Easiest solution to all the xp imbalance problems of the game

Lets see what a new player that starts right now faces due to the hardcore design of the game:

More experienced people with more hours of game play that have αquired huge amounts of xp and high lvl of ships can kill him in one round or two depending the ship lvl difference.

If he tries to grind exp to catch up with these people in order to have meaningful balanced fights he has 4 options:

1. Get a c3 and grind 300-500 exp/hour. Thats probably impossible now cause most of the ships can one shot him.
   
2. Get a c5 tender with more survivability and due to exp gained from healing probably can get 300-500 exp/hour
3. Get a c4 and try to do some damage while retreating in the first notice of damage 300-500 exp/hour
   
4. Get a c5 tender and grind mission exp for up to 1200xp/hour. Unfortunately this is bugged and caps at 8k exp (revinance reported at 11k).

The above numbers are accurate for me and i know what i am doing. For a new player i expect to have half of those so lets say 250xp/ hour.

Just to be able to survive and have some contribution to a fight right now 4 and a half days after the server reset one needs atleast a c5 costing 6-9k.

So a new player will have to grind on a hostile environment with a huge disadvantage for about 30 hours. Lets say he plays semi casually with 3 hours per day it will take him 10 days. When he finally gets his c5 it will be probably already obsolete due to the other players moving even higher at the food chain. He will die in 1-2 round feel demoralized because he contributed nothing and quit the game.


Here is an easy and quick to apply solution using pve that will benefit everyone and especially the longevity of the game:

1. Take the top 10 players of the server and find the average exp number for the day. Right now that number is about 20k.
2. Apply a server cap exp gained by doing missions for each day. It could be -25% from that number. So lets say 15k right now. This will give incentive to the top players to continue playing pvp to stay on top. You can tweak that number as we test more the game and find the gold standard. I would say letting people have a max edge of +1 lvl class would be the best solution.
3. Make the pve missions extremely rewarding. Like giving 1k exp per mission. This will be the best solution for new people just starting cause they will be able to catch up with the rest of the server within a few hours by doing 15 missions for 15k. They will also get experience on how to fight.Mean while they will spend less time in pve to catch and and move to pvp faster so we have more people fighting in the real fun battles.

This solution is great for top players too. Imagine being the top player right now and have to take a break for 1 week. You get back and you are left so behind that you cant do anything.


I believe technically this is very easy to implement. Just tweak the pve mission numbers and adjust a max server cap gained from missions.


This system will lead to amazing massive epic and memorable fights of people running with c6 vs c7 chips (even the new players will have a c6 within 2 hours of starting the game).

At the same time it will retain its hardcore nature because if you lose your c6 ship you cant do any more missions to get it back in 2 hours because the is a server pve cap.

I think this is a win-win solution for everyone. The top players will still feel "special" and with more people to fight close to their lvl. Also they will be allowed to take a break for real life reasons. The new players will be able to catch up instantly and not feel useless. The boring grind "to stay competitive will be reduced significantly. The game will attract and retain more players.


TL DR: Increase xp gains and server cap on exp gained from pve as a mechanic to have less grind and a more equal population while retaining the hardcore nature of the game.

 

We got cut off at various points for pirate missions because it was being WAY too productive for no-risk when you could bring high class (up to a 5 or 6 by the time you limit out at the original 15k/Rank 4 - though stated rank 5 at first) ships and fight AI. It just so happened that the Pirate Missions were turned down to Rank 3 limit (still up from previous rank 2) when Rev was at 11k.


So you want a floating system where new players can get safe XP from PM's (Pirate Missions) with a cap based on the leaderboard top 10?

I'm not totally against the idea of some sort of catch up system or this one in particular, but...

