Why doesn't EXP lapse?

Discussion in 'Dungeons of Dredmor General' started by DoDgirl, Jul 24, 2012.

  1. DoDgirl

    DoDgirl Member

    I'm just curious as to why the game was designed where crossing the EXP line by 1 resets the counter to zero no matter what you managed to do in order to go over the hump itself. I imagine it was done purposefully but as a lover of dismantling systems and games I genuinely cannot decipher why it's like this.
     
  2. Daynab

    Daynab Community Moderator Staff Member

    I don't think it's a conscious design decision :p
     
  3. mining

    mining Member

    Well, a large reason to do this is to stop a bugged monster/event from giving you 20 levels.
     
  4. Kazeto

    Kazeto Member

    Or a non-bugged Archeology player when he finds that crownstar annendum in his first fountain, to be honest.
     
  5. banjo2E

    banjo2E Member

    On the other hand, being in a room with a Dredmor statue, 1 HP, and 8 XP to the next level is slightly annoying.

    Besides, you find an item of any quality in a fountain like, 1 time out of 100. If you're fortunate enough to win a crownstar whilst using Archaeology, you should get to win the game.

    Also, the "if you have exactly the amount of EXP required to level up, you don't level" thing still annoys me.
     
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  6. DoDgirl

    DoDgirl Member

    I guess thew way I see it there's no reason for it mainly because it "punishes" players for having good luck in a randomly generated dungeon. You do not instantly win the game because you get all of your skills; as a matter of fact the entire reason the game is fun is because you do not instantly win the game when you get all of your skills. You don't become invincible at all.

    Furthermore there's no real "abuse" other than Archeology and honestly if you have Archeology whether or not you lapse you're abusing the system anyway. It's just a matter of creating two of something versus one with smithing.

    That all aside it sounds like it was a bug fix. Well then!
     
  7. Shwqa

    Shwqa Member

    Yeah I wish there was just a two level cap. Like you could get 2 levels from any one source of experience. For example getting 9999999999999999999exp from museuming a debug item at level 1 only made you level 3. I don't think we should punish player for bugs or the off chance someone get super duper lucky with the right skill set.
     
  8. Nikolai

    Nikolai Member

    I don't think the XP should be lost at all. But if it simply must be done, why don't we instate a system where after your first level, the XP you get is reduced by 1/4, and then after that level the XP is reduced by another 1/4, and so on until you stop levelling?
     
    Kazeto likes this.
  9. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    This is not intended (by me anyway .. ?). I think the ticket got lost at some point in transition to our new system. Shall mark it for next patch, will see if it can be fixed.
     
  10. jhffmn

    jhffmn Member

    I'm not sure how I feel about this. If it is fixed, the first time you find a crownstar as an archeology player you'll hit the level cap. Even if you don't find one till dungeon level 12-13 that still seems a bit silly as that can take you up from level 26 or so to whatever your cap is (35+)

    I can't see what the legitimate downside is to leaving this as is.

    I'd probably make a character designed to dungeon dive, with a high level cap, just to abuse this.
     
  11. Warlock

    Warlock Member

    Let's just forget those unfortunate implications for the sake of the people who actually find crownstars in fountains. I found exactly one of those. :(
     
  12. jhffmn

    jhffmn Member

    Isn't wearing it enough of a bonus? Finding one on level 1 is a pretty huge advantage as is.

    Hiting level cap at level 1 just makes the game boring. This is a single player game after all. Imagine if you could find an item in game that made you imune to all damage, wouldn't that just take all the fun out of things?
     
  13. Warlock

    Warlock Member

    More power to the people who don't want to get pwned by diggles over again. For the rest of us, we save those.
     
  14. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    The experience gain equation from archeology is also slated for revision.
     
  15. FaxCelestis

    FaxCelestis Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Might I suggest, instead of the current
    Code:
    $ItemLevel * $ArtifactQuality * 60
    you use something more like
    Code:
    ($ItemLevel * $ArtifactQuality * 60) - (($CurrentCharacterLevel - 1)^2) 
    ?
     
  16. rotopenguin

    rotopenguin Member

    Excess XP can't just scale down, or spill straight across into a dozen levelups for a new adventurer. It has to go onto a Customer Loyalty Rewards Card, to be tallied up for an Achievement. The first 100 players to completely fill their cards should get a signed digital copy of the tracker ticket for the XP discard bug.
     
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  17. DoDgirl

    DoDgirl Member

    If you really want to fix the EXP problem just scale it to the floor you're on. For instance let's say you're running a dungeon where after 3 levels on any given floor ( I assume we can do common multiplication but I'll explain in detail anyway ) you get half the experience for all experience gaining actions including that of Archeology ( meaning you wouldn't have to change it or whatever ) and this is recursive.

    For instance our CROWNSTAR! Found on level 1.

    If you're character level is 1 - 3 on level 1 then you get full exp, it crosses into 4 - 7 you get half, it crosses again into 8 - 11 and it's halfed again, and so forth and so on; this keeps momentum in the game encouraging the player to delve and therefore risk their lives while at the same time preventing punishment for success and luck while also allowing those who do want to grind or use skills that increase EXP to reap benefits ( 3 lvl system per dungeon floor though it could be rebalanced to whatever ) without becoming OP.

    I am still going to state however that this game does not hold conventional leveling schemes therefore things like leveling up repeatedly on level one do not guarantee survival at level 10 or in a real jam like warping into a monster zoo or the like. Even with maxed out skills you can very well die unlike other games that are based moreso on equipment rather than intellect and proper strategies.

    The reason this is so important is because the argument that you can "Max Out and therefore Win" doesn't apply to this particular type of game and that's something that when not observed creates conundrums regarding such systems as experience that lead to inaccurate understandings seeing as a lot of people genuinely take some skills like Blood Magic and NEVER level them up on purpose.
     
  18. DoDgirl

    DoDgirl Member

    This doesn't solve the problem unless the character's level is refreshed in the equation every time a level up occurs as the character who finds the crownstar on level one gets the same EXP as he would have gotten. As a matter of fact this punishes characters who actually play through the game and AREN'T as lucky.
     
  19. Daynab

    Daynab Community Moderator Staff Member

    The statement that gaining 10 levels on floor 1 doesn't make it any easier to beat the game is a good one. Only thing is it would make it easy to cheese a large portion of the game, but mostly that it would make that portion of the game boring, which is probably the worst part of it.
     
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  20. DoDgirl

    DoDgirl Member

    I totally agree. Therein lies the beauty of the game however, the whole cheesing part of it, namely in the fact that if you want to level and jump to 7 you can and if you want to flex your muscles and do all the monster zoos solo because you're the shit from that Crownstar, you can, and honestly if you don't want to risk this and refuse to take Archeology, currently the only method to do this, you can do that too!

    Just as cheese plays a large part in the game the game itself is based entirely on how to break the game. You find the combo that wins you the game and like chess you want to do it in as few moves as possible. Realistically when you play you not only don't need every skill in every tree but you really don't want them either; other than just the buffs from the Class Bars there's little benefit. I guess I might be looking at how the game was designed wrong though. lol