Fixed Leveling: Sudden Huge Amounts of XP Gained

[Hylie Pistof]

Yes I do use the world map to save time or when the winds will not allow me to sail, but I direct sail a lot, especially between close islands and the sailing skill always lags behind the others. For instance in this new game my melee skill is 8 and my sailing skill is 4. They should be reversed.

 

[Grey Roger]

Same here - realistic mode, worldmap to save time, especially if the wind is blowing in my face when I'm leaving port, otherwise quite a lot of direct sailing. This is the result - this is my status at the end of the "Hornblower" storyline:


Officers - who needs them anyway? Before this point Hornblower can't hire them; after this, he doesn't need them. I've got all the perks except for the new additions, and I couldn't care less about smuggling or gambling anyway. Almost all skills are at 10, half of them at base level 10 and most of the rest boosted to 10 by equipment - only Commerce and Luck are low.

In fact, the skills hadn't changed much since I took another snapshot rather earlier, at the point where Hornblower has just got command of the Retribution and gone to Cayman to find Quelp. At that time Sailing, Grappling and Repair were only at base level 7 instead of 9, though they were still effectively 10 due to equipment bonuses; Commerce was one point lower; Luck was almost exactly the same, it didn't have the 58%. And I was only level 51 at that time.

Melee increased slowly at first, probably because opponents are matched to my skill. Sailing and gunnery skills went up like rockets once I got into sea battles, so did my level, which meant melee opponents became higher level, which meant I got more skill reward for defeating them.

And when Quelp rejoined me as escort to the Hotspur on its first trip out of Bridgetown, he went ballistic:

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Ayup! Here are 2 screenies. One from last week and one from today after bumping the sailing perk from 1 to 2 in leveling.c.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Hopefully @Levis will be around again soon. I seem to remember he said he'd be back by Sunday.
Haven't seen him though.

 

[HellSailor]

Then the EXPMult of sailing to value 2 is correct as I had imagined. Will try to see that though.

 

[Baddy]

Dear sirs, can someone tell me how to change the speed of the player's skills increase? I am still hacking with the new WIP and in InternalSettings.h there is no trace of the old settings, like
SKILLS_UP_BONUS 25 // From 10 to 99 - speed of player's skills-increase
SKILLS_UP_BONUS 10 // From 10 to 99 - speed of player's skills-increase
SKILL_EXPERIENCE_MULTIPLIER...

How can I slow down the increase of my new character?
Thank you.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

At the moment the skills system is a work in progress and not correctly balanced.
Clearly you noticed the issues we're still having with it.

 

[Baddy]

At the moment the skills system is a work in progress and not correctly balanced.
Clearly you noticed the issues we're still having with it.

Oh, I will wait. You know, I like to grow old on my lugger, moving balls of cotton up and down, dreaming for years about fregates and such...
Thank you.

 

[Baddy]

Do you know if the value of the party experience is an unsigned int?
This is because I wrote in "Crewmember_alc_dialog.c" the code

case "SkillPoints":
DialogExit();
AddPartyExp(pchar, -500);
break;

But it increase positively.
I wrote it trying to limit the experience increasing...

 

[Baddy]

Sorry for bothering boys, I wat too talkative.
I have found leveling.c, and edit it. .... bwah bwah bwahhhh. Oh I LIKE to hack.
My values are now:

#define SKILLS_UP_BONUS 10
#define SKILL_EXPERIENCE_MULTIPLIER 0.35
#define EXPERIENCE_MULTIPLIER 0.2 .

You know, I'm an old man , not like you, young guys, "today a boat, tomorrow a Line ship".
Quiet life, quiet life, working hard and maybe some day pirates will sink you.
Again, sorry and thanks for all the hard work in the inproved version.

 

[Levis]

Sorry my flight was cancelled and I had to arange some other stuff first.
Going to work on this today and tomorrow. I will take all feedback into account.

 

[Levis]

Here is a new Leveling.c which has taken the feedback into account and should be balanced better.
I changed some of the multipliers as @HellSailor sugested. I also made the XP curve more exponatial as sugested by @Pieter Boelen and @Grey Roger.
I also tried to make the first level for skills a bit easier but after that they become harder (they are also exponantional now).
I think @Hylie Pistof will now have less level up pop up at the start of the game.

Please let me know if this balance is better.
Included in the zip file you will find an excel document. It shows some charts showing the old level progression and the new one. The upper charts are the same. There is just one which goes to 10o and another more zoomed in for level 50.

I tried to look at the data by @Grey Roger and when looking at his character from hornblower this one should now with the new changed implemented below level 50. This might still be to high but I would first like to see how this plays. if things still are to high we could balance it a bit more. This could also be done by changing EXPERIENCE_MULTIPLIER in Leveling.c.
If the distribution is alright this float can be used to have a linear increase or decrease of the XP needed.

 

[Levis]

@Baddy I moved your posts here. Please try this new Leveling.c and see how it goes. If you still think its to easy please let me know which variables you use.

 

[HellSailor]

Excellent @Levis! I will test these new features ASAP I think tomorrow I can test it properly.

 

[Levis]

I will post another update tomorrow probably so if you have any feedback please let me know asap.
I might be able to do little tweaks on friday evening but after that I'm away till the 31th of august.

 

[HellSailor]

Tomorow after lunch I will give it a try and test everything I can in two hours of gameplay. Then I will post my impressions and feedback about it here. I hope that should give me time to see the new differences.

 

[HellSailor]

Just a little quick note about this new levelling system: It works GREAT. No, seriously, it works perfectly. I think I even like this new system the system we all know before these new implements. This exponential system is very interesting too; Some levels requiere an amount of experience that goes higher and higher, while others need less experience. Defintely I am going to fully test Beta 3.5 WIP once for all properly!

On the other side, however, I noticed something that needs a little change, but nothing serious: I made a TSH campaign for test, just to see how the new exp system worked from level 1, and I feel that practising fencing with Malcom is a bit slow (I am in level 9 with level 6 of fencing). So I think I am going to try to increase it a bit (From 5 to 5.25 and see what happens).

Stay alert for new upcoming posts of my opinions about this new levelling system. Great job @Levis

 

[Levis]

Getting to level 4 should be easy, after it, it gets harder really quick. This is done intentionally. I could change the curve a bit do it's easier till level 6 but that means the later levels get even harder . But feel free to test the multipliers. Although when you will encounter enemies they won't have above level 7 of fencing unless they are level 20+ probably.

 

[Levis]

Btw thanks for the positive feedback . Hope others will like it too.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Getting to level 4 should be easy, after it, it gets harder really quick. This is done intentionally. I could change the curve a bit do it's easier till level 6 but that means the later levels get even harder .

4 sounds like a reasonable number to me as that matches with the number of skill points you can gain through items.
So quickly to level 4 plus but some skill items and you're already up to 8. Then you just need to work a bit harder to get those last two points.
As long as enemies aren't excessively tougher or weaker compared to the player, that should work for gameplay.