PC Xp Imbalances and shared XP

[BFT2020]

All of this is why I'm in favor of the XP-for-survival idea. Every 60 IRL minutes you survive you get a congratulatory package of XP. Every time you die, you take a hit to the 60-minute counter. Do what you want - mine, craft, farm, kill, loot, make a pass at Joel or Jen - doesn't matter. If you survive, you make progress. No more XP farming, the only goal is to survive another day. Roland passed on to me his 0XP mod from A18 and I'm sorta dipping my toe into the DLL modding side of things to see if I can put something like this together. I'm sure it's doable, I just have a lot to learn about the game's main DLL.

I really want this, even though I only play SP.

What's funny about that Roland, back in A15 the more you crafted a tool, the better you got at it. There was 0 need for exp at all regarding weapons or tool quality. Nowadays? You need exp for everything involving weapons. You quite literally rely on exp to make a better pickaxe, didn't used to be that way in A15. Even A15 allowed you to combine tools in a workbench to get better ones up to level 600.

There are advantages and disadvantages in LBD, like any advancement system.

I been splitting my time between 7D2D and another zombie survival game that does use LBD.  While some of it is okay, other parts of it make me think WTH....like improving first aid skill by constantly digging in the ground to scratch up my hands to heal them over and over again, or purposely getting poked by broken glass...otherwise it is a very slow grind to even advance one level (my approach to survival games is not to get hurt, no matter what).

Then there is the issue I see all the time with LBD where you spend all day crafting hundreds and hundreds of stone pickaxes, then magically you are able to craft a max quality steel pickaxe.....

 

[Darklegend222]

I really want this, even though I only play SP.

There are advantages and disadvantages in LBD, like any advancement system.

I been splitting my time between 7D2D and another zombie survival game that does use LBD.  While some of it is okay, other parts of it make me think WTH....like improving first aid skill by constantly digging in the ground to scratch up my hands to heal them over and over again, or purposely getting poked by broken glass...otherwise it is a very slow grind to even advance one level (my approach to survival games is not to get hurt, no matter what).

Then there is the issue I see all the time with LBD where you spend all day crafting hundreds and hundreds of stone pickaxes, then magically you are able to craft a max quality steel pickaxe.....

That is the massive downside to LBD and it's the reason I'm not fully die-hard for it. I'm still more in it's favor than the current system. Perhaps a LBD system would only be good for tools and weapons. Let the sex rex, physician, and the intellect tree be all perk reliant, that way we can use whatever weapon and not be too worried about quality.

As for needing to craft a lot of them, that's specifically for nighttime when zombies are sprinting everywhere. Nighttime is downtime, and downtime means material gathering, or crafting

 

[Roland]

As for your other statements, they are all sound. However, it comes back to exp being a necessity. If you igore exp, your now far behind than every single one of your friends, and now you have to deal with zombies at their level when you're not there yet. Which is exactly why people push for all the shared exp so hard. Is it not immersive and breaks the laws of physics? Yep, but does it make sure everyone is on the same playing field and no one is left behind in a PvE survival game about surviving hordes? Absolutely.

I get it. I just don't like it. I'm behind in my own group simply because I don't play as often. Even so I wouldn't want to be gifted a bunch of xp I didn't earn myself. I hate it when I log back in and my family tells me there are tools and weapons in the crates for me and they are all two levels above what I had. Now I'm skipping. Its essentially the same as  just grabbing stuff from the creative menu or giving myself xp through the console commands. Shared xp from kills while we are all together on a quest feels fine but just leeching xp from someone upgrading blocks and mining coal and I'm not even helping them....?

I mean lets take it a step further. Since I can't play as often why not have the game pool all the shared xp I'm missing out on while offline and the rest of my team is playing and then when I finally do log in I just get it all. Too far? (I can hear some of you salivating at this idea....)

 

[meganoth]

My group plays with default distance rules and I don't remember the others ever asking for a change of that. Often someone is a bit behind or ahead in levels but the usual reaction is that the others suggest upgrading of blocks or drinking an xp potion on horde night.

If someone is lagging behind and gets into trouble with zombies just give him the best equipment. Problem solved, in a co-op game.

 

[Boidster]

Often someone is a bit behind or ahead in levels but the usual reaction is that the others suggest upgrading of blocks

If your group needs shale, you could literally tell them to go pound sand.

 

[DaChibii]

I attempted to find a post of mine from the bygone ages about a possible "fix?" .... Anyways, it was this:

Just make it an option and leave it up to the players to determine how the XP is shared. So have two values: a min range, where if the player is within they get 100% and a max range, where if they are beyond they get none, and then just gradient it between the two (unless the two values are the same at which point you have we currently have). And then below that just have a checklist of activities that trigger the XP share. I guess if they wanted to be more complicated each activity could have it own range settings, but that might be too complex for a group to balance well.

In my current group, we have to use block-upgrading to balance out the levels due how XP is generated. And often it's me that's behind (I'm the cook/farmer), where as our Int player generally is in the lead due to sale/purchase XP, and our Per player is second from the loot and salvaging XP. We all mine, and the Per player is current base designer... but we all can do it if needed.

