Smoothing Xp curves

[ChaosSlayerZ]

I have been looking at Xp curve posted at
http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=ExpByLevel

and its hideously uneven. Its maybe "live-like" but completely illogical from any sane person perspective (SONY devs not included)

Look for example:

XP difference between:
29 and 30 is 2437000
30 and 31 is 5311000 !!!
31 and 32 is back down down to 3070100


even worse cases:

44 to 45 7380100
45 to 46 16835800!!!
and back down again 46 to 47 is 8695400

similar gaps: 40 to 41, 54 to 55, 59 to 60


I have no problem with needed XP rising every level, but spiking and then dropping down is simply ridiculous.

Could we perhaps make XP table part of DB tables which anyone could edit, instead of having it hard coded into source?

thanks!

[trevius]

Those are normal hell levels from Live that have been that way since the game was created along with the ones from 51-59. I doubt an exp table would ever be added, but there might be a way to make a rule that just lets you set a flat increase rate for each level to the next.

[steve]

Hell levels were gotten rid of years ago on Live. It's a smooth progression now.

[gaeorn]

Hell levels were gotten rid of years ago on Live. It's a smooth progression now.

Where is this documented? I'd like to see the information about this.

[blackdragonsdg]

Where is this documented? I'd like to see the information about this.

It has been more than a few years now but SOE actually did say that they took out the hell levels. I don't believe them for a second but that is a different story.

[Shendare]

I was able to find this mention:

Hell Levels 50-60 - [ Link (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2002-2.html) ] (September 4, 2002)

We have smoothed out level progression from 50-60. This should
mitigate the "penalty effect" that occurs in levels 51, 54 and 59. Note
that it will cost the same experience to level from 50 to 60 as it did
before. Also, death experience loss will appear different in some
levels. This is an unfortunate side effect that must remain to prevent
some experience exploits.

[pfyon]

I also remember all the hell levels from 1-50 being removed back when I still played (quit around august 2004).

[Shendare]

While I can't find the actual patch message, this archived copy of a Moorgard (well-informed EQ player who went on to work for SOE) post with alleged confirmation from EQ dev Absor seems to confirm it:

http://www.moorgard.com/mobhunter_archive/-302956908.html

o After applying advanced mathemagics, the commonly known "hell-level" experience gain effect in levels 30, 35, 40, and 45 has been largely done away with. Further, the "post-hell-level" experience loss in levels 31, 36, 41, and 46 was driven from the face of Norrath as well.

[gaeorn]

I was able to find this mention:

Hell Levels 50-60 - [ Link (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2002-2.html) ] (September 4, 2002)We have smoothed out level progression from 50-60. This should
mitigate the "penalty effect" that occurs in levels 51, 54 and 59. Note
that it will cost the same experience to level from 50 to 60 as it did
before. Also, death experience loss will appear different in some
levels. This is an unfortunate side effect that must remain to prevent
some experience exploits.

You know, now that I read this, I remember this one. I was 60 or above at the time, but I do remember it being mentioned. Since I left the game before Omens came out, this has to have been close to the time period that the emu code is targeting.

It certainly follows that they would adjust the other "hell levels" to smooth them out when they were able to figure out a good method for doing so.

[trevius]

We have smoothed out level progression from 50-60. This should
mitigate the "penalty effect" that occurs in levels 51, 54 and 59. Note
that it will cost the same experience to level from 50 to 60 as it did
before. Also, death experience loss will appear different in some
levels. This is an unfortunate side effect that must remain to prevent
some experience exploits.

Yeah, I definitely remember them doing this change, but that was only to smooth out hell level differences, not remove them completely. Basically, 51, 54 and 59 were hell levels for hell levels lol. So, they just spread out the hell level exp from 51 - 59 so it was exactly the same amount of exp, just not jumps at any particular level. Prior to this change, level 59 was an insanely long hell level. After the change, it wasn't too bad.

Unless they have made other changes since these, the hell levels should still exist. Though, it sounds like they probably removed the ones below level 51. As far as I can tell, 51-59 are still hell levels on Live. Though, with level 85 being the cap atm, it doesn't really make sense to have hell levels in the middle and none after.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

yes I would really much like some sort of variable mult based modifier, instead of ups and downs =P
And its has to work beyond current lev of 75
Don't see whats a problem with reading XP table from the DB =P

For the record, I really don't care how much actual XP it takes to level up (in general) - cuase I have XP gained Rule which can be adjusted up and down.
I just want some way around ridiculous spikes, where previous level requires MORE XP than the next one.

[AndMetal]

I think the hardest part about loading it from the DB is we don't want to query the DB every time we run Client::GetEXPForLevel() (http://code.google.com/p/projecteqemu/source/browse/trunk/EQEmuServer/zone/exp.cpp?r=781#411), so we'd want to load it into memory. To do that, we need to load the info into each zone we load. Granted, it would use 4 * max levels bytes of memory per zone (300 bytes for 75 levels), but I don't know if it's really worth it for a handful of servers that would want to modify the exp tables instead of the exp gain multipliers.

Personally, I think it would be easier for a server admin to modify the function & recompile than it would be to add a table & populate it with the exp amount for each level.

I do think it would be easy to put in something to make linear exp gain, but I don't think it would work well with the rules system, since you don't really want to change exp gain on-the-fly.

[steve]

You can go from 50-60 in a couple hours now with hotzones on Live. I've done it as recent as a couple months ago.

I haven't tried regular zone exp because, frankly, there aren't enough people to group with to get a full group (except possibly Mayong, and I have no desire to play there). So it wouldn't be an accurate test to attempt to compare now vs then.

I do think the hell levels should have their exp redistributed, in accordance with the note that was posted for 51-60. Also, hell levels were gotten rid of for 30-50, so might as well do those too.