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Post by orphan on Sept 9, 2009 3:44:44 GMT
Okay I have a great one for you big guys. On AA, it feels like dying has more of an impact on a players file, than just losing some exp, skills, stats, and a level. It feels like afterward it takes longer (more than it should) to begin regaining things back. I have a specific question tho, if a fighter with 100 spear, and no other skills. Okay, say he dies, now he begins to work knife for the 1st time, is he going to be starting in a "negative" experience pool for knife skill? I.E. Is it going to take longer to advance this skill, than it would have, before he died? I guess what I'm getting at, are there some small hidden nasties that come along with death, that might make it worthwhile to suicide a lower level character and startover Fresh? I know that had a shifter, and he died, afterward it seemed like ALL of my forms suffered from both a negative Time AND Exp penalty. Thus, it seemed faster to suicide him, and restart, than trying to regain 59 forms worth of exp/time? If you could make sense of all that, then you will probably be able to help me, if not, than you haven't died much
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Post by CalviN on Sept 9, 2009 11:16:53 GMT
Ok... I have NO freaking clue if the times/exp required for shitter levels could/would go negative past zero... I would suspect not. The death scale on AA has always been in thirds, and with skills, it's always had a max loss of 5 per death, as far as I've ever experienced or heard of. And factor this in.... who coded skills? Who coded Shifters? Who was the balance arch at the time they were coded? Oh, right.... Paldin, Paldin, and Paldin. I'd think that of all people, he'd be very consistent in how he set things up. The only REAL way to tell, (shockingly, as with EVERYTHING on AA...) would be to start a new alt, wait until 5 minutes has passed (or however long it takes you to get to shifters, but make it exactly the same with each) and join shitters. Idle kill your way to opossum, or whatever the first thing is, get to where you have at least 2nd level in it, then with one alt, don't die, and get frog.... find out how long it takes to get lvl 2... then die with the other BEFORE getting frog, and see how long it takes. If the frog on the dead alt takes longer, you pretty much got a difinitive answer. As far as skills, it depends on how much exp you lose. This is just my personal theory, not having seen the actual code... but I think skills works like this. You have a skill points pool for each type. Each point in that skill is based on reaching a number. Say skill 1 is 10 pool points. 2 is another 20. 3 is 40. 4 is 60. skill 100 might be 1.5mill pool points. For each hit you do with a weapon, you get X pool points. the X is based on several factors. Skill, level of NPC, weapon level your using compared to your level, etc. If you have 99 spear, and you're using an arrow, you'll probably get 1 pool point for every 1000 hits, because it's so damn low on the skill suitability level that it doesn't even register. If you're using an almost perfectly suited weapon, on an NPC that's a level higher than you, ya might get 3 pool points per successful hit. If you're using a Perfectly suited weap on the same NPC, each hit might give ya 5 pool points. So it seems like you're getting skills faster because you're getting more credit per hit you do. Now, thinking about that, if you die.... the exp and skill pool points you lose might be 1/3 of your total exp/pool points. But.... you can only lose a max of 5 (or for other classes than fighter, might be capped differently per skill based on class suitability, so you might be capped at 3 or 4). So according to pool points, you might've lost the equivalent of 6.5 skills worth of pool points... but you only went down 5 skills. So you're 1.5 skills in the hole. One of the supporting things with this is... when I hit 1700 with Calvin, I kept playing. (obviously) So I was still using weapons to kill things, and I think I was still racking up pool points. I haven't died since I hit 1600 several years back. But.... I did die on Anarchy (when Morphine and some necro double-teamed me) and several of my skills (two weapon, club, longsword, exotic, rapier.... aka, the skills I used the most going from 1600-1700, and that I played with afterwards a lot) stayed at 100, and a few others I used frequently (like 2hs, 2ha) dropped 2-3 points... but the skills I never touched (flail, shortsword, unarmed) all dropped down 5 points a piece. I think with the ones that stayed at 100, I used em so darn much, I probably had the pool points to have 105-110 in those skills. So... yeah, I think it could take you longer to regain your skills after a death than it did to go from whatever you drop to to what you had originally.... but it's because it's capped. Does the rest of that crap work like that?? Possibly... maybe even probably. Does it go negative, like you're thinking with shitter levels??? I doubt that. I don't think starting off with zero time, zero levels in a clan or skill and dying before you ever start using it will put you negative. It might though........ Mage and Rogue study hours go south of zero when you die, so........ it might. Like I said before, there's only one way to find out.... Let us know your results!!
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Post by orphan on Sept 9, 2009 20:06:25 GMT
Thanks for the reply Calvin,
I had come up with the same theory around pooled exp points for skills, but when I tried to explain it to people they just stared at me blankly. There are other things that suggest you are correct too, for example the wildly varied rate at which fighters hit 1700. Because when fighting monsters like 9k's most of that experience is just freebie, and really only the exp gained from the hits, counts. Thank you for the explanation.
Just to expand on something, do you feel personally, after getting 1700 that dual-wielding or using single-perfectly suited weps raised your skills faster?
The reason I ask is because most of the dualling combo's don't always allow for perfectly suited weapons in the mix.
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Post by sinister on Sept 12, 2009 21:02:50 GMT
I guess what I'm getting at, are there some small hidden nasties that come along with death, that might make it worthwhile to suicide a lower level character and startover Fresh? Yes, your exp/time average takes a hit, but only one person in the mud cares about crap like that.
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Post by Notanalt on Sept 12, 2009 22:48:22 GMT
I thought that one person quit.
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Post by CalviN on Sept 15, 2009 10:56:05 GMT
Uh..... can't really answer that question. I kinda had maxxed out 1600 skills several years before two weapon skill came out, so I got to 1700 just dualing the last 100.
However, based on what I've heard from all of the other players I talk to and party with, and working on skills with smaller alts, that it's MUCH faster to raise the individual skills by dualing. (Rapier, Exotic, Shortsword, Spear, etc... pretty much everything except unarmed, 2HS 2HA) Not only are you increasing your average hits per round, but you're also working towards getting two skills at once every time you dual. (whatever the skill is, and your two weapon skill) And you can mix and match most of the skills, working two individual skills and 2weap, like dualing a shortsword in one hand and spear in the other, so you're actually working towards 3 skills at once...
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Post by Morask on Sept 16, 2009 9:32:29 GMT
just did a quick test...made a new alt..joined mage class went and died ...study hours were still at 0... no xp had been gained
recreated samd alt. .. joined mages went and did free xp search obtained 26 study hours ... died and had 17 hours
so looking at this and my previous mages it looks like you only go into negetive hours (and i assume its the same for rogue) if you have spent those hours you would loose through lost xp
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Post by Mani on Oct 2, 2009 2:32:57 GMT
I don't believe in the negative xp for skills thing. Died a crapload of times on my old elf ranger, and ended up at level 20 with like 7 skills at 60+ including 2hs.
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