Now, I get that balancing XP is going to be difficult for groups just from having specialization creating better efficiency of POI clears, equipment crafting, and monetization of loot. But does feel a bit off. Maybe the upgrade block XP be nerf'd a bit, the repair XP be buffed (so more people help with repairs), and increase the XP from farming a bit (tie with LoL?) especially since we don't have braindead renewable farms anymore.

 

[Shockwave1]

What's funny about shared XP and everyone here suggesting that it ALL should be shared, is what the original intent of shared xp was.  @theFlu was exactly right about the reasoning and that was because when it was first implemented the default setting was that you had to be close together in a party working together for the sharing to even happen. But with options for distances all the way up to map wide (or is that a mod?), I think most players play xp sharing map-wide (or whatever the max unmodded distance is) which is really (in my opinion) silly. Full disclosure:  I do it too--  because my family insists.

But I don't know how it can be justified that I get part of the kill xp that someone 2 km away made. I wasn't involved at all. How did I learn anything by it? It makes no sense. So if my buddy is mining 2km away in what way would his actions build experience within me? (I certainly hope nobody who praised LBD because of how much sense it made for gaining experience is in here pushing for shared xp from a long distance...heheh)

I'd be for sharing xp of every single activity in the game as long as the devs hard-code in that you must be within 10 meters of anyone you want to share with so you at least have to be able to see what they are doing to learn from it. Shared xp was supposed to be an incentive to party up and play together. It wasn't intended to simply be a tool to try and keep everyone at about the same level and that seems to be how a lot of people in this thread are viewing it and why they feel it is unbalanced. It is unbalanced for keeping everyone's xp in the party in equilibrium because that isn't the purpose for which it was created.

I'd be interested to know how many people play shared xp with default proximity rules in place.

I can see no valid argument against a checkbox for sharing all XP... vs only combat xp. Nobody has to check it off.

It is justified to get part of the kill because the XP system is so ridiculously unbalanced towards building, selling, and mining vs farming, cooking crafting, looting, questing, unloading, organizing, and actually building etc. There are a TON of tasks that a group does but XP is awarded for only a small fraction of them. I mean lets face it. Smelting and crafting nets you virtually zero xp but it is one of the most valuable things to a group: Ammo, food, mods, farming... way less XP. I can design an awesome horde base from scratch that works awesome, reason out how all the traps go, wire up all the banks and switches and turrets so we can turn on and off the various things easily, and who gets the XP? The guy who placed the traps where I told them to (INT), and they guy who pushes the button on the nail gun to upgrade the blocks I placed down (our PER / questing/looting guy because he's always behind in XP).

If our PER guy goes on T5 quest kills all the zeds and gets everything by himself (we have 100M xp range right now) and shares his killing XP with nobody. If I spend the exact same amount of time (safely) mining I get WAY more XP. If our INT guy sells (safely) all the crap he brings home she gets more xp than he did doing the quest (if you add in whatever tasks she did while he was gone... maybe some upgrading, maybe some wood chopping, whatever).

I see no reason for it to be hard coded to 10m. Why would that be necessary? You can always set it to 10m in your game why limit someone else? I just don't think selling things to the trader should be the #1 pool of XP in a game based on the dukes you get, which is how it turns out in a loot heavy group that gives it all to the INT guy to sell. Nor do I think that traps that I designed and wired up should give me zippo xp while it gives the INT guy a ton on horde night.

There is simply no reason not to give this as an OPTION to groups that want it. It is simply a FAR less fun game with people looking around for ways to equalize XP (letting someone use the nail gun on the structure I designed and built so they get all the XP for simply upgrading it). 

Now keep in mind... we ONLY play together. There is no one person playing more or less. So we are always playing, always helping each other, always questing together, etc. The XP differential based on who does what jobs to keep our group going is wide, and that's wonky.

 

[Roland]

I can see no valid argument against a checkbox for sharing all XP... vs only combat xp. Nobody has to check it off.

Me neither. We have a checkbox for enabling the creative menu after all.

I see no reason for it to be hard coded to 10m. Why would that be necessary? You can always set it to 10m in your game why limit someone else?

In a game like this where everything can be modded, I agree. I was mainly trying to convey how important I feel it is to the integrity of the game rules and balance. I seriously have no power to hard code anything into the game and I see no reason either why groups couldn't have whatever setting they wanted as an option.

There is simply no reason not to give this as an OPTION to groups that want it

Agreed.

It is simply a FAR less fun game with people looking around for ways to equalize XP (letting someone use the nail gun on the structure I designed and built so they get all the XP for simply upgrading it). 

I agree which is why I never worry about whether someone has more or less xp than me. I just play the game and spend skillpoints whenever they come available. 

 

[lug]

fun is so subjective. if making the game fun trumps conventional "realistic behavior" then i think folks supporting options for xp sharing are on the right track. but i have read here abouts that more options, in general, is not the focus of the alpha releases. so perhaps the beta will introduce the 17 page option menu