Leveling bug: Should it be removed?

[MasterNuke]

It's an exploit. Previous attempts were made to prevent it from happening, but now there are ways to get around and exploit it again.

[Sam]

Originally Posted by MasterNuke

It's an exploit. Previous attempts were made to prevent it from happening, but now there are ways to get around and exploit it again.

But if so i don't understand why the Admins of the past didn't prevent it.
And now, while they are not playing anymore and only working a bit in the background for GK talking about it, instead of acting and report it as a bug.

[--Chris--]

"They complain about it simply because they do not want to devote the time needed to leveling or getting the maps." - Deo

I don't play.

[Lance]

Originally Posted by Deophite18

In my opinion, i believe those who have ever complained about it dont really care about the actual bug or glitch or whatever you want to call it. They complain about it simply because they do not want to devote the time needed to leveling or getting the maps. Sure it is faster than the conventional way, but it still requires a lot of time and patience which a lot of people dont have anyways. The people who complain i guarantee you will never reach high levels by killing lords all day, because that would take forever. So instead they complain about a quick way to level since they dont have the resources to do it themselves. And so they think that if they can't do it no one else can.

Or, you know, they should report bugs so they should be fixed. Don't try to fix some blame or bad qualities on the reporters for doing what they, as players, should be obligated to do.

[Craigus]

Before this "bug" can be fixed something in the leveling system needs to change otherwise lower levels will never be able to compete with older players.

[Splke]

Attempts to prevent it went failed; like Ed said. That's why you don't notice the admins doing anything. That or they just suck. :l

[Lance]

Originally Posted by Schlurfy

But if so i don't understand why the Admins of the past didn't prevent it.
And now, while they are not playing anymore and only working a bit in the background for GK talking about it, instead of acting and report it as a bug.

You seem to be forgetting a few key points:

1) These are mudlib issues. Stefan has to fix them.
2) We "Admins of the past" brought the old incarnations of this bug up before. That is, when people with drastically different overall levels did the same thing, they received outrageously high amounts of experience. This was perceived as a bug, so the party level limit was put into place to counter this. Unfortunately, it wasn't considered at the time that people could have very similar overall levels but drastically different skill levels and thus could continue to abuse the bug that way.
3) a) I haven't had a chance to speak with Stefan since reading this thread.
3) b) I hadn't learned of the existence of this incarnation of the bug until reading this thread.
3) c) I can't fix it myself.

Yet, somehow you are blaming us "Admins of the past" for not discovering / dealing with this problem earlier. That doesn't make sense. How about working on helping fixing the problem (helping contact Stefan) instead of affixing the blame?

[Sam]

Originally Posted by Lance

You seem to be forgetting a few key points:

1) These are mudlib issues. Stefan has to fix them.
2) We "Admins of the past" brought the old incarnations of this bug up before. That is, when people with drastically different overall levels did the same thing, they received outrageously high amounts of experience. This was perceived as a bug, so the party level limit was put into place to counter this. Unfortunately, it wasn't considered at the time that people could have very similar overall levels but drastically different skill levels and thus could continue to abuse the bug that way.
3) a) I haven't had a chance to speak with Stefan since reading this thread.
3) b) I hadn't learned of the existence of this incarnation of the bug until reading this thread.
3) c) I can't fix it myself.

Yet, somehow you are blaming us "Admins of the past" for not discovering / dealing with this problem earlier. That doesn't make sense. How about working on helping fixing the problem (helping contact Stefan) instead of affixing the blame?

I am helping by talking about it with Björn and I said in this thread:

Originally Posted by Schlurfy

...Maybe Stefan can clarify what is intended and what not.

A normal player without knowing anything about programming or how much exp and whatever killing any kind of monsters cannot know is it right or wrong how much he level by using the party tool.
If it was not intend that people can level in that way in a party Stefan will fix it.
I didn't know that this is a problem that most likely came into being from the new mudlib. I never pretended to have knowledge from programming, now I know that this is not an problem what was also in the past.
Therefore I apologize to blame older Admins for being inactive.

[Craigus]

This method has been around for atleast 3 years.

[Splke]

The method has been around for 3 years, but the severe abuse in this specific case is different than just having a friend level at low levels with you. This is like back when Toran was raising Wren's wisdom level by reseting his spare account and using his lvl 1 char to give her 100k per kill in Immense maps.

It's not _that_ effective, but in essence it is on the same level of abuse.

[Craigus]

Same method but yeah its alot harder because you would need a permenant person.

[Butz]

Originally Posted by Craigus

Before this "bug" can be fixed something in the leveling system needs to change otherwise lower levels will never be able to compete with older players.

Indeed. Experience requirements that go up almost exponentially (at least in the beginning), while having experience gained per kill going down on a sliding scale as level rises make people more likely to look for loopholes like this. The amount of experience needed between levels is obscene really, especially since after a certain point, levels get you nothing more than a couple hitpoints, and occasionally allow you to add another + to your equipment.

Personally, I think there shouldn't BE base experience. Your level should be a total of your ability levels, and stop rising at a certain point. (Max out your total level, and you just can't level up anymore, in anything.)

[busyrobot]

This is all the result of a bad mathmatical system in leveling. As you level up, the exp that is given by a monster goes down. As you go down, your experience per monster does up.

The best solution IMO, is to completely wipe the experience/lvl modifier, and just inflate the xp needed at higher levels. That way, you have a nice clean linear system.

Example:

Current system: Lets say you need 100k exp to get from level 49 to 50 and 100k from 50 to 51. At level 49, a Slug gives you 500 ep, and at level 50, it only gives you 250 xp.

Wouldn't it be better, to have the Slug give a standard 500 xp, always, and make 50 to 51 require 200k xp instead of 100k?

