tModLoader Experience and Classes

[Saerus]

Well, it's ok but i want it to be smaller cuz my screen is small, and the UI is big

There is now a command to toggle UI transparency.

v1.0.4
-new command /expbartrans toggles UI transparency (done)
-improved the check for whether a character has found an Ascension Orb before (no longer counts picking one up that has been dropped by a player) (done)

I won't release this as its own version over the Mod Browser since it's a tiny change and we've already had two updates today (I don't want to bombard everyone), but here's a download link in case you want it now: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0MAvKt4u50dbC1UTHlGZXV4djA/view?usp=sharing

 

[Roxxz]

Nice to see the mod is going on strongly.

Are you against reducing damage of other weapons that are not of your class/reducing hp to balance the game and incentive sticking to that class?

 

[Saerus]

Nice to see the mod is going on strongly.

Are you against reducing damage of other weapons that are not of your class/reducing hp to balance the game and incentive sticking to that class?

I'm basically against it unless the majority want it.

EDIT: this can be the next poll - please remind me if I forget

My reasons were discussed back here:

Several people have commented on giving classes downsides/cons. Some people are all for it while others are very much against it. If it becomes clear that the majority of people want downsides, then I will add them. Until then, we won't have downsides and here is why:
1. They just don't do very much.

A. Decreasing health/defense/etc below vanilla values is not reasonable or fun. Very few would choose these options, especially for already squishy play types (e.g., mages).
B. Decreasing off damage types generally has no consequence past early game. If a ranger deals 10% less melee/magic/minion damage, this really won't change anything. The ranger is going to be using ranged weapons almost exclusively. When they do use other damage types, it will generally be for utility rather than damage. Anyone who likes to use several damage can roll a Hybrid.​

2. Don't feel good/doesn't improve the experience.

A. Nobody likes to be limited. If you build a specific style, then penalties to other styles won't impact you very much, but they also won't improve the overall experience. If anything, knowing that you are pigeonholed (even though you did it to yourself) will make for a worse experience.​

This is certainly open for debate. I want to give you guys what you want. I can always adjust my own personal version if I don't like the direction that the public release is going.

tldr; Adding downsides to classes is open for discussion. My thoughts are that they don't improve the experience and that they limit your options while doing little to improve balance.

 

[Icegod101]

So I play through the game normally, then suddenly at a random time in the game my character stops seeing the exp bar, exp commands don't work, items still work though
I'm stuck at the same level I was last time I saw the exp bar.

 

[Saerus]

So I play through the game normally, then suddenly at a random time in the game my character stops seeing the exp bar, exp commands don't work, items still work though
I'm stuck at the same level I was last time I saw the exp bar.

Just to confirm:

1. A class token is equipped?
2. You have tried /expbar to toggle bar visibility?
3. You have not set exprate to zero with /exprate?
4. You have tried leaving the map and re-entering?

Edit: When you say that the exp commands don't work, do they display any message or simply do nothing at all?

 

[Icegod101]

Just to confirm:

1. A class token is equipped?
2. You have tried /expbar to toggle bar visibility?
3. You have not set exprate to zero with /exprate?
4. You have tried leaving the map and re-entering?

Edit: When you say that the exp commands don't work, do they display any message or simply do nothing at all?

Tried everything, solved issue by deleting the mod and reinstalling

 

[Saerus]

Tried everything, solved issue by deleting the mod and reinstalling

Glad you got it sorted out. If it happens again, please let me know and I'll look into it.

 

[Sylvesta Epsylven]

Thank you very much Saerus!

 

[Teleclast]

Have you changed anything to deal with the exp sharing mechanic? Me and 3 others killed the boss Star Scouter several times and our experience values between two of us were leapfrogging despite no deaths, same team, all killing, etc.

 

[updatedude]

The rate of Ascension Orb drops seem too low. I've been playtesting on Expert Hard Mode with x30 spawn rate and even after basically committing genocide, there'd only be 2 or 3, or maybe even no Ascension Orbs at all. The drop rate from bosses looks okay. It's perhaps even a little high, considering we don't need many.

