rank I map!)
Gauntlet (difficult at the end - this is more of a rank II-III map)
Jumpship
Nano Technics (except for the ending titan fight)
Opportunity Knocks (very hard if you have no way for self healing)
Seraphim Falling (if you can defeat the Predalien at the beginning)
Temple Run (the hard part is the cavern part. This may take many iterations to figure out the strategy. Redeemer is very helpful there).
Torlan Evolution (I recommend this one for wide open long map. This may be difficult for low levels, it's doable due to its open nature).
Use of Weapons levels 1,2,4
Wangara 1 (low on ammo and healing though)
The difference between successful people from others is
not in the lack of strength,
not in the lack of knowledge,
but rather in the lack of will.

FFE466

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{F}{AH}{CivFR}{XC}{U}{DF}{CJ}{SD}
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