I would like to propose an idea to buff gained party EXP between similarly leveled players, and a nerf to gained party EXP between party members with a huge level gap (A nerf to the actual root of leeching). -Party EXP Buff- Spoiler Training in a party is way more fun than grinding alone. Or, being around people in general is more fun than being alone. Part of why PQ's are such a great alternative to grinding; and while I would still love to see all the PQ's that should be around make a return, I also would like to bring the spirit of teamwork and playing together to grinding. As of right now, the bonus amount of EXP between party members is not enough of an incentive to encourage people to join a party for grinding (Unless there is HS), it still seems far more safe and rewarding to rely solely on yourself in a grinding situation, rather than trusting one other or multiple other people to keep up the same pace, and only kill mobs that would otherwise be out of your way. Between a two person party, there seems to be a 20% increase for party bonus EXP, with 1/3rd of the EXP going to the other party member. (I am unsure of what the bonus or division is between 3 or more party members, but they seem to be similarly not worth it.) While I am sure this bonus EXP could be taken advantage of effectively, it seems too situational. It'd be great to have a party EXP bonus that assured us without a doubt, it was the superior way to grind. -The Inspiration- Spoiler There was a party EXP glitch a few updates back, that suddenly had many people taking advantage of it and grinding together. It's been awhile, and I am not sure I fully grasped it, and correct me if I am wrong but the way I understood the glitch was that: If all party members were within 5 levels of the Mobs level, the EXP gained and shared between killing the mob was 100% of the total mobs EXP. For Example: If we were to train on Dreamy Ghosts, which are Lv. 100, everyone in the party would have to be Lv. 95 - 105 in order to receive 10,240 EXP for each kill all across the board. If even one party member was not in level range, the party EXP for all was back to normal. This was obviously over powered, but also very awesome because there was only the potential for faster EXP gained the more people you added to the party within the level range. Even when the map was typically too small to share between 6 people, there was no penalty to anyone for sharing and attacking the same mobs; it was still beneficial as you could work together to kill the same mobs faster, rather than competing to do the most damage to them to get more EXP out of it than the other. (Seriously though, KSing shouldn't make such an impact when you're literally teamed up.) There's no way we should implement this glitch exactly, but I would love to have something similar I really like the idea of great bonus EXP under the situation that every party member is within 5 levels of the mob. That would make each training spot almost like a PQ in a way. At Lv. 20-30, you can team up with others in that level range at Wild Boars for great EXP, and at Lv. 30-40, you can move onto Jr. Wraiths with your party, and so-on. The way I would have this work without heavily incentivizing just AFKing in a party is, -When the whole party is within 5 levels of the mob being killed: Party Bonus EXP is 50% (This simply adds onto the Base-EXP of the mob; if the mob gave 100 EXP originally, it now gives 150 before being divided up. Let's call this value Full-EXP, as compared to the value Base-EXP, which is the mobs EXP without any bonus') 2/5ths of the Full-EXP goes to the other party member(s) The shared and gained EXP is not diminished any further as you gain more party members (meaning all other party members get 2/5ths of the mobs Full-EXP if you kill a mob in that scenario, whilst you still get 3/5ths of the mobs Full-EXP.) Doing some math, this would have it so that the party member still gets 90% of the Base-EXP from purely their own kills as compared to what they would have gotten without a party, so it'll be much easier for a party member to make up for that loss. And of course, to incite the feeling of "The more, the merrier", the EXP wouldn't be diminished any further no matter how many more people you add to the party. Perhaps this could be very difficult to implement, however if it can basically be done on accident, I have hope for it to be done in some way or another. Potential Cons: Spoiler Could provide a new method of leeching. Though paying 2-5 people all close to your level while you sit down and they train seems like a much harder situation to set up, and doing it without permission of the others just incentivizes them to replace you with another member who would actually help kill. Holy Symbol is now extra Over Powered? Yeah kinda. Unless you don't deem it a problem, I would like some suggestions on how this could be made less-so. If this Party Bonus EXP cannot be excluded from bosses, we might see strict Level-based runs develop, for example a Zakum run only accepting party members within Lv. 135-145. However once someone falls outside of that range, there will of course be normal runs still around who don't care as much about your level. Whether or not you would deem this bad or not is really up in the air. -Party EXP Nerf- Spoiler Simply put: reduce the amount of EXP gained to low levels from high-level kills. The problem with leeching and why it's so viable is that Bishops and Arch Mages can kill mobs so fast that it surpasses the already current nerf to EXP given to low-levels from high levels. I don't really have much other input than change the value that determines how much less EXP is shared between two character's with a level gap. If it's 1% less EXP shared per 1 level, then make it like 2% less per 1 level. I don't know. Potential Cons: HP washing could become more difficult (Though if the developers go through with their HP items, quests, and things, it might be a non-issue). Having a high level help a newbie train will be less effective (Though it honestly was never effective, unless you were an Arch Mage or Bishop). Feedback, critiques, or corrections are encouraged! Help me figure out how these changes could be improved, if they should even be bothered with, and/or what you'd like to see relevant to this topic.