Getting enough Ascension Orbs for Tier 2 seems reasonable since you should get them by the time you hit level 10. But for Tier 3, it seems to make more sense to just farm bosses and convert instead.

Is this intentional? I can certainly see the sense in it. It means we wouldn't be overloaded with Ascension Orbs and Boss Orbs can be gotten by summoning and farming bosses at a not unreasonable rate. Also, given that Ascension Orbs give out 500 exp, which is huge in the early going...

Your earlier post said the rate of Monster/Ascension Orbs is 1% from non-bosses with base experience >1? So this means we farm by... erm, killing blue slimes or something?

Sorry if I'm jumping all over the place. Writing all this out is giving me an idea on the logic being used? So we're SUPPOSED to farm bosses for Ascension Orbs? Because if they drop too easily, it'd be too easy to level up in the early going?

 

[Teleclast]

Boss Orbs turning into Ascension Orbs makes that a non problem, Eye of Ctuhulu spam will get you more than enough. I did similar but in Thorium mod so it was other bosses.

 

[Saerus]

Thank you very much Saerus!

You are very welcome.

Have you changed anything to deal with the exp sharing mechanic? Me and 3 others killed the boss Star Scouter several times and our experience values between two of us were leapfrogging despite no deaths, same team, all killing, etc.

That's sounds a lot like a bug we had in an older version. Were you up to date?

If this was on the latest version, then v1.1.0 should resolve the issue as experience handling will be fully shifted to server-side.

The rate of Ascension Orb drops seem too low. I've been playtesting on Expert Hard Mode with x30 spawn rate and even after basically committing genocide, there'd only be 2 or 3, or maybe even no Ascension Orbs at all. The drop rate from bosses looks okay. It's perhaps even a little high, considering we don't need many.

Getting enough Ascension Orbs for Tier 2 seems reasonable since you should get them by the time you hit level 10. But for Tier 3, it seems to make more sense to just farm bosses and convert instead.

Is this intentional? I can certainly see the sense in it. It means we wouldn't be overloaded with Ascension Orbs and Boss Orbs can be gotten by summoning and farming bosses at a not unreasonable rate. Also, given that Ascension Orbs give out 500 exp, which is huge in the early going...

Your earlier post said the rate of Monster/Ascension Orbs is 1% from non-bosses with base experience >1? So this means we farm by... erm, killing blue slimes or something?

Sorry if I'm jumping all over the place. Writing all this out is giving me an idea on the logic being used? So we're SUPPOSED to farm bosses for Ascension Orbs? Because if they drop too easily, it'd be too easy to level up in the early going?

Re: Droprate
I actually reduced the drop rate to 1/200 in one of the follow-up versions. However, the droprate for each character is 1/75 until the first Orb is found to help with Tier II. I am thinking that maybe 1/150 would be better.

Re: Blue Slime
Only monsters that give more than 1 base experience can drop the orb, which does not include blue slimes.

Re: Low Level Orbs
Yeah, I don't want the orbs to be a source of significant experience at low level, but I also don't want them to be worthless at high level. I'm trying to find a balance between value and availability.

Re: Boss To Ascension Exchange
The idea here was to let players collect the Ascension Orbs in whatever way they like. If they want to farm bosses, that works. If they prefer to grind mobs, sure.

EDIT: Quick update on v1.1.0
Things are progressing well (perhaps too well *is suspicious*). The new system involves substantially less net traffic and is much less likely to develop experience-affecting bugs. Aside from these very internal changes, you can expect to see the following:

-UI transparency can be toggled
-class tokens can no longer start with a prefix (but you can still add one if you want) *I made this change for anyone who feels that the tokens shouldn't have prefixes
-Ascension Orb drop rate increased to 1/150 (from 1/200)
-individual exprate is not applied in multiplayer, there will be a way for the host to set a global exprate
-statue-spawned monsters will not give experience in any game mode

Release will probably be tomorrow - much sooner than anticipated.

 

[TrevorSmith]

Is it possible to make the orbs scale based on whether the player has defeated certain bosses? I.E. 500 exp for start, 1000 after 1 boss, 2000 after 2nd unique boss kill, etc.
500 no bosses
1000 1 boss killed
2000 2 bosses killed (EoC and either of the worms)
4000 3 bosses killed (EoC and both of the "worm" class bosses, or EoC+Worm+skele)
etc.

