The Ancient Sceptre of Dominion

[Gorka]

Sceptre Changed... running new tests.
485m (30mins) BH (Mh/Lair/DMount) Legendary
773m (30mins) Lyme (MnM/Vol) Legendary (Sceptre changed again after this)
492m (30mins) SS/AH (Dweb/Fiends/Neg Plane) Legendary
516m (30mins) Lyme (Kitzeh/Oly) Legendary

Group was slightly larger... 14 people or so. Players require more hitroll to do better at legendary. Healo mana not really an issue, but large group.

[Driven]

Sceptre has been updated. This is probably going to be the last xp update on the sceptre for legendary xp. If we still have problems balancing Lyme wrt offlyme, then we need to look for other ways of doing that balance. I would like to see how non-chop heroic xp looks.

[Gorka]

For a couple of weeks I thought the issues with the sceptre might have been a thing of the past. Changes had been made, and now people had started to realise that the sceptre needed to deployed "strategically" instead of "all the time" - as in some cases it's effect was actually counterproductive. The sceptre had seemingly found a sweet spot that complimented the game - but didn't dominate it.

However yesterday one of my characters rebirthed, and I achieved the feat of leveling 171 times in about a 24hr period which included at least 7hrs sleep, and 2 hrs doing valk quests. Now I know a few of you will be lining up to remind me of my "privilege" being an experienced and wealthy player - which indeed does contribute to my ability to level a character... But the truth is what happened yesterday has never happened in the history of the mud. 2x40, almost 5x20 in the space of a day.

So lets first acknowledge my privilege... yes, I had the coins to level, although it must be pointed out the initial levels are very cheap and general xp gold would have covered them anyway. I was in elite eq for my levels, and being a rebirth I was also getting double xp. There was also a large group that ran most of the day, however it must be noted that these current groups only run xp at less than half the rate of more experienced groups and I was getting no leader or tank bonus. The thing that made the real difference yesterday was the sceptre and evidence of this is provided below.

You receive 376,044 experience points as your share.
You gain 376,044 extra bonus experience!
You are taking the first steps along the way to redemption.
Total exp for kill is 69,250,766.
Your blood freezes as you hear Baphomet's death cry.
Guinex gets gold coins from the corpse of Baphomet that's on the ground.
Guinex splits 138666 coins. Your share is 11555 coins.

<436hp 238ma 228mv -1.2ac The DemonWeb and Citadel 32,277,455xp -%>
Vege reports 1447/1447 hp. Change: -75. Need: 0. Spells: glowing, greater fluidity.
The legendary master of heroism tells you 'Well done defeating Baphomet!'
The legendary master of heroism tells you 'Additional experience for a heroic effort!'
You have been awarded 1798808 experience points!
Saving Tonedeaf.
Saving items.
The legendary master of heroism tells you 'Well done defeating Baphomet!'
The legendary master of heroism tells you 'Additional experience for a heroic effort!'
You have been awarded 1798808 experience points!
Saving Tonedeaf.
Saving items.

I was awarded 376,044xp, and rebirth doubled it... but the sceptre effectively awarded me 3,597,616 bonus xp. So basically whenever the sceptre was used yesterday, probably about less than 50% of the time I was grouping, the sceptre bonus was giving me up to 10x the normal xp. When I questioned the over poweredness of this, I typically got the response.

I've made my point quite clear before. As a player I enjoy the new content and powers and things to achieve, but I believe these things must be earned and delivered in a linear fashion. However, if I put aside my feelings and examine what I think is objectively "good for sloth," I strongly believe that "too much sugar" in the long run will lead to the demise of sloth. Just like putting cheat codes into old games - it only led to 10mins of playing before the thrill wore off and you deleted that game. There is a natural link between "value" and "work." You can't cheat this formula without it effecting the value of something. I feel that those who played before Maniac's changes have had all had there achievements "cheapened" because now these things can be achieved with less than half the work. Already we have 9x40's who got in their position in a few months and they got there before they even learnt some really simple parts of the game. Although I think the game does have to grow and improve over time, that process should be linear and not exponential. Also that when you create a brand, although it might develop in time, people don't like it when the brand sells out on it's ethos and tend to leave it when it does. In the last 1-2 years we have seen...

* A clasp which delivers a significant double blind stopping mobs from hitting you.
* An artifact that allows sanct 40k chop mobs to be your followers.
* Proc weapons like the sphairai which can deliver damage of 300+ in 1/6 attacks for free.
* Massively upgraded drachma and 3x40 eq systems.
* Gauntlets that not only prohibit mob powers, but do damage up to about 6,000hp. It's like bringing a gun to a knife fight.

All these things are given for very little, to no work... compared to rebirth shop for instance.

After all these things were implemented, low and behold it was realised... groups were doing world xp and clearing all areas before it could even age... Bruh!

The solution seems to have been to create something to fix the problem - which instead has really just done the opposite and increased the terminal velocity that sloth seems to be traveling at.

I'm well aware that my position on all these changes, is a minority position, but there are those who agree with me and can at least see my point. I'm well aware that many players are enjoying the way things are, but I feel that sloth is deviating to far from it's "ethos" and that those who can't see this, are ill informed, or never really cared anyways about sloth, as everything has always been about them...

Now coincidentally the sceptre is also now being used to inflate mob coins on a particular mob from 1m to 7m by killing it as a legendary. But at least that growth is only 7x not 10x. How long can this go on... how long until we see a "create new 9x40" on the login screen, that's the direction we are headed... Is sloth going to introduce guns and aliens? Where are the carers of the game to slow down the speed at which we are travelling. Do we not understand that the true value of sloth was always the reward for real work? We seem to be behaving like a pack of hyena's tearing at a corpse (and I suspect these types of players will disappear as soon as the meat has gone.) Time will show if that corpse was sloth... I could be wrong, but you can't just increase rewards, cheapen effort and expect people to place the same value on something... that doesn't make something more valuable... it makes it more common.

[Guinex]

Maybe we need to revert back to warriors only being able to tank as well the changes made to the over the past few years have probably been a little overkill. Imagine what a group of all warriors would be capable of now. No need to cast a spell just, toss the guy tanking every once in a while a heal.

I can't help but feel a lot of these complaints are a result of people gaining power to Gorka faster then he made it to his power heights. Another thing to note is that if it wasn't for covid you would not be leveling at the rates that we are now, in all the times i have played i have never seen groups like we have today. Rewind pre covid and all the stay at homes you wouldn't have gotten Tonedeaf to the level he is right now, i know it may sound shocking that some people had a life before this all went down.

Also another side note, sceptre bonus definitely is wonky as to how it is working. Why doesn't it just mirror and multiply the xp gains? At higher levels generall the bonus is lower then the kill, and and low levels it is way over the kill rate.

PS.. Even without this sceptre we still would be leveling extremely fast.

[Driven]

The xp bonus of the sceptre is a simple bucket calculation... your total levels / total levels of group. So an 8x20 will get half the xp as an 8x40 (assuming avatar level 0). It's straightforward to add a scaling factor for lower levels.

Your bonus was 5x, not 10x. Can you identify the crossover point where the bonus xp starts to be 1x?

[Guinex]

It is somewhere around the 6x40 mark. I don't have any logged info for it, but as i recall using it the luster started to fade around 6x40. There are still some mobs that go over 1x but generally speaking it is always below that at 9x40 on heroic.

[Driven]

Given that you have all of this logged, can you give me a spectrum of typical bonus values across the levels as Tonedeaf leveled up? The scaling factor will be tiered in order to replicate the game's xp system, but I need the data to implement it.