Some problems:
-New accounts could be created to gain huge XP all over again when one account has exhausted its quotta, especially after losing a ship, and many high level ships could easily be run in rotations.
-Negates the tactical investment of time and meticulously careful/skilled gameplay (the ones that survive and thrive the hard way) into the game by jumping everyone up to high tier ships quickly, almost at will with thousands of XP gained from missions (a bit exaggerated, but for demonstration: an hour to get a C7? charge in at the top players, do what you can with 'free' C7's, probably not care, blow up for engine dmg and do it again? C7 zerg is now the new 'throw away' corvette tactic, no thanks)
-If a top player loses his very hard earned reward, there's no chance of him recovering, no place for him in this system since his XP is the one setting the bar, he must start all over

The system is kinda unfairly rewarding new players/accounts and would certainly promote [more] multi-accounting. I know for a fact this is going on already, and the power of those players would skyrocket + very easily enable them to run a fleet of high tier ships all at once with this XP system where it would be damn near impossible (or at least very tedious) to train up multiple accounts to that level playing the game legit.

My opinion: Too much room to 'game the system' here, which is why the brand new PM cap got shut down so quickly (or so I heard). Come up with some solutions to the problems/revise plan. I noticed a sudden spike in some of Sol's XP's around the PM change, and their gain rates have largely dropped off now.

V had talked about something where new accounts would get +50 xp per day elapsed of server life. I tried to get him to raise that a bit, but then if you even go to ~200 250. Still runs into the same problems as above once the server is, lets say 40 days old, new accounts can be created for instant 10k xp.


[Edit]

PS - I would be much more for a system where new accounts got a sort of XP multiplier bonus, but it only applied to PvP. They must participate in combat, in whatever capacity they can (corvettes are just fine), and they will earn 500% or whatever of normal XP until reaching some floating target, possibly like what you mentioned above. Work and risk must be involved in the system. Enough to prevent abuse, but not too much as to make the catch-up an impossible grind.

Think of playing paintball vs playing lasertag. If you take out the sting and make it a dime a dozen, the game and behavior of the players changes drastically.

 

I agree, I've been on both sides of the end. Either I have to run or die or I simply cap the sector because I'm higher tier and no one wants to risk their hours worth of xp. I like the hard core nature, I really do, but I also want players to be able to have fun, maybe even daily missions for bonus xp? That's a bit more hard to pull during a beta, but doable in the future becouse right now I feel like the elite will be the only ones doing the memorable battle with station assults

 

This proposal has some good points, but it doesn't address one of the major design flaws of the game: It should be relatively difficult to get to the next tier of ships, but it should be easy to stay at a tier and switch ships within the tier. Right now, if you are a top player and you grind to tier 6 or 7, but then you have some bad luck or run into a bug, and you lose your ship, you are dumped back at tier 3 like any newbie that just joined the game. Then you have to do that same 100-hour grind just to get back to where you were. And if you're an average player and you lose a tier 4 or tier 5 ship, you might never progress beyond those levels.

 

I could rebuy 2 of the most expensive (on both sides) Gen C6 right now or progress to a C7 (admittedly I am an extreme outlier), which is oddly 20.5k vs much cheaper and more durable (when shields used properly) Sol ships or Gen's other crappy C6 .

There is that window where if you lose it right away such as @infested before getting DMA I or whatever so you can survive.... OUCH. You really shouldn't take an asset fresh off the shipyard without upgrades and go solo. Not unless you are a boss and playing VERY carefully.

 

Xeen I'm not sure how any of that is relevant. It's great that you're doing well but it doesn't address my points

 

1. Ok so just make the xp difference wider like 1 tier ship difference + some grinding with pvp. So if someone wants to "exploit the system" he would still be left at at c6 vs c7 after doing 10 hours of grinding on top. The stronger top players would still have 1 lvl ship difference +their officers.
2. The point is to have less inequality to not discourage new players or even the top players that want to keep up while taking time off. The game would still remain hardcore because a top 10 player vs a newbie has the edge of his knowledge+ 1 lvl of ship + his officers and can kill the newbie.
3. Ok so you want a less hardcore game then? No problem just add honorable death to both races as a standard feature. If you die you get your half exp back and with a bit of grinding + missions you can come back with a -1 lvl ship and be competitive again in no time.

 

The point was that it is both possible to play safe and be able to rebuy a ship/progress or play foolishly and lose it before you get critical upgrades. The choice is yours.

 

Actually, maybe after you buy the ship, you can repurchase it at half the cost on death, still lose officers, but could reduce the need of grinding while maintaining your status, if you lose the ship multiple times you will be clearly forced into a lower tier due to cost, but atleast you have a form of bounce back. This can also make it so you stick to the ship as Honorable death gives you currency back rather then force you to stick to the ship

 

I like this solution too but for everyone not just new accounts. This way people can get days of and stay competitive. I totally agree that risk vs reward is a good system. I am just proposing now the easiest solution technically imo that can be done within one day and fix the imbalances just like when i proposed to limit the ships per sector to increase speeds.

It was just easy to implement. Vesuvious can decide what solution is the fastest and more appropriate.

 

So Honorable Death + 50% return = no XP loss on ship destruction for Genari?? No way. Can always farm and trade up quickly, no risk, under that design. Just don't upgrade officers too high until you get a ship you wont lose.

 

Why would you want a system like that Xeen, just get rid of honorable death.

 

That's what you just described, although poorly with your wording at the end?

I disagreed 'No Way' 100% recovery of losses for Genari (rebuying same ship or other).

 

I was going off of what infested said with honorable death on both side. You interpreted as that, check the quote.

That also came off as a little sassy, my apologies

 

So a specific ship, once purchased for full price, can be rebought at half price and no XP is given on death?

That's not too bad. A 50% buyback for THAT ONE SHIP, not any ship or any ship lower or any ship within the class, might be good.


TBH, I was mulling around an idea in my head for goofing off towards the end based on how HD worked (before it was disabled).

I'd get to 400k XP, by then having a literal ton extra (about 200k), then buy 200k worth of ships and suicide them for the last 100k to instantly get rank 10 captain. Would only cost me a net of 100k XP to do it too. Honorable Death is just a bad skill in several ways.

 

Ok so after running a few more exp gaining tests i have calculated that it would take me right now 28 straight hours of mindless grinding with a c3 to be able to obtain a c6 and have meaningful fights. Thats just mindless zero risk low reward boring grinding. Make that double for a new player that is just figuring things and doesn't know how to optimally grind so like ~60 hours.

With xeen's suggestion of 500% more exp for corvettes+ this would be reduced to ~6-12 hours which i find acceptable. For a c7 its about double so ~12-24 hours and so on.

So we can ask for this solution:

"All players can get 500% more exp up to -25% of the top 10 players. After that the extra xp system stops so it creates diminishing returns for the top players to decrease inequality. "

This system guarantees that new players can catch up faster and if a top player loses his ship he can grind it up way faster too and make a comeback.

I think we will see better games too gameplaywise because we will have many high tier ships supported by low tier ships doing meaningful work like scouting, distracting and some damage. Most of these low tier ships will be piloted by new players learning the game along with veterans and feeling impactfull while grinding their stronger ships in less time.

I would like to hear more peoples thoughts on such a system and then maybe we can even run a poll and see the reaction of the community.

 

Honorable Death is not even a factor. Who cares about bonus exp upon death as long as it brings no HP/LP? This does not help you get the advantage by getting into better ships sooner. All you gain is quicker access to captain skills and a higher spot on the leaderboard.

 

Ves do you have any plans to reduce the inequality mechanics i have described in this post or do you plan to keep the server as it is now until the season ends?

 

Everything looks like it's been looked at from single.player perspectives. And the team.work growth is been missed. I'm not a massive gamer, and this is my first beta. So sorry lads and lasses, if I'm off the mark or become confused, but it's a team game. You work in teams. And teams grow and win.??????? Sometimes great leaders die in battle , the battlefield opens up after that, and the great leader takes a break,,, plays some other game and joins a new team until he is ready to lead again....... ,but it's a team game????