Let's just say I got a quizzical ruling on something I encountered tonight.
As one may know from reading here, I, from time to time, will farm gil by going to the Promyvions (I now use Holla, since it has Fears and Pains), using my Dragoon to make the process easier.
Well, earlier this week, I finally got my Dragoon to 75. Woo hoo, fuck you to all the cheaters, and all that jazz...
I decided to take my Dragoon into Limit Point mode and farm a few things because I spent about 150K or so getting the necessary materials to complete the entire DNC AF1 set, and because I need to get another Sole Sushi stack and another Reraise Earring before Sunday for Dynamis.
I noticed something once I began to look at the fights: When I was in Limit Point mode, the number of Limit Points I received was substantially higher than the number of Experience Points I received for the same monsters under the same conditions (no Tactics Pearl quest, so no reduction for Adventuring Fellows)...
Try 75-100% higher... A 25-30 XP monster was giving me 50-55 LP. A 45 XP Thinker might get me 85 LP.
So, needless to say, it got GM'ed. And the GM, who shall remain nameless for security purposes, ruled the above a legal and intended game mechanic, not an exploit.
I'm not exactly sure why that ruling was made, but, until I hear different... I'm not at all certain that that's not a problem with the coding of how LP are applied in a level-restricted area such as a Promyvion...
And that gets to my question: Are they just making these rulings up not to rock the boat? This sounds an exploit, unless XP:LP is not 1:1...
Puzzled about this one...
Posts
15 comments:
I vaguely remember it was always setup this way. But being how infrequently I do level-capped shit (ie: never)... eh who knows.
I noticed a long time ago that for whatever reason the limit points you earn in any level capped zone will be higher than any exp you would earn in the same zone. It led to some interesting attempts to solo merits as PUP in places like Riverne.
I think SE's intention was to make fighting mobs in these zones beneficial to higher level players helping lower level players. While farming for drops you end up getting some decent chains in the process. I always thought of it as a weird way to encourage people to help out with missions and come back to the zones, etc.
I get that (this is to both of you), but, especially given what I've seen, I can see a fairly significant potential for abuse by meriting people blocking out lower levels from using the zones.
Can one understand the benefit of a couple of people saying "screw everybody else, I'm going to run up some merit points while waiting to get the rest of this Salvage party together..."
Or perhaps you should try and do a little more research on your own before claiming the GM's don't know crap.
http://www.playonline.com/updateus/040914gs7tr3.html
Pertinent portion:
Players will now receive experience points when fighting monsters in level-restricted areas (this only applies when fighting in the new Chains of Promathia areas). The amount earned per battle will be calculated using the following two methods, with the player receiving the higher total of the two:
(a) EXP calculations made based on current party level and number of party members * 0.5
(b) EXP calculations made based on actual party level (before level was restricted) and number of party members * 1.0
EXP chain bonuses are based on the party level before the restriction.
When in merit point accumulation mode, all EXP earned in this fashion will be changed to limit points.
So yes, DEFINITELY not an exploit as the version history itself states that this is intended. It's theorized that SE originally did this to try and make level cap areas more appealing to merit in, but the whole inconvenience of it and later the introduction of TOA just made this never catch on.
If you can find someone who will actually help you out, get someone who's actually lvl 30 and they should get the same amount of xp as you do limits.
I can't remember the specific patch notes but I do remember that they did specifically alter this a long time ago in an effort to alleviate stress on the current merit camps by offering alternatives in level capped areas.
Either way I can assure you that's as intended.
Also, in response to your above comment... meritting in a pt there has been tried, due to a combo of difficulty to reach merit-worthy mobs and a general slowness of exping on low level mobs, even the double limit points of meritting on these mobs don't come close to the amount of lp generated on today's baseline AU merit camps
Tarothin, I want you to listen very carefully to me.
The way that most of the shitheads play, and the way that Square-Enix has half-assed it's rules interpretations, past and present, I don't exactly trust the GM's to do any more than take the path of least resistance (the "easy route").
As I've stated numerous times, I question the integrity of this game, top to bottom. I still have the letter I wrote a month ago, but there doesn't seem to be any top-level communication at all to express these concerns in a strong enough form.