That way, you don't have crazy xp inflation when a low level fellow kills a high level monster, and you can't exploit parties no matter the xp gap.

If you add two other fixes:
1) The amount of damage you do with a method of attack, determines the xp you get for the kill. If you do 20% of the damage on a creature with wisdom, you get 20% wisdom xp for your contribution to the kill.
2) The other party members get shared xp in the category you did the damage with - you use wisdom, they get shared wisdom xp.

Then, you have no more room for exploits. What I do think could be a valuable place for reducing XP by percent, is let a lvl 1 player party with a lvl 100 player, but they only get the percentage shared via the level diffference. Then, a level 5 player, and a level 50 player can party, but the lvl 5 player would get 10% of the shared amount of xp. Actually, instead of level difference, use xp difference. If the level 50 player needs 500k to get to the next level (I mean, the standard gap from lvl 50 to 51 being equal to 500k, not what they have left to lvl to get there) and gets 1k for a kill, that is 1/500th of the way. Then the lvl 5 player if the gap from lvl 5 to 6 is 10k, would get the shared modifier modified by the xp amount that is 1/500th closer to lvl 6.


The problem is if you make fixes right now, the game is still horribly thrown off. I really think a reset and general rebalance would be an exceptionally good idea.

One recommendation though: Add more role for parties...make it so if you use weapons, you have a delay to cast healing spells, so you need a cleric around to heal in the party. Make it so to use swords well, you need a wizard to cast 'entangle' to raise an enemy's AC. If the game gets rebalanced, increasing the benefits for cooperation will improve interesting gameplay by a huge factor.

[Splke]

Static EXP is stupid, honestly. *shrugs* The idea of making a class an actual CLASS seems like a taboo for GK, it's been so long since anythings had real value on there that it would be scary to see something make sense.

[skyler87]

Originally Posted by Raziel

Do you people follow all the rules?

I'm sure we try our best to. Accidentally swearing or breaking a rule like that is one things, spending hundreds of hours abusing a bug like this while knowing that it was pretty much cheating is a whole different subject. I know that you and everyone else who used it had a good idea that you were doing something wrong, since like I said, the only time I would see *Fr0chin doing it was at about 3 A.M. when there were only about 5 people online.

Originally Posted by Deophite18

Yeah but can you really expect to take a long absence from graal like he did and still expect to be on top when you come back.

Honestly, no, I didn't expect to still be on top because I just assumed that a bunch of kids would find a bug to level with and have a hayday with it (notice that I still have more online time than you, Fr0chin, Raziel, and mostly every other one of the level 110 considered powerful). However, I might as well do everything I can about it, right?


Edit: I've tried telling the *****s that abuse this bug that they are causing great imbalance on the server. Fr0chin's Ogma+9 blessing is making it so just about every level 20 newbie can put up a good fight with me because of their increased WC and poison damage. Of course, abusers of the bug say "well, it gives newbies a chance so it actually makes the server better." Fr0chin typically charges 125 diamonds for the ogma+9 blessing. So, if you aren't on Fr0chin's good side, then too bad, you'll be far inferior to everyone in the server because you can't get the blessing that he has a monopoly on because of this bug. Further, people having this level are discouraging newer players from continuing their subscription. I know afew players that came to GK from Zone when they quit, played until about level 9 thinking that the server was fun. Then, they finally realized that it would take them unthinkable amounts of time to get to even level 50, so they say "GK'S *** CUZ EVERYONE CHEATED AND IS 2 HIGH A LEVEL I'M NOT PLAYING HERE".

Originally Posted by busyrobot

The problem is if you make fixes right now, the game is still horribly thrown off. I really think a reset and general rebalance would be an exceptionally good idea.

A reset is a great idea. I think everyone would have a lot of fun, if some things like this bug, were fixed. But, all of the people who are level 110 (Fr0chin, Raziel, Kilik or w/e, Drk, so on) would cry irl because all of their _hard work_ will have gone to waste. In the long run, there would be more gains than losses. There's about 10 players or so that used this bug to get level 110...there's about 70 other players who are low level, and must be crazy because they continue to play the server. Overall, the server would become more popular, because the lower levels would actually be PART OF THE GAME if the server reset, as opposed to lowly, worthless "noobs" even though they may have 300 hours played on the server. GK getting more popular=more customers, more customers=more players on GK, and probably a lot more fun and interesting.

[nullify]

So, you are mad and such because "newbs" can kill you? That seems to be what you just said in your last post.

[Googi]

I remember back when resets were considered a last resort. Now they're the tool of your average complainer.

[skyler87]

Originally Posted by nullify

So, you are mad and such because "newbs" can kill you? That seems to be what you just said in your last post.

Yeah, I'm mad about it. However, you shuld lern2reed, because that's not all that I said in my last post.

Originally Posted by Googi

I remember back when resets were considered a last resort. Now they're the tool of your average complainer.

There have been many, many complaints and posts that lead to people wanting a reset for a long, long time now.

[Splke]

lel newbies

[Googi]

Originally Posted by skyler87

There have been many, many complaints and posts that lead to people wanting a reset for a long, long time now.

If the server still has players, it doesn't need a reset. Even the most serious problems people complain about can be solved through widespread nerfing.

[skyler87]

Originally Posted by Googi

If the server still has players, it doesn't need a reset. Even the most serious problems people complain about can be solved through widespread nerfing.

I fully agree, but you know..widespread nerfing of players and/or functions just ends up pissing afew people off while it doesn't effect many others. It's more balanced to have a reset, since everyone will get all of the effects of that. Besides, when have you known staff to ever nerf ANYTHING on this server?

Also, remember 2k1? It did reset, eventually, when there weren't any players left. It was too late though, and noone bothered coming back because they weren't into the server anymore, thus 2k1 is no longer alive.