2.3.0 Changes to the High-level Experience Equation

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Darkkrows wrote:

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Chris wrote:

We want to strike a good balance between rewarding progression and a race to 100 that isn't over in ten days each league.

Then you guys should implement Exp fatigue system. The faster the exp a player gain, the more exp penalty he will receive.(and you balance this system around the top players) They still can race within the fatigue system, exp bar still move just slower.

quite a number of MMO implement this trick to stop the no-lifer from leveling 1 character too quick & this system does not punish the more casual players who do not have 14-16hours a day to play the game but still wanted to go max level & have some progression.

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Voroseeg wrote:

The race to 100 was never fast, you just nerfed it based on the streamers that played the game 24/7 with top gear, OP meta builds and +30% packsize Gorge rotations.

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Jentry wrote:

I mapped as support this league with a few of the top 5 PSC players to hit 100. While I understand and agree with the stimulus which Chris & GGG have for these exp changes, I advocate that the chosen methodology of implementation has exacerbated disincentives to running endgame challenging content, and has reinforced the pervasively growing speed mapping meta which detracts from the fun, challenge, and loot of the highest tier map content in Path of Exile.

In PSC, and progressively for a number of development cycles since the overhaul of map modifiers, the players I see successfully pushing the ladder are speed running mid tier maps (Tier 9-12) in lieu of playing content appropriate for their ability.

I think it is critical to expound upon what I mean by "Speed Running" because it is a playstyle that I only observe in this tiny niche of the POE community. Builds, groups, and Map Rolling revolve around the ability to one shot every monster in the chosen tier of maps, the vast majority of loot is disabled and ignored, and there is significant priority given to sustaining obscenely high Movement Speed.

The gravitation towards this Movespeed=Clearspeed, nodowntimeinstapopmapaftermapinonehideout, playstyle is Phrenetic. For me it has detracted a good deal from the depth and enrichment of what Path of Exile once was because this "Efficiency Mapping" incentives players to actively ignore many aspects of the Game Design and map in Cliques or small groups of like minded players, or Solo in this style to achieve ladder position.

While there has always been a no-life element to the POE ladder, these changes further skew towards the extreme.

I do not fault the players for adapting, responding, to the GGG changes in this fashion. As Chris and GGG has pointed out many times, the playerbase, even in the absence of "Access to Information" on many of the mathematical fine points of the game, the players are becoming ever more efficient at MinMaxing their builds and their playstyle.

The tier 9-12 maps are sustainable indefinitely with minimal currency investment and can be run at max speed with negligible risk to grind exp. Higher tier maps are not sustainable and require currency investment that doesn't return maps or appropriate reward to the risk and differential time it takes to run them (except maybe for the first week of the league). The risks in the highest end maps often appear in Spiky forms, and are not a elegant counterbalance to play skill but rather a direct developer response to expected meta and playstyle.

As more and more players and groups gravitate to this playstyle, they also withdraw, in my experience, from the broader community, trading, crafting, social aspect of POE. The SpeedMapping meta being sustainable as a solo playstyle or clique playstyle supports a narrow band focus on the "Game". It is so much more efficient at accomplishing the niche goal of pushing the ladder that traditional mapping feels slow and wasteful. It is more difficult to make new friends to play with as the lightspeed jump from normal mapping to "SpeedMapping" is very jarring for new players, or longtime players who have never pushed ladder in this fashion. This, by design, has created a, barrier to entry, a monumental disincentive to players who consider jumping into the ladder race.

Basically, what I am arguing here, is to push the ladder these days, you either have to go it alone, or conform to the very narrow and xenophobic speed meta, and it just instantly trashes so much of the richness and depth of an awesome game and encourages elitism as a zeitgeist. I don't think it is healthy or sustainable for the long term of the community.

VOC

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Chris wrote:

The race to level 100 in Path of Exile is not meant to be fast. The upper echelons of player level in Path of Exile are about bragging right more than absolute power. The marginal benefits of the last few passive skill points are low, and there currently aren't any items that require level 97 to equip.

Over time, players have become both better at building characters, better at playing to maximise experience and have more powerful tools at their disposal. The race to 100 gets faster and faster each league.

To compensate for this, we have periodically applied changes to the experience equation to slow down the top players reaching 100. Sometimes we apply changes that intentionally slow a larger band of players down, but this is due to our dissatisfaction with their leveling speed also. As we have seen this league, players are still able to reach high levels rather quickly.

We didn't go into detail about the specifics of the 2.3.0 experience change in the patch notes. This was an oversight. The details are as follows:

We reduced the effective level of endgame areas for the purposes of the experience equation. The below chart lists the monster level of the area, what the level is for the experience penalty before 2.3.0, and then the effective level after 2.3.0. You can see the details of the experience penalty equation on the Path of Exile wiki (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Experience).

Level 70: 70 -> 70
Level 71: 71 -> 70.94
Level 72: 72 -> 71.82
Level 73: 73 -> 72.64
Level 74: 74 -> 73.4
Level 75: 75 -> 74.1
Level 76: 76 -> 74.74
Level 77: 76.9 -> 75.32
Level 78: 77.7 -> 75.84
Level 79: 78.4 -> 76.3
Level 80: 79 -> 76.7
Level 81: 79.5 -> 77.04
Level 82: 79.9 -> 77.32
Level 83: 80.1 -> 77.54
Level 84: 80.2 -> 77.7

We've found that players who aim for max level enjoy a harder grind to reach this goal. The harder grind also more clearly signals to players who like building alternate characters roughly when to reroll.

In the future, we'll release content that has a higher monster level than level 84. This would make the race to 100 even faster. We'll probably apply experience penalties directly to the upper levels themselves rather than continuing to drop the effective area levels for experience. For example, maybe it'll take 50% longer to reach level 100 from level 99, but the experience gain of lower-level players would be unadjusted. This depends a lot on the specific level of content that comes out in future releases. We want to strike a good balance between rewarding progression and a race to 100 that isn't over in ten days each league.