I can't say I agree with the ruling, bluntly. I could see high-level meritpos cock-blocking level-restricted areas with this kind of a ruling. The players in this game cannot be trusted, Tarothin, and the rules and rulings need to be made with that in account.
Perhaps that's the point, though -- in that there is a limiting factor in how many people can merit at once, feasibly.
Yes, the insidious plot by SE and everyone else has been uncovered. You caught us after 5 years. Honestly what potential besides spheres for maps you don't actually need and the occasional farm for items is lost if players merit in mass there "to beat the system".
If anything pt's there would be welcome. I mean clearer paths to the the spire? I might actually help aggro-vating retards again.
I'm sorry that you can't see that the conduct of the players has basically put most everything at some sort of suspicion level, ODannyBoy...
Sigh, did you even read what was said in the release notes?
Lemme give you a more concrete example (gonna use old xp values because it's what I'm more used to, same theories apply though)
Assume you're fighting a lvl 30 (even match in 30 cap) monster. Number on the left is your pre capped lvl, number on right is your xp.
30: 100
31: 72
32: 50
33-75: 50
LP mode: 100
Limits aren't magically getting doubled or anything, XP is simple gimped in half when you're beyond a certain lvl range. You're simply getting what you should have been getting if you were actually the lvl you're capped at. Therefore there is absolutely no basis for calling this an exploit. It has worked like this for 4 1/2 years unchanged, people discovered how it worked the first day it came out and noone bothered to take advantage of it because it's such a pain. About the only real useful nice aspect of this is when you're doing swift belts or something and you can get full limits rather than crap xp.
Tarothin: Do you realize how little sense that makes?
Do you realize how much that can be exploited by players wishing to cock-block level-restricted areas, exactly by this cockamanie ungimping of limit points when they, at maximum should be 1-1 with the XP you get at level 75...
It makes perfect sense, you are after all in a lvl 30 zone, so they give you the max xp that a lvl 30 can get. I don't see what's wrong with that at all. They WANTED people to use these zones for xp/merit, but guess what, people still didn't want to bother.
And despite all your talk of exploting this NOONE does it because it's never worth it to go to all the trouble when you can make 5 times the xp rate just killing colibri. People hardly ever use lvl cap areas as is, I don't understand what you're worried about.
"Do you realize how much that can be exploited by players wishing to cock-block level-restricted areas"
The reason that they aren't worried about people cockblocking the zone is because no one is going to do it, unless they seriously have one hell of a grudge against people in the zone and want to cause them grief.
The reason they won't do this? It's not efficient.
I know it isn't always a great idea to assume things, but based on your blog, I'm going to assume that the people you're worried about cockblocking in these zones are members of HNM shells, or others that you'll frequently see maxing out the colibri camps. These people won't do this, and I'll explain why.
People in HNM shells have most of their playtime taken up by things like camping HNMs, dynamis, limbus, salvage, Bv2, and Ouryu. They do not have a lot of time to merit, and so when they do merit, they want to grind out as many merits as they can in the shortest amount of time possible. Their ideal party setup will *usually* consist of a RDM, BRD, COR, and 3 melee.
The reason these level capped zones aren't efficient for these players is that at least two of the support jobs lose key abilities that make their merit parties run smoothly. The RDM needs convert and refresh to maintain his supposed infinite mp, which he won't have until level 41. The BRD will usually be throwing Ballad II on the RDM, which he won't have until level 55.
Combine the lack of those abilities with the fact that most level capped zones are out in bumblefuck, and you'll see why it's just completely inefficient for these parties to want to go there.
So yeah, while it's entirely feasible that merit parties *could* monopolize these zones if they wished, it isn't at all *likely* that they would want to.
As tarothin said, this is really only a perk if you're doing swift belt runs, because you can rack up some merits in the process. Other than that, there's really no appeal to it for most people.
Here's a point... that exp thing has been around for nearly 5 years now, and it hasn't been exploited because it's not worth exploiting.
So I don't see what the problem is.
Post a Comment