Its the new “nerf leech at its source,” thread of the month. 1. Things to note: Until Ulu City, you will gain more exp pure grinding. Even in Ulu City, I believe early Himes levels will get you more levels per hour grinding, so long as you have a priest and you are a mobbing class. 2. Low-Level leech is straight up horrible and does not need nerfs. This is the main culprit imo when people complain about leech because they cannot find pq members in this range cause they’re all leeching (21-70). You apporxmately get 100-150% per hour in low level leech. I have LPQed on my HP Blood washed mule from levels 35-48. LPQ is at least 3-4x faster than low level leech. 3. A lot of people buy leech because they cannot grind on an int character. No matter how much leech gets nerfed, so long as it exists in some form, these people will buy it because they have no other choice. TLDR: 1+2: Leech isn’t even that good. People are just lazy. 3: If you want high HP, you sorta have too eventually buy leech. My Thoughts on changes: Increase base exp or party exp in ToT, an area where prequests must be done to enter. As a result it could be a better mid game (starts at 81) to late game grinding spot (oblivion). Bishops will never be able to 1-hit most high lvl stuff. AMs need high level HS mules to do any decent training/leeching here.
As long as leech gives tolerable exp and people are willing to purchase it, it would still detract heavily from partying. Leech may not be the fastest at the lower levels, but it's still cheaper and you can get fast levels. At least for me, leech being too strong from 55-130 is the main thing. Add the exchange quest from 10-30 and that's a lot of levels where many players aren't actively participating in party based areas. You would rather do an exp overhaul on 15 maps rather than the exp system in general?
To be fair, most of it is geared toward the party EXP buff section, the other part just seemed a little relevant to throw out there. Though I'd personally have to disagree that low-level leech is bad; Ninja Castle with my Bishop and whatever new characters I don't feel like leveling naturally, level quite quickly there. Though of course, if the first suggestion is taken into consideration, training with a partner could potentially trump leeching, so the other suggestion might not be needed. I mean, it'd be great for ToT, but I was kind of hoping for overall increase in the incentive to do party play for grinding; surely it'd be an improvement, but leaving it exclusive to ToT seems a bit unnecessary. I honestly don't care about leveling any faster; we could even lower the server's EXP multiplier, and only being able to keep up with the original with grinding with a party. Not that I'd ask for that or ever see it happen; just to explain what I mean. If you can increase the reason why people should be grinding together rather than alone without a bunch of issues, I'm for it.
I tried grinding on my white knight and it is absolutely boring and dull. Please don't take away my self leeching way of leveling...
I'm pretty sure leech is faster than grinding from lvl 75+ (unless you are a bandit/fp mage) Harps give some really fast exp Also LPQ is very slow and if you say you get 1 lvl per hour in leech then you will definitely not get 3-4 lvls in LPQ (
That's alright, I won't advocate for a nerf of leeching very much. I'm far more for just increasing the viability of party grinding~ Hopefully we can also get R&J PQ up soonish so new 3rd jobbers can have a good PQ to play with.