 

[Saerus]

Is it possible to make the orbs scale based on whether the player has defeated certain bosses? I.E. 500 exp for start, 1000 after 1 boss, 2000 after 2nd unique boss kill, etc.
500 no bosses
1000 1 boss killed
2000 2 bosses killed (EoC and either of the worms)
4000 3 bosses killed (EoC and both of the "worm" class bosses, or EoC+Worm+skele)
etc.

I have been thinking about doing something like that.

I probably wouldn't use specific bosses because many people are using other mods that change the progression (e.g., takes much longer to get to WoF because there's so much to do before then). I also wouldn't use number of bosses because it's easy enough to kill a bunch of EoC early on. Number of unique bosses (any bosses) is doable, but runs into the same issue where some players will kill 10 unique bosses before WoF.

At the moment, my preferred options are:

1. Orbs exchange for more experience when you are higher level. The downside is that it gets a bit goofy when you reset to level 1 at Tier III, but maybe that's not so bad.
2. Monsters/Bosses drop more than one orb at a time based on their stats (same drop chance). This would probably force us to change the Tier III requirements again, but that's also not so bad.
3. Orbs exchange for more experience at each class tier. Simplest solution. For endgame, maybe have a fourth exchange rate at Tier III Level 50+.

What are everyone's thoughts on this?

 

[NeoPhantom]

Third option seems best

 

[Teleclast]

The exp sharing was happening on v1.0.3. I'm sure because we were getting Boss Orbs and it was the reason we were farming it.

 

[Saerus]

The exp sharing was happening on v1.0.3. I'm sure because we were getting Boss Orbs and it was the reason we were farming it.

Thanks for the update. To clearify, your experience values were jumping around out of combat? Around once per second?

This should be fixed in v1.1, but I would still like to have some idea of what happened to learn from this.

 

[Teleclast]

We didn't check it often enough for me to be confident in telling you that.

Basically we would use /explist every one or two boss fights of the UFO. We were all nearby, only two of us were really checking our exp values, we were both tier 2 (Him Rogue, me Summoner) I would pass him then he would pass me, this happened at least a good 4 times between 20 boss fights. I'll try to see if it's repeatable when he gets near me in experience again.

I was the one initially behind and I wasn't doing anything funny like turning boss orbs until experience.

 

[Saerus]

We didn't check it often enough for me to be confident in telling you that.

Basically we would use /explist every one or two boss fights of the UFO. We were all nearby, only two of us were really checking our exp values, we were both tier 2 (Him Rogue, me Summoner) I would pass him then he would pass me, this happened at least a good 4 times between 20 boss fights. I'll try to see if it's repeatable when he gets near me in experience again.

I was the one initially behind and I wasn't doing anything funny like turning boss orbs until experience.

Hmm. The client-client syncing in the current build is pretty goofy. There are several ways that your exp value for other players can become out of sync and it can take a second or two for it to correct.

In the new build, the client doesn't even track others' experience. There isn't really a need for it now that the server announces levelups, etc. For explist, the server just throws a string at you. It's much cleaner.

Edit: Clients actually will have a copy of other clients' experience to prevent bugs with the auras, but it's still much cleaner.

 

[Namesomething]

My quick two cents: I believe it could be decent enough to make the drop rate for Ascension orbs be something like 1% with the current requirements, while at the same time lowering the amount of EXP they give on usage to about 100 points and changing the boss orb:monster orb conversion rate to 1:5 or something and the amount of orbs bosses drop to something based on how much HP they have in total, just to make it so farming EoC and Twins isn't worth the same thing. That way, orbs become something that you can use to progress more quickly instead of saving to jobchange because they're so ungodly rare, or things that you might only ever see at a decent rate after beating bosses and converting boss orbs.

Another option could be making them give a percentage of the amount of EXP you need for the next level, maybe 1-5% I guess.

Keep in mind that I've barely played with this mod yet so I have no idea of how balance is at higher levels, both stat and experience-wise.