Hi,
Due to collectable XP loot, people are all farming the same mobs at the same spots over and over again. As these spots are scattered all over classic and SI, we got a nice incentive to travel the world more instead of sticking to the same dungeons all the time. While this is a step into a very nice direciton, the vast majority of the classic PvE zones are still mostly dead. There are lots of mobs which are costing server CPU cycles and bandwidth (when someone runs by) but are probably never going to be killed.
At the same time, for some (many?) people, pulling the same mobs at the same spot over and over again can get quite boring. For those people it would be much more fun to roam the maps, explore and kill mobs on the go. However, staying at one spot with a good respawn rate is so much more efficient than roaming and the risk running around not finding adequate mobs is so high, that nobody is actually doing it.
Obviously, Mythic had been aware of this back then already, so they introduced the concept of camp bonus. However, the camp bonus is so small, it cannot compensate the loss of XP efficiency when roaming instead of stationary spot grinding.
But I think this can be fixed by modifying the camp bonus settings (maybe this even does not require programming any new logic):
- Increase the maximum camp bonus massively
- Make the camp bonus replenishment rate much slower
- Make camp bonus decay when a mob is killed much faster
The result would be that a mob which has not been touched in weeks will give as much XP as a whole group of mobs. However, that camp bonus vanishes very fast, so it is not worth it to stay at a location for much longer than the duration of a single camp fire. The camp bonus takes very long to recover, so it is encouraged to boldly go where no one has gone before ... or at least not in a long time (like many days or few weeks). The total leveling speed of roaming would be approximately the same as stationary XP loot grind, as there will always be gaps between mobs, sometimes mobs are scarce, sometimes it takes a little longer to find the next mob with an adequate level, etc.
The result would (hopefully) be that people who like a bit of variety can do so without drawbacks while XP for "classic" stationary grinders remains untouched. At the same time the world would be much more alive as there will be exploring adventurers everywhere.
With extra scripting effort, this could be extended even further: Maybe the camp bonus % could be translated directly into a drop chance for some extra phoenix feathers (independent from mob level). In the very long run, when most players have all their characters leveled up to 50 already, the world will not die out: there is still a reason to roam all maps on all levels. Of course, the amount of feathers gained that way should be small enough so it is still worth to battle high end mobs and bosses, but still high enough to encourage some players to keep roaming the PvE content. Alternatively, some reward other than feathers could be used here (like item skins etc).
Thanks for reading!
Due to collectable XP loot, people are all farming the same mobs at the same spots over and over again. As these spots are scattered all over classic and SI, we got a nice incentive to travel the world more instead of sticking to the same dungeons all the time. While this is a step into a very nice direciton, the vast majority of the classic PvE zones are still mostly dead. There are lots of mobs which are costing server CPU cycles and bandwidth (when someone runs by) but are probably never going to be killed.
At the same time, for some (many?) people, pulling the same mobs at the same spot over and over again can get quite boring. For those people it would be much more fun to roam the maps, explore and kill mobs on the go. However, staying at one spot with a good respawn rate is so much more efficient than roaming and the risk running around not finding adequate mobs is so high, that nobody is actually doing it.
Obviously, Mythic had been aware of this back then already, so they introduced the concept of camp bonus. However, the camp bonus is so small, it cannot compensate the loss of XP efficiency when roaming instead of stationary spot grinding.
But I think this can be fixed by modifying the camp bonus settings (maybe this even does not require programming any new logic):
- Increase the maximum camp bonus massively
- Make the camp bonus replenishment rate much slower
- Make camp bonus decay when a mob is killed much faster
The result would be that a mob which has not been touched in weeks will give as much XP as a whole group of mobs. However, that camp bonus vanishes very fast, so it is not worth it to stay at a location for much longer than the duration of a single camp fire. The camp bonus takes very long to recover, so it is encouraged to boldly go where no one has gone before ... or at least not in a long time (like many days or few weeks). The total leveling speed of roaming would be approximately the same as stationary XP loot grind, as there will always be gaps between mobs, sometimes mobs are scarce, sometimes it takes a little longer to find the next mob with an adequate level, etc.
The result would (hopefully) be that people who like a bit of variety can do so without drawbacks while XP for "classic" stationary grinders remains untouched. At the same time the world would be much more alive as there will be exploring adventurers everywhere.
With extra scripting effort, this could be extended even further: Maybe the camp bonus % could be translated directly into a drop chance for some extra phoenix feathers (independent from mob level). In the very long run, when most players have all their characters leveled up to 50 already, the world will not die out: there is still a reason to roam all maps on all levels. Of course, the amount of feathers gained that way should be small enough so it is still worth to battle high end mobs and bosses, but still high enough to encourage some players to keep roaming the PvE content. Alternatively, some reward other than feathers could be used here (like item skins etc).
Thanks for reading!