Leech low levels is still slower then PQ imo. “As long as leech gives tolerable exp and people are willing to purchase it, it would still detract heavily from partying.” I agree I wrote something similar. Buffing the party EXP section would also buff leech. I personally don’t like all those threads that were like “don’t give exp to characters who don’t do damage every like 10seconds.” Leech should stay. The economy rides too much on it. I’m not saying you want leech removed, but there were one/two threads on it I believe. R&J PQ would help IMMENSENLY in my opinion. Even in GMS I did that PQ to level up and it gives new players a chance to not have to use 260m on a dept star.
You must've not read the "Buffing the Party EXP" section, then. Or do you mean it'll buff leeching someone who wants to leech in a party of 6 with everyone within 5 levels of themselves? I did mention that posssibility in cons, as well.
Nope! I’ll read it later haha. I feel like most maps aren’t even optimal 6 man parties. And it would almost force parties to pick up lazy people/leechers just so they could hit 6 people. Most training maps (for non 4th job mages) seem to be optimally 2-3 players. I’ll read that thread though.
I like the idea of basically having these semi PQs for grinding. But a thing i mentioned in almost any post that talks about changing the way EXP is shared is the big problem with how it would work when bossing. As you mentioned it will create these weird 135~145 parties of 6 people for great exp on these levels. But after that, if we will include your other suggestion for nerfs for exp sharing between big gaps in lvls, you'd see that it would get increasingly harder for lower lvls above 145 to lvl up proper (until the giant HT parties of lvl 155-165). Also, in late game maps, the lvls in which its viable to grind becomes far larger than 10 lvls range. As a pally i bet you already know ToT by heart. What im trying to say is that in places like ToT where grinding on lvl 142+ is not weird at all, you are limiting the map's viability even more-so than it already is. Also, I'd wait with updates like this until washing won't require so much base int from some classes (referring only to the base int NEEDED to reach enough HP to not miss out on HT). They said that the belt and GPQ medal will give HP, hopefully after that it would become viable. This sort of update is pretty bottom heavy, lvl wise, not sure if the mods of this game want the early game to be that fast. With such grinding parties, early game will be super fast, and if there are enough people in your lvl range, you will be able to climb the ranks really fast.
So I suppose it'd be best if there was some way to have it be excluded from bosses? Though that'd make it harder to implement I am sure. But if that can be achieved, then so-to can the nerf be excluded from bosses... probably. So bossing could essentially stay the same. It'd actually be really good for those starting the ToT quests at their given levels. Since each quest to move onto the next map always has the level requirement equal to the level of the enemy you're killing 999 of. But yeah, after Lv. 136, you wouldn't have that great party EXP bonus, but could still continue at the original pace which is still not bad at all. Though I don't see how that would exactly limit the map's viability. Could you elaborate more on that? Of course; I think by the time, if and when this is ever considered, the server will have diminished the need for base int washing. That's a good point. Of course, as I mentioned before, I don't necessarily want leveling to be faster, I would just like to see party-play to be more incentivized, and seem worth the effort of getting people to train with you. Is there any other ways you can see that being achieved without buffing lower leveling as much?
Hmm, I might have worded it incorrectly, what I meant was the viability of grinding parties at ToT past lvl 136. Once your grinding party exceeds that lvl, everyone would get less exp than they would have before this change, which further pushes back parties from the idea of grinding together, moreso if they are a lot of lvls apart. The map itself doesn't get worse, it will still be a viable solo/duo map, but big parties is a big nono past 136, which is a bit sad when you realize how many classes are practically forced to do grinding instead of bossing. Also, I highly doubt it's possible to seperate exp rules of bosses from normal exp rules.
Alright, I get it. So it'd be still a positive, just too bad that the road of fun party play / good party EXP ends there. We could always change the party requirement to be the other factor that affects shared EXP, and that's whether everyone in the party is within 5 levels of each other. My only problem with that variant is that it seems less clear-cut, and seems more open to the possibility of abuse. I wouldn't say impossible, but I agree that it's likely too dang hard to bother trying.
