At level 1, you are lacking in all resources (skill points, ability points, riln) and if you are a new player, you are also lacking applied world knowledge (where things are, what things are or are not a good use of time). I think the most difficult part of the exp bucket is wrapping your head around the idea of the bucket and understanding how your actions should be influenced by it. When I first started out, I would also just stop doing things that got me exp and try out things that don't give exp (exploration, shopping/selling, organizing my inventory, meeting people when they're around). After more exposure, I just ignored the bucket altogether, and now after much more time, I've divided activities into three categories:Rias wrote: ↑Thu May 20, 2021 10:18 am I keep going back and forth on the experience bucket thing. I mostly like it, part of me doesn't. I wouldn't be averse to tweaking it so it's not quite so much downtime. I'm also happy to entertain ideas for alternative methods of pacing. My original pacing idea for The Other Game was simply rest time to regenerate energy. That goes a little more quickly than I think I'd prefer for a pacing mechanism, though. Maybe. Hmmm. Happy to hear additional ideas from anyone on this subject (preferably in a separate BBS thread dedicated to the subject, though).
- Large exp rewards from limited resources (setting fishing records, studying, long distance deliveries, etc) - These you watch your bucket and never ever do when you already have a full bucket. They're a great kickstart to your activities when your bucket is low or empty except when you want to grind skill practice, then you should be focusing your low bucket time on those skills.
- Exp from non-limited resources (combat, resource gathering, crafting (ish)) - These you can do to fill your time at any time, and are good for filling your bucket when its low, but having a full bucket doesn't necessarily mean that you need to stop. If you want to stop, you should. If you don't want to stop, don't.
- Non-exp/low exp activities (RP, exploration, inventory/vault management, foraging, felling trees*, clearing stumps, etc) - These you do when you have a full bucket or when another good opportunity presents itself. If an activity grants exp, but doing that activity will never fill your bucket, it belongs here.
That brief set of thoughts aside, I can understand wanting to change up pacing (particularly at low levels) and I've thought about a few ways to do that, presented below:
- Rework the exp tables: This is kind of big and kind of not big. Currently, exp to reach a level is a function of level as follows: exp needed = 125*level^2 + 4875*level - 5000. If this formula were to be tweeked, there are two fixed points that we absolutely want to keep the same: level 1 (because you shouldn't need to earn level 1) and level 100 (so that it still takes the same amount of time to reach level cap). Within that range though, there is considerable flexibility. The most straightforward way is to keep the same kind of formula and just tweak those numbers. You can find a table of what that would look like here. I've added some key summary bits to help make things clearer, namely what level you are when you've gotten a set percentage of the exp needed to reach level 100 (10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%), and hours needed to reach levels 10, 25, 50, 75, and 100. I think A=175 is too fast, while A=150 might be fine. You can also rework the exp function to be a different kind of smooth function, but those tend to be complicated and unintuitive and unless you want players asking constantly why level 2 is 4,114 exp and level 3 is 8,332 and what bizzare thing is going on, I'd avoid those for simplicity's sake. The pros here are that you could increase the leveling pace at lower levels and decrease it at higher levels and because you're only adjusting the formula everyone falls nicely into their new level and doesn't need to feel cheated that they missed out on an accelerated early level experience. The downside is that it may accelerate people out of the range of challenges presently in game.
- Rework the exp tables using piecewise functions: This is as above, but you have say, one function for levels 1-10, one for 11-20, etc that are all patched together. This is more confusing than the above, but also gives you more fine-tuned control over pacing in different bands. Same pros as above, with potentially less impact from the downside mentioned above.
- Expand and rescale tutorial tasks: If you expanded the number of tutorial tasks offered and converted them all to instant exp, you could essentially use the tutorial tasks to move a character from level 1 to level 2 or 3 fairly quickly. This would help players feel like they're making quick progress, but it wouldn't ease them into the bucket, it'd just give them a longer walk before taking the plunge.
- Low level partial instant exp: This is the crazier suggestion. Have characters get all of their exp split between bucket exp and instant exp at low levels. For example, when a level 1 character kills a mob, they get half that exp into their bucket, and half as instant exp when the bucket is below 100% and only 10% instant exp when the bucket is over 100%. At level 2, adjust those down to 40% instant and 8% instant with a full bucket, 3, 30%, 6%, 4 20%, 4%, 5 10%, 2%, and then at level 6 they've joined the normal uphill battle of the bucket. Ditto for all other exp-gain activities, and make sure to not echo any instant exp gains below like 5 or 10 exp (carving a longbow and getting constantly spammed with [Experience +0.3] would just be silly and annoying). If you go this route, make sure that (1) tutorial tasks require looking at help bucket and (2) that the documention for help bucket gets updated to explain this acceleration process at early levels and that it gets phased out to introduce people to the bucket concept. The upside here is that it incentivizes low level characters to stay active and learn the game, but also starts the process of teaching them that continuing to grind when the bucket is overfull is less effective. It also takes longer to fill the bucket, and when combined with the instant exp will do a lot of heavy lifting toward accelerating the leveling process. It also incentivizes low level characters to keep grinding to get the riln they desperately need at low levels (unless they're killing ravens-I'll post a separate suggestion for that shortly). The downsides are that it might be too much acceleration and also that some players might have felt cheated for not getting this lovely swift boot out of low levels, but the game IS still in alpha and many of those players enjoyed a period of vastly easier/safer combat or if they're really old animal husbandry with no poop, so probably it all breaks even somewhere.
- Reduce combat exp: It's been a bit since I've properly done combat, so I don't know that it needs to be lowered on everything, but low hp mobs like ravens could stand to give less exp. Maybe give them an additional exp multiplier of HP/100 to reflect that they're really easy to kill. This only helps combat focused characters, but given the relative safety of non-combat exp gains, I don't feel like non-combat characters have quite the same downtime struggle at low levels, but I could be